With Travis Sago: How To Explode Sales, Goodwill and Conversions With The Triangle Of Insight

I had an idea for a 20 minute podcast called "20 Minute Mentor" to put on iTunes and Substack. It would be a vehicle for people to promote themselves while also getting asked insightful questions they aren't normally asked, like a Charlie Rose interview.

I wanted to ask Travis Sago about his "Triangle of Insight" framework which helps simplify communicating key ideas. He created it to pump out effective emails and content more easily, and to give copywriters a formula to follow.

The triangle has 3 main parts - a specific symptom of the problem, wisdom/insight about why it's happening, and a metaphor or story to illustrate it. This allows you to quickly shine a light on someone's problem from a new angle so they can see what's missing. Travis uses this triangle across his coaching programs like the popular Ronin group on deal making and licensing. 

Lawton

I had this idea, I had this idea and I told Tony about it and I was like, everyone's got 20 minutes and I think 20 minute mentor would be cool idea for to put it up on itunes and to put it up on substack and And just to get and just to have it be a vehicle for people to promote or whatever they wanted but at the same time like have a charlie rose situation where it's like you get to Ask some questions that and answer some questions.

Maybe that you not aren't normally yeah aren't normally asked so yeah so yeah, man, I wanted to ask you about the the triangle of insight, right? And for those of us who are just joining us or So travis has this thing and i'm going to try to explain it But basically travels to do a lot better job of basically the triangle of insight.

Was And one of my questions was like why did you create something like that? What was the challenge if you could think back what was the challenge that you were facing? When you were writing the your email promotions to where you're like, man I've got to come up with a simpler way to get to the heart of what i'm trying to say faster or in a more effective way that you came up with the trial and triangle of insight Maybe you could walk the audience through how

Travis

Yeah first thing the key word here is insight And the power of insight. Insight is like a flashlight that you can shine in front of people and help them guide their way, especially if they feel like they're in dark in the dark a little bit and help them get to where they're going.

What I figured out over many years of doing this is if you want to win friends and make a hell of a lot of money, like insight is the tool you want to be able to give people insight that works better than authority. I guess authority is a great card to have in your hand if you have it.

But if you don't helping somebody out by shining a light in front of them and making sure they don't fall into a pit or guiding the path, if somebody's been stuck in a cave for two years and you light a candle, right? It doesn't have to be big, but that, with that candle, they can see the whole room and they can find their way out, right?

And they're going to be like, yeah, so you get, you help them with that one small thing and you can keep leading them to the next thing. I realized it was insight. And I was in all kinds of markets from home construction to relationships to diet to money, and it worked in every single market.

People had a problem, right? They keep their problems because they don't, they have a false assumption about what. Needs to solve it, right? And so we want to shine that light of insight, but we want to do it in a way we don't cause shame, make them feel bad about themselves. And those things are so those are some of the challenges.

And I just wanted on two levels. I did the triangle of insight one because I wanted a framework. That made it easy for me to pump out an email in like 10 to 20 minutes that was actually move the conversion golf ball closer and closer to the hole, right? Or even go into the hole, right? Shine that insight.

Plus I needed something that I could give to copywriters. People use the term copywriters, but writing is a small part of it. What they don't know is how to pick a problem, deliver wisdom and how to do it. And if I could give them, if I could feed them the triangle of insight, then I could get like a 20 an hour writer by feeding them the triangle of insight.

They didn't have to be like a 500 an hour copywriter, if that makes sense. So by feeding them the ingredients to the cake. They could take all those ingredients and cook it up in the oven without being a master chef, if that makes sense.

Lawton:

. And I think it's a lot more effective to give them the kind of insight than basically buy my stuff.

TRAVIS

if you're serious about this, buy my stuff, or shaming, right? Here's what, here's why you're not successful. I see this all the time in emails and posts and then they wonder why they got all the struggle bunnies and all the, yeah. The time starved people, right?

Cause we're shaming them, blaming them. And we're not helping them see why they're having the challenge they are, right. And what needs to happen to remove that challenge.

Lawton

And that's the other thing I was going to ask is what do you see? The pitfalls and kind of mistakes that other people are doing but basically that whole thing of one of the things I see is just people are like solution aware, but not problem aware, right?

And they'll be like, you got a headache You should buy my pills right and they just go on and on about the pills and there's nothing about

TRAVIS the problem and they either overuse logic or they rely on their authority and their fame. That's why everybody thinks authority and fame is the only conversion mechanism, right?

So they get somebody with authority and the cash shame on them and they get a few people to buy, right? But they have ginormous audiences, right? And again, like time and time again, I realized whether you had authority or didn't have authority, if you could get somebody to see their problem in a different light and a different angle, Oh my god, and they have this implicit decision this is what I need now, and so you could position your thing, that'd be that next thing oh my god, this is what I need, and they come to it on their own decision, and they purchase it on their own, without all the drama of look at how many, and testimonials, and all that kind of stuff, right?

Testimonials are great if you have them, but I I don't need testimonials I just have to shine a light on a problem in a different way. So people see it different and they come to their own conclusions, what, about what they're missing and what it's going to take to get them from hell Island to heaven Island, right?

Yeah.

One of the markets that I was helping was like life coaches. And so when you taught me the triangle of insight and what is the audience is hell Island? What is the audience is heaven Island? What, and what does that look like? So I had to teach these people look every market has what I call it a 90 minute line from hell And it's like when you go to the airport, you got to take off your clothes.

You got to put your clothes back on but then it's like the heaven island. Okay So that so now so it's one thing for me to come out along and say do you want to fly frustration free? And it's what does that mean? but if I could finger point to that hell island which Minute line and then I could point to TSA pre and say hey There's this TSA pre thing would you like to hear about it?

And you don't have to take off your clothes. You don't have to. Yeah, that's right.

Go to the airport. Not to get felt up. Now, some people are like, this is how I get my extracurriculars in so I would probably not take you up on that offer because wow, like somebody's going to feel me up. I'm down, right?

Yeah. I'm just kidding, right?

So what you're talking about on the triangle is the, is one of the corners. I usually say it's a lower left corner. It's what we call a symptom. It's a symptom of Hell Island. The lower left hand corner is a symptom of Hell Island. Very specific vision of Heaven Island or the obstacle in between, right?

And since we're limited on time, we'll just talk about symptoms of Hell Island. But that's the symptom, right? Frustration in a line is a problem. It's too, yes, it's true. But when you say, good Lord if I have to get pat down one more time by TSA I'm gonna, whatever. That's a very Specific symptom, right that they have if they're on Hell Island.

They don't a problem is they may be hungry, right? Yeah, a symptom is are you tired of eating bugs and lizards? Because that's all they have on the. On the island oh, my God and then a vision of heaven wouldn't be food. Hey, if you're tired of eating bugs and lizards, get some food would be I have an Australian Wagyu steak over there and a bottle of McAllen 18, Glenn Libet and Jessica Alba for a dinner date or for I don't know who the guy heartthrob is, right?

But that's way more of a better vision, right? And the obstacle might be something they've tried before, right? If you tried to get across in a dinghy, right? There's too many sharks and you can't go fast enough to, the sharks are going to get you, right? But we've got a speedboat, right? It's big, it goes fast, it's going to get you from eating bugs this morning to eating Australian Wagyu in A bottle of McAllen tonight, right?

So I've the whole triangle of insight there, right? The boat is like the metaphor on that. That makes sense. So we're getting jumbled, but let's do the whole triangle and we can do examples. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the lower part of the left hand side of the triangle is a symptom of Hell Island a specific vision of Heaven Island, or the obstacle in between.

The very top of the triangle is wisdom. What is the insight? That's the kind of like They keep having this problem, but why do they keep having it? We want to shine that light on it. The way that we do it is in the lower right hand corner of the triangle, which can be several things, but the two most effective ones are metaphors.

And stories, personal stories are even better because now you get to put in some of your personality. Like I, I use all kinds of stories. When I was 11 living in Huntington beach. I look like Opie from Ron Howard, right? I was all elbows, knees, and freckles, right? And I had my bell bottoms. So I have all kinds of stories, but it helps them, especially if the audience is my age, it helps them identify.

With that, right? So telling him that those stories, right? So now we got the triangle of insight. We have the story, right? They go, aha, because we all have junior high brains, right? These big intellectual logical things don't hit as hard as is a story, a metaphor. Or any of those kinds of things.

So that's the triangle symptom wisdom, and then a story, simile, metaphor any of those work great. So what I've done is like the hardest part for a copywriter to come up with is usually the wisdom. But if I have a brand new copywriter. For a brand new writer. I'm gonna feed them the whole triangle of insight, right?

So I might say, um, like for a growing business. Were you late on payroll checks in the last six months? My wisdom might be that they're not doing enough with the intellectual property that they already have. Which is a very brainy kind of thing. But I might use a story Of how, when I was a kid, we were broke and I wanted to lift weights, but I didn't have, we didn't have money to buy weight.

So I took a suitcase. And I loaded it with bricks and put a belt around it. Which is really cool for doing some exercises, but completely useless for doing other exercises. And that's like the business they have. If they don't, if they aren't using licensing. They don't have the right tool, right?

And that's part of the reason why they're having troubles making payroll, because they have a mountain of cash sitting there in the form of IP. And they're only using one thing to sell it, which may be courses or coaching or those kinds of, which are great things, just not for other things. Or there's another example. I'm just like popping these off. You can see how fast you can do them. I could use if my audience was more home tight, right? I could use an oven as a metaphor and you can start anywhere on the triangle you want. Usually when you're getting your feet wet, you start out on the lower left hand side with a symptom and then you figure out what the wisdom is and the metaphor.

But, a lot of folks right now, right? A symptom may be that their revenue is exceeding or that their expenses are exceeding their revenue, or even more specific is a payroll, right? They're having trouble making payroll, right? And that's the wisdom is there again. They're not using the right tools, but the metaphor may change and I might use an oven.

If you're a cook, Okay. And you're not using an oven in your kitchen or salt, you're severely limited to what you're cooking, right? Money is the same way. If you're not using licensing in your IP, you're like in the business kitchen cooking without an oven or salt. Does that make sense?

So now they get a light my God, like how many old courses do you have sitting there? How many how many videos are on your YouTube channel? All that stuff is cash. If you know how to put into the licensing oven, does that make

LAWTON: That totally makes sense. Yeah. And I think like doing it this way, you can, you need to write far less copy as well.

TRAVIS: Absolutely. Which is my favorite part

that was a huge breakthrough for me, as well as the copywriters that we hired, we used to write long ass emails. Yeah. And sometimes we still will, depending on where we're at, but we started telling our copywriters, if you can't get it done in two pages of a Google document, it's too fricking long.

So you can take, and it forces you that triangle of insight forces you. To get that wisdom out there really quickly using the best shortcut known to man, which is a metaphor or story, right? Or similarly, right? And they can go, I got it. Now, usually the tail on that triangle, like a kite tail is the offer.

So then you would. Deliver the triangle and then have the tail of the offer.

LAWTON: I used the story one. I used Obama the other day. Cause it was what was it? The Obama flaw that destroys MLM enrollments. And the, one of the stories my client told me was, she was like, people go into over explanation mode and they just keep talking and they ruin the sale.

Yeah. I was like who else went into professor mode? Oh, Obama. So Obama would go into these kind of professorial things and he would lecture the audience and all his staff would be like, don't do that. You can't do that. Like professor Obama, you can't do that. And I just thought that was hilarious that I get to use that in email,

TRAVIS

Sometimes until you practice at it, writing two pages is harder than writing 20,

LAWTON: right? Yeah. I think coming up with the idea is sometimes the most challenging part, but it's your idea, your antenna is out there,

TRAVIS: The first time people start using the triangle of insight, they cuss me.

They're like, oh, you make it sound so easy, right? And I call this the metaphor muscle, right? And we have it as kids. But it gets flabby as adults, but it comes right back, like a lot of muscles, like you start to use them and you just practice with it, right? I used to just pick up something, right?

I'd pick up an iPhone and I'd figure out, okay, how can I make this a metaphor for the wisdom that I When I get across or the case or whatever it is but you get that muscle and it comes right back So the first time you try triangle of insight you probably cuss me It'll probably take you 60 minutes, but you do it a few times, right and you can and I write posts with it.

I write You can anywhere you could do I have people that do it in their videos They do we call them triangle of insight videos. I do it in their videos. They do it and email and posts especially like the shorter stuff you need to deliver that insight as quickly as possible. And that metaphor and story really helps.

LAWTON: And you've tailored that into your own communities that you're building right now. And and I definitely wanted to tell people about that. You've got you've got several groups. I think your main group that you're building right now is what you call your Ronan group. And and that's just exploded and popularity and and getting in helping people with with things like deal making and licensing and that kind of thing.

And did you want to share some about that and how people can get involved or how people can find out what you're doing?

TRAVIS Yeah, dude. I have I'm trying to forget where to start here. I've got Royalty Ronin, and the whole idea behind Royalty Ronin is what I call the 30 year wealth shortcut.

Most people try to save up their money for 30 years to get a couple million so they can put it In stocks or whatever and live off of it, right? But what hedge fund managers, what rich people do is they don't worry about ownership. They go out and get control of something, right? So a hedge fund manager, average age of a hedge fund manager is 35 years old.

Right now, I guarantee you, as we're talking, there's some 65 year old lady writing a check to a 35 year old hedge fund manager for 10 million, 20 million, 30 million for a whole Life savings, right? And the deal is what's called two and 20. It's a 2% management fee and a 20 percent of whatever they make.

But the easiest thing to get control of now is intellectual property and data. And we can make these same kinds of deals. Like we get control of customer list and those kinds of things that people decades to build and we get them. Turned over to us so we can cash flow them. That's Royalty RONIN.

It's a paid group. I have a new group I just started up. It's going to be for folks that have intellectual property already and just want to learn about licensing. It's called Royalty Rockstars. You can go to RoyaltyRockstars. com. That'll take you to a free group right there. If you don't give a shit about any of that and just want to learn how to do better offers, I got another free group called MillionDollarOfferMojo.com. That'll take you to it. A facebook group where we talk about offers and offer help and those kind of things, but those are probably the best portals into my little mojo and ronin and royalty world, I guess

Yeah, I wouldn't say i'm retired but I mostly teach and mentor when I feel like it.

And I really, I really do think in the world today, if you're making money and you don't understand licensing and you don't understand how to license IP, you're literally in the money kitchen without an oven or without a sharp knife or without salt, right? You can still make a lot of money and stuff, but you just got that limit, right?

Today IP and data is cash. It is the new oil. It is the new, right? And if you don't understand, that's what all the NFTs are about and crypto, that's all IP, right? So if you don't understand how to do deals and do licensing with it you're again, like cooking without salt, right? Or trying to put bread in without yeast, right?

You're going to get a result, but it's not going to be as great as if you understood those kind of things.

LAWTON: Yeah. If you look, just look at Hollywood's all about IP and licensing,

TRAVIS George Lucas added like two or three sentences to a contract when you did Star Wars, right? He was honest.

I may be getting the story a little bit out of whack, but they were negotiating the contract for Star Wars. He said, hey, by the way, I would like merchandising rights for Star Wars. They're like yeah, okay, we'll put that in there, right? Made him millions upon millions of maybe billions of dollars, right?

I know I had Star Wars sheets, Star Wars lunchbox, Star Wars thermoses, like Star Wars. I think everything I had was Star Wars. And every time mom would buy some Star Wars stuff or I'd buy Star Wars stuff. Your toys, right? With my paper route money, George Lucas was getting a little bit cash. That's right.

It must be nice. Yeah, so I don't want to get off on a tangent on licensing here, but the triangle of insight Certainly helps me explain something complicated like ip and licensing and those kind of things

LAWTON: , I mean because I think that's one of your main gifts is take the complicated and try to simplify it as much as possible for people to to want to not only to want to get involved in what you're offering but to want to Help other people to sell their they'll to sell Either sell your you know Your own products or your own services or to help a client sell their products and services and I think it's just an invaluable thing and that's why I wanted to talk about it and and and help people shed some light on how do I do this kind of thing And cause it, cause nobody really talks about it, nobody talks,

TRAVIS you're going to make me blush.

Like what I want on my tombstone, on my epitaph is made the light come on. So the triangle of insight really is a deep and meaningful tool for me, because that's the way that I help. People get insight and I've made quite a few friends over the years, right? Rather they bought anything from me.

And not a lot of people do buy stuff from me, but I have people that's buying stuff from me for years. I got a guy in the Ronin group right now that was one of the first subscribers on my first email list way back in 2004, right? So that triangle of insight. Like people don't remember what you write to them, but they remember the ahas and the brain gasms you give them.

It's Oh, like he made me see this. And that kind of carries you through the years as well. I think so.

LAWTON: Thank you so much for your time. And you're so welcome, man. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. All right, man. I'll talk to you later, man. I appreciate it. All right. Bye