Kurt Mortensen

Humor's effectiveness will always ride the emotional tides of your audience members. How well a joke goes over may depend on whose company your prospects are in, whether they are winding down for the day or still up against deadlines or other workplace pressures, whether they are awake and alert...

Nothing disarms and invites an audience in more than humor. We are instantly drawn to people we think are funny. We enjoy listening to humorous individuals and hearing what they have to say. Humor grabs attention, creates rapport and makes a message more memorable. It can also relieve tension, enhance...

Many think motivation is useless because it doesn't ensure long-lasting results. This thought tendency can be seen in what I call the Desperation Cycle. The Desperation Cycle shows how human nature influences us to take the easiest path instead of the best one. In persuasion, we need to pull people...

In our age of ever-expanding communication possibilities, researchers have been drawn to answer the question of which communication mode is most likely to lend itself to successful negotiation. Although the answer is undetermined, Face-to-face communication has been proven to have a greater possibility of alleviating miscommunication. When you're in person,...

Just like anything in life, there is an art an a science. In this article I outline the step by step science to using dissonance effectively. Take the material I teach you and use your art to apply the most effective method in a given situation. STEP ONE: GET A COMMITMENT You...

One's thought patterns, beliefs and attitudes can be used to "preprogram" actual experiences that are yet to happen. NLP is very focused on how we think, what influences the way we think, and how we structure what we think. Subscribers to the science are encouraged to closely study and then...

For the most part, we are all conformists. We will do what the crowd does. We might not like to admit that, but it is true. Only 5 to 10 percent of the population engages in behavior contrary to the social norm. We see this law operating in groups, in organizations,...

One highly effective type of advertising costs virtually nothing: public relations. With public relations, the newsworthiness of some aspect of your business or business activities can earn you free publicity in newspapers or magazines, or even on radio or television. However, it must truly be newsworthy. You might publicize, for...

Many of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. A renowned researcher and psychologist, Maslow proposed a "hierarchy of needs" that demonstrates the human needs we are most motivated to satisfy. The base of the motivational order begins with the fundamentals of life. These fundamental, life-sustaining needs must...

An embedded command is a technique used to communicate to the conscious mind while also sending a message to the subconscious mind. The idea is to actually bypass the conscious mind and communicate directly to the subconscious mind. Embedded commands are commonly used in marketing and advertising. Embedded commands are...