A woman was crying backstage at Russell Brunson's event Funnel Hacking Live.

She'd spent $200,000 on ads driving traffic to her webinar. The traffic was there. The offer was solid. But something between the click and the close was broken, and she couldn't figure out what.

McCall Jones, a voice and acting teacher from Los Angeles who had no business being at a marketing conference, walked over and asked what was wrong. The woman explained. McCall listened, then said: "Let me help you."

Four phone calls later, the woman's click-through rate had increased 12x. Not doubled. Not tripled. Twelve times what it was before. And McCall hadn't touched the copy, the offer, or the funnel. She'd only changed how the woman showed up on camera.

That moment launched everything.

McCall realized the performance skills she'd been teaching actors and singers were the exact same skills entrepreneurs were missing in their videos, webinars, and sales presentations. She built a methodology around it called Charisma Hacking, and in a recent conversation with Stu McLaren on the Marketing Your Business podcast, she broke down the entire system.

Your "Too Much" Is Actually Your Superpower

Most video coaching tells you to be more energetic, more animated, more polished. Basically, more like the person teaching the course.

McCall's data told a different story. She developed 54 distinct charisma style combinations based on how people naturally communicate and connect. Not five personality types. Not a simple introvert-extrovert spectrum. Fifty-four specific combinations, each with its own strengths and rhythms.

The core idea?

Everyone has a unique charisma signature. The problem isn't that you lack charisma. The problem is that you've been told your natural style is wrong.

McCall calls this the "Too" Phase. Think back to the feedback you've gotten throughout your life. Not the polite kind. The kind that stung.

Too loud. Too quiet. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too blunt. Too emotional. Too analytical.

Her argument, backed by data across thousands of entrepreneurs, is that the quality you were told to suppress is actually the foundation of your unique charisma. The person told they're "too intense" has a natural ability to create urgency on camera. The person told they're "too sensitive" creates emotional safety that makes audiences open up. The person told they're "too loud" has energy that cuts through a crowded feed.

This isn't feel-good advice. It's strategic. 89% of consumers say video quality impacts their trust in a brand, and "quality" doesn't just mean resolution and lighting. It means authenticity. When you suppress what makes you distinctive, you come across as flat and forgettable. When you lean into it, you become someone worth listening to.

The 1-3-5 Rule

McCall built a simple practice to help people reclaim whatever quality they were told to tone down.

Find 1 person who embodies the trait you were told was "too much." Someone you admire who built a career around that exact quality.

Find 3 examples of how that trait specifically helped them succeed. Not vague inspiration. Concrete evidence. Deals they closed, audiences they moved, results they produced because of the quality, not in spite of it.

Spend 5 minutes per day recording yourself on camera and leaning into that trait intentionally. Don't try to fix the thing you've been told is too much. Amplify it. The goal isn't to become a caricature. It's to build comfort with the full range of your natural expression.

The Charisma Loop: How to Hold Attention on Camera

This is where McCall's performance background translates directly into business results. The Charisma Loop is a four-part cycle that repeats throughout any presentation or video.

It starts with Center, your baseline emotional state. Think of it as home base. Then you move Off Center with a disruption that shifts the energy: a surprising stat, an unexpected story, a contrast that makes people lean in. From there you hit the Trigger, the emotional peak where the audience actually feels something. Finally, the Bridge brings them back and connects the feeling to your next point or call to action.

Then the loop repeats. Center, Off Center, Trigger, Bridge. Again and again.

If you've ever watched a webinar where the content was good but you zoned out halfway through, the presenter wasn't running a Charisma Loop. If you've ever watched someone hold you captivated for 90 minutes, they were.

The 16 Emotions That Lifted Conversions by 38%

McCall tested her framework in one of the highest-stakes sales environments in online business. She worked directly with Russell Brunson to restructure his "Selling Online" event, mapping 16 specific emotions that an audience must feel, in a precise order, for a presentation to convert at the highest level.

The result: a 38% increase in conversion rate.

The first four emotions set the stage before you teach anything:

1. "I'm in the right place." Confirmation that this is relevant to them. This comes from naming their exact situation and exact problem in the opening minutes.
2. "This could be my missing piece." The feeling that what you're about to share might be the thing that finally makes everything click.
3. "I would be dumb to do anything else." Urgency meets logic. If they don't feel this, they'll check their email during your presentation.
4. "I've never heard this before." Novelty that eliminates the "I already know this" objection before it forms.

Then every training section runs its own four-emotion sequence: "No wonder this hasn't been working" (relief that their frustration has a structural cause), "There's a path" (a clear framework exists), "This will work for me" (stories that mirror their situation), and "I know too much to go back" (the emotional lock where not buying becomes harder than buying).

If you're running webinars, creating membership content, or selling from stage, the words you say matter far less than the emotional journey you take your audience on. Most entrepreneurs optimize their scripts. McCall optimizes the feelings.

Personalized Video: The Most Underused Tool in Business

McCall is also a fierce advocate for sending short, one-to-one personalized video messages to prospects, leads, and members. Personalized video messages have driven up to an 8x improvement in click-through rates compared to standard outreach, and personalized webinar CTAs convert 48% higher than non-personalized ones.

Her two rules are simple.

First, use your face as the thumbnail. When a video lands in someone's inbox, seeing a real human face creates an immediate connection that text can't match. Second, say their name in the first two seconds. Hearing your own name spoken by a real person triggers an attention response that cuts through everything else.

As McCall shared on the podcast, every view in their funnel is worth $2.57. When you know the dollar value of a view, you start treating video presence as a revenue lever.

This approach is especially powerful for membership retention. Imagine a new member receiving a personalized video welcome within 24 hours, their name spoken in the first two seconds, your face on the thumbnail. That's not just onboarding. That's the beginning of a relationship that keeps them around for years.

How to Start This Week

You don't need to master all 54 charisma styles or memorize 16 emotions to see results. Here's where to begin.

Identify your "too." What have people told you is "too much" about how you communicate? Write it down. That's the raw material for your charisma signature. Then run the 1-3-5 Rule.

Map the Charisma Loop in your next video. Plan your Center, your Off Center moment, your Trigger, and your Bridge before you hit record. Even a rough version will make your content noticeably more engaging.

Nail the opening four emotions. Whether it's a webinar, a sales video, or a membership launch, make sure the first few minutes help your audience feel: "I'm in the right place," "This could be my missing piece," "I'd be dumb not to pay attention," and "I've never heard this before."

Send one personalized video. Pick a prospect or a new member. Record 30 seconds with their name up front and your face as the thumbnail. That single video will teach you more about video presence than any course.

McCall Jones said something on the podcast that stopped Stu mid-sentence: "Your emotion controls your charisma. Your charisma controls other people's emotions." That's the whole game. You can have the perfect offer, the perfect funnel, and the perfect copy. But if the person delivering the message doesn't connect emotionally with the audience, none of it converts the way it should.

Charisma isn't magic. It's structure. And the frameworks are proven. The only question is whether you'll start using them.

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