646: How to Make Compelling Arguments that Win Over Voters? Expert Tips w/ VA Delegate Nick Freitas

Brian Nichols  0:13  
How do we make the argument? Yeah, let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Monday there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. And thanks for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host. Going live Mr. Stratus ip studios, you're in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let cyber attacks are outdated Business Technology, put your company at risk. Learn more at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip making the argument now guys, I know. You hear all the time in the show. Instead of making arguments we focus on meeting people where they're at on issues they care about. But today, we are going to talk about making arguments but not in the way you think but rather, in constructing a solid not argument so much as a pitch, right? How do we make convincing effective arguments, pitches to our prospects? Or in this case, maybe to our voters? I thought who better to join me on the show to discuss that other than delegate Nick freight is joining us from Virginia. Nick, thanks for joining the show.

Nick Freitas  1:31  
Oh, thanks very much for having me on. Absolutely. Well,

Brian Nichols  1:33  
thank you for joining us. Because yeah, we have to talk today about how do we make arguments because you're quite well known and your YouTube views have accrued millions of I'm sure have a watch hours over there on YouTube. But before we go ahead and talk about all the things you're doing great in terms of making the argument first, do us a favor and introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and what brought you on this path to making effective arguments to your constituents?

Nick Freitas  1:57  
Sure, I mean, I think first of all, I'd have to say actually, I like I like your way of focusing on more from the marketing perspective rather than than the like the technical argumentation side. But my background was I went into the military right out of high school, served with the infantry and 82nd airborne division 25th infantry served in Army Special Forces, did a couple of combat tours. And interestingly enough, it was it was in the midst of doing combat tours, and I started to read a lot more Milton Friedman and Thomas Sol and Frederick Basquiat and Ludwig von Mises and Hayek and I really started, you know, moving over to what I call the Liberty side of politics and philosophy. And when I got out of the military, moved to Virginia was working out here with my family, I'm married, I have three kids. And in 2015, I had someone say, you know, Nick, you should run for the House of Delegates. And my first response was No, right, which was, which was probably, you know, the smarter one. And, you know, later on, I got asked, again, I ran and so I've served in the Virginia House of Delegates for seven years. And, you know, I, I really take the liberty wing of a lot of issues. So I find myself in a lot of situations where I have people on the left going, I want the government to do this. And I have, you know, friends of mine, because I usually find myself on the rights and I want the government do this. And I'm usually the one going, why is the government doing any of this? And, and key to that, you know, is I kind of realized, not perfectly fitting into one of these groups oftentimes puts you in a situation where you're having to explain your position on a particular issue to a much broader audience, because I'm, whereas most people that enrichment or whatnot, when they're talking about a particular issue, nobody's confused on why they they stand where they do. I'm usually the one that people are looking at me going, why did you vote that way? And then having to sit there and express and explain it, both logically, but also in a way that's culturally relevant. Because if you're just making good academic arguments, then you're probably only appealing to a really small section of the population, not because people are dumb, but because they're busy. Yes. And so it's important to find things that resonate. And so that's, that's been kind of my, you know, I think, from being in the military to now being on the legislature, and then also working on our podcast making the argument.

Brian Nichols  4:13  
And let's go back to a thing you brought up here about it having to be culturally relevant, but also, and this goes kind of hand in hand with my approach saying meet people where they're at on the issues they care about, because and how often Nick, do you see it right? You'll you'll have an issue, right? And libertarians will have an issue. And we want to focus on that issue. And then when we go out and we start talking to people, we come to realize that we're falling on deaf ears because the issue that we're focused on, for better or for worse, isn't what's in the purview everybody else. So let me ask you this, because this is sometimes the hardest thing is well, how do we reset that narrative then how do we reframe the collective consciousness of in this case the constituencies to focus On the things that we want them to win, they do matter, right? And let's look for example, like, you know, the the wars in Yemen and in our supporting that this issue is finally being brought up. And I think we're seeing more people being aware to it. But frankly, this is something hasn't even really been discussed when you talk about like a corporate news perspective, until recently because it was being brought to a floor vote. So I guess when you talk about something like that, how do you get people on board? Maybe when it's not in the view of the corporate narrative? Or when it just is outside of the the culturally relevant conversation? How do we make it culturally relevant?

Nick Freitas  5:36  
I think I think there's some things where you can you can approach something that is in the news from a different angle. I think that's interesting to people to some degree, but even then, they have to be interested in it. So the real question is, is why do we want to talk about Yemen? Why would argue that the reason why we'd want to talk about Yemen is because we're, we have some problems with American interventionism in places that we shouldn't be, whether it's, you know, American tax dollars going to finance operations that we think may be dubious or unconstitutional. And so the question I would ask is, Okay, if that's the fundamental principle that you want, does Yemen provide you the best mechanism to talk about that particular issue? And for some people that my answer might be yes, for other people? It's no, but if you're going to insist on No, no, I want to use Yemen to illustrate this principle, I would say, you might be starting off on the wrong in the wrong area. And so if the principle is, hey, it's not a good idea for the United States to be essentially, you know, assisting in these proxy wars, or being interventionist or using American tax dollars or using American or American servicemembers in a dangerous way. Again, if Yemen is really important to someone, then great hammer that point home using Yemen, but there's all kinds of other examples that you can use, that are probably far more likely to hit somebody, you know, where they're at, based off of their own experience. I mean, you can use Iraq, you can use Afghanistan, you could use, you know, the potential for getting more involved in Ukraine, you can use all these things in order to illustrate that principle. And then the other thing I would tell people is something I tell a lot of my libertarian friends, if you're, if you're doing it from the perspective where you're, you know, slamming the military. Okay, you know, I'm not saying, Look, I don't believe that the department defense gets, it gets a pass that, you know, we can never question it or question, you know, the military. I don't think that's true. And I'm, I'm a combat that. But again, what's your goal? Is your goal do? Okay? Well, then, I will tell you, when a lot of cases your most sympathetic, your most sympathetic victim that you're trying to defend is the person that's potentially going to be set over to get killed or to do something that they shouldn't be doing. Because the government sent them over there and didn't even follow the the constitutional process for going through all of that. So I would say in every single one of these issues, there's the fundamental principle that you're trying to argue. And then there's the point you're using to illustrate that. And you can you can use various ones to illustrate it, but just don't lose sight of what the fundamental thing is that you're trying to convince somebody

Brian Nichols  8:02  
out. Well, and let's talk about those illustration methods, because you just like you spark some stuff in my head, right? Because sometimes the challenge is how do you tie the political with the culturally relevant like we were talking about? One way I've found some success doing is taking the political issue and the topical political conversation and then connecting it with usually a movie or a TV show that has some theme that parallels I like to use, for example, in the world of school choice, not sure how familiar you are with Harry Potter, but in Harry Potter five, we have the wonderful Dolores Umbridge, who comes from the wizarding like government, they're big federal wizard and government. She comes to Hogwarts, the private school, as government saying, Okay, well, we're going to tell you how to teach at this school. And I'm returning to my wife. And I'm like, this is this is an argument against public schools right here. And she's like, Oh, I get it. I'm like, write this now. And she's like, okay, yeah. Because now she's making them do this. And I'm like, exactly. And then the aha moment happened. My wife watched Waco. And she's like her entire world, like just completely transformed because she didn't know was a thing. Like she didn't actually know that way goes, I think and how many folks out there don't know about Waco, right. So there is a means to use, the media, and the forms of entertainment to help us tell our messages. That's what I'm finding. What else are you finding as it means to help tell our messages?

Nick Freitas  9:31  
Well, I think I think using popular culture is really important. Because it is amazing how you can find these little nuggets of wisdom in there where you could use it to illustrate a point and it has broad cultural relevance, like people understand that reference point. Again, like waco is a perfect example. You talk about Waco, every libertarian probably knows what you're talking about. Some conservatives probably know what you're talking about. Maybe some people on the left, but then all the people don't really care about politics. So that's absolutely no clue. Right? And again, it's not that they're stupid. They're Busy, they have different priorities that they're focusing on. And so but when you have something like, you know, a Harry Potter reference, again, I've never seen, you know, Harry Potter, but I've been to Harry Potter land, right, like at Universal Studios, like I even know enough about it to understand the cultural relevance of it, because shoot everyone else I know does. So I think using points like that are really important. I think the other thing that's interesting is that every once awhile, something will like really just captured the country's attention. So inflation, right was obviously something that everyone impacted everybody, they were all mad about it. And everybody was offering different explanations for why it was happening. And none of them were very suitable. And here's what we found, we found a lot of different ways to talk about inflation over the last 10 months. And it was some of our most popular videos, it was some of the most popular discussions. Some of them are popular short form content. You know, for years before this, you know, Ron Paul, are going to audit the Fed out of the Fed out of the Fed. They're like, Yeah, who's the Fed? Right? This was a perfect example, where all of a sudden inflation is taking place. And we say, okay, yeah, yeah, you got one politician saying, it's all the corporations, you got another politician saying that, you know, it's this, you think maybe you could have something to do with printing trillions of dollars in the last three years? Anybody think that's a good idea? And it gave us people now started asking questions about how did we get here. And we actually had a, a very, you know, easy to understand, accurate explanation for this is how we got here. Not only that, but we were also able to explain why other people were lying to them about how they got here and how we got here. I used to tell people, like you want to know the most bipartisan thing that has happened in Congress for the last, you know, whatever, several decades, inflationary monetary policy like, you know, probably people that think I'm too partisan. Here's one where I hate both parties equally. And that's inflationary monetary policy that here's what this means. Because again, if you just leave it with, oh, it's the Federal Reserve an inflationary monetary policy. Okay, what's that? Right? But when you start to say, like, Okay, I want you to imagine a world where politicians want to spend a bunch of money, but they can't take any more from you. And nobody wants to lend to them because they're doing a crappy job. And so they just print a bunch of it. As if all of a sudden, like, there's gonna be no impact from that. Nothing. No, no, it's

Brian Nichols  12:17  
funny, you say that is that you see my shirt, Nick. It's the magic money tree shirt, which obviously represents our fed here. So I'm glad you're using this as the example. very topical.

Nick Freitas  12:25  
Yeah. So but I found that any other time I talked about the Federal Reserve, nobody cared. But when all of a sudden the I could I could effectively explain in a way that was culturally relevant to someone. Why the Federal Reserve? And oh, by the way, did you know they have almost no oversight? What? Oh, yeah, this organization will totally work for the federal government and not really know why. So, you know, there was these ways that, you know, they were already interested in the topic, we were providing a solution. Plus, we had so much additional information about it like, again, things like, actually, no, it's not, it's never really been audited, like we don't really know, like, like, that just blows people's minds. And now they're curious about what this huge organization that is, it is causing their grocery prices to go up, right? They're not concerned about inflationary monetary policy, they're really concerned about the fact that everything they're buying in the grocery store is 18 to 30%, more expensive, and we can show them why that is. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  13:20  
well, and you talked about peaking interest. That's key in sales, right? I mean, goodness, I'm out here today doing some, some cold emailing, it's the holidays, people aren't really in their offices. I'm like, You know what, we're gonna do some cold calling, but we're gonna do it from cold emailing. And, you know, beyond the, the way I approach my emails, what I'm trying to do is lead with things that are in their purview, right and lead with main top of mind issues, but if I'm not doing so enough, that gets him to say, I want to learn more, I'm not gonna get a meeting, right? I'm not gonna be able to book that meeting. And the same thing is true with us. But we're not booking a meeting. We're trying to get them to say, Okay, well, maybe I want to go to his campaign website. Maybe I want to go ahead and get a yard sign, right. I mean, I want to support this guy, maybe I want to give him some money, right. And that's all of a sudden, where we can start quote, making the sale all the way to getting them to the ballot box, getting them to actually cast their vote for us. Right and peaking interest. Oh, no, no, you're

Nick Freitas  14:17  
absolutely right. And and it's interesting, because the way that the way that so many people pique interest with in politics, or within political discourse, is a what is it? It's epinephrine. Yep. Right. It's fear and anxiety. Yep. Right. That's it's just

Brian Nichols  14:32  
this constant FUD fear, uncertainty, doubt, all that stuff,

Nick Freitas  14:36  
all of it just over and over and over and over again. And then there's never any resolution to it. It's just constantly you better you better down it, you better do this. And then you win. And it's like, what changes will apparently nothing because now you got to be fearful of the other side winning. Right? And so it's nothing but that. And we started looking at that. And one of the things that we one of the best compliments we ever got on the podcast was I feel like this is the only podcast that I've watched the talks about politics Where I don't just leave pissed off at the world. And we started to realize that I think this is important from a sales perspective. We weren't thinking about it from that perspective. But I think it makes sense. If it's all fear and anxiety, at some point, people are going to tap out, they're just done. There has to be there has to be some sort of, you know, resolution or motivation or reward or connection. And we found that the most powerful way that we can market what we believe, is, sometimes there's going to be the fear and anxiety because bottom line is, there's things going on that are problematic. But then what sort of solution to that? are we offering and by solution, I don't just mean vote for this person. Or if only these people weren't? That's okay. Right? Maybe to some degree, but no, it's what can you do? And what can you do that has actual practical effect. And then the whole goal was is at the end, we don't want people feeling, you know, miserable. And then thinking that the only positive action is to vote, or to go campaign more, we know, the sort of society we want to encourage is one where free people have maximum ability to engage in voluntary cooperation with one another in order to achieve like incredible things. So okay, here's the problem. What can you do right now, not just voting? What can you do right now to in order to fix this, or in order to make a difference in your life, or the lives of the people around you, and go try this, and hey, we've tried it, we found out that it works. Well, now somebody is not just getting fear and anxiety, they're actually getting motivated to do something that when that something works, there's reward. And then the other thing we found is that when you share personal stories, both of triumph and failure, you also make that personal connection. And if you can hit those three things, where it's like, Okay, we have the problem, but we have a solution, something for you know, to motivate and reward. Plus, we've also added that personal connection, because we want you to know that we're not sitting up here, you know, some sort of No at all, we're doing our best to and sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail, and we want you to be a part of that. So that, you know, you're better for it. You got to do all of those. But unfortunately, what we see a lot, especially when I see a lot on the conservative or the libertarian side of politics is fear and anxiety, fear and anxiety, fear and anxiety. Yep.

Brian Nichols  17:21  
Well, and you hit on the reason beyond like what you were talking about there from our candidate school, why we have, we have candidates on their teaching other candidates who have been both successful, but also have lost. And I think it's important for us to learn from the losses just as much as we do from those victories. And I think sometimes we learn more from the losses. I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. I hope that Callaway learned a loss from our Jacksonville game there yesterday, because that's stunk, and that hurt, because it should hurt, you should learn from that pain of that loss. I mean, goodness, I used to weigh 385 pounds, losing 180 pounds, that was a lot of work. And it sucked. It was tough. But it helped me learn what I had to do to become better, right and just looking at I think politics in general, we so often get into the we want to win versus the opponent, we want to crush the other team versus trying to bring the real solutions to the table to make things better. Because, unfortunately, and this is the reality is that those fears, those uncertainties, those doubts, those can be things that hold people back from making a choice, the biggest thing we have to face, we're in sales isn't the competition. It's it's status quo. It's the person that we're talking to not changing, not making the decision because there is so much fear, there is so much uncertainty, there is so much doubt they don't want to make the wrong decision. It's not that they don't they had the fear of missing out they had the fear of messing up. And that right there is where we have to be able to reframe the conversation for sure.

Nick Freitas  18:55  
Well, I think it's fascinating now that if you look at one of the most popular people out there, I mean, Jordan Peterson Yep. And and he's constantly What's he constantly talking about? You have your own room? Yeah, he does. He doesn't just say, you know, everything sucks, right? He talks about a lot of things that are bad or dangerous or potentially problematic. But then he offers things that you as an individual can do in your own life to make it better for you and the people around you that you care about. And that's empowering. And again, one of the things that frustrates me so much, and this is interesting, we were always talking about democracy, democracy, democracy, and I'm like, okay, look, I if you're going to have a system of government, I think democratic processes are essential to making sure you know, to try to keep it within certain boundaries. But freedom and democracy are not synonymous. Right, a freezing it is what a free society is wondering, you have the maxim of ability to live your life in accordance with with your needs, wants and desires, insofar as you don't infringe on the rights of somebody else, right. That's, that's that's a free society. And it is, it is so it is so in a in a plus Politicians best interest to convince you that freedom or prosperity or wealth or success is all rooted on who holds political office as opposed to the 1000 little decisions that you make in your own life on a daily basis. And the people that are kind of pulling the curtain back and going, Hey, look, the people that have relied on politicians to fix everything. Yeah, they're sucking, they're just as bad off, if not worse off, the people that went out there and said, you know, what, I can make my bed, I can make different decisions with respect to, you know, working out or how I eat, I can make different decisions with respect to the things I do at my current job, or the side hustle that I want to get that could potentially become the career, right. And when you start looking at those things, is very tangible options that yes, includes some risks and includes some sacrifice, but are attainable, right, that is a that's a totally different mindset on life. And it's one that's far more exciting and empowering, then, gosh, I sure hope we win the next election because maybe the guy that I've never met, that is going to be the President will do something to benefit me. Like, that's pathetic, right? Whereas in reality, there's so many things you can do in your own life, even little things that can have, you know, an impact a compound interest, if you will, on everything in your future. That's, I mean, that's empowering.

Brian Nichols  21:22  
Nick, we're already hard pressed for time. So that means it's time for final thoughts. But my final thought I'll kick things off is actually kind of a story. And it's my story from looking at exactly what you just framed as, like taking a risk taking a jump. So and I'll compare it and contrast to I'm not gonna say who it is because I'm gonna say, but somebody from New York, and it's a good friend of mine, but it is the difference between I was in Philadelphia, and I looked around and let's be real the past two plus years in Philadelphia, under the COVID, Insanity was freaking miserable. I mean, I just it made life not fun. It made friendships dissolve. I mean, this is the weaponized hypochondria, that was COVID. Insanity, it crushed so many people. So I decided along with my wife to do something about it, right, we decided to leave Philadelphia, leave Pennsylvania and navigate out into the Midwest. And now we set up shop out here in Indiana. And guess what, oh, my God, this is the happiest I've been in literally years. Versus I have a friend who lives in New York now, not the city, but Upstate New York, very, I would say traditional conservative, and they just they can't do it can't make the move. And I keep on saying why not like what do you have to lose? Well, you know, there's this Endo, you know, the family. And I'm like, there's always going to be reasons not to do something like, if you're going to constantly be looking and saying like, yeah, this sucks, this thinks I can't do anything about then you there's there are things you can do. And that is the immediate things in your life. It's your health. It's your family, it's your environment is the people you surround yourself with goodness, good people bring out the good in people. So what should we do? Surround yourself with good people, and not people who actively hate your values people who vehemently go against your goals, surround yourself with people in your community, who are going to help build each other up on common foundations? So that's what I have for my final thoughts. Nick, what do you have for us for your final thoughts today?

Nick Freitas  23:30  
No, I think there's, I think there's a great deal of truth in that, you know, again, you should surround yourself with people that want the best for you. That doesn't mean they're always going to reinforce whatever your notion is from from one day to the next, but want the best genuinely want the best for you. Yeah, and it's one of those things where I find that with, you know, my family, my faith or church. One of the things for me, that is something different that we kind of started doing next year, and we're really expanding on, I really got into the homestead community. And it was never something that I thought I would do necessarily, I always I always had, you know, a little bit of property, we got 10 acres. But one of the things that really intrigued me about it was these guys, so many of them were people that found themselves in a situation where they didn't like where they were at, they wanted to do a change, they wanted something better for their family. And they they took a leap. And I love it because they are so honest about when they fail. And they're so honest about when they succeed and how they did it and they want you to know how to do it and not because they're telling you you got to do this, but because they found something of value and they want to share it because they're genuinely excited about it. Yes. And I started recognizing to how incredibly therapeutic it was to have a garden or to raise some you know, chickens or goats or whatever. And and the other thing that was empowering about it was with everything that was going on in the world on you know, supply chain shortages and issues and things like that was like you know, this is something that we can do that will be beneficial and then you know, one of my one of my children kind of has some some food allergies and whatnot and all All of a sudden, we found that some of the things that we're doing here could potentially be beneficial for her. And this wasn't something we had to ask permission for. We could just do it. So we did it. And do we screw up, dude a ton, like, like tomatoes this year miserable, like I wasted, like so much time, in the sense that I didn't get tomatoes, but not in the sense that I didn't learn a lot about how to properly prep the soil and how to properly like prune, you know, tomato plants. And so there is there is joy in the journey, when you're doing something that has value like that, and my gosh, you don't have to wait around for somebody else to make it happen. You can go do it. So go find those things. For me, it was that for you. It was moving to Indiana, right? That's, that's significant. For other people, it's a little thing. So, baby, step your way into that. But start finding things over your life that you can take control of and then make the most of it and be honest about your failures. Be honest about your successes. And I think I think you're gonna find a lot of joy in doing that.

Brian Nichols  25:57  
Here here. Nick Freitas. We could keep going. And going, but unfortunately, we are already over time. But you know, I'm the host, so Oh, well, I get to do what I want. I got to set my own time parameters. I'm like the Cowboys when they were in overtime, they couldn't seem to get it over the finish line. That wound is still open. Yes. Pour the salt there. Nick. No, thank you. This has been a great conversation. Obviously. Folks, if you enjoyed today's episode, I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor. Number one, go ahead and give it a share. And when you do tag yours truly at be Nichols, liberty, Twitter, Facebook, wherever it is you share it, Nick, where can folks go ahead and tag you continue the conversation?

Nick Freitas  26:30  
Sure they can they can find we're on social media across the board. We're on Twitter, we're on Instagram. A lot of people like my short form content on Instagram reels. But our podcast is called making the argument we have another show called the Y minutes where we just take three minutes to kind of look at a particular issue from an entirely different interesting angle. So making the argument or the why minutes, it's a great place to find us on our content. Perfect. And folks,

Brian Nichols  26:53  
I'll make it easy for you to go ahead and find all of the links there. Therefore mentioned just now, if you're one of the I'd say 95% of the folks who listen to the actual podcast over on the podcast version of the show, will click the artwork and your podcast catcher, we'll bring you right over to Brian Nichols show.com Click on episode 646 646 Don't wander I'm so tired. 646 And that'll bring you over to today's episode where you will find the transcript from today's episode. All the links from today's today's episode Plus, you'll find the video version of the show over on our YouTube rumble in an odyssey wherever it is you want to get your your video content from all I ask Do me a favor hit that little subscribe button and notification bell so you don't miss a single time we go live and oh one last thing by the way. Shame on you. I'm saying that not to you, Nick. But to the folks out there who forgot to get your freedom fanatic or Liberty lover in your life Christmas presents. How dare you? Well, no worries, even though it's gonna be a little behind the Christmas date for delivery, you can still go ahead and get that awesome gift for that that freedom fanatic and liberty lover in your life over at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop like I mentioned here I'm rocking right now our magic money tree shirt, but we also have our what happened in 1971 our liberty legends Now that's what I call tyranny, Klaus Schwab shirt and more. We have garden flags, backpacks, snapbacks. You name it. We got it. But do yourself a favor use code TBNS at checkout for 10% off, Nick, this has been great. Thank you for joining us. And with that being said, Folks, thank you for joining us on of course another fun filled episode. But with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for delegate Nick fritas. We'll see you tomorrow. The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai