Eben Pagan reveals unconscious motivators that drive human behavior, teaching the difference between 'toward' and 'away from' motivation (with away being twice as powerful). He breaks down David McClelland's three core motivators - power, affiliation, and achievement - and shows how to use the 'six sermons' framework to persuade effectively.
Using Motivators To Persuade People
Eben reveals that avoiding pain is twice as powerful as pursuing pleasure, challenging the common preference for positive motivation only. This insight from cognitive science research shows most people waste two-thirds of their persuasion power by ignoring fear-based appeals.
Drawing from David McClelland's research, Eben explains how power, affiliation, and achievement map to our three brains. These fundamental drives shape all human behavior and provide a framework for understanding what really motivates people beneath surface-level desires.
Learned from mentor Wyatt Wood Small, this framework addresses toward and away from versions of all three motivators. Eben demonstrates how speaking to achievement, affiliation, and power in both directions creates compelling persuasion that resonates with everyone.
Behind the three motivators lie deeper evolutionary drives for survival, sex, and status. Understanding these primal forces explains why instant gratification appeals work and how to leverage them ethically while maintaining integrity in your promises.
“There are six sermons that you wanna be giving to people at all times, and they are how if they do what you're telling them to do, they will get more of the achievements and outcomes they want. They'll get more affiliation, love, and approval. They'll get more power and influence and control. If they don't do them, they will fail more and not get the outcomes they want. They'll be rejected more and pushed away from other people and get disapproval, not be taken care of, and they'll lose power, control, and influence.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 8:28
The six sermons address toward and away from motivations for achievement, affiliation, and power. Tell people they'll get more achievements, love/approval, and power/control if they follow your advice, and they'll experience failure, rejection, and loss of power if they don't.
“my experience is, and the cognitive scientists are discovering, that the away from motivation, in other words, moving away from the things that you don't wanna have happen, is something like twice as powerful as moving toward the thing that you want to have happen.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 2:24
Away from motivation is approximately twice as powerful as toward motivation because humans are evolutionarily wired to avoid pain and threats more strongly than to pursue rewards. This comes from our survival instincts where avoiding danger was more critical than seeking pleasure.
“David McClelland, who's done a lot of research on motivation, written several books on it and so forth, he's boiled motivation down to kind of three factors, and they are power, affiliation, and achievement.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 4:51
David McClelland identified three core motivators: power (desire for control and influence), affiliation (need for love, approval, and social connection), and achievement (drive to accomplish goals and avoid failure). These map to the conceptual, emotional, and physical brains respectively.
“And these factors are survival, sex, and social status. And if you look back into our evolutionary past, what you see is that we survived. Each one of us is part of an unbroken chain of life all the way back for literally hundreds of millions, billions of years.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 12:52
The three evolutionary drives are survival, sex (reproduction), and social status. These developed because every human ancestor had to survive to adulthood, find a mate, and navigate status hierarchies in groups of 100-150 people where position determined access to resources and protection.
“If you're trying to sell someone a house and you know that they're an achievement oriented person and, that for them, it's all about getting the house, reaching the goal, and not being a failure in life. And they could really, you know, give a damn what other people think. You're not going to be trying to sell them the house based on your neighbors are really gonna think you're an important person”
— Eben Pagan▶ 11:22
Identify whether someone is achievement, affiliation, or power oriented and whether they're toward or away from motivated. Then tailor your message accordingly - don't sell house benefits based on neighbor approval to achievement-oriented people who don't care what others think.
“We're very instant gratification oriented. And this is because most of us are not that good at thinking about the future and thinking about consequences and connecting the situations that we're in right now back to the decisions that we made months and years and decades ago.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 16:48
Humans are instant gratification oriented because we evolved needing to find our next meal immediately after eating. We're poor at connecting current situations to past decisions, so we respond strongly to promises of fast, easy, low cost, low risk results.
A systematic approach to address all six core human motivations in your persuasion
Address toward achievement
Explain how taking your recommended actions will help them reach their goals and get the outcomes they want in life
Address away from failure
Show how not taking action will lead to failure and prevent them from getting what they want
Address toward affiliation
Describe how people will be magnetically attracted to them, want them as friends, and love them
Address away from rejection
Explain how inaction will lead to rejection, people not wanting to be around them, and social isolation
Address toward power
Show how they'll have more power, control, and influence over themselves and others
Address away from powerlessness
Demonstrate how they'll lose power, become insignificant, and be unable to run their own life without action
Away from motivation is approximately twice as powerful as toward motivation in driving human behavior
Based on cognitive science research showing people are more motivated to avoid pain than pursue pleasure. Example: weight loss is driven twice as much by avoiding judgment, rejection, and feeling ugly than by looking good or being attractive.
David McClelland's three core human motivators are power, affiliation, and achievement, which map to the conceptual, emotional, and physical brains respectively
David McClelland's documented research on motivation factors. Achievement maps to physical brain (survival, getting food, mating), affiliation maps to emotional brain (love, approval, avoiding rejection), power maps to conceptual brain (control, influence, avoiding insignificance).
The six sermons framework addresses toward and away from motivations for power, affiliation, and achievement to speak to all people effectively
Learned from mentor Wyatt Wood Small. The six sermons are: you'll get more achievements/outcomes, more affiliation/love/approval, more power/influence/control, AND you'll avoid failure, avoid rejection/disapproval, avoid losing power/becoming insignificant.
Behind power, affiliation, and achievement are three evolutionary drives: survival, sex, and social status
Every human ancestor in an unbroken chain spanning hundreds of millions of years both made it to adulthood and found a mate. Humans evolved in groups of 100-150 where knowing your status hierarchy position was crucial for survival.
Real status is about actually having other people admire and respect you, not wearing fancy brands or pretending to be famous
Distinguished from fake status displays. Real status means other people genuinely look up to you and respect your actual accomplishments and character.
Humans respond powerfully to magic cures because we're instant gratification oriented and poor at connecting present situations to past decisions
Proven through Eben's marketing experiments. Evolutionary wiring from when humans had to find their next meal after every meal, requiring immediate gratification drives for survival.
When selling, feature fast, easy, low cost, low risk results that genuinely work, but only promise what you can actually deliver
Emphasizes finding some aspect of any offering that provides quick results. Warning to maintain honesty and transparency - only sell things that really work and deliver on instant gratification promises.
Not using away from motivation wastes about two-thirds of your persuasion power and two-thirds of the power to help others get what they want
Since away from motivation is twice as powerful as toward motivation, ignoring it means missing the majority of motivational leverage available.
Away from motivation is approximately twice as powerful as toward motivation in driving human behavior
▶ 2:24David McClelland's three core human motivators are power, affiliation, and achievement, which map to the conceptual, emotional, and physical brains respectively
▶ 4:51The six sermons framework addresses toward and away from motivations for power, affiliation, and achievement to speak to all people effectively
▶ 7:39Behind power, affiliation, and achievement are three evolutionary drives: survival, sex, and social status
▶ 12:52Real status is about actually having other people admire and respect you, not wearing fancy brands or pretending to be famous
▶ 15:45Humans respond powerfully to magic cures because we're instant gratification oriented and poor at connecting present situations to past decisions
▶ 16:48When selling, feature fast, easy, low cost, low risk results that genuinely work, but only promise what you can actually deliver
▶ 17:58Not using away from motivation wastes about two-thirds of your persuasion power and two-thirds of the power to help others get what they want
▶ 4:51Claim: “Using fear or stick motivation is wrong - only use positive carrot motivation”
Reframe: You must use both desire and fear, inspiration and dread, toward and away from motivation to be effective
Claim: “Status comes from wearing fancy brands or appearing famous”
Reframe: Real status is about actually having other people admire and respect you for genuine accomplishments
“away from motivation, in other words, moving away from the things that you don't wanna have happen, is something like twice as powerful as moving toward the thing that you want to have happen”
“if you don't take advantage of all of the natural away from motivation that's present, you're wasting about two thirds of your persuasion power”
“Only sell things that really work. And if you're going to promise that your product helps someone get results fast or easy or low cost or low risk, if you're teaching something that gives a person instant gratification, make sure that it does.”
Organizing Your Ideas Into High Value Content
Learn Eben Pagan's systematic approach to organizing your expertise into products that literally sell themselves by focusing on what customers actually want.
How To Design Follow Up Newsletters
Learn Eben Pagan's proven formula for follow-up newsletters that turn skeptical prospects into paying customers through strategic relationship building.
Communicating Your Products In The Real World
Discover why 'almost none' of what you say to customers gets through and the simple technique that instantly creates understanding.
Coaching Strategies
Business Frameworks
Common Mistakes
Create complete concepts by introducing the idea, explaining it, describing how it works, then giving actionable steps - not just theoretical ideas people can't implement
Eben demonstrates this with a weight loss example, showing how 'eat smaller meals more often' becomes a six-point complete concept including context, explanation, benefits, and action steps
People will only do something they've first seen themselves doing in their mind - if they can't visualize implementation, they won't take action
Eben explains this as 'a massive insight' and demonstrates how telling customers what they're learning sets their mind 'on that channel' before showing them how it works
Most sales happen after the first website visit - on the second, third, fourth, fifth, or even twentieth contact, making follow-up essential for maximizing revenue
Eben states 'many, many sales are made after the first time someone visits your website. Many sales are made on the second contact, the third contact, the fourth, the fifth, the tenth, the twentieth contact'
Follow-up content must be relevant to the prospect's specific interests, fears, frustrations, anxieties, and desires to build meaningful relationships
Eben explains relevancy as 'a good match for what the person is interested in' and connects it to 'what the prospect is afraid of, what their frustrations are, what their anxieties are about, or what their desires are'
