Lessons learnt from free course

Joel Bauer free course!

What a beautiful Saturday morning to sleep in... I thought to myself. Guess what, despite my ever-alluring bed tempting me to go back to sleep, I decided against it and freshened up before heading to over to the MAXAtria (the expo block where city harvest church service is held) for a free course on how to make money by Joel Bauer (http://joelbauerlive.com). Being just a little over 18, I had never attended these sort of courses before, as such, you can bet I was skeptical about it. Why would he organize a free course? What were the strings attached? These were just some of the endless questions racing through my mind.

Roughly one-third of the attendees is portrayed in this picture

I was hoping that there would be an uncountable number of people attending the course as I would be wary if there was too few attendees as something bad may happen. Thankfully, most of my fears were dispelled when I was confronted by snaking queues, weaving back and forth throughout the whole of level 2 of MAXAtria. Also, the swiftness of the registration staff was impressive, taking only a fraction of a second to scan the QR code and register me for the event, with my new alias: Zhang Liang.

This was taken 10 minutes before the starting time of 9am.. How good is this guy? The ability to reach out to so many people is pretty awe inspiring. Isn't it?

Once the doors were opened, the room was filled to the brim within roughly 20 minutes. This was in fact a considerable achievement in itself, especially with respect to the previous day's investment course(which was apparently at the same location as far as I know) where only 20% of the seats were taken. Even with a capacity of 1000, they managed to use up about an extra 40 chairs to ensure every person was well accommodated. And yes, I turned up early for the event!

Joel "Stand up if you trust me".. Behold the response

He started the day by having what he coined as a "preframe", where he relentlessly forced down all these amazing (and some unbelievable) testimonials down our throats. I mean, this guy has trained with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and companies like IBM and Panasonic? Is he for real? You can bet I surely was skeptical about this event. He also kept emphasizing throughout the event that he would not sell us anything nor could we buy anything from him and about how he was all about giving back to society. (ohhhh sure~)

Just 15 minutes into the course, I could clearly see why he was the master of persuasion. It was appalling at the number of people who just met him and trusted him instantly! I propose that it had something to do with the endless testimonials he screened to us. Also, he said the next person who's phone rang would be excused from this private event. But guess what, no one was invited out despite the specks of rings every now and then.

The short pep-talk (which was more of rambling and quibbling, but in a persuasive and confident manner) in the morning was followed up by a 15-minute toilet break where he said to be punctual in re-entering the venue. However, it was pretty much impossible to be back that quick with the hundreds of people going to the same toilet which resulted in massive jams and queues. After the break, he proceeded to talk about having dreams, which are actually of utmost importance to myself. A few days ago, me and my friend just had this dreary conversation about having dreams and aspirations and what do most people even come to Meridian Junior College (MJC) for, where they plan to go next and their purpose in putting in hours upon hours of studying (mind you, this is Singapore where I know of people who sleep 4 hours a day to study, also to compound the grave over-studying situation here, MJC's principal even said that its normal to study over 10 hours a day).

So, after hearing most people in their 30s and 40s not even having clear goals and dreams was somewhat a let down for me as I knew that this would lead to Singapore lacking enjoyable careers where people would chase their dreams. As I would put it, having a clear purpose is what drives you forward.

I forgot to take a picture so this will suffice.

After the talk about the importance of dreams, we had our 1-hour lunch break where I went to BK. They offered a satay burger set priced at $8.65. The burger was pretty much like any chicken burger, just with the addition of satay sauce, which was honestly quite disappointing. The size of the burger however, just added to my disappointment as it was way to small, just like any other BK burger. The fries however, were surprisingly nice due to the fun shake factor and the taste of the piquante spice and spicy honey sauce. Also for you spicy food lovers out there, this could appeal to you as the spice sure is spicy. To top it off, it came with Sjora which was quite sweet. Although the meal was not heaven to my taste buds, it was still a pretty decent fast-food meal and I headed back right after I was done.

When I reached back to the MAXAtria course room, it was totally dark and a video was screening while he elaborated on it. Due to this I had great difficulty finding a seat as like 90% of the room was already filled and most empty seats were reserved by people waiting for their friends! After roughly 3 minutes of me precariously wandering around, trying hard not to trip over chairs, I found an empty seat beside 2 people. The uncle on my left was pretty silly to say the least as I caught him closing his eyes a few times throughout the talk, my guess was he had too full a lunch to fight off fatigue. On my left was a couple (which was what most of the participants were composed of... couples everywhere). They looked pretty young, roughly in their early twenties so I talked to them about this guy asking if they believed everything he said, to my surprise and horror, they actually did believe every word that came out of his mouth. This reinforced my view that giving testimonials were actually THE most effective way in gaining others trust quickly. 

The following segment was all about dressing, a brief overview; 

BLUE - If you would appear on the media

WHITE - Acts as a magnet to attract people

RED - Never wear this as a top-down dress code as it diverts attention away from your face. As a tie it would be during charity events.

YELLOW - At events where your audience is mainly older people as it stands out. 

PINK - Shifts focus to your face and personality. Works as a gender neutral colour that can be worn both by male or female, prevents objectification. 

The colors refer to the inner layer of clothing and the tie.

The last two hours which I stayed behind for was a segment on business cards. According to Joel, most important of all is a card that people can read. He asked the audience for four people to present their business card to him and engaged the audience by asking them if they were able to read the small print on the card and that resulted in people being taught a painful lesson that their card was truly ineffective. (Mind you, these were experienced businessmen who were probably 2-3 times my age we are talking about)  He gave a general set of 5 fundamental things that business cards ought to comprise of, in no particular order of importance they are:

1. Lowest common denominator question being answered. i.e. what do you do.

2. Emotionalize with customers, captivate their sense of touch, sight, or even hearing if budget allows 

3. Hotline. Having a outsourced hotline gives customers the impression that your time is valuable. Furthermore, it allows you to prepare your speech before you call them back. (These cost $5-10/mth) 

4. Guaranteed outcome gives people a paradigm shift to be more able to trust you fully. These may take the form of money back guarantees too. Another important part is using the phrase "potentially guarantee" to prevent any conflicts with the law.

5. Have a presentable website. I did try making my own website using online website builder WIX before, check it out here: http://callmedarryl.wix.com/the-lysucious-bakery

On a more serious note, his aura reeked of persuasiveness and trustworthiness was emanating from him to such an extent that the following sequence of events took place. He asked who would purchase his business card for $100 when it was manufactured for a mere 11 cents. As no one stood up, he talked about how it was,
1. Sold in an auction for $3700 
2. He had only brought 2 into Singapore and the other was not for sale at any price
3. Able to be sold on EBay for $1700 overnight
4. How we should trust him because it is unthinkable that he would not give your money back if you asked for it.
Following this, he asked people who wanted to purchase the card now to form a queue. It felt like an absolute nightmare when almost a hundred people queued to purchase his card for a 100 bucks! No one even had any proof of what he said was true! Being in the persuasion trainer business for over 30 years and the testimonials sure gave him a lot of credibility. Later on, he asked who in the audience would like to purchase the card, it was as if the nightmare turned into a lucid one as nearly 80% of the room stood up! What ignorance!! But at least at the end of it, he chose one lucky guy to give the card to as he didn't need the $100. His point was clear, persuading people is a valuable skill, but it could also cause harm if done with the wrong intentions.

After spending most of the day there, from 0830 to 1600, despite the rigorous testimonial sharing which took up roughly 50% of the time there, there was much to be learnt and I would consider going for other such courses in the future. I would also look out for networking courses to go and meet new faces, who knows, the oft-bandied maxim "what a small world" does materialize when these people I meet may be future business partners.