Mark Sylvester: John Davies has a method, an approach he systematically developed over a career spanning three decades. He's proven it to be invaluable for dozens of industries and thousands of projects facing public acceptance. Up until now the method has only been available to his select client list. John is unpacking his insight and wealth of knowledge to overcome opposition and earn public support for the first time right here.

Mark Sylvester: Throughout these episodes, we'll take a deep dive step by step with John into his strategies to overcome opposition and create support. Nothing is free in this world, but good ideas are priceless. This show could be just the thing you've been looking for.

Mark Sylvester: I'm Mark Sylvester. Now let's get started and talk with John.

Mark Sylvester: Welcome back to the show. John, we've been talking about for the last several weeks about the strategy, and you know this has been developed over 35, 30 plus years of you out there overcoming opposition on a regular basis. Yet it was recently you went back and you looked in your reading and you found out that there was someone who had done this 300, what? 384 BC.

John Davies: Right.

Mark Sylvester: Tell us that story.

John Davies: That was a long time ago. That's quite a while ago. So I'm literally prepping to speak at a conference in Pennsylvania, like I do the night before. So having a little bit of dinner and putting up my presentation and making sure all the chemicals with the food and sugars are making me feel good about myself and looking into it. And I was looking at this book that I'd read years ago, and I'm looking at the Aristotle. "Oh yeah, the ethos, pathos, logos." I thought, "Oh, that's interesting." So it's that little triangle, famous triangle, that you might've studied in college. So ethos being an ethical in approach, pathos, emotional, logos a logical. And so here it is. Aristotle, 384 BC, claimed that to persuade anyone you have to appeal to all three types of argument.

John Davies: So I'm like, "Oh, yeah." So like I didn't invent this. So the deal for us is to earn respect with ethos. We do that, the ethical. We do that through the acknowledge. So you do it through character and credibility, and you earn credibility by being honest, and part of being honest is acknowledging you're not perfect.

Mark Sylvester: Did Aristotle start with ethos? I mean, was there a concept of the-

John Davies: It's at the top of the pyramid.

Mark Sylvester: Got it.

John Davies: I texted him and I never got a callback. And I figured that if I could get him on Facebook, I probably could get going with them. Can you imagine Aristotle's Instagram account?

Mark Sylvester: His feed, yeah.

John Davies: His Twitter feed would be great. I'll try. Actually maybe you can try for me. You're good at that. But I believe that it's at the top of the pyramid. When you do the pyramid, at the bottom one side is pathos. The other side is logos. So one side is to stir emotions and imagination with pathos. The other is logos, so provide evidence and in his deal was provide evidence through words, structure and data. So I have to believe he'd start with ethos or earn respect to credibility and character. Then stir imaginations and emotions through pathos. And then provide evidence through words, structure and data. I mean, isn't that the-

Mark Sylvester: That's exactly what we're talking about, right?

John Davies: And so my ego was pretty deflated at that point. It's like, "Okay, so I came up with this great method that is 2,401 years old."

Mark Sylvester: When you think about it though, you were really unique in the sense that you have this method. It's what has contributed to the awards, it's contributed to the winning track record, and people aren't doing it. So the fact that you were able to connect those dots, I think was just social proof for you.

John Davies: It was that. And the other part of it was for me is it was a way of showing people that truth are always truths. There are truths that are just there, and you can't change truth. True principles never change.

Mark Sylvester: Kind of like a Newton and gravity.

John Davies: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, Newton doesn't have a Twitter account either, but I think he would agree that this type of argument would work. This is like gravity, right? It's like, this is what works.

Mark Sylvester: Now I'm going to ask a kind of off the wall question, but I'm wondering, were there real estate issues in 384 BC?

John Davies: Probably. I would guess there'd be a lot of NIMBYs back there. No, I don't think that was an issue back then. I think they were debating the great questions. Today the great questions unfortunately seem to be, what are you going to do to my backyard? What are you going to do to me?

John Davies: Where they're debating the great issues of state. The great issues of philosophy and unfortunately we're ... So it sort of makes me sad that we're applying ethos, pathos and logos to building homes for people to live in when that would be ... Why wouldn't we do that back in 384 BC?

Mark Sylvester: Right. Right. When we were talking about this earlier, and you were saying there was a great Al Gore story that helped you illustrate why this was so important. Tell us that story.

John Davies: Well, think about Al Gore, right? He, he changed the world with his ... I mean, believe global warming buy into it, hate it, climate change, whatever, the deal is Al Gore changed the world in how we look at things with that. And he had this amazing passion. So you look at what he did with it, but he also ran for president, right?

Mark Sylvester: Right.

John Davies: And when he ran for president, we were at peace. 9/11 hadn't taken place. The budget was balanced. We had a surplus, you know, we went through this wonderful era, and he couldn't get elected. He was doing the third term of Bill Clinton. He had no passion. I mean if you watch the debate, it was awful. It was embarrassing. And then he goes off and does his whole deal in global warming. And he had this passion. So he had the passion and he had the respect. I think maybe he comes into it and if you're looking at Aristotle, he had respect and credibility because he was a vice president of the United States, a longterm US senator, and then he had this passion, the pathos, the emotion, and he captured people's imagination, and then he went in and developed the data. So Al Gore, actually Inconvenient Truth, actually he ripped it off from Aristotle, I'm pretty sure.

Mark Sylvester: Because he understood how in putting across a pretty complex message-

John Davies: A very complex message, and he did it with his credibility, with his passion and with the data.

Mark Sylvester: Do you know that started out as a presentation at Ted?

John Davies: Oh, did it really?

Mark Sylvester: Yeah.

John Davies: That makes sense.

Mark Sylvester: The first time that he gave that was at Ted, and it was called global warming, and Ted very rarely has a little Q&A afterwards, but Chris Anderson said, "Let's talk." And Jay Walker, who was the founder of Priceline, he rose his hand and he said, "You're calling it the wrong thing." He said, "What do you mean?" He says, "It's got to be a climate crisis to get people to call ..." And from that day on, the language changed and the film deal was struck at lunch that day to go and make a film out of it. So I think that-

John Davies: Well, if you look at the Club of Rome and dig in deep to how they looked at it. They had the same thing, and Al Gore is part of the Club of Rome. And the idea was how can we make an urgent crisis to change things? And they said, "This is it." And so it was both from a productive point of view at a Ted and what I consider an unproductive view at the Club of Rome. But so the idea is, believe it, not believe it, the deal is it works, and you've got to work it. You can't just go out there and do the logos. So if we take this-

Mark Sylvester: You've got to do all three legs of the stool.

John Davies: Right. Yeah, and three legs of the stool is good because, by the way, a three legged stool is inherently not very stable, but it's better than a two legged stool.

Mark Sylvester: Pretty much.

John Davies: And the deal is when I look at most development things, they have one long leg, which is the logos, the evidence and all the data and all the financial data. They never developed the credibility by acknowledging, and so we're down to a two legged stool, maybe a little stumped on the credibility and then stirring emotions and passion, there's nothing on that side. So we have one long leg, two very short legs, and the whole thing collapses.

Mark Sylvester: And in an atmosphere of zero trust.

John Davies: Right.

Mark Sylvester: Because you didn't build trust right off the bat.

John Davies: Right. And so I think what you're looking at is a very strong three legged stool, and when you lose one or two, you can't stand up, you can't stand in the fight.

Mark Sylvester: John, I know you love to read, and I love how you connect the dots. And I'm, I'm wondering if, because I think as someone who is committed, they've been listening now for six shows, they're looking forward to the next six. They really wanting to learn this. Is there, I'm thinking of a book that's kind of an old master's book, is like that Aristotle kind of, should we go and study the old writings or maybe bring something into just the last century I should go read?

John Davies: Yeah, I think you can look at in the last century, and I think if you look at some of the great books of the last five, 10 years where it's teaching how to deal with people. And so if you look at Simon Sinek's book, Start With Why, I mean he doesn't get into earn respect through character, but he does and he stirs emotions because if you start with why, that's emotion. And you start with why, that's who you are. Then people listen to the data.

Mark Sylvester: Because you're being truthful.

John Davies: Because you're being truthful and you're talking about ... Talk about the why. I mean if you're able to start with the why, it's more of emotion. So I'd like to give Aristotle credit for all the books that have been written about this area because I mean it's basically there, and you look at some great books that have changed how you look at your life and things, and then you look back and it's a lot of those old great thinkers.

John Davies: The era where everything was done verbally, very little was written, we're coming in that cusp where we went from a oral society of learning to a written and reading. And I mean that took place over hundreds and hundreds of years, where now the technology is changing so quickly. So they had time to take that richness and and tie it in. So, you know, one of the great books that people have read is Stephen Covey's 7 Habits. You go back and look at what-

Mark Sylvester: It's been 30 years?

John Davies: Yeah, then you look at what John Wooden did 40 years ago.

Mark Sylvester: Right.

John Davies: When he did his pyramid, and you look at the pyramid, and you look at all these things. It's back to these great classics. So, yeah, go read about the great philosophers. How did they approach the world? Because it's still true. Humans haven't changed. We think we think faster, we see things faster, we make faster decisions, but we still do it the same way.

Mark Sylvester: And if you weren't such a great reader from an early age, you wouldn't have been able to connect that dot. We wouldn't have been able to do this episode, and I'm so glad that you helped us wrap up this first section, which is the strategic part of the Davies method.

Mark Sylvester: Next week what we're going to talk about is how people are doing it wrong, and I think what's going to happen is our listener is going to see themselves and see big parts of themselves and their process in that. So until next week, John, thank you so much.

John Davies: Thank you.

Mark Sylvester: Thank you for listening. It's now your opportunity and responsibility to use the method today. You've completed one segment toward understanding the Davies method. We look forward to you subscribing. Join us as we uncover and explain the nuances of John's distinctive approach. For more episodes, visit the thedaviesmethod.com. I'm Mark Sylvester recording at the Pullstring Press studios in Santa Barbara, California.