The Greatest Skill of the 21st Century

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

The greatest skill of the 21st century is not coding, artificial intelligence, or web design. It is persuasive communication.

If you want to be rich, learn persuasive communication.

A few months ago, one of the richest people I know, Alex, told me this. He said to stop worrying about sales, marketing, coding, or anything else until you learn how to communicate persuasively.

This is the first time someone has told me this. Most people I look up to always tell me, "Learn a lot of technical skills; the more skills you have, the more money you will earn." This is true, but you can never sell yourself or your technical skills if you don't know how to communicate persuasively with others.

However, no one wakes up in the morning desiring to learn persuasive communication. Everyone wants to learn things like copywriting, marketing, or sales. But if you spend five minutes thinking about these technical skills, you will know that nothing matters without persuasive communication. All of these skills won't matter if you can't sell them.

It is human psychology. Skills are used to exchange value between two people. If people don't perceive your skills as valuable, they won't pay for them. The same psychological principle works on everything you do, including building relationships with others.

A few years ago, I started a mastermind group to talk about leadership and business, and it failed. I had 12 members, and I needed 20 members to break even. Every group member loved the benefit, but I needed help convincing other people to join. So, when Alex told me about mastering the art of persuasive communication, it hit me hard, and I decided to learn as much as possible about persuasive communication.

You are an emotional being.

The number one principle you need to remember is this: people don't remember what you say. They remember how you make them feel.

This is life-changing advice; you should remember it whenever you talk to others. As research proved, "By nature, human beings are first and foremost emotional creatures. We are motivated and activated by emotions." You are not as logical as you think; you are most likely driven to please your ego, which is an emotional being.

Emotions aren't good or bad. So, don't feel bad if you feel more emotional than others. You are a human.

Your ego drives you.

Understanding the importance of the ego will help you capture other people's attention.

As Blair Warren said, "People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies." Addressing your audience's ego will help you connect with them emotionally. You should focus on encouraging them and disliking their enemies.

If you learn to take people on an emotional journey of love, hate, excitement, fear, calmness, and any other emotion that ultimately benefits their lives, you will win forever.

Everything is content creation.

Once you understand that your life is a story and everyone's life is a story, you will learn how to tell better stories.

The architect is a storyteller, the songwriter is a storyteller, and the marketer is a storyteller. Humans only understand the universe if they tell themselves stories about the world around them.

A study in Nature Communications helps explain why storytelling is a powerful tool for fostering social collaboration and teaching social norms, and it pays valuable dividends to the storytellers themselves, improving their chances of being selected as social partners, receiving community approval, and even having healthy offspring.

Learn what captures your attention.

If you are scrolling online, pay attention to what captures your attention.

If you go to the bookstore, pay attention to what gets your attention. If you are talking to your customers, understand what keeps you interested in the conversation. Consume information without allowing it to consume you.

For example, you should ask yourself, "Why am I still reading this? How is this article holding my attention?"

If you want to learn how to communicate powerfully with other people, learn how to use your words, and understand the impact of your words. Words are the building blocks of storytelling. They take your audience on a journey of highs and lows and make them remember you for a long time.

Use numbers to hook people's attention.

The average person eats almost 1500 pounds of food a year.

Using numbers in your hooks, articles, or stories will make people stop to see what the numbers relate to. As the economist Aaron Levenstein once said, "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." Numbers are powerful. The world is crowded, and a lot of data is being produced. You will only be noticed if you learn to use statistics to tell your story.

Headlines with numbers are compelling because the number makes a clear, quantifiable promise so you know what to expect. The number is the hook. It promises to tell you something in a set of measurable steps. People love to know what they are about to be told and how long they will have to pay attention.

Use pattern interrupt often.

Pattern interruption is a method to change a person's mental, emotional, or behavioral state to break their usual habits.

It is a method great communicators use to capture your attention and disrupt your established patterns. Think of it as an unexpected act that shocks you into another state of mind. For example, most of what you see on social media is biased information, so seeing a well-formatted list of tweets will make you stop scrolling.

If people are shouting, whispering will get more attention. If people are making videos, writing will get more attention. Choose how you want to interrupt people.

Use negativity bias.

The human brain is wired to detect and pay attention to negativity.

Negativity bias is a well-studied concept. Negativity bias causes heightened emotional responses to negative events compared to positive events of equal magnitude. As the Decision Lab study shows, "Negativity bias is linked to loss aversion, a cognitive bias that describes why the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining."

Your survival instincts influence your negativity bias. You are wired to pay attention to anything that threatens your survival. That is why the headline "You will die" gets more clicks than "You will survive."

This is a very practical guide on how to use psychology to communicate more persuasively with others. So, when you write, remember how to use these tips to capture and retain people's attention. If you have the opportunity to speak in front of others, remember to use these tips to persuade people of your point of view.