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Mark: Today, I have got a very, very important chapter from this entire process here not
just because the content is really important which, I believe that it is, may be more
important than originally meets the eye but also we've got the absolute ideal person to
be talking to about this. The concept is framing and it would be very interesting to hear if
this expert agrees with me on this but I personally feel that the concept of the frame
may, in fact, be the single most important concept in persuasion there is, period, hands
down. Now, this is all theory, right? None of us really know what persuasion is.
Ultimately, we've got some great theories but this is one theory that has held out for me
again and again and again. The expert’s name is the gentleman; if you haven’t heard of
him, you definitely should hear him. His name is Kenrick Cleveland. Now, you can find
out about him at MAXpersuasion.com.

Now, Kenrick is sort of a secret weapon for a lot of people and I'll just tell you a little
story. There is a very well-known trainer. Now, I'm not going to mention any name
because I don't know if it’s really proper to talk about how Kenrick helped him but he
had a closing system where, at the end of every one of his talks, he would give a close
that was so powerful that it would close pretty much more people in a room setting than
I have ever heard about and everyone I had talked to kept telling me about this, “You
gotta see this guy doing his close.” And when I finally saw the close, I thought “Wow!
This is absolutely amazing. Who designed this? This is absolutely genius!” Well, it turns
out that Kenrick is the guy who actually designed the process for him step-by-step and
this is only one of many, many such cases where I find out later on that Kenrick is sort of
a guy who designs some kind of a persuasive scenario. This had a huge, dramatic
influence on a lot of businesses. Now, there's a lot more that I can say about Kenrick but
I want to zoom in on that one story because that, I think, very, very well characterizes
who he is. He's sort of a… I mean, he is extremely well-known among certain people.
For those who don't know him, he's sort of a secret weapon behind the scenes for a lot
of these really, really well-known people; and I'm talking some huge, huge names of
people on stage that you would see and you think “Oh, wow! This guy’s is the best of
the best!” and awesome Kenrick will do a step for them. He will devise closing
processes or devise ways to make their presentation more persuasive and that’s but
only one of many ways that Kenrick helps people improve the profitability of their
business so, without any further ado, Kenrick, my old friend, welcome to the call!

Kenrick: Thanks so much, Mark. I'm glad to be with you today.

Mark: How long… it’s been what? Twelve years now or so since, I think, we've known
each other, is that about right?

Kenrick: I think so. I'll accept that.

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Mark: That’s about right. Well, it was around twelve years ago when you and I first met
that you first introduced me to another concept that is different from framing and that is
the idea of the use of presupposition in language – something I wasn’t even aware of at
the time; and when you presented that concept to me, I have to say it was one of the
pivotal moments in my education of persuasion. That is, of course, one of the
foundationally most important things you can know about persuasion and you have a
heck of a lot of that at that time but when you taught that to me, that was one of the
most important turning points. I just wanted to tip my hat to you and just let people know
“Hey, even people who are experts in certain things, learn from other people.” Hopefully,
from other extremely knowledgeable experts as Kenrick is; I mean, he's just one of the
best of the best of the best of the best in the world; so, thank you for that. That was a
very important moment in my life.

Kenrick: Well, coming from you, Mark, that really means something. I appreciate that.

Mark: You're very, very welcome.

Kenrick: And, by the way, I wanted to just mention I agree with you a hundred percent
about framing being perhaps THE most important of all persuasion strategies and skills.
In fact, I’ve been spending a tremendous amount of time this last year with my coaching
group on framing and frames and those strategies in general. I think I can't say enough
about the power of these and, even though I’ve known about them for many, many
years and use them, I didn’t quite really start to understand the far-reaching nature of
these until the last few years when I’ve been just developing around this whole concept
like mad. So, I'm right there with you.

Mark: Well, I'm really curious to hear what you have to say about this now in the new
context because you and I haven’t really been on the phone in about that long, in a
couple of years. So, if you’ve got new stuff to talk about, I'm kind of chopping at the bit
here. I want to find out what it is.

Kenrick: Let me just start off… go ahead.

Mark: Go ahead… yeah, there's a delay and I think we’re both extremely excited about
the concept of framing. Let me just jump in really quickly and give them sort of a broad
overview of framing really, really quickly and maybe you could do the same thing
because I'm sure that we both got different things to say about it. What I would say is
that the idea of the frame is, to put it very, very simply, what I like to say is it’s the
information around the information, right? So, if you present someone with a piece of art
and you show it to someone in the context of a street vendor selling it with $5 price tag
and then you contrast that with selling that same piece of art inside the MoMA or,

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perhaps, The Louvre where you sell art inside those great museums but, what I'm
saying is that your perception of that same painting would be radically different –
radically different! And it doesn’t matter how much you know about art; I challenge you
that your perception of that painting would be extremely different now. This is really only
a metaphorical explanation of the idea of the frame. So that context becomes the frame.
It’s not actually just a physical frame around it. That’s a tiny, tiny part of it but, really, it’s
the context, it’s your previous knowledge, it’s what you're experiencing right now in that
moment – every single one of those things have a huge impact on the information that
you're perceiving and, as we go through this conversation, you'll see so many ways that
this pervades our actual communication and every single thing that we do and I would
put to you the listener every single belief that you have, I would say that most of your
beliefs have been shaped if not completely formed by the manipulation of the frame
whether it be deliberate by someone, perhaps a politician, or a passive thing that just
sort of happened in your life and creating a context that was sort of randomly throwing a
dice and creating a belief system in your mind. Now, Kenrick, what do you think? Is that
sort of right on with frames?

Kenrick: I'm right there with you. I want to add something and say that the way I define
frames is they are our way of making meaning out of things. So, we determine what
something means and what we should do and how we should respond based on the
frames that we've accepted in any situation that we find ourselves. So, here’s an
example I like to give.

Imagine these two different scenarios, both having something in common. Imagine that
you're driving down the street and, the next thing, you look in your rearview mirror and,
racing up behind you is a police officer with his lights flashing, pulling right in behind
you, okay? And now you have one reaction to that.

The next situation is, you're at home relaxing on your couch and you see on TV police
officers racing to a scene with their lights flashing and stopping a mass murderer from
pulling again.

So, you have two radically different perspectives of those flashing lights.

Mark: Right.

Kenrick: Okay, now, interestingly, that’s only one type of framing. There's two types of
frames: There's context framing which I talk about as the packaging, the environment,
like a webpage or a seminar room or an officer car; and then there's the content which I
talk about being the message. So an example of the message type of thing was
President Reagan teasing Walter Mondale in 1984 when everyone thought Reagan was

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too old to run for president and he stated “I will not make age an issue in this campaign.
I'm not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” So
he didn’t reframe the wrapper or the packaging, he reframed the message.

Mark: Right.

Kenrick: So, there's those two types of frames that are global types of frames that we
can use anywhere.

Mark: Okay, so you're saying that there are… Okay, wow! That’s really interesting
actually. So you're talking about the way that the frame affects an actual situation or the
way the frame affects an actual language message, is that right? Is that the distinction?

Kenrick: That’s exactly right – the content and the context. Both have many
possibilities of framing or you can use them separately or together. In fact, Mark, I teach
twenty-four strategies. I call them doorways into the mind that lets you do the content
type. Well, it includes both, really, but primarily the content type of strategies with these.
I mean, I'm telling you! Framing has become like my middle name. It is literally that
powerful. Let me give you three general framing principles that I think will kind of help
lead us down the path of understanding here. The first is understanding the concept of
frames and you have to become aware that frames exist to begin with so that you can
start using them to your advantage. So, first we conceptualize that frames are present.
Second, and by the way, this is sounds like, well, relatively simple but believe me, when
you wake up to these frames that are happening in our day-to-day lives, you'll be
shocked! The second principle I talk about is identifying the frames.

So, first we have to know that they exist then we identify the frames and then we learn
to detect them when they're being used which is literally all the time and deciding that
we’re going to consciously use them to become aware of their use on us and on others
so that it can be a choice, okay? So, you know one of the things I did for today and this
was… I was excited to talk to you and I knew we’re going to have a lot of fun.

Mark: Yeah.

Kenrick: I wrote down a bunch of frames that I find and use all the time and I thought
maybe if I shared them with you and the listeners that maybe it would be a significant
advantage because we’re so far talking about things that are kind of big concepts and
we need to make the rubber meet the road here.

Mark: Yeah, okay great!

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Kenrick: Okay, let me just throw out some frames that everyone will recognize these
frames when I say them and you mentioned, by the way, beliefs and every single belief
a person has is a frame and, by the way, that’s why we have wars sometimes because
we have people with one frame opposing those with another frame and they're not
willing to negotiate. Alright, well, let’s throw out some frames and there's a tower of
them. The expert frame: the frame of a father which I kind of see as an expert with an
authoritarian twist or the frame of a mother which could be an expert frame with a
nurturing element, if we want to stay with archetypes. There's the protector frame which
is what you know all governments hope you're going to see them as. Then there's the
enforcer frame, of rules, of societal norms, of agreements, these are what all law
enforcement, police officer types think of themselves as. There's the beauty sex-appeal
frame and we’re inundated with that nonstop. There's the professional frame and I see
that as “I do it for a living. I'm educated and <credential>.” It’s that kind of frame. There's
the aloof and not needing anything frame, “If you want me, you're going to have to get
me” kind of thing, okay? There's the organizer frame. There's the team player frame, a
follower frame, a student frame, a needy person frame, a beggar frame. I mean, I
literally could have listed on and on but I thought it might be kind of fun, Mark, if you
would just make a statement that you think to be true about marketing and let me apply
some of these different frames to them because I think your listeners will start to get the
power of this stuff the minute they hear it. How about we go about that?

Mark: I think that’s a great idea and I’ve got a wonderful one we can use for this just as
you said that. There's an old marketing saw and old saws are very, very dangerous
things because sometimes they're right and sometimes they're not. They sound really,
really good and what they do is they sort of get us to shut our brains off whenever we
hear one of these old things. “Oh, that sounds so true!” whether or not it’s true, we don't
know, right? So, it’d be very interesting to see how this job bounces up against frames.
So, this old marketing saw goes “We make our decisions based on emotion and justify
them with logic.” Now, this is something I actually tend to believe is true, right? So, it’d
be interesting to see what happens with that. So, that’s something I believe about
marketing but I'm open to the fact that it may not be a hundred percent true.

Kenrick: You're a hundred percent right. I won’t do a thing to change your mind but this
is beyond right. Now, let me state that using some of these different frames.

Mark, I'm one of the leading experts in the world on persuasion and I'm telling you
factually that that is correct, that people make their decision based on emotion. They
back them up with logic.

That’s the expert talking. Now, here’s the father talking.

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Mark, I care about you. You and I have done well together and I’ve watched over you all
of these years and as you know, I’ve taught you for many years that, you know, people
make decisions based on emotion and they back them up with logic.

Now, the mother.

Mark, you know, I think we should really take care of people and if we can just teach
them some of these truths that we will imbibe like, for example, you know people make
decisions based on emotions but they back them up based on logic. You know the world
would be a better place and this is what I’ve helped you to be all along all throughout
these years.

Mark: That’s great.

Kenrick: Now, the protector.

You know, Mark, I want you to be the best you can be and we need to safeguard your
business and so you need to review your copy and make sure you have a strong
emotional appeal but enough logical facts to make sure it’s doing what it needs to do so
that everybody buys in to your story.

Mark: Yup.

Kenrick: The enforcer.

Look, Mark! Just make it happen, alright? I'm telling you; use emotion appropriately,
okay, and back it up with a little bit of logic because I said so.

Mark: Nice.

Kenrick: Beauty sex-appeal; I'm probably not the one for that one but, you know, let’s
bring in whatever model and have her tell us those same things in a nice sultry voice,
okay? How about the team player?

Hey, Mark, let’s all get together and vote on this, what do you say?

Mark: Nice.

Kenrick: The beggar.

Please, Mark, I'm so tired of my internet business not doing what it should. Please,
Mark, I beg you. Tell me the secret to making my life better, okay? Is it that people will

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make their decision on emotions? Because I’ve heard everything, okay? Is that the way
it works? Please tell me.

Mark: That’s great.

Kenrick: Okay, there's the beggar, alright? Now, here’s the thing. If you just look at
these different frames when anyone hears you and I speaking of them, they're going to
go “Oh wow! That’s cool!” I mean, you can hear the difference in the influence. But I
think, Mark, if you and I talk about the expert frame for a few minutes, I think that’s the
one that the listeners are probably going to need to use because, if they're selling
information, they probably want or need to be an expert in some form, what do you
think?

Mark: I would believe so.

Kenrick: So, if people are wanting to sell more information, they have to be the expert
at what they're doing. The question is, what does it mean to establish an expert frame?
Okay, for example, have you ever known an expert that you thought was probably an
expert but you couldn’t stand?

Mark: Oh, most definitely.

Kenrick: I can name some of the government.

Mark: Right. Yeah, I think you and I both know a couple. We won’t mention their names
but, yeah.

Kenrick: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean they think they're an expert alright. They
go around throwing their weight around all over the world but, you know, good grief! I
mean, I don't like them. So the fact remains that if we look at an expert status using the
right framing, I'm like you. If we look at the frame of rapport, I'm like you. I’ve don't what
you're trying to do, I’ve made it. That’s a hell of a rapport frame and a hell of an expert
status frame all in one.

Mark: Yeah.

Kenrick: The frame of the expert is one of the most compelling frames that I worked
with people on using. There's some considerations, though. You can't be the expert and
be arrogant. You're gonna turn off more people than you're going to turn on! There's the
whole concept of one-up, one-down and equal and I say that an expert is really good at
going through the one-up and equal positions, they're kind of floating between them. In
fact, Mark, as you started, you did a beautiful job of introducing me and our relationship

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and establishing me as an expert. Then you went on and you talked about how you and
I were going to have a lot of fun and you wanted to jump in and say what you thought
about it. What you're doing is establishing an equal status so, “Yeah, Kenrick’s an expert
but I'm right there too.” And that was brilliant.

Mark: Exactly.

Kenrick: That frame that you used is brilliant and you know, of course, you and I both
know exactly that that’s what we’re doing with the rest of the world unless I point it out
and I just go “Alright, that was a nice introduction.” Well, it was beyond nice. You were
leveraging frames!

Mark: That’s right. Well, I don't really do it consciously anymore and I mean I think that,
like, when you get to a point where you're good at something like this, that sort of
becomes second nature and at this point I kind of know without even thinking about it
too much exactly how I want to treat the interview and I'll just… the words will come out
that will create that proper frame. But you're totally right. I mean, it is precisely the
creation of a frame around the interview, isn’t it?

Kenrick: That’s exactly right and that’s exactly what you did and it makes sense
because it’s like this: You are framing this the way you need people to accept the
information. You couldn’t do that if you just said “Okay, guys, we’re going to talk about
framing today and I got with me this guy on the phone. Well, I'm Mark. That’s nice. I'm
Mark. That’s nice. …maybe one or both of us and, you know, so let’s go.” Well, that
frame doesn’t work.

Mark: That’s right.

Kenrick: That frame isn’t gonna make anybody understand it. And, by the way Mark,
another thing I jotted down today that I thought would be really helpful… because,
listen. Frames, I could talk for the next six months and not repeat anything about
frames. This is just that powerful and because it’s such a giant, grand topic and because
it has this power, I always want to be pragmatic. That is just who I am and I know it’s
who you are because of our previous discussion. I thought I would also mention four
ways that we can interact with frames.

Mark: Okay, absolutely.

Kenrick: Because this might be really helpful. The first way is we just accept it. So,
probably, for almost everyone on the call, when Mark did his framing clauses of me and
him, they didn’t even think “Oh! You know, that’s a frame!” They probably just went

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“Okay.” Because that’s the pervasive nature of frames and, by the way, there's basically
a rule that says he who sets the frame wins.

Mark: That’s right.

Kenrick: So, if you can be quick enough and sharp enough to set the frame, in other
words, our conversation today isn’t about me presenting to you why you should buy
from me, it’s you hearing about the most phenomenal thing there is in the world and
how you can quickly take advantage of them before they're all gone.

Mark: That’s right.

Kenrick: Different frame, okay?

Mark: Totally different.

Kenrick: So the first thing we can do is just flat out accept it and most people do blindly
unless it radically conflicts with their beliefs. The second thing we can do, which makes
sense, is we can refuse to accept the frame. For example, you're not my boss, you don't
tell me what to do, you don't order me around.

Mark: Right.

Kenrick: Okay, that’s a refusal to accept that frame. “You know what? It was necessary
for our country to go into Iraq.” Well, guess what? The American people are standing up
and saying “No, we don't buy that garbage at this moment.” That frame has been shut
down and now the political fallout is happening. Okay, these frames have been set up.
You know, “We’re from the government. We’re here to help you.” These are frames that
are not quite being bought into. The confidence is at an all-time low worldwide.

Okay, another thing you can do, you can shift the frame; so that is to turn it into
something else more desirable for you. In other words, instead of accepting it or
rejecting it, you can simply shift it to something else.

Mark: Right.

Kenrick: Okay, you can do other ways of dealing with them. You can set them up front
overtly. For example, I'm the teacher, you're the student or you and I are the teachers
and everyone else is the student or, you know, however you want to frame it but, I
mean, where we set the frame up front and that’s where you going to use an
introduction. And the last thing I’ve written is you can covertly adjust the frame on the fly.
So, for example, I could say to you “And Mark, there's something else here of a
spectacular nature that I’ve never even shared with you and I'd love to do it privately

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when we have a little bit more time. I think it'll take your learning of this even further.”
Well, I'm sort of un-framing you at that point. I'm saying I'm all that and I’ve got
something even better whereupon you might be inclined to say “Excellent, Kenrick! And,
by the way, with marketing, I have something that’s going to knock your socks off. I
haven’t even shared this with anyone else either. So, let’s both hear these things.” And I
go “Uh, shit! I just got leveled again! We got to be equals.”

Mark: It’d be like two ninjas battling, right. Yeah.

Kenrick: That’s exactly right!

Mark: Well, what I would do to flip that frame up is, you know personally, like… so I
would lead them up to believe that learning is something that should be constant so I
don't see, you know, someone that’s positioning themselves as someone who would
teach something to me as necessarily positioned higher but most people would perceive
that. So, what I would do is I would flip the frame in learning and I would say “Hey, that’s
great. I'm always looking to further my knowledge.” And no matter how much you know
about that, it’s always important to continue to learn your education. So that changes
the frame again where it’s like, no matter how much you know about that. So, that’s sort
of presupposing that I know a hell of a lot about it, right?

Kenrick: That’s also a bit of the aloof frame. In other words, you're saying “Yes,
learning is really important.” What you're doing is you're saying “I don't care from what
the source even if that source is you. What I care about is learning.” So this is what I
talk about when I say we’re shifting the frame. So you're accepting. What you're doing it
is you're shifting it towards learning and away from me or you or the person in particular.

Mark: You know what I could use; so, like, if I wanted to be respectful of you and I'm
trying to find… I mean it’s interesting as we say this I'm thinking… what I was trying to
do is I prefer a general strategy of giving as much respect as I can to you in person,
right? So, I would probably something like “Hey, that’s great. I really appreciate that. I'm
always looking to expand my knowledge no matter how much you know especially from
you because I know you know absolutely so much about this. Maybe even more than I
do. Probably more than I do, you know?” Now, truth be told, you know a hell of a lot
more about persuasion in general than I do. I mean, just in the general sense. I mean,
you wake up in the morning and it’s like you study this, you know? That’s like the truth
but what I would try to find is like a way so the one listening understands; you know,
whenever you position yourself as an expert, that is something that must be maintained
at all times and the way that you use your language and the way you interact with
someone is the way to do it. Now, a lot of people who don't have a lot of grace in the
way they do this, they see it as only one thing. Kenrick sees this in like a million different

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levels here which is, you know, really, really sophisticated. The average guy sees it as
like there's one guy who's higher, there's one guy who's lower. He's not aware of the
way that you can actually position someone sort of together with you and have you both
walk away looking shining, right? Well, you know, I can look like I have preeminence in
one area and Kenrick in another and we can both walk away looking shining. That’s
what I always try to do. I never try to, like at least not consciously, I never want to put
another person’s frame like that. I think that’s sort of almost a terrible thing to do
because, psychologically, if the person doesn’t know what it’s doing, well, actually, it’s a
bit damaging, isn’t it, right, when you give the someone the frame that they are lower or
that they are not worthy? That’s like, you know, that can have far-reaching impact on
someone’s life and, unconsciously, they can start making decisions based on that that
are almost damaging. What do you think about that?

Kenrick: You know, one of the first things that I jotted down when I knew you and I
were going to chat is that these are strategies that are so profound and they can easily
be harnessed for good or evil, it’s just a matter of which way you want to use them. I'm
reminded, by the way, of the statement that one of the newscasters, I think on Fox
News, says; they got a little sniff after he had been saying this and they repeat it
nonstop, is “Doesn’t anyone deserve a government that works?” and if you really
analyze that statement, it’s like, who in the heck is going to respond to that statement,
“Yeah, I do. I'm so pitiful that I guess I have to feel like I'm not deserving in order to
respond to that.” I mean, you know it’s like “Okay.” But he says it with such conviction
and they repeat it so often I'm thinking “Is everyone that listens to this station deserving
these issues?” I mean, it’s cracking me up. You're right when you said earlier the
average person sees frames as “I'm winning or I'm losing,” the other person is winning
or they're losing and I see it as every shade of grey as I know you do, Mark, and it is an
absolute joy in life for me to find someone who disagrees with something that I say and I
literally thrilled helping them to see a different way of looking at things.

Mark: You see, now that’s a useful mentality, right? I mean, if we can teach the world
that frame of “Hey! You know what? It’s great to find someone who disagrees, you
know? It adds spice to your life. It gives you mental challenge.” Now, using the kind of
frames that I want to get out there into the world, right now, there's an extremely
unhealthy frames. Now, I don't know what you think about Noam Chomsky’s politics but
Chomsky, outside of his political leanings, and I don't even want to mention that
because I don't want to make it a device of conversation for anyone; I know that person
who believes in Chomsky politics. My politician is something totally different. I won’t say
what they are because, again, I don't want to take the value away from this conversation
for someone who might have one political leaning or another but one thing that
Chomsky does that’s absolutely amazing is that he analyzes the media and we’re

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talking about Noam Chomsky by the way. Regardless of what you think of him, he's one
of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century still alive now, extremely important then.
Not only was he a great linguist and maybe the greatest linguist ever but he also does a
wonderful job of analyzing the media. Now, all of this stuff that Kenrick and I are talking
about, like, these statements that don't really mean anything but has some persuasive
impact. Chomsky kind of dismisses these as well that’s as if it’s meaningless. It doesn’t
have any meaning, that statement. But, really, it does, right? Yes, it doesn’t have any
logical meaning but it has a persuasive effect and someone like Kenrick, where he goes
kind of beyond what Chomsky does and I think Chomsky even analyzes this to the
depth that someone like Kenrick would is he will tell you exactly what impact that
statement has on your mind which is something I think is extremely important right now
because there are a lot of beliefs, a lot of frames that we had been led to believe right
now and not just in politics but in all main areas of our lives, especially culturally. There
are frames that we have that I believe are unhealthy frames, right? So, for example, I'll
give you a couple of interesting frames that you might have in your mind right now. I'm
speaking to Americans here. Americans are going to have a different frame in their mind
from anyone else. So, imagine in your mind what someone who is cool would look like.
What is your definition of cool, right? Now, think about that frame of cool, right? So, cool
is like, you know, what's hip, what's interesting, what is in, what is accepted by people,
what people look at and admire – that’s kind of what cool is. Well, we can assign almost
anything to that definition of cool, right? One of the things that were cool in the 1950s
that we all look at now and go “Wow, that’s actually kind of geeky, right?” So, now, there
are certain things that we have assigned to “cool” that created a frame in our mind that I
think are unhealthy. For example, you may have the unconscious association that a lot
of these kids who are out there, you know, drinking every night and just completely
damaging their bodies on a daily basis because that is what is cool, right? Well, think
about this. How is it that we have come to that belief? Well, you come to that belief
because you’ve had an absolute onslaught of information creating that frame for you.
You watch TV shows and movies and you see interviews and you hear about these
guys going out there and doing that and you see them doing it in movies and that
becomes cool. What if there was an ugly behavior that was being presented there that
wasn’t tied in to the sale of a product that’s actually damaging to your body, right? You
could very easily create an entirely different frame just by shifting the information that
we put in our culture and we know this for a fact that this happened with the diamond
industry when the bureaus went out and deliberately attempted to make diamonds the
things that girls wanted. This was not the case. The bureaus went out and deliberately
placed these elements in our culture. They had product placement in films and
diamonds became the things that you buy. So, what we’re talking about here, this is
frame creation and I just want to kind of bring out as a side topic here outside of our
discussion, what Kenrick is teaching that’s extremely useful about frames, I want to add

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another layer to this, another way of looking at it and talk about just how profoundly
huge the impact of what Kenrick is teaching you. You can actually change the behavior
of entire cultures, as Kenrick said, for good or for evil and I just want to plant the idea on
everyone’s mind, okay. You're learning the most powerful persuasion in existence right
now, okay? How are you going to use it? Are you going to create beliefs in people’s
minds that are unhealthy or are you going to create beliefs in people’s minds that
diminish their power for your own personal gain, which by the way I would tell you, this
is not going to be often that it'll lead to a personal gain but to a lot of unhealthiness in
your life and probably a lot of pain. Where you're going to go out, either you're going to
find a way, a lot of ways to empower everyone around you while empowering yourself
and I would just present to you so please strongly consider the latter because I have
found that it’s going to add a tremendous amount of richness to your life. Kenrick, what
do you think about that?

Kenrick: You know, I'm behind it a hundred percent. In fact, there's a researcher and a
professor at a university that I had in one of my trainings not too long ago and he was
retained by the transportation department to figure out how to get one segment of the
population to adopt wearing seatbelts more effectively and this segment of folks is the
teenage boys up through the age of about twenty-five or what have you and, in order to
rebel, they would refuse to wear the seatbelts. I'm sure anybody on the phone that’s
male can recall being that age or is that age can understand. Now, okay, I went through
that kind of thing too, alright? So, this gentleman tried to figure out some ways to
change the frame of seeing seatbelts and so one of the things he did was not adopted
ultimately but I just thought it was one of the most brilliant things I'd ever heard is he
came up with seatbelt, like a padding that would go over the seatbelt. It’s about a foot
long and it would just wrap around the seatbelt and on it would be some sayings like
“Express yourself” or whatever, okay? And one of the things that he thought of doing is
coming up with statements like “Down with the man” and I don't recall the specific but it
was basically like telling the cops what they could do with themselves but the only way
they could see that is if they had the seatbelt on!

Mark: Yes.

Kenrick: So, here’s a beautiful way of reframing. You know, my mother when I was a
little boy, I was in high school, in freshman high school when I was really struggling with
my work and I was angry; I was just an angry boy at that time; and one of the teachers
in particular, I thought, was exceptionally stupid. Mom said to me “Son, why don't you
get even with that guy?” Boy, I was all ears then. I was like “Yeah, what do you mean?”
she goes “Why don't you just do your work so well, so completely that they have to turn
their attitude around about you and praise you in class?” Well, you could say that didn’t
quite work with me.

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Mark: Wow.

Kenrick: But, at least the idea of what you're talking about here is that frames can
change a nation. It can change the world and they're fast and they're powerful. Look
again at the frame going on right now politically, you know; Obama claiming that he's
the wave of change and Clinton claiming that she's the word of experience. You know,
these are two frames that they're trying to get the world to buy into. I don't mean to
debase this by bringing up something as specific like that but I think that there's the
point. And people are seeing the impact that this has play out right in real time in front of
their eyes.

Mark: You know, there's an interesting thing happening right now. As we record this,
we’re in mid-March in 2008. You could be listening to this in 2015; we’ll probably call it
then. I don't know, it could be maybe a hundred years later. At this moment in time,
there is this entity called the United Nations here. Greetings from 2008 to you folks in
the future. The UN just came out and they said that they are encouraging the actors and
musicians and popular cultural figures of the world to start claiming responsibility for
their drug behavior and how they present this to other people and I thought this was
actually a very, very sophisticated and an important move on their part because they're
doing a few things here. They're acknowledging that the drug behavior of these young,
popular culture figures creates a frame around drugs for young kids so that they are
actually stimulating more drug use. If all of these popular culture figures were out going
to the gym all the time and presenting that as a reality and not doing stupid, reckless
things to damage their bodies on a regular basis, kids would see that and go “Oh, that’s
what it takes to be cool!” right? “I want to be saying this, I want to be popular. Oh, that’s
what I do!” but instead what we do to the frame that’s created by the behavior now, they
go “Oh, that’s what I do to be cool! I go out and I take ecstasy mixed with other drugs on
the weekend,” right? You know, “I put my life in danger over the weekend.” This is why
kids are getting hooked on this thing, in New Zealand, they call “P” or in the United
States, it’s crystal meth and they have other names for it in other countries. It’s probably
the fastest growing drug in the world right now and hear about these popular culture
figures using this stuff and that just reinforces that frame. So, I just wanted to kind of
point out that there are now more sophisticated attempts at getting this done which I
thought was a very, very positive move. I don't often agree with a lot of the things that
the governments of the world do. I don't often agree with what the United Nations does
but I think there is a little glimmer of hope when you see them doing stuff like that. So,
it’s kind of cool. You know, we've gone beyond the overt attempts of putting out a
campaign that says “Oh no, no. Just say no. Don't do drugs!” which doesn’t do anything
in terms of persuasion. In fact, as you said, it gets kids to actually do the opposite, right?
Now, they're going out in there. They're contacting figures in popular culture and asking

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them to change their ways because that’s a more persuasive tactic than to go out and
directly advertise something, isn’t it?

Kenrick: Right, absolutely and this is why I… you and I were mentioning at the
beginning of the call that these things are so pervasive and it’s such an enormous
concept that it can be applied… I mean, it is being applied currently to us all the time.
Look at the frame, for example, politically. I can talk about what's going on in the US
where they say, for example, you need to have the Patriot Act so that we can protect
you. Well, I'm sorry but no one’s any more protected with that than the man on the
moon and what also is happening is that it rips out the rights out from underneath
anyone so it’s like “We’re here to protect you but, in so doing, you have to eliminate your
rights.” And this is constantly the case. Look at the names of bills in any country and
you'll see that, often, they talk about the Privacy Act. Well, the Privacy Act isn’t about
keeping your stuff private. It’s about releasing your information to the world.

Mark: Right.

Kenrick: You know, these are frames, though. These are frames that they're using to
make you go “Oh, yeah! Absolutely! I want privacy. You bet, sure!” and yet, in reality, the
bills don't do anything like that. You know, if you can just start to recognize these frames
then we can start to object to their use in our own lives and we can start to shift them to
more highly evolved frames in our lives and the lives of others. It’s a big game that
these frames are playing in our lives and in the lives of the world at large and, if we
would wake up and begin to see it, we can turn them to our advantage.

Mark: You're totally right and another example of that, of recent frame use; and this is
something actually that most Americans don't know but, and again I don't want to
politicize this; just to state the fact; in America, we no longer have habeas corpus, right?
And habeas corpus is probably the most fundamental foundation of our law, right? I
mean, this goes all the way back to the Magna Carta. I mean, basically, what it is it’s a
law that says that, hey, if somebody holds your you as a person, somebody can come to
the agency that’s holding you and serve writ of habeas corpus that basically says “Hey,
you’ve got this person. Habeas corpus means you have the body. Because you have
this person’s body, please produce the body or a justification, an actual legally justifiable
reason for holding them.” Pretty basic right; otherwise, what you have, you’ve got a
world where people can just sort of abduct you and say “Well, too bad. You're off the
circuit.” Well, recently, there was…”

Kenrick: Welcome to that world!

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Mark: Welcome to that world, right! Well, it’s the fact, right? And, again, not to politicize
it, no matter how somebody feels about, you know, War on Terror or whatever but that’s
just the fact, right? It’s there and something called the military Commissions Act, I
believe, of 2006; ironically named the Military Commissions Act; it’s something that sort
of says “Hey, we can take enemy combatants and take away the right to have access to
the writ of habeas corpus from illegal enemy combatants.” Now, all that sounds fine.
Okay, well, hey, if somebody’s an illegal enemy combatant, of course, we don't want to
give them right. But hidden inside of that; and this is a really, really important concept at
framing because this is so well hidden inside of this that people won’t get it; they hear
something called the Military Commissions Act, they hear illegal enemy combatants,
okay, fine, fine, fine; these are all bad; we want to give the military more power but there
is a line inside there that said “The right to declare someone an illegal enemy combatant
rests with the Office of the President without right to appeal.” Okay, so what that means
is that the Office of the President can go to you. “So, Mr. Kenrick Cleveland, I now
declare that you are an illegal enemy combatant. Please come with us.” Now, here’s the
thing; once they do that, there's no way you can appeal to. You can't serve a writ of
habeas corpus at that point. It simply doesn’t have any legal power anymore; and you
can't go to anyone to contest the state of being an illegal enemy combatant. Now, you
can do this to anyone. It can be even a citizen of the United States. Now, people would
think “Well, nobody’s really going to do that.” And the thing that’s important for people to
understand is that, well, either we've thought about that in the past but, remember, there
have been corrupt officials so imagine that you're in the United States right now.
Imagine the person you want least to be President of the United States. Would you trust
them to have that power? Okay. Maybe you're a Republican and you don't like Hilary
Clinton. Would you trust Hilary Clinton with the power to deem anyone in the United
States an illegal enemy combatant? Or, if you're a Democrat, would you trust John
McCain to have the power to declare anyone an illegal enemy combatant? Would you
trust those people to do that? So, that’s the point behind all this, right? So, again, not to
politicize it, that’s just the fact and it’s something that a lot of people on the left and the
right are discussing right now because it’s a basic fundamental constitutional issue. So,
how does this thing reframing? Well, we have presented this again inside of the frame
of “We’re doing this, you know, because it’s part of the War on Terror. This is only for
illegal enemy combatants.” So, people sort of shut down when they hear that because
the frame actually sometimes gets you to stop thinking, doesn’t it?

Kenrick: And, by the way, Mark, you and I have had discussions about this principle in
the past but, you know, the concept of a War on Terror… you know you can't put terror
in a wheelbarrow. You know, the type of language it is, is called a nominalization. It acts
like it’s something but it’s nothing. So, if it won’t fit into a wheelbarrow but we keep
referring to it like we can touch it like a building, the frame that’s being installed for us is

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that terror is something real like the building I'm sitting in or I could look at out of my
window. It’s not real in that same regard and yet, therefore, it’s not a winnable war. If
you can't win because you can't identify the problem then you’ve got a never ending war
and we can keep people off-balance all the time by little systems of lies. You know, like
these little rats were trained to salivate when the orange light comes on, you know,
higher level of risk today; or the red light – oh my god, evident risk of terror! I mean, you
know all it means are unauthentic frames that are being applied at us all the time and
speaking of military since you mentioned military, I just had the thought pass my mind
that a Trojan horse, that’s exactly… that’s a frame in which we’re dealing with the
context. So, the context is this nice statue gets wheeled into the city in honor of the
head of the city or what have you but hidden within it are militants that are going to
come out and destroy the city as soon everyone goes to sleep that night.

Mark: yeah, you're totally right.

Kenrick: So, that’s enough Trojan example.

Mark: Well, let me give a couple of other examples just to, sort of, let people look at
this from different sides. You know, in case there's somebody who is for the War on
Terror or whatever and I'm not going to say one way or the other my personal feelings
about.

Kenrick: Yeah.

Mark: I think I know very well how you feel about it.

Kenrick: He knows about it!

Mark: Yeah. But let’s imagine someone who’s listening is actually for that. They believe
that the War on Terror is a worthy thing, right? So, let’s talk about a few other examples
of using frame for maybe other political issues or from other ends of the political agenda
so they can see the broader concept of it, right? I need to say, in a general sense, I
wanted to give people more access to information and educate people more so that
they can get more involved. A lot of people, I believe if you're a follower of Leo Strauss,
maybe people are these days, you know they believe that very overtly that the average
person is simply not intelligent enough to understand the complexities of the world;
therefore, not only is it a good idea to deceive them, they must be deceived because
telling them the actual truth would lead to ruin because they would not be able to
process that information in a meaningful way. That’s what people who… yeah, look up
Leo Strauss and that’s sort of the basis of… anyway, that would lead people down in an
entirely new path to discovery which is an interesting thing. So, let’s just talk though. I
mean, I think that on the left and the right, the people who think that way, right? Who

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thinks “Hey, it’s okay to deceive the people because they are not smart enough.” Who
knows? I mean, look. I want to be just intellectually honest about every side of it. I don't
want to say, you know, one way is right or another. It’s just interesting to see everyone’s
different beliefs. I would just want peace one way or the other. You know, I don't know
what the proper path is but I actually think that’s what we all want, right? We all want to
have people in prosperous world, I would hope, right?

Kenrick: You know, one thing, Mark, that I'm impressed with here is that the idea of the
United States government is one of representation and what that says is that, basically,
the American people are too stupid to cast a vote. We’re not really voting for the
president. What we’re doing is we’re voting… it looks like we’re voting. It’s kind of a
sham that looks like there's a vote but, in reality, it’s a vote that should lead one of our
elected representatives to cast their vote called the electoral college, to cast their vote
and there had been examples in which the popular vote went one way and the electoral
college went the other and that’s who was elected president is based on electoral
college. So, already, in the United States, there's a system in place that says “You're too
stupid to really pick your leaders.

Mark: That’s right. Well, we saw that very recently, I remember when I was a young kid;
we talked about that happening hypothetically. I was helping a young girlfriend of mine.
She was doing a debate and then she said “Hey, how could I debate against the
electoral college?” and I said “Okay, explain to me the electoral college. I want to
understand it deeply.” She explained the whole system. I said “Well,” I said “the problem
is obvious and there's going to be one day when there's a popular vote that goes
against what the Electoral College does. Mathematically, it’s totally possible until you
check it out!

Sure enough, she did and it was and then we saw this in our lifetimes. I mean, just the
election exactly two elections ago, we saw that happen in the United States. So, I want
to give a couple of examples of this. They're really interesting. So, I few look back at
history, there are certain things that we have done that have had certain names like we
name certain military operations. We name certain things on, like for example, the idea
of the Federal Reserve Bank right? Now, this is sort of a big contentious issue on the
internet and there are people who are conspiracy theorists will go off about it. But, in
general, it’s a fact that the average person does not understand what the Federal
Reserve Bank is, right? So, first of all, the Federal Reserve Bank is actually not a
government institution as such yet there is one presidentially appointed figure on the
Federal Reserve board; one, that would be the chairman of the board but that chairman
is not accountable to the President of the United States and the Federal Reserve is
actually made up of, I believe, ten independent, privately owned banks, So, there’s no
accountability. So there's no accountability, it’s a privately owned institution yet we call it

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the Federal Reserve. Now, look, I don't want to get into the whole conspiracy side of
that. I'm only going to stick to the facts of it. Some people say “Yep, that’s actually true
but it’s a good thing that the Federal Reserve is a privately owned institution because
we don't want the government involved in money” or “I’ve heard all given. Either way I
don't want to get too far into one side or another. I just want to point out the facts, right?
So, notice that when we call something out with a name like “Federal Reserve,” right?
What frame does that put around it for you? Well, that tells me “government institution,
right?” it doesn’t say to me “Hey, this is a privately held institution. It’s not actually
accountable ultimately to the government, right? I mean, the Federal doesn’t have to go
and get permission from anyone else with their actions. They come and they report a
few things from time to time. They weren’t asking permission from anybody. So, that’s
sort of a nonpartisan case of framing that we see. I'm trying to pick now a case that
might come from the left, right? Because now we’re talking about a lot of stuff.

Kenrick: You got the wrong guy out here. I didn’t come from the left.

Mark: I know!

Kenrick: Hey, listen. You know, it reminds me and I know you'll see I want to try to
change the center of this religiously. I'm not going to get it to my beliefs or yours but I
will quote from a well-known historical book that many will pledge their lives for – the
bible – in which it says, I believe in Genesis, “And God had Adam name the beasts of
the field and gave him dominion over them,” and I only say that because I think
[0:55:03.4] could have gone of at least biblical times, he'd have known that names hold
power so, when you name something The Federal Reserve, its intention is to deceive.
Its intention is to make, like you said, people believed that it is a government institution
that is held accountable like our government is supposed to be when, in reality, it’s a
private bank and that’s what I was getting at earlier when I said look at the names of the
bills, you know, the Privacy Act is not about your stuff being private. It’s about the
government’s right to give it to whomever they want but the names are deceiving like
that and we can get further into conspiracy theories by talking about the old CAP’s
name versus the Christian Appalachian, the first letter capitalized and the rest not but
there's probably no need to go into all that but I mean the fact remains that, when it
comes into persuasion, people are buying into these frames all the time and, just like
you, Mark, I look for ways that I can help the world have more information and more
knowledge and I think one of the greatest things that we can do as experts in this field is
simply point out to the world “Look at what you're being sold. Look at the frames that are
being given and make your own mind about it.” The problem is, the frames are
insidious. They're transparent. Nobody can see them and the reason they can't see
them is because they're not formed explicitly. They're formed based on your upbringing,
on your socialization, on what happens as you're growing up, your early dating

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experiences, et cetera, et cetera. This builds your model of the world and you
automatically adopt the frames of your parents and of all those around you and I know
some of you are going “No, I don't adopt those.” I would argue that with you and say,
then, it doesn’t matter you’ve adopted something and, being frames, are working your
life and the fact is most people cannot articulate the frames that they brought into so we
call it their model of the world and a model of the world is filled of a whole bunch of
frames that people have and what I'm saying is, if we start looking for these and pulling
them apart and realizing where they're being used, we can start very simply just like I
was talking about and look at simple frames; the frame of authority, the frame of the
father and the mother and all these different simple frames until we start seeing how
everything in our life is shaped by frames the great one for this is the frame of authority.

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