312. The Science of Influence: Dr. Robert Cialdini Reveals the Secrets (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 312 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about influence from the amazing Dr. Robert Cialdini. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is a refresh of my conversation with the amazing Dr. Robert Cialdini. And as you heard on episode 299, where I broke down the top downloaded episodes of the Brainy Business in its first five years, this is the sixth most downloaded episode of the show of all time. Which considering we are now on number 312, that's a pretty big deal. Though not surprising because, I mean, it's Cialdini. Most everyone who has studied psychology or sales or marketing or gone to business school has heard his name and probably read at least one of his books. And even if you don't know him by name, you definitely know someone who does. And your buying experience today are very much influenced by his insights over the last several decades. Today we're digging into his iconic book Influence and the new and expanded version which included the seventh principle of Persuasion for the first time. Unity. So insightful and helpful from just a truly kind and wonderful person who has given so much to the world. I'm honored to have had a chance to speak with him back in 2021 and to share this conversation with you again today. Don't forget that the show notes for the episode include all sorts of goodies, including related articles, books, including Influence and Pre Suasion, as well as links to past episodes and ways to get in contact with and follow Dr. Cialdini. Those notes are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 312. All right, let's talk about the new and expanded version of influence. Dr. Robert Cialdini, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Well, thank you, Melinda. I'm glad to be with you.

Absolutely. Well, I am so delighted that you would take some time to speak with me today. As I told you in sort of.

Our pre conversation, I've mentioned your name.

Many times on the show before. But for those who are new or haven't heard those episodes yet, can you tell everyone a little bit about you and your background?

Well, I'm a persuasion scientist, behavioral scientist with an emphasis on persuasion and social influence. And I've done that for all my career and have written some books on the topic. And I think one of those is what brings me here.

Yes, absolutely. And really just amazing research. I love the technique where you talk about from early on, doing the hardcore in depth observational research of having other people train you in their ways essentially to learn about these principles of persuasion.

Yeah, you know, when I was starting out as an assistant professor, I was pretty much bolted into my laboratory and studying how the messaging process and making changes within it caused college students who came into my laboratory to change their opinions or even their behaviors. But I quickly came to recognize that I was studying a very limited set of individuals in a very limited set of circumstances. And if I really wanted to know what was powerful in moving people in one direction or another via the, the messaging process, I should go into the environment, the naturally occurring environment, where there are people whose business it is to do that and whose economic livelihood depends on the success of the strategies they employ to move people in their direction. So what I did was to take training undercover with disguised identity, disguised intent, in as many influence training programs and professions as I could get access to. So I learned how to sell automobiles, I learned how, how to sell insurance, I learned how to sell portrait photography over the phone. And I didn't stop with sales. I did the same thing with charity organizations. How did the fundraisers get us to say yes? And what do they train their aspiring professionals to do? Because that's what they found to be successful. I did the same thing with recruiters and public service communicators, even public relations. And I even interviewed cult recruiters to see what they did. And across it all, I looked for the commonalities, which were the things that occurred in common across each of these professions that were dedicated to getting us to say yes to their requests. And I only found this small footprint of principles that seem to be employed in each of those professions. And I decided to write a book on the topic, one of those principles per chapter. And that was, I have to say, surprisingly popular. The book, so four copies I could have sensibly imagined in a variety of languages. So I thought I had something of value to transmit to the larger community.

Yes, definitely. Lots of copies sold from with the.

Original six persuasion principles there, and now this.

In this new edition there is a seventh. And so please do share what the seven are. And then, you know, question being, I'm sure there was some internal debate and struggle of Deciding, like, do you add a seventh one? Is unity just sort of deeper level of social proof, kind of where they're sort of similar, you know, how did that all come about? And deciding to do the updated edition with its extra 200 or so pages.

Questions, and let's just take a quick tour through the first six that seem to be dominant in all of my investigations and also in the academic literature. There was good support that these principles, when included in a communication, did significantly increase the likelihood of assent to the communication. Now, likelihood is a crucial word in there because we're dealing with human behavior. There are no such things as certainties there, right? But there are probabilities that can be adjusted. There are odds of the likelihood of ascent that can be adjusted. And that is what the both of those investigations, the kind of investigation where you look at soundly conducted, properly controlled experimental research that includes or not one or another of these principles in a.

Message, and also what the practitioners were.

Telling their aspiring professionals what to do that had always worked with them. If you look at both of those, there were just these six, so I.

Can tick them off.

Now, the first is the rule for.

Reciprocation that says people feel an obligation.

To give back to those who have first given to them.

So people will say yes to those they owe. There's an implication of that.

Then we should give first, right?

We should give benefits and advantages and information to people who will then stand, right, because of this rule that was.

Installed in them from childhood and, by the way, in every human culture, to give back.

I always say, if you're, let's say.

You'Re in a new situation, maybe a.

New job or a new environment, and you go into a room where there are a lot of people and you.

Would like to be able to be.

Influential with those people, the first question you should ask is not who can most help me here? It's whom can I most help here? And then all the benefits of the rule of reciprocity will flow to you. Second principle is liking. Nobody's surprised to know that we prefer to say yes to those we know and like. But there are two small practices we can undertake that significantly increase the probability that people will feel a sense of rapport with us, a sense of liking. One is to identify genuine similarities that exist between us and then raise them to consciousness. The other is to give genuine compliments, real praise where it is warranted. And both of those will elevate dramatically the extent of goodwill that people will feel with us and want to continue to interact with us and do business with us, come along with what we're suggesting that they might well do. Next principle is the principle of social proof. When people are uncertain, they don't look inside themselves for answers. All they see in there is the confusion, the uncertainty. So they look outside. And one principal place they look is to their peers. What are the majority of people around me like me doing in this situation? That information will reduce my uncertainty as to what I should do here. So I always like to tell a story of a study that was done in Beijing, China shows you the cross cultural reach of the this principle. Restaurant managers in a string of restaurants put a little asterisk next to certain.

Items on their menus.

And the consequence was that purchase of those dishes increased by 13 to 20% immediately. So what did the asterisk stand for? It didn't say what we normally see on restaurant menus, like this is a specialty of the house or this is what our chef is recommending for this evening. It said this is one of our most popular items. And each one then became 13 to 20% more popular for its popularity. So that's the idea, you decide what to do to reduce your uncertainty. And there's actually some internal evidence that supports this idea that it's about uncertainty reduction. If you look at the data from these studies that were done in Beijing, those asterisks increased the purchasing likelihood of those items. For all the demographics, all the kinds of visitors who came to the restaurant for younger people, older people, males, females. But there was one demographic group that was especially likely to follow the instruction of what other people had chosen. It was first time visitors who were uncertain about the quality and the choices available. They were the ones who most took the evidence from social proof of what they should choose. Next principle is authority. Again, when people are uncertain, they don't look inside themselves, they look outside. And besides looking to peers, there's another principal source of information that they employ and that is the voices of genuine experts, authorities on the topic who have proven themselves to be knowledgeable on the issues. And if you give people evidence of what others who are legitimate authorities are saying, or if you can give them evidence that you are a legitimate authority on the topic, they're significantly more likely to defer to your recommendation as a consequence.

Next principle is commitment and consistency. We all have a preference to be consistent with what we have already said or done, especially in public, because to be inconsistent undermines our reputation as somebody who's sober and strong willed and somebody who is going to do what they say. And so on, these kinds of things. And so one thing that a communicator can do successfully is ask people to take a small step in a particular direction, an easy step to take, let's say, sign a petition, something like that, in favor of housing for the homeless. There's a study in Israel that showed that if you get people to sign that petition and somebody comes back a week later, not even the same person who asked you to sign a petition and ask you to give a contribution to housing for the homeless, those people who were asked to sign the petition, 100% of which did, those people now are significantly more likely to donate to that cause in order to be consistent with what they've already said or done. So commitment and consistency. The sixth principle is scarcity. We want more of those things we can have less of. We find those things that are scarce, rare, dwindling in availability more attractive. So again, as a communicator, if you can honestly say, well, there's only a limited time that this will be available at this price, or this is something that is unique, none of our competitors have this feature or this combination of features that will spur people to move in the direction that's being requested. So those are the basic six of those principles. And then, you know, I started to recognize that even though those principles were very good to me, I have to say, very good to me, there was one I had missed. And it was the principle of what we call unity and the sense in which if a communicator can arrange for us to see him or her as one of us, not just like us or similar to us, but of sharing the same category of social identity that we use to define ourselves, like a nationality or a regional allegiance, or ethnic.

Or racial or religious or political affiliation.

All barriers to influence go down as.

A result of seeing that person not just as like us, but of us. So that's the seventh principle that we've.

Added to the new updated and expanded version of the book. Influence.

Right. Well, and thank you so much for doing the recap. For those who are unfamiliar and have not yet read either the older version of the book or this new, amazing, updated version. There are already podcast episodes on the brainy business on most of those. Reciprocity, social proof, familiarity, bias, pre commitment, scarcity. I'm realizing, I think authority bias needs an episode. So we'll get in there, but with unity. I love that it's kind of the. It's like that amalgamation, right? Because there's a little bit of familiarity. If we're of like minds. I naturally like someone more if I know that they're similar to me because, you know, I like things like me. It kind of gets a few of the principles mixed in together, even though it is definitely kind of stands, like we said, on its own. So I want to ask about a couple of the new amazing studies and things that were included. One that really stood out to me was the Cuban Missile Crisis. And that is just such a great lesson in the piece of reciprocity and talking about accuracy in history and why it's very important. Can you share a little bit about that particular story?

I don't know how many of your viewers are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I am.

But it was back in the early 60s when the world trembled because the two nuclear powers of the age, the US and at that time, the Soviet Union, were locked, locking horns over the.

Placement of missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States. By then, Nikita Khrushchev, who was the head of the Soviet Union at that time, facing off with John Kennedy. And there was these claims that war was about to begin, and it was no ordinary war. It was going to be a nuclear war that could wipe out a third of humanity unless this conflict was resolved. The lesson that we learned from that was that John F. Kennedy was steadfast and unyielding in his insistence that Khrushchev remove those missiles from Cuba or there was going to be war. And there were already Russian ships steaming to Cuba with more missiles. And Khrushchev said, you touch those, you touch those ships and. And there will be war. That's an act of war. Kennedy was saying, we're going to blockade him. Everybody was, was shaking in their boots at around the world here.

But Kennedy held his position and stared down Khrushchev. Khrushchev blinked, he folded. He took his missiles home. In the context of this steely eyed, resolute approach of Kennedy, that was the story. Turns out if you look into the recently released information that was exchanged between those parties, now, it wasn't that at all. It was an act of reciprocation. Kennedy promised to remove US Missiles from Turkey if Khrushchev would remove missiles from Cuba. It was a reciprocal exchange of concessions, not this hard line of being obstinate and never conceding. In fact, that could have brought us to war. But because for political reasons, Kennedy made it a condition of this exchange that Khrushchev could not. No one could reveal that he had compromised, that Kennedy had compromised, because that would maybe cost him the election. If he gave in to the Russians on anything, it was buried for decades.

Until recently.

We've seen no, that stubborn approach which then subsequent leaders took to be the way to achieve negotiation victory was maybe the thing that would have destroyed a third of the, of the world. It was concession. It was, but not any concession. It was reciprocal concession. That was the, the tip of the spear.

Yeah, I am hearing, because I was listening to the audio version of the book. But just that moment of oh, I hate that people have been taught this wrong thing that has causes more problems for so long. I'm glad that it's coming to light at least and hopefully by sharing it today, people can then go and continue to share that with others so that we get more reciprocity in the world.

Right.

It's regrettable in our political groups that conceding to the other side is seen as some kind of weakness or betrayal of our, of the loyalties to the people within our categories. And that's a true, that's a, that's a true worrisome feature of modern political life, at least here in the United States for me. And I'm sorry that the message of the Cuban Missile crisis and how it was resolved was the false message that feeds into this current narrative.

Yeah, well, hopefully we'll do a little something. We'll do what we can to spread that word and help to adjust that into the future. One other piece on reciprocity that I think is so important for the people in business that are listening. And often we like to think that you want to make everything as smooth and streamlined as possible and you want people to be problem free. And I love the way that you kind of put a twist on that to show that problem free is not necessarily the best way to go. But instead actually having a couple problems can be helpful in business. Can you tell a little bit about that?

Yeah.

Let me say it this way. It turns out that if you look at loyalty and advocacy of your product or service or in the case that I talk about in the book, it was a hotel. It's not problem free experience. There's its problem. Freed experience. That is, there was a problem that was resolved in favor of the customer or client or in this case the visitor to the hotel. And what we found in the general.

Is that these organizations that try to go full for seamless operation, that there is never a glitch, there's never a bobble, there's never a mistake that any.

Client or customer experiences with their products or services.

That's great. Except it's naive. We have human beings involved in providing those products or services, in interacting with our customers and clients. And as a consequence, there are going to be mistakes, there are going to be bobbles. If those people can then resolve those problems quickly. That is what is perceived as a special kind of gift to the customer who then feels obligated to give something special in return. And here's my evidence of it. I was giving a talk at a golf and tennis resort to a business audience and the general manager of the resort happened to be there in the audience listening to me. And as I was talking about the importance of having available the ability to resolve a problem, to fix a problem for a customer service. And that's where you should put your.

Your budget, you shouldn't put all of.

Your budget in this dream world of never having a mistake, when there are mistakes, there should be budgets available to allow you to fix that mistake. So he, he raised his hand and he said, this is amazing what you're saying because something like this just happened to me this morning. We had one of our guests come to play tennis with her two children. And the two child sized rackets that we have were already in use, so she couldn't play with the kids at the time that she had budgeted for it. I sent one of my assistants down to the sporting goods store down the street. Within 15 minutes we had purchased two more and she got to play with her kids tennis. She came to see me this afternoon at lunch. She said, I've just booked my entire extended family into this resort for the 4th of July weekend because of what you did for, for me this morning. Now here's the point I want to make. Suppose the management had decided we shouldn't have just two of these rackets. We should have six of these rackets for kids available so that there won't be any glitches. And sure enough, that woman and her kids got the two rackets. Sure you want to play with it? Here they are. There wouldn't have been a blip on her radar screen of obligation or sense of appreciation or gratitude. It was fixing a problem that produced that effect. And that's what the research suggests.

I just love the story and I think there's a balance. You know, we don't want it to be all clunky. There's benefits in reducing friction. And I will link to Roger Dooley.

And his book Friction in the show.

Notes the episode we did. But you know, if there's a problem, it's an opportunity to have this reciprocity benefit.

I think that's exactly how to say it. It's where you put your budget. If a problem does arise, you should have saved some of your budget to be sure that you provide a special gift to those individuals. That's how they experience it and how they respond to it is to give you a special gift in return, either in advocacy of you and your product or in loyalty to your organization.

Yeah, absolutely.

Such a great point.

So I have a group of global behavioral economics enthusiasts from around the world. We just have a free space where people can come in and ask questions. And when I found out that I would be interviewing you today, I just said, hypothetically, if you could ask Robert Cialdini a question, what would you say? And so one of them that ties in nicely with the book was asking how do your strategies of influence adapt to a digital world, for example, social media. And that question's from Adnan Moussa. Apologies if I pronounced that wrong. Which I think ties in very well with some new boxes and things in the format that you have in the book.

Yes, in the new box we have E boxes where we talk about how the principles of influence have been migrated to electronic platforms of one source or another, social media or digital marketing, whatever the platform might be. And there was a study of 6,700 digital commerce platforms and A B tests that were done within those platforms to.

See which features of the site were.

Most likely to turn people from prospects into customers, in essence conversions.

And they located 29 separate factors that.

They examined in terms of these A.

B tests and evaluated. And some of them were economically based. For example, does the site provide free delivery? Some were technological. Does the site have a search function? Some were persuasive. Is there a call to action line at the end of each appeal that is made to a customer or a prospect. And then there were the six principles.

Of influence at the time that they.

Were studying, when they were just six. Those six were the top six yay. Of the 29.

So here's what we're here's, here's the.

Point with regard to that question. The platforms, the delivery systems on which those principles are presented can change. And I'm going to offer a big difference in a minute. But the principles by which people move are moved to change. They don't change in the space of 15 years, right? No, they evolve in us. And those are the ones that usually steer us correctly. And things like scarcity and authority, authority and social proof, those normally and reciprocity, giving back to those we owe Those are things that normally steer us correctly when we follow their dictates. So which platform and which system for presenting the information, those things can change dramatically with digital approaches that are now available. But the principles don't change. Now with that said, I am going to suggest that one of the principles has gained greater traction than all the others with the advent of the Internet, and that is social proof, because people now have access to the views of others around them, like them from all over the world in chat groups and product brand groups and so on that, that meet. And also we have all of these review sites that allow us to see what people have experienced using a product or service through their ratings and so on. Access to people we would never have been able to make contact with, that's now available to us. And I saw an article that said that people who shop online Regularly, almost always, 98% of them say that they check product reviews what other people have said before they make a purchase. 98%. We can't get 98% of people in the world to believe that the earth is round. 98% piling in to this principle of influence, this source of information, because it's now so available to us in ways that just wasn't the case before the Internet revolution.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for answering Adnan's question. There was one also from Brandt Matthews that I think ties in really well with what you were just talking about in this. You know, as people are becoming more familiar with the principles of persuasion, they know that they're there. Are they less effective now or not really. And I think you sort of answered it, but just if you wanted to add anything else.

Well, actually I do agree that that's a concern and I think it should be the right orientation to take, but with a complicating, mediating condition that is we should not resist those principles when we see them being employed on us. If they're being employed. Honestly, if there truly is authority, information, I want that before I decide. If there truly is popularity from the people who are like me for a particular restaurant or particular piece of software, I want that information before I decide. And I'll give you an example of what happened to me when I was in a, an appliance store. I was looking for something else and I saw a big screen TV on sale at a great price and I knew this was a high quality item from Consumer Reports and I was standing in front of it and the salesperson person came up to me and said, I see you're interested in this. Set at this price, I can see why it's a great deal, But I have to tell you, it's our last one. Now, I knew that was a scarcity appeal, but I didn't know whether it was true or not. And then he said to me, and in fact, there's a woman who just called who said she might come by the store this afternoon to purchase that Molina. I'm supposed to be the doctor of influence. 20 minutes later, I'm wheeling out of the shop with that TV in my cart because I'm human, right? And if it was the last one at that great price, and that salesman didn't tell me it was, and I went home to think about it and then came back that evening to purchase this. And I said to him, where's the set? He said, oh, it sold. It was our last one. I would have been furious with him. What? It's the last one and you didn't tell me? You didn't tell me. What's wrong with you, man? Right? So where it's true, we want people to use these principles on us. They normally inform us into a sense properly. What we have to guard against is the manipulation of those principles, the deceptive use of them, the counterfeiting of those principles. Because, indeed, that particular strategy that I just described to you has been used by certain kinds of merchandisers and in retail stores, the store Best Buy was. The employees were indicted for using this strategy, this precise strategy, saying, this is the last one. People would buy it. Then they go to a store room in the back and put another one and use that same strategy again. So I bought it, and I went back the next day to see if that shelf was empty or there was another model of the same set there, and it was an empty shelf.

Hooray.

So what I did and what I'm urging all of us to do, I went back to my office and I wrote a very positive review of that shop. And that salesperson, Brad, his name is. If there had been another set on the. On the shelf, I would have written a very negative review about both Brad and the shop. And that's what I think we have to do. We have to be in a position to enrich those people who use these principles to inform us properly into a choice, or at least give us that information where it properly resides. But we have to sting those people who undercut the validity of those principles and the diagnosticity of those principles for choice, because they are. They are undermining the shortcuts we need in modern life to Be able to choose efficiently and well.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's the reciprocity in taking the time to present that social proof for others and to praise when something went well. And knowing that, like you said, they had made a bad choice, then they.

Deserved a bad review as well, for.

The social proof to come back to them. So that sort of ties in then. I wanted to. We won't get into the story specifically of giving compliments behind people's back, but I think this is sort of. People have to go check out the book and the chapter on social proof for that. I love when people use their own tactics and you can see it in.

The work they're doing.

It's one thing if you write a book and say, this is all of what you should do, and then you don't do any of it yourself. You kind of go, well, I mean, is that really a thing? So I want to talk about the reader letters and those boxes that are included within the book and how, you know, you're using social proof to show where people are reading the book and talking about it and following up with you and then having kind of a gift of featuring them in the book. Was that an intentional social proof, sort of a strategy or just something that you did?

Anyway, here's what happened. When I wrote the first edition of the book, of course, there were no prior readers. But I included in the preface an invitation for readers of the book to send me an account of a time that they witnessed one or another of the principals working on them successfully or working for them successfully. And I got a set of these. And they were so instructive where you could see how these principles were working in the lives of everyday lives of the people who were reading the book that I began this feature of called Readers Reports, where I would include that. And then in an author's note at the bottom of each of these reports, I would provide a reflection on it. What I thought this indicated or how it fit with the existing literature or how it exists, advanced what we'd already been talking about to another level, whatever. And that has been such a popular feature that it wasn't designed so much for social proof as it was to accede to the preferences of my readership. They really liked this kind of information.

Where they were getting more than just an example of how the principle worked.

In some situation that I had encountered.

Or observed, but one where people just.

Like them were experiencing it and could.

Talk about situations and settings that the.

Readers were in as well in their daily lives.

Yeah, I think it's just such a.

Even if it didn't, you know, like.

You said, didn't start out with that intent, but being able to, you give a little something because people like to see their story featured somewhere so there's some reciprocity, like you said, the social proof, people like me where it's like, oh, I'm a marketing director or whatever, you know, as you read those little stories, like testimonial value.

So I appreciate.

Well, let me just say that I'm.

Thinking of writing my next book as all reader's reports.

Ooh, great.

With a comment for me from me on each because it has been such a well received feature.

Oh, I love it. Well, look forward to that book when it comes out and everybody should pick that up whenever it happens. So as there were so many new things in the new edition of the book, we didn't talk a ton about unity. And I know there were other stories. Do you have a favorite story? Maybe one you haven't gotten to talk about as much on all the interviews I'm sure you've been doing that you would want to share with the listeners before we close out?

I can tell you an instance where the UNITY principle worked for me after I recognized its power. I was writing a grant application and it was due the next day. And I realized as I was reading through it there was a gap in it. I didn't have some data that I really needed to make this point I was claiming in there, but I knew that a colleague of mine had the data in his archives. So I wrote him a little email saying, tim, not his real name. I have this due tomorrow and I could really use your help with this. Could you go to your archives, get the data out, send it over to me so I could. And I'm going to call you and explain further. So then I did call him and he was. He's a kind of irascible guy. He's known to be difficult. And he said, bob, I'm sorry, I can't be responsible for your poor time management skills. The answer is no. And before I read the research on.

Unity, I would have said, come on.

I really need this. I got this thing due tomorrow. He'd already said no to that. I said, come on, Tim, we've been members of the same psychology department now for 12 years. I really need this. And I had the data that afternoon.

Yeah.

So tying in that I've heard this described where I love the term unity in business before, where you said affinity groups, you know, things like that, being able to just that one little tidbit makes all the difference. Love it. So for everyone who I know is now itching to go get their own copy of the new Influence and you have many other books as was talked about and great work and research and everything, what's the best way to learn more from you to continue this education and be in contact?

Certainly there are other books which anybody can get access to on our website influenceatwork.com but also on that website, if anyone is interested in training, we have an EPOP that is an online on demand workshop, Principles of Persuasion Workshop, for anybody who would be interested in learning about how to best become effective and ethical in the use of persuasion science.

Absolutely.

The ethical piece is so important as you talk about throughout the book and as was mentioned today. So I love that that is a key tenet of how you speak about this. So Bob, thank you again so much for joining me on the show today and talking about the new edition of Influence.

Well, I enjoyed it, Melina, thanks.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about influence from Dr. Cialdini today? For me, I always love learning from Bob. He's such a great example about how you can get far with kindness and by giving to others. Am I right? Reciprocity, Liking. Social proof, Authority, commitment and consistency. Scarcity. And now unity. Seven powerful principles of persuasion that can change the world, which we know because they already have. I'm so honored to have gotten connected with Bob and some others on the Cialdini team. Did you know he was kind enough to do an endorsement of my second book, what yout Employees need and Can't Tell youl. It appears right on the front cover. It's amazing how something so simple like a testimonial or endorsement can bring about so many of these principles. We have social proof, of course, and because he's an authority on topics like this, his word goes a long way. That was so kind of him to provide that for me. I feel compelled to give back to him and his team in any way I can. So we have reciprocity. I was willing to ask him because he's so likable and kind. Though don't get me wrong, it was still incredibly scary for me to hit send on the email. And even though I'm confident he has tons of people ask, I don't believe he gives an endorsement to everyone because he has a reputation to remain consistent on. So those endorsements are scarce, which makes me and potential readers value it more. And of course it feels like we're part of the same club that unity, be it from being in the space of behavioral science or authors or lifelong learners or whatever else, at least for me, the unity is there too. So I see all seven of the principles of persuasion in this one gesture. It's pretty cool when you think about it. And speaking about reciprocity and giving back, I want to take a moment to share about something really cool that has recently been announced called the Cialdini Institute. Cialdini and his team have also recently launched a newsletter and he's being super active on LinkedIn, which is really cool to see and it inspired me to refresh this episode today to help spread a little love back his way. There are of course links in the show notes so you can learn all about the Cialdini Institute. It's a great growing and evolving thing. It's pretty new, so I'm excited to see what happens as well. There's also a link to his newsletter so you can subscribe and share and whatever other goodness you feel like. I said, I'm super excited to see how this develops and can't wait to watch as things unfold. Those show notes with links to all things Cialdini, including links to get your copies of some of his amazing books. Related past episodes, the Cialdini Institute and his newsletter are all waiting for you within the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 312 and just like that, episode 312 on influence with Dr. Robert Cialdini is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Troy Andrews discussing Bridges and Barriers. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.