#181: Jason Harris: The Art of Soulful Persuasion Profit with Purpose by Anna Goldstein

Jason Harris is Co-Founder and CEO of Mekanism, an award-winning creative advertising agency. Jason is the author of The Soulful Art of Persuasion that highlights the 11 habits you need to become more authentically or soulfully persuasive. He proves that persuasion is not a dirty word, but the most positive, productive, and ethical way of changing peoples’ minds through the cultivation of character building habits.
Become a person with more fulfilling experiences and more authentic personal relationships! Tune in to this episode to learn the power of positivity and persuasion, collaboration, storytelling, building lasting relationships, and actionable habits that you can implement to become a master influencer. 
Why did you write The Soulful Art of Persuasion? What was the inspiration behind it?
He’s an avid reader, listener of podcasts, and loves reading business books. As an entrepreneur, he’s figuring out how other people approach business and sales, so he consumes that type of content. It dawned on him that there’s something different about the way he approaches business and the principals he follows compared to everyone else’s approach. He saw transactional, short-term methods of building a business rather than relationship and long-term focused methods. He had a different angle and a different thing to say in the business book atmosphere. To Jason, the idea of being a soulful persuader and influencer is being an influencer in your personal and professional sphere.
What are the core principals of your book and how did you develop these principals?
Jason worked at a lot of different companies before starting his own and he felt like he didn’t respond well to a lot of the company cultures he was experiencing. There wasn’t much of a space where people could feel truly themselves and be original, so he learned a lot of what he wanted to create and the ways he wanted to work from seeing what other people were doing, both positive and negative. He kept a journal of these ideas and beliefs until he developed the four core beliefs that he follows to this day. The four principals are: be original, be generous, be empathetic, and be soulful. His inspiration also came from books he was reading, the way people made him feel, and seeing success growing from long-term relationships.
How did you decide that those four, out of all the principals we could live by, were essential?
The 11 habits he mentions in the book fall under these categories. Being soulful came last to him, but the other three came from a balance of business, how he wants to pursue his life, and the type of person he wants to be. Some of the habits came naturally to him and some he had to practice and develop over time.
What’s an example of something that was not natural for you?
Jason isn’t a naturally generous person. He says he was born on the more self-absorbed and slightly selfish side. Through work and growing up and his experiences, he realized that it’s a characteristic that’s really important.
When working with big brands, how do you tell a story that can build a sense of trust, but that is also not transactional?
You can’t always do that. They’ll send you a brief of what to talk about and then you come up with the creative work off of that brief. You have to absorb what they’re saying and what they want to accomplish, then crack the creative and spit it back to them with ideas that position the brand in a way that you feel is right. It’s always a dance with what you feel the audience will respond to and what the brand thinks they will respond to. He tries to embody the principals of being original and knowing the audience.
Do you think the art of storytelling in a way that connects with the person or brand applies to long-term relationships?
Definitely, 100%. When he talks about relationships, there are personal and professional relationships and you have to approach them in a similar fashion.
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