Zoe Chance: Writer, Teacher, Researcher, and Climate Philanthropist

Hello, I'm Jane Goodall, and I just want to tell you that I've been on Guy's podcast twice now and had a great time, and I really hope that you'll listen to it. Of course, especially the one when I'm on, but the other great, too.

I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable people. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable. Today's guest who's helping me make you remarkable is Zoe Chance. She is a behavioral scientist at the Yale School of Management and one of its most popular instructors. She worked her way up from telemarketing and door to door sales to managing Mattel's Barbies brand, a $200 million business, all the way to the Yale School of Management. Zoe's research has been published in the New York Times, BBC, the Economist, and Harvard Business Review. Her popular TED talk, How to Make a Behavior Addictive, has over 600,000 views. Zoe receives her doctorate degree from Harvard, her MBA from the University of Southern California, and Zoe's latest book is called Influence Is yous the Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. If you are a Bob Cialdini or Katie Milkman fan, you'll love this book. This is the longest episode of Remarkable People because it overfloweth with practical and tactical advice about influence, persuasion, and change. I tried to find stuff to cut, but I couldn't. What can I say? I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here's the remarkable Zoe Chance. I'm going to read you a sentence, and then I'm going to ask you for a grade because, right, you teach MBAs, you teach students. You know how to grade people, right?

So do you?

I don't know. Not like you do. I don't have the most popular course in the Yale MBA program, but. Okay. You ready?

Ready.

So people can become more remarkable simply by listening to my podcast, because my remarkable guests reveal their best practices and secrets. How's that for framing?

A plus?

You say that to everybody.

It's a winner. You got definitely the Mysterious Frame. Some monumental, manageable stuff going on. No wonder your podcast is so popular, Guy.

Actually, I want it to be more popular so that I gravitated towards the framing chapter immediately.

Being a wordsmith, you know a lot about it.

I guess. I don't, but you're the teacher, so. Now would you tell me if I had a C or B minus frame?

No. I would probably give you an A minus if you sucked.

So an A plus is not that great.

Then like an A would have been. That was pretty good, right? Okay. A plus. You nailed it.

Okay.

And now all of my students are going to be like, oh, my God, I suck now I know I suck.

Second question. I want to know how you influence the diet of Google employees.

So Guy, we were brought on to try to help employees mindlessly make healthier eating choices. Because if you tried to strong arm people, anybody like parents know this, right? With their children, if you try to force people to eat healthier, they're going to fight you. They will fight you with whatever means they have. But you've spent time at Google, I'm just going to guess, right? You visited the campus.

That's why I asked.

Yeah. There's just delicious, fresh food every freaking where.

Yes.

And even in their, I think, unofficial manifesto has been that there needs to be food available for every employee, no matter where they are, every moment of the day, within 150ft. And. And a lot of this food is delicious. A lot of it is healthy, a lot of it is junk. It's a mix of whatever people want. And so people complain. So employees of Google call themselves Googlers. New Googlers get called Nooglers. And people complain about what they call the Noogler 15, which is like the freshman 15, where you go to college and you drink a lot of beer and you gain 15 pound. So you join Google, you have all this food available and gain £15. So what we did was we did a number of experiments with the Google Food team, using principles of behavioral economics to nudge people's choices in a healthy direction where we're never going to restrict what they can eat. But a lot of this centered around making it a little bit more difficult to get the unhealthy food. Like one study we did was just pure observation. There's no intervention. There's a break room with snack area and two different coffee machines. One is closer, one is further. And we just sent spies to watch and see after people go get coffee, did they go and get a snack? And it turned out that 50% more people were getting snacks if they got their coffee from the close coffee machine. And so the direction is not surprising at all. We all know we do things that are easy, but we just tend to underestimate how powerful that is. And I feel silly saying this to you, especially with your history for Apple, of all people, you know how important it is to make things easy to do what you want. So in this particular case, all these people who don't realize it are mindlessly snacking just because of where they got their coffee, and men are doing it a little bit more. So if you're a guy who drinks three drinks a day, you're going to gain about £4 a year. And when we presented this, there was an architect in the room who's been designing with his firm all of the breakthrough rooms for all of Google and other places. And he calls back to his headquarters immediately to say, hey, guys, we need to redesign how we do the break rooms to just separate the drinks from the snacks. So this is an example of one of the simplest interventions to influence people's behavior is just separating. You can do it at your house. I've done it at my house.

I gotta talk to my wife tonight. I grabbed a handful of nuts just before I got on this session, because they're right there.

And it's easy, right?

Yep.

I don't aspire to be ascetic and eat perfectly clean all the time, but I was eating more junk. My family was eating more junk than we wanted. And so we put our cookies and chips and stuff in an opaque container in the cabinet where you'd open it up and you see the container, but we just forgot what was in it. And our junk food actually molded it, turned green before we ate it.

Really?

Yeah. This. It. It works. And behavioral interventions for influencing behavior are so often much more powerful and influential than all the stuff that we do to try to change people's minds.

A couple weeks ago, I interviewed someone, and they were talking about the power of habits, specifically tiny habits. And so we came up with. Yeah, Exactly.

He's great.

BJ's, you know, I got him between surf sessions. Anyway, so I was discussing this hypothetical situation, because it's not true of my family, that a teenage boy would never, ever put his laundry in the basket. And so BJ came up with the idea that I should buy, or not I, my friend, should buy this little basketball rim and put it over the laundry basket. Because BJ said you got to get him into the habit of doing things he would have done anyway. But now it's fun and it serves a double purpose. And I have had mixed results. It's not. It wasn't the clear win I was hoping for.

Yeah, like, it sounds really, really fun, but it actually is still creating work, right? Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, they work great for socks, but not for pants because, you know, the rim is not a full size rim. But anyway, I digress.

I really wonder about a lot of the things we're trying to influence people to do, especially as managers, also as Parents and, you know, I struggle my daughter just like every other parent with their kids. But what of these things should we just be giving up rather than struggling? Right. Does it actually matter if your son puts his laundry in the basket? I don't know.

I don't know. It's my ocdness. I don't know. Okay. I could make his door spring loaded so it shuts it, and then I'd never see the mess. And then life is good.

Yeah, there you go. It's. That's a very different thing to say. I don't want to see your dirty laundry on the floor. Then you can't put your laundry on the floor.

He doesn't listen to my podcast, so we're safe.

Okay, good. Have you ever asked your son what it would take for him to put laundry in the basket? Because he probably knows.

Yeah. Buy a car.

He knows how to bargain. Good job training him.

Yeah, well, you know, there's a school of thought that it doesn't matter how you get people to do good habits as long as they start forming good habits. It becomes a habit to form good habits. So if it takes a car. This was a discussion I had with John List of the University of Chicago about. He had an experiment with elementary school. They created a experimental elementary school in Chicago and they were actually paying, I think either kids and or parents to attend school. And a lot of people that just set them off. You're ruining education. You're demotivating them. You're ruining their motivation. It's not about money, it's about enlightenment. And he said for these conditions, if you can get them into the habit any way you can, it's a win. And I kind of like that theory.

It's so complicated. Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Sometimes the extrinsic rewards can build habit, but it's really, really rare. And my guess in that situation is that when these kids and parents were getting paid for the kids to go to school, that the kids probably stayed in school because they actually realized that they liked it rather than. Right.

Yes.

So then you're getting intrinsic rewards from it. And it wasn't just like the extrinsic rewards can get you to try something, but it's the pleasure and the enjoyment and things like that get you to continue.

I have to say that I've had on my podcast, as you heard, John List, Angela Duckworth, Katie Milkman, Bob Cialdini.

Twice, David Aker, daughter, Jennifer Anker.

Jennifer Acker. Yep. The happy person. And now I have you. So my Life is almost complete. I am very curious, do you have anywhere that you and Bob Cialdini significantly diverge on any kind of behavioral economics, social psychology practices?

We're very like minded and also we have a big zone of difference about how our work gets applied. And I'll explain a little bit. So Bob Cialdini, many of your listeners know he wrote this book called influence in 1985 and it sold, I don't know, 30 million copies or something. No, eight. I think it was 8 million copies by now, but 8, 30 million, who's counting at that point? Bob Cialdini is part of the reason that I came to academia in the first place because I loved this book so much. It was my absolute favorite book and it has become the bible of transactional sales. So what he's focusing on in that work, especially less so in his newer work and his newer book Pre Suasion is how to influence one off situational behaviors to get somebody to do the thing you want in that moment. And where I diverge from that practice. But Bob totally agrees with me on the philosophy is that really what we want to do is be building relationships and having people want to collaborate with us, say yes to us generally as a human being, that this is ultimately how you have long term influence. And it's very different from the transactional influence that can feel manipulative if somebody sees what you're doing. Like one of Bob Cialdini's main six principles is scarcity. And that's what you see everywhere. Right. In every single transactional sales situation. And I used to work in transactional sales and I've done all of this. It's not evil. But you tell people you have a limited supply or they have to buy it right now and you put people on their back foot by feeling the urgency. That just drives them into an irrational mindset. And you feel like I have to have that thing, but then it ends up creating a lot of regrets afterwards. That's an example. And like Bob Cialdini, you know that I love you. So if you hear this, hear it in that light.

He is the greatest. You just mentioned scarcity is one of his six principles. So this morning I got an email from NetJets where NetJets is where you eat timeshare private airplanes.

Okay. Yeah.

You know, the starting paragraph is something like there are a limited amount of black card memberships available, guys, you know? Huh. There's like so many people pounding on paying 10,000 bucks an hour limit anyway.

Right. And if you call them tomorrow, they're going to be like, oh, nope, sorry, that was a one time deal. Yeah. So most scarcity influence practices are just not even real. And that's also why we feel manipulated like in that situation exactly like you're talking about. Yeah.

Like you can only invite a few other people to Gmail right now because it's in beta tests. Are kind and smart people at a disadvantage when it comes to influencing others?

They can be at a disadvantage and they're at a disadvantage if they don't understand how it works, which most of us don't understand how it works but. And they're actually, they have a double liability. Because if you are kind of, you're likely to be really careful not to use influence techniques and strategies because you don't want to be manipulative. And then if you're smart, you have a totally different problem. That's you assume people are much more rational than they are in their decision making. And so you tend to be working on crafting your perfect arguments, which is fine and good, but that is at a later stage. And if you've skipped the first stage stage of getting their attention and second of all getting them interested in listening to you, then it doesn't matter how great your arguments are. But the kind person part is the even bigger problem in all of this. Because if we who want to do good things in the world and help each other out and create a good society, if we are not studying and practicing influence, then we just leave it to the domain of the power hungry people who are.

So let's suppose that I'm a smart person listening to this. Then the natural follow on question is what is the role of facts in decision making and influence?

Then it's a really deep question. And facts are simply less persuasive than we think. It doesn't make them less important than we think, but they're less persuasive than we think because so much of what we do, our decisions and our behavior are guided unconsciously. In the book I talk about the two systems that a lot of your readers will be familiar with that are officially called System 1 and System 2. And I use a different analogy in the book. But researchers who study unconscious decisions and behavior estimate that those guide 95%. Your unconscious system guides 95% of everything you think and everything you do, but you don't know. Because it's unconscious, we can't perceive it. So we imagine ourselves to be in that 5% of the time that we're doing something consciously and with great intention. Like not your son, but your friend's son with the laundry. It's not like he's consciously intending to put his clothes on the floor. They just go to the floor. Right. It's not even a choice.

Exactly.

And you're asking him to make a conscious choice in a situation where there's no conscious thinking happening. And that's part of what's really hard.

You alluded to this system one and system two, but I think you have a much, much better label for them, which is Gators versus Judges.

Yeah.

What a brilliant dichotomy.

Thanks. I use this analogy, the dichotomy, just because as a teacher of behavioral economics, I found it's very hard for people, the super smart people that I teach, like MBA students and CEOs who come through, to remember which one is system one and which one is system two. And that's because it takes a lot of conscious intention to remember and figure out. But gators and judges. Gators are the primal, intuitive, emotional gut, an habitual decision making system. And then judges are the conscious, slow, rational, effortful, seemingly objective, seemingly rational decision making system. And it's easy to remember those.

I think that you might be able to measure the moral fiber of a person by eliciting their reaction to your concept that 95% of decision making is gator driven, not by the judge. And so, like, when I read Gators versus Judges, my reaction was, shit, this is just not right. If the wrong people learn that it's a gator world, they're going to take advantage of it. So I was disturbed that this is true.

That's fascinating. And also, you've done so much work in consumer marketing, and it's largely not surprising to people who work in consumer marketing. It's just that we don't think of our friends, family, colleagues, bosses and employees in that same light. No. Wouldn't you agree that when we're thinking of the customer in air quotes that we do assume that customers behave this.

Way as opposed to people you care about?

Yeah. Literally.

Yeah. But are you saying that to be successful you've got to be thinking like someone throwing raw meat at a gator? You got to get it right in front of his nose?

Yes, I literally am.

You are saying that?

I truly am. And the raw meat situation that you're talking about is just if you want to influence somebody's behavior, no matter who they are, the most important thing you can do is make it as easy as possible for them to take action. So if we're thinking about gators, and meat. And the meat needs to go directly next to the alligator's jaws, or the alligator is not even going to move because it's so incredibly lazy. And this is even yourself. So it's not just the people you care about, but you with the behaviors that you want to change. The reason that you're not fulfilling your hopes and dreams and New Year's resolutions is that it's not easy for you to do it. And it's very difficult to resist temptation. So I don't think of it as being insulting or disrespectful. To use this analogy of, yeah, if you want somebody to do the thing you'd like them to do, you just have to make it as easy as possible. There's not an alternative.

Is there a concept of reverse gaitering? Because let's suppose that I didn't want black people to vote, so I'm going to make it as difficult as possible, put every barrier in front of them. Is that the reverse gator theory?

Hell, yes. And it goes way beyond just the Gators, but 100%. And this is exactly what's going on with voting right now in the United States, where a lot of the barriers are not obstacles that prevent people from voting. They just make it more difficult to vote. And that means that far fewer people will vote.

Many people think that I am too political and I take too much of a stand, and you can imagine my perspective in all this. But honestly, Zoe, I am 67 years old. I don't give a shit anymore. And, you know, I can love it or leave it. So now do you have a thought that, you know, by suppressing voting rights, it may help you in the short term winning the school districts and the state legislatures, but ultimately the demographics are going to bite you in the ass, and you are going to regret this in the long run. Or do you think this can succeed?

I mean, I believe in the Martin Luther King ideal that the long arm of history bends toward justice. I hope that's true, and I think we have to hope that's true. And we also have to fight like hell. And you and I both said at the beginning of our conversation, like, oh, it's not good to politics, and here we are. But what we're talking about is not so much partisan politics that I know we don't want to get into the weeds of that, but we're talking about democracy and suppression of democracy. And to me, this goes far beyond political parties and political issues. This is just a deep, fundamental human right that's being Violated. And to me, there's no both sides on this issue, that if you choose to live in a democracy, you fundamentally have the right to vote, and it should be as easy as possible.

Amen. Amen.

And. And Guy, I love. I just. I love it that you're like, Listen, I'm 67, and I just do whatever I want, and I don't care what people think. And I think that a lot of people find their authentic voice later in life and that feeling that you have. And I'm wondering if you have any advice for people like the people you and I teach who are a lot younger than we are. Is there a way to get to that place earlier where you just say the thing that's in your heart because it's the truth.

It took me 67 years. I would never have said something like that when I was 30. So it's a lot of factors. So, number one, it's not like I'm a billionaire, but there is very little someone could do to me, not hire me for a speech or not buy my book or whatever that will materially affect my life. Money might not buy you happiness, but it may buy you independence.

Yeah.

So that's number one. And number two, at 67, at least two thirds of your life is over. So, you know, what are you holding back for? I mean, the clock is ticking. And then the third one, this is a story. So In November of 2016 or so, I was in Germany. I had dinner with two friends. They're in their 40s. And Trumpism had. The whole thing had started at that point, and we're going into the election and all that, and these guys say to me, listen, you know, Guy, to this day, we question our grandparents. What were you thinking? How could you let Adolf Hitler come to power? And so they said to me, you know, Guy, if you want your grandchildren to be wondering, did you resist, then don't take a stand. But if you want your grandchildren to not wonder, did Grandpa take a stance against the fall of democracy? You gotta go on the record. And I felt convicted by that. And, you know, I came back to America and I was all in on Hillary. All the rest is history. But, you know, so that's why.

Anyway, I feel really moved by that, and I appreciate you sharing it, and you sharing that story means so much to other people listening. I got very politically involved in.

Some.

But not enough in 2016 and then more in 2020. And I've done other stuff in the past, but I had two specific friends were super successful, and they left their jobs to spend their whole entire life campaigning for Biden. And because they'd left their life to campaign for Biden and that's all that they were doing, I ended up that year donating two months of my income to this election, which was far more than I had ever done, and volunteering, and I've been for a while showing up at the polls to volunteer and doing things like that, which is fun, but it's a small thing. But this was me making a really meaningful sacrifice specifically because of my friends. So even though we try to not talk about politics and get people down when we can share stories like that, it's a really big deal and we help other people do it, too.

Well, thank you. And we're really going off the map here. But there have been many times where I take this very specific stance and there are people who in the comments on social media say, you know, guy, you're like pissing off half of your audience. And I tell them you're I'm not pissing off half of my audience. QAnon is not listening to me. They're never going to listen to me. The American Nazi Party is not going to hire me. I don't have to worry about it anyway.

And you and I do work with a whole lot of Republicans on all different kinds of projects and our colleagues and our students and things like that. But that is the line. They are not QAnon, they're not the Nazi Party, and it's not human beings who are voting different. I'm speaking for myself. I shouldn't speak for you. I'm just making a big assumption because of the kind of work that you do. I assume that you're not canceling everyone who voted differently than you did in these elections, but it's the lawmakers who frustrate you and get you really angry. Like they get me angry.

When are people most likely to be influenceable?

People are most likely to be influenceable when you yourself are also influenceable when you're talking with them. If we're talking about a conversation, there's nudge kinds of influences that you can do to influence people just when they're distracted and busy with other things. So they can be influenceable in that way, in a different way. But if we're talking to somebody in a conversation, the leap that most people don't make because they don't even realize that they need to is that actually when you open your own mind, that's what it takes to have another person open their mind.

And are you talking about trying to influence the person at United Airlines to upgrade you to first class? Are you trying to influence.

No, it really depends what kind of situation we're talking about. Because in that kind of situation, they're doing their job and they're in a rush, and you just need, like, you have one chance to say something and hope that it lands, and it's likely not going to because they're not really doing a lot of upgrades just based on charm and charisma at the gate. But at the very least, what you still have an opportunity to do, even in the most fleeting situation, is be warm. And it's so, so, so simple. And you're great at this. You know it already. But the two dimensions of social judgments that all of us are making all the time, mostly unconsciously, are warmth and competence. And warmth is, do I like that person? And competence is, do I trust that person? Are they intelligent? Are they good at what they do? And warmth judgments happen first. They happen instantly, instantaneously, all the time. They're very, very sticky. And if you don't like the person, it doesn't matter how smart and how competent they are, you just don't care what they have to offer, and you don't want any part of anything to do with them. But if you like the person, then you're willing to excuse all kinds of shortcomings. So people are far more influenceable when we approach them with warmth in whatever context we're talking about.

And this is totally gator kicking in right here.

Yes, 100% Gatorade.

And what makes a person be perceived as warm?

What would you say?

I would say in person, I would say a Duchenne smile.

That's so fancy. Tell our listeners what a Duchenne smile is.

I think many people think that a smile is caused by your jaw and your teeth and a Duchenne smile. The concept is it's caused by your eyes. And so the eyes are the key to a smile. Whereas gritting your teeth like you have a pencil in it and gritting your teeth and smiling that way is not perceived as a sincere smile.

It's not perceived as sincere because apparently it's not sincere. Is that. Yeah, yeah. And it's hard. Although researchers will say it's impossible to have a Duchenne smile if you're not being sincere. As a former actor, I can tell you it's not at all impossible. It's very possible to do it. But, yes, authenticity and smiles comes. What would you say? Smiling is big. Smiling is big. And we can hear it on the phone too, right? Even if you and I weren't seeing each other, we can tell when each other's smiling. We can hear it in our voices. And when we make eye contact with people in a friendly way, we pay attention to them. We use their name. And a really simple one that most people don't know how important it is to ask follow up questions in conversations. And researchers at Harvard have found that people who ask follow up questions are better liked specifically by that person that they're asking questions at. And they do things like if they'll have a speed dating study. And people who ask follow up questions are more likely to get a second date, but then they will play the conversation to another listener and see how much they like those two people. And it doesn't matter if you're just observing someone if they're asking follow up questions. Actually, now that I'm saying this out loud, I'm realizing, oh no, I'm saying something terrible about your audience, guys. I'm sure they care about you asking follow up questions, but I definitely care about you asking follow up questions, just caring about us as a person.

So you're saying when you meet somebody and you find out, I don't know, you both work at Apple or something, you have a follow up question like, I don't know, what department did you work in? Or were you there with Steve Jobs? Or what's a good follow up question?

It's so, so funny that you're, that you're the one asking me what's a good follow up question.

Well, you're the expert.

No, no, no, you're the expert interviewer. You're the expert on follow up questions. And I'm curious to ask you, and I know lot of preparation and I really appreciate it. And what amount of your interviewing people is pulling the thread where you feel curious about something? When you're asking a follow up question, I don't think that's prepared. Is it just your, your innate curiosity or is there something else driving it?

It's my innate curiosity and the sheer intellectual processing ability to come up with great follow up questions. But I, quite modestly, no. When I prepare, for example, for this one, I read through the book and I honed in on the framing question and the framing question because it's a real question to me. Like, how do I explain my podcast? I struggle with that until today. But even more importantly, in the back of my mind for a podcast, I have a theory that the first question is the most important and my Intent with the first question on every podcast is, I want the guest to say to himself or herself, holy shit, this guy really prepared. He didn't just read the Wikipedia entry about me. This guy was in chapter 14, and he is trying to have a framing question that is manageable and mysterious. And what's the other? Manageable, mysterious and monumental.

Yeah, right.

I want you to know that I read that in chapter eight, and I took it to heart. And this is not a producer, hand me Wikipedia said, here, go for it.

Yeah, that was insane. Why do you do that?

Because I think it sets the tone for the whole podcast. Because from that point on, the guest knows, holy shit. You know, sometimes I listen to that public radio station and I hear them ask questions. And these are people you would consider the best podcasters in the world. And they ask questions like, your mother killed your father when you were 5. How did you feel? Well, what a dumb shit question. How did I feel? A. I tried to block the memory of my mother killing my father, and that was 45 years ago. Do I remember what I felt that day? And I will tell you that one of the things that makes me happiest about an interview, not that I'm trying to lead you on to say this, but is that when the person says, either that's a good question, but that could just be conversation filler, that's a good question. Or I'm glad you asked. But no, the comment that makes me the most happy is when somebody says, no one has ever asked me that question before. So I hope I ask questions that no one has ever asked you before.

And you talk to a lot of people who do a hell of a lot of interviews.

Oh, yeah.

There aren't that many questions that no one has asked.

Absolutely there. Yeah. Yep, yep. Back on track here. So I want to know, why are people afraid to ask for stuff?

People are really afraid deeply to not be liked. And we have this deep seated, probably evolutionary fear of getting rejected. And if you think about human history, if you got kicked out of the tribe, then you would die. You would literally die. So you would die if people don't like you. And there are studies like Naomi Eisenberger runs these very cool FMRI studies where she'll have people playing a game of catch in the FMRI scanner. And it's not physical catch. This is a video game of catch. There are three participants, and one of them starts getting left out because the other two are confederates. And the person who's getting left out and is experiencing rejection is having their brain scanned. And what Naomi Eisenberger is finding is that they experience the social pain just like physical pain. It's the same areas of our brain that are hurting us when we get rejected as when we actually get punched in the face. So we're afraid to ask because we are afraid for people not to like us. But there are a whole lot of other deep things that go into this about feelings of shame and even fear of greatness is a crazy one. And this is far afield from regular behavioral economics kinds of experiments like we started with. But I've been teaching this class for about a decade now, and I get to read students private journals where every week they turn in a journal, they do a real world influence challenge, and then they're reflecting on their experiences and on their thoughts. So I've been lucky to have this insight into people's deep psyche and secret private thoughts about the fears that they have around influence. And I've talked to a lot of people. It's really not just the people that we might think like someone who seems shy or powerless or doesn't belong, but people like frat boys and CEOs and Wall street bankers. Pretty much everyone I've ever taught or spoken with about this has some area of their life in which they're afraid to ask. And the two biggest ones for people tend to be money for themselves and love. Romantic situations.

And how do you overcome this practice? You mean ask for money? Ask for money and sex all the time?

Well, I did say love. I didn't say sex. I think asking for sex all the time will probably backfire. And asking for money all the time would backfire too. Right. We don't want to go back and pester the same people for the same thing all the time. They will get annoyed. But what we do in class over this seven weeks, it's a boot camp kind of class where we practice every single week asking. And we also practice generosity. And we also practice gratitude. And this stuff wasn't in the book. It's maybe the second book. But we're creating a cycle of influence where we're becoming more influential and we're getting more by the stuff that we ask for, but we're also giving a lot and practicing the gratitude that naturally should come along with the amassing of power through influence. And maybe not ironically, but not obviously. This is a key part of becoming a more influential person and becoming someone that people like and want to say yes to, because they see the good that you're doing in the world and then you Yourself see the good that you're doing in the world. And so you don't feel as ashamed to ask when you're doing a lot of good for a lot of other people as well.

Flipping this over, you also discuss the benefits of learning to say no.

Yes. Yeah, we start with no even. And anybody listening to the podcast, I invite you, if you feel like it, to just try as a challenge. 24 hours of no next 24 hours, I realize say no to everything. Everyone. Literally, literally every request. With the caveat that, of course, don't ruin your life, but say no to tiny things, big things, even. Say no to things that you want to say yes to. At least until you have the experience of how did it feel to say no? And then how did it land? What was the response on the other side? If you have to change your mind afterward, it's fine. But people are so consistently surprised how difficult it is, how enlightening it is. Like, most of us have some idea of whether or not we have a problem being a people pleaser, and most of us find out that we're even more of a people pleaser than we thought that we were, and our default response is just to say yes. And we feel super uncomfortable saying no to somebody, especially someone we know, because we think that they will, again, not like us because of saying no, just like we're afraid they'll not like us because we're asking. But the reality is that if you say no in a simple way, like no or no, thank you, or yes, sorry, but no, people are not going to not like you. And if you say no in a warm way, oh my gosh, that is an amazing offer and I would totally love to do that in another universe. In this one, it's completely not possible. Then it's not just that they're not going to not like you, but they'll actually like you more. You're communicating genuinely with them and you're drawing a boundary and you're modeling healthy boundaries for other people. And so you're making it more comfortable for them to say no as well.

And if I were to try this, let's say you're going to do this with your family. Do you prep your family and say, okay, for the next 24 hours? I'm saying no.

Or do you just no, don't do it.

Not surprise them.

Surprise them, just surprise them.

Just don't do it.

Yeah. However, if there's somebody that you're spending a lot of time with over those 24 hours, then I would say Just say no to the first thing that they ask you. And that's where you get the learning. Because you've got to experience saying no to that person. They got to experience you saying no to them. But then beyond that, if there's 10 more requests, it's just, no, no, no. I don't want to be responsible for your divorce, Guy.

Well, thank you. I'm glad you continued.

There's one more thing about the practicing saying no. When you help other people feel more comfortable saying no to you because you have these healthy boundaries, you're losing this edge of neediness that's repulsive when you ask. So you become a better asker when you become a better no sayer.

Really, you become a better asker when you become a better knower.

Knower.

Let me wrap my brain around that, huh?

So thinking through when you have been practicing your right to self determination, you have agency and you decide consciously, do I want to say yes or no to this? Actually, no. Do I want to say yes or no to this? Actually, you know, I wish I could say yes, but the answer is no. You have healthy boundaries. And then when someone says no to you, you're not taking it personally because, you know, they have a life and they have a right to make their own decisions. And just like when you say no to somebody, it usually doesn't have anything to do with them. You internalize that. When somebody says no to you, it probably has nothing to do with you. And so then when you're approaching people, you don't have that needy fear of rejection that's actually making rejection more likely to happen.

I have a practical solution. I have a person who helps me and I have two email addresses. One is obviously Guy Kawasaki Mail, and I have another one. And so she has access to all mail that goes to Guy Kawasaki Mail. And then she tries to handle whatever she can, and whatever she can't, she forwards to me. Then I give her a one word response, yes or no, and then she communicates the no to the people in a warm manner. So she's actually better at being me than I am.

That's amazing.

I have drawn that barrier and it works. It works because I have a hard time saying no.

It gets easier with practice, but I don't think it ever gets to be just super easy and fun. I share your feeling, but I don't share your assistant that gets to monitor my email. I do most of my own nose. Although I do have other people helping with some stuff. But, yeah, like, I still feel that I want to say yes to everyone, because I like people, and a lot of the stuff that they're asking or offering is cool, and if I had a lot of time, I would do it. And I don't know if that's true for YouTube. It's more about limited time.

I'll tell you another thing that I learned that I used to get asked, I swear, once a day, could you review my pitch?

Oh, I'm sure.

And reviewing your pitch, believe it or not, if you truly did it and commented and, you know, wrote stuff out, it takes two hours, let's say.

Yeah.

So I would tell people, I will do this if you donate $500 to my son's hockey team at the University of California at Berkeley. So I don't want the money. I'm not doing it for money. I just want you to donate 500 bucks to show that you really want it. And you know What?

He did.

99.9% of people disappeared after that.

My crazy. Is that right? Can I just ask, like, at that point in time or whenever, how much would you have charged if somebody approached you with a business proposition to say, I'd like you to review my pitch, you go give a keynote, and I have no idea how many tens of thousands of dollars you get, but you spending two hours is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, and you're willing to donate your time for them to spend 500. Right.

And so my interpretation is. So you don't think my time is worth 250 bucks an hour? I mean, how else can you interpret it? Right?

I interpret it differently, but yes, but that is literally how it ends up. The way that I interpret it, though, is that it's shifting this dynamic from a communal dynamic of somebody asking somebody for a favor, even though it's a stranger and a famous stranger and it's actually inappropriate, but still it's a favor kind of dynamic that they're perceiving on their side. And then you're saying, okay, yes, for money, and you've turned it into a transaction, and the warmth gets sucked out of it for a lot of them, even though what you're actually doing is really nice. So I don't think you should change what you're doing. I think what you're doing is great. You're doing is great because you don't need to make time, and you shouldn't make time for all of the world asking you for help on their pitches. Right. And then, of course, there are a bunch of people who, not just not valuing your time, like they might actually, if you put up a thing on your website and said, hey, everybody, I'm gonna sell my time for $250 an hour this weekend, and I'll review as many pitches as you want. And you would get a bazillion people applying for that. So in my class, we have a reach out to a hero challenge, and students reach out to people like you who they see as a role model and a mentor. And in my class, you're not allowed to ask for something. You're just showering love on that person, and that's all you're allowed to do. Although some of them bend the rules and they do ask for things. But it's so exciting and it's so scary for them to reach out to you that they're hoping that they might possibly get a response from you. They're fearing rejection, and they're assuming they're going to hear nothing but that. Some people, when they hear back this thing that sounds like a negotiation, it sounds like a transaction, and it sounds a little bit like rejection, even though it's the opposite. It's the opposite. But, Guy, don't change what you're doing. If you still ever do this kind of thing.

Why are you saying that? It seems like I am not warmly rejecting them. I am turning it into a transaction, which is what you argue against.

Yeah, because they're saying, hey, will you do me a favor? And in essence, you're saying, no, I'm not going to do you a favor because you're a stranger, and that would be crazy. But actually, I can do something incredibly generous where I'll do something awesome if you do something awesome. But that still does shift it into a transaction. And just a lot of people are turned off by transactional interactions with each other. And we do a lot of this when we try to influence people by giving a sweetener to the deal, and we're pushing people away by saying, hey, if you do this thing, then I'll do this thing. That's awesome. But, Guy, in your case, you're not trying to influence them to make the $500 donation. You're just offering a gift that they're saying no to. And thank God they're saying no. Thank God they're saying no. It's great. It's great. It's perfect. Can I share one more thing about this particular issue topic that a lot of people don't know? That there are so many busy, successful, famous people who are willing to do so much more for charity than they're willing to do for money. And even in the world of market research, if you are, let's just say reaching out to doctors who are busy, successful, have plenty of money and you want to do a half hour interview with them or you want to get them to do a survey, you have to give them $250 if you're going to pay them to do the interview or the survey. But if it's money for charity, they will do this for $25. So it's a similar situation to what you're talking about where for you, you're saying, I'll donate my time. That's not a transaction. And these doctors were saying it's not a transaction. I hope that I didn't just do something terrible for all of the kind, successful, already wealthy people in the world.

But they'll get over it.

They'll get over it. Thank you.

What is the relationship between generosity and happiness? Because I think there are a lot of people who would say the two are in direct opposition, that if you're generous, you're not happy because you're giving stuff away.

Are those generous people or selfish people who are saying probably selfish, that could be totally true for them. It's not that there aren't some jerks at selfish people in the world who are maybe sociopaths and they're just motivated by getting what they can get for themselves in out of Grant's work. He calls those people takers. Easy shorthand. But the majority of us, and on average just people in general, when they are giving time, giving money, giving advice, when we're helping other people out, we feel better physically, we feel better mentally, we feel more powerful, even physically stronger. And there's a, a limit. Of course there's a limit to how much giving we can do. The amount of volunteering over which people don't get all of the health benefits and things like that. Oh God, now that I started saying it, I have to go double check it. I think that it's 40 hours a year. So if you're volunteering basically more than around an hour a week of volunteer time, if you have a regular job, then maybe you're starting to hurt yourself. We know a lot about caregiver burnout, so there are limits to all of this. But people are happier spending money on other people than on themselves. In general studies, groups of people like HIV patients have found that those who provided support to other HIV patients actually had their viral load decrease even more than the people who are receiving social support. So it's not a bad thing. For us to be helpers and for us to be giving other people opportunities to be helpers too. We just need to take care of our boundaries and respect that they take care of theirs as well.

You will let me know if I'm asking you too many questions, right? Because I don't want to overstep the boundaries of your generosity here. Discuss the problem of the overuse of first person pronouns.

Oh, you really did prepare so deeply. Like you're. You haven't read the book, you don't know. But guys asking questions from chapters all over the book. And most people who invite you to their podcast, you can tell that they've only read the first three chapters because they don't ask you about anything beyond that. So first person pronouns like I, me, mine are more commonly used by people who feel disempowered. And in a whole bunch of research, many, many studies, doing textual analyses of speeches, emails, conversations, all kinds of talking that we do, people in more powerful roles or who feel more powerful use fewer of those first person pronouns. They might say we, they might say us, they might say you. We don't see the differences on that. But they're not talking about themselves as much because their attention isn't directed as much to themselves. When we are in a lower position in a status hierarchy or when we're in an economically tough situation, when we're broke, when we're sick, when we're sad, when we're depressed, we can't help focusing on our own feelings. And then also we really care what the other person thinks about us when we're talking to them. So we have this boomerang diminisher thing that we do where we'll use first person pronouns in phrases like I just thought, I was kind of wondering, I hope you don't mind, but. And we're trying to show that we're not a threat and hoping that that will make the other person like us, but it only does the first clearly, you're not a threat if you're acting like that, but it doesn't make the other person like you.

Of course, the exception to this is probably Martin Luther King, but.

Say more about I have a dream or yeah, exactly right.

This is the day after Martin Luther King Day, so.

And it's not that you should never talk about yourself and never talk about your dreams, and it's not that you should never use first person pronouns, but it's interesting to notice in other people's conversations. And if you want to see how much you're doing this, check your own emails so that you don't have to be having this complicated self regulation going on in a conversation that would make you not able to be present in the conversation. But you can do it in emails. And if you want to change this habit of the diminishers, a really easy thing to do to shift is just ask the other person a question. Like instead of saying oh, I just thought, I was kind of wondering, you can just say like hey, what would you think about X?

And let's say that you had a magic email client or word processor and it just banned the word I. You could not type I capitalized. Do you think that, I mean seriously, this could change how people perceive you? Just that?

Yes. I think they would perceive you as being super weird and you would alienate them. They would be trying to have a normal conversation and you would sound like an AI or something like that. Yeah. So don't be weird and extreme. Of course. But if there was a program that say before you sent out an email was like, hey, looks like you use the word I six times in a four sentence email. Are you sure you want to do that? I think you would be annoyed for a little while, but then you would get in the habit and it would just be a short period of time until you could shift and potentially that could shift your mindset. But I don't know, we would have to test it.

Maybe people from Grammarly are listening and they'll add that in the Grammarly Pro edition. I kind of followed. But I can't say that I'm certain what you're saying about Elizabeth Holmes lowering her voice. What was the point of that?

Why was she doing that? She was doing that, I believe, believe because she had heard, like a lot of us, that lower voices are perceived to be more influential and people tend to be more inclined to follow a leader with a lower voice. And how people have interpreted that is to talk like this. Right. And then she got slammed for sounding inauthentic because she sounded like she was trying to sound like an old man with a six pack a day habit. But what's really going on in the situations where people are preferring lower voices is that we can hear people's resonant voice when they're relaxed and it's in contrast to the tight, screechy voice when we're uncomfortable and it's just very, very hard to listen to. So this is good news for women and anyone else who doesn't have a naturally lower booming voice. You definitely don't need to try to do that. But if you can practice speaking in your natural low register, it's much easier and more enjoyable for people to listen to. Guy, can I ask you a question?

Yes.

This. This is, like, on a different topic, but going deep, and it's in my head from our earlier part of our conversation. Do you have advice for people who are influential and they have learned the kinds of skills that you have? Maybe it's not at your level, but they know how to entice people, charm them. They're enthusiastic, they're charismatic, and they find themselves in a situation where they have to be evangelizing some product or service that they don't actually believe in. Do they have to leave their job?

Well, we have to take some things off the plate. So if you are a single parent and you need the job, you need the money, put food and clothes, that's one situation. But if it's not that, let's say it's not dire financial, I have to be employed. I would say that it is virtually impossible to evangelize something you don't believe in, because evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning bringing the good news. So by definition, if you're bringing the good news, it's something you believe in. So you. You can't bring the good news of something you don't believe in. And so it's kind of a sexy moron.

I feel like you're just being tricky to get out of this. Like, why getting to technical Greek. Like, technically, it's not evangelized. Maybe it's because of a personal experience that I had, which is also not in the book, but when I was working at Mattel and I was a brand manager for the spongebob brand, and I got an award for best presentation during Toy Fair at the company, and the prize was you got to get a day off, and it's great. And all these people are telling me. I'd given this. This pitch 40 times over the course of the week to CEOs of Toys R Us and Walmart, Kmart and stuff. All these people are telling me your enthusiasm for spongebob really came across. I believe I was evangelizing spongebob, but the truth was that I hated spongebob. I just had a lot of acting training and to go, like Greek on you as well. Enthusiasm comes from enthusiasm, which is also Greek, and it means to be possessed by the gods, and it's the opposite of demonic possession. It used to mean something good and literal for the Greeks, like the Oracle of Delphi, but then it shifted over time to become a religious Charlatan in the 1800s was called Enthusiastic because they're just spouting bullcrap and pretending that it's divine. And I think that's what I was doing as a spongebob manager. I was just spouting bull crap, but trying to come across as somebody being real and authentic and an evangelist who maybe just didn't have faith.

Someone once told me, once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. So wrap your mind around that. We gotta find the Greek word, root word for sinceros or whatever it means the opposite of what we think it now means. Well, I didn't mean to evade your question, but in my pure world, you know, there are things I could not evangelize. If Microsoft called me up and said, evangelize, Ms. Dos, I could not do it because I don't believe in it. However, I will tell you that there are lots of people who believe in, you know, you need to find your passion. Once you find your passion, the money will come, life is good, all that kind of stuff. I have a slightly different theory. So I believe that scenario is possible. Don't get me wrong. And I use this hypothetical example. So let's say you're a programmer, great programmer. You get hired by MyPets.com and you sell pet food. This company sells pet food. Dog. Cat pet food. You don't even have a dog or a cat. You don't really care about dogs or cats. You're just an engineer. You're really good at Python or something, and you get this great job. You're employee number six@mypets.com Five years later, your 2% of the company is not worth $200 million. I would make the case at that point, you probably will love dogs and cats. Next question. And I'm going to read to you from your book. And I just love this paragraph. I hope everybody, whoever aspired to be, quote, unquote, charismatic reads this, the most important paragraph you could ever read. If you want to be charismatic. You ready? I'm quoting from the Gospel according to Zoe. Zoe 1.1. Charisma isn't something you are, it is something you do, which places it within your control. You can become more charismatic by adjusting the way you interact with people. And I would say that's contrary to most thinking that Steve Jobs was born charismatic. You have to be born charismatic. So let's talk about charisma for a second here. How do you become more charismatic?

Great. And you, I'm sure, know a lot about Steve Jobs Journey, I really don't at all. But some people are born charismatic. It's just that a lot of people we think of as being charismatic weren't at all. And I read in the book about Prince is one of them. I love Prince's music. He was a hero to me, icon. And I was so, so, so, so, so excited when I finally got to see him in concert, in person. I was an adult. And we're waiting there in his tiny little Las Vegas lounge for him to come on stage. For two hours we're waiting, and the tension is building. And he comes on stage and he looks directly into my eyes and says something like, are we alone? And I turn to the person who was with me is a behavioral scientist named Eldar Shafir. I turned to Eldar Shafir, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna faint. And then the woman next to me on the other side, someone I don't even know, she just drops to the floor unconscious in a dead faint. And the paramedics who take her away, I asked, has this ever happened before? And they said, it's not unusual. Prince was so freaking charismatic that he could make people lose consciousness. However, he started out, not just not being that charismatic, but being almost anti charismatic. He was so shy and so quiet that when Warner Brothers had hired him and he produced an album and he had a number one hit, they wouldn't let him go on tour because when they saw him in concert, he just turned slowly with his back to the wall, and he just played his music, music to the wall because he was too shy to even talk to people. So I share some very specific tips in the book. But the one most important thing for becoming charismatic is that you put your focus on one other person at a time. So it's back to the attentional focus thing like we started talking about with pronouns. In order to have people pay attention to you, the secret is to pay attention to them. And in a group of people, the secret is to do this one by one. The rest of the people in the group will feel a vicarious connection to you when you make a real connection with one of those people.

That leads us to the question of how are you supposed to do this in a zoom world?

One super tactical thing that we can do is that feels really weird, has to do with the camera and making eye contact with the camera. And when I'm teaching, what I'll try to do is when I'm talking to people, I focus on the camera because they're listening to me, and so they're looking at my face. And if I'm looking at the camera, it looks like I'm making eye contact with them. But when I'm listening to someone, then it doesn't matter. I can look at their face. I don't need to be looking at the camera. So that's one tiny little thing. And then another thing we can do that's very helpful for people leading meetings online is to use people's names a lot because that just immediately brings them back to the room. And actually, while we're on the topic of zoom meetings, this has nothing to do with charisma, but super helpful for attention in zoom meetings is to just invite people to be using the chat all the time, anytime that they want, so they can channel their multitasking into the meeting instead of channeling their multitasking into email and all this other stuff.

I don't know what your setup is, but you're a professional. I'm using an imac here, and I have a DSLR behind a teleprompter that's reflecting a second screen. So I think I am looking right into your eyes, but your eyes are on a teleprompter in front of the camera.

That's amazing. I want to talk to you, and it definitely looks like you're looking into my eyes. Absolutely.

So this is my setup here. I'll send you this picture. This teleprompter is, I don't know, 150 bucks. And this little monitor is another 150. So 250 bucks. You could learn how to fake sincerity and zoom meeting. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't think. You said the name of it is called Shining, right?

Yeah.

This is what Prince did. Right now, I want to discuss what I do, and you tell me if it's so freaking smart you never thought of it before, etc. Etc. Or, God, you're like, you get an A minus. Yeah, I want to get A minus or A plus. So I have a theory. I have seen many, many people speak, and I would say the extreme is probably Sheryl Sandberg. So when Sheryl Sandberg comes to speak for you, I swear she has a entourage of 10 people. Her personal assistant has a personal assistant. Her PR person has a PR person. Her security guard has a security guard. There's 10 people. And let's just say that there are rider contracts not for Sheryl Sandberg, but there are rider contracts for people like, you know, if Beyonce walks In the room, you cannot make eye contact. Nobody can make eye contact backstage and all this kind of stuff. I don't know if it's Beyonce, but something like that.

You're trashing Beyonce and you don't even know. Yeah.

And there's also a theory of speaking that, you know, you need to focus, get back into the speaker ready room and just focus, don't interact, blah, blah, blah. And then there's Guy's theory. So Guy's theory is before speech, this was in real life when we still had those things. Before I speak, I would go into the audience and I would meet as many people as I could. And if they wanted selfies during the break before my speech, I would take selfies, I would autograph, I would do anything. I'd do that. And then this is guy's shining 2.0. Because I had a theory that one thing that determines the success of a speech is how you are at that moment. And so then I thought, well, what makes you confident is when you look out and you see people in the audience who are smiling and laughing and making eye contact. So now how can you increase the probability of that? If you would go out and meet them and take selfies and autograph their books, they are so happy when you start speaking that it just beams energy into your Persona. So that's my theory of Shining Pro, that you go out and you make those contacts so that when you're on stage, this a.

It's a. Yeah, it's fully, fully next level. And for a lot of speakers who aren't as comfortable as you are on stage, other people who feel like they need to go to the back of the room and go to the green room and be preparing or whatever, that's totally fine too. You don't need to do the socializing beforehand. And then there are also people like me who will show up to big events where most people have no idea who I am, and they. They see me and they're like, oh, who is that weirdo person saying hi to me? So if you're not recognizable, it's just more effortful to be doing the schmoozing before your talk. For me, it's super easy and fun to do that afterward. Or in a room or a situation where it's a group that's invited me and they were there to hear me, then it's very easy to socialize with them and super fun and 100%. But I had some experiences where I'm trying to meet people. But it's this series of awkward pieces of small talk where they have no idea who I am. And it's not selfies. It's totally not the selfies. So it doesn't have that liftoff feeling. But after this book launch, and then everybody's gonna know who I am, and then I'm gonna pull the guy maneuver of shining 2.0, and all y' all will be doing selfies with me and we'll be kicking it back, drinking champagne before the talk instead of just after.

Remember me when you're rich and famous. So when Bob Cialdini is calling you up for advice, you let me know.

And, oh, now he's going to not call me for advice. He's going to be like, zoe, what are you doing? You're bringing me down. You're throwing shade on my stuff.

I could make the case that you know his concept of persuasion. You mentioned his book. So this is pre shining. This is to ensure shining happens. Yeah, you heard it here first.

Can I share that with people? When I'm offering advice, I will absolutely credit you. And you don't need to credit me. No, it's more compelling if I credit you. Right. I'm not just being generous, I'm being selfish. Then people would be like, oh, that's what guy does. It must be a great idea.

How does one. When you're on the opposite side of your book and Bob Chaldeans book and Katie Milkman's book and Angela Duckworth's book and David Aker's book, when you're the opposite side, how does one detect and resist influence and persuasion and negatively? Manipulation.

Super important, right? And increasingly, as you study influence and you're becoming more influential, you see all of these strategies in the world and you're realizing how much people are trying to influence you and get you to do stuff. I write about nine different red flags that you can look for. But the most important one is the hardest one to perceive because it's being in the ether. And it's. You don't know that you are not thinking rationally. You don't know that you're back in the gator space and you're not able to be making good, smart, objective, rational decisions. And people who have malevolent or manipulative wishes will do whatever they can to get you into that state. And any emotion at all could put you in that state. So fear, anger, excitement, greed, lust, spiritual rapture, any highly emotional state can put you into the ethereum. And when somebody's trying to persuade you to do something, an urgency usually goes along with it. Scarcity that we talked about. The simplest, best thing that you can do is just step back and take time with the silly netjets thing. I don't think that they're evil using scarcity, but saying, oh, we only have a certain number of memberships or whatever. Well, like just step back and chill and be willing to miss a few opportunities in your life that actually do vanish in order to have the benefit of all of the bad opportunities in your life that you don't actually go for. And another just really simple red flag to look for is people who don't take your no for an answer when you're firm and direct about your no. If you are wishy washy about saying no, then you don't know if they just didn't understand. So you may have to go beyond being nice and just be very direct and just no thank you, I'm not interested, that's not rude, but it's very direct. And then if they're still but, but, but, but you at least know that they're trying to get something from you and they don't care how you feel about it. So being direct when you say no will help you identify those people who don't, say, have your best interests at heart.

But there's dozens of experts and authors who are saying don't take no for an answer, Persist, keep going at it. So how do you separate the people who are won't take no for an.

Answer for you personally as the influencer, what I suggest is ask permission to follow up. That's how you not take no for an answer in an influential, polite, good relationship sort of way and say okay, I get that this isn't not a good idea for you right now, is it? Okay, could I follow up with you next month, next year, whatever. And then you get to decide yes or no. And if you say no, then I should never follow up with you because you've been very clear to me and if you say yes, then you've given me permission and then when I do follow up, then I get to say so you said it was okay if, you know, I checked in with you and here now we are, and then you will be more inclined to say yes to me, pay attention to me and all of those things. So they're not wrong about following up. But don't take no for an answer. If you just stop there could just easily go to the realm of aggression and just pissing people off. So it's not just me saying morally, it's Not a good idea. It's just not an effective thing to do.

There's a spin off corollary from that, which is if you are really a definite and more or less permanent no, don't try to be more acceptable by saying, right now I'm busy. Not at this time. If it's a hard cold no. If you say that because you're inviting them to follow up and then you're compounding the problem.

Yeah. If you make an excuse, if you give an objection, then you're giving them a way back in at a later state. So, yes, I definitely recommend that if you are not interested, you let them know you're not interested. There will be all kinds of situations where, like, say somebody will ask me for advice, like they ask you for advice, but I'm not as nice as you are. And so I will say no. But I don't just say no, I'm busy right now because I know I'm going to be busy from now until forever. And I'll say something like, I wish this was the kind of thing that I had time for. Or like a stranger asks for a coffee chat or something like that, which a lot of people do say yes to. I really don't do that. That's just not part of my thing. And I get asked so much because I teach asking, I just get asked all the time for stuff. And so, yeah, I'll say I wish. This is the kind of thing I wish I was able to say yes to. I wish I had time. But in that kind of framing, then people get, it's not that she's busy right now, it's that this is in a whole category of things that she says no to.

But what if somebody says she's full of shit? She doesn't wish she has time for this. She's just trying to not say no.

Yes, yes. No, I would not say that unless it's true.

Oh, oh, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, thank you. Yeah. No, if it's something I'm not interested in, I would just say thank you. Or maybe not thanking them or that's not really my thing, but good luck.

It's funny because in LinkedIn when you get a LinkedIn person to person message, there's these default answers and one of them is something like no, comma, I'm not interested. And I hesitate to click on that because I think, man, that seems like awfully succinct and cold and brutal, but it may be the right way. Did you tell them to do it that way? Because it sure looks like it.

So I would probably never use that button on LinkedIn. And I'm really curious. Maybe one of the LinkedIn people is listening and can tell you or me, please tell me how many people actually use the button that says, no, I'm not interested. Part of what you're perceiving in that guy is that when we're writing messages to each other, we're very easily perceived to be harsh, far more than meant, and warmth is very hard to convey. So we have to be really specifically intentional about conveying warmth in written messaging, even more than verbally. Because when you know, somebody asks you something and you could be like, yeah, no, I'm not interested. And that doesn't sound evil, right? Just like, okay, they're not interested. But when you write, no, I'm not interested on LinkedIn, you sound like just a sadist.

This has been a very interesting conversation. There's so many layers of the onion here. However, my experience is that even a no yields a positive response, as you mentioned earlier, because many times it's a hard and fast no. And the response I get is, I never expected you to answer. So thank you very much, even for answering. So I. It's kind of like a win, win there.

Wait a sec. Let me ask you about this because I. And I'm having so much fun in this conversation and I'm learning a lot. So thank you that I have the experience where people will often ask me for something and to do something, some advice, whatever, and I say no, and then they follow up with another request because I responded to them. And I feel like maybe I should just have not responded in the first place. So I have somebody who, two days ago, this is a former student and Waleed, if you're listening, I'm really sorry. So he. He sent me an email with a picture of a wallet with my face on it, and it says, dream big, always. And he's offering to mail me this wallet and also asking me for advice for his new business. And I feel like I'm super busy right now, so I'm not able, even if I wanted to, to do the consultative advice. But also in the line where he says, dear Professor Chance, Chance is in a different font. And then there's the rest of the glowing letter about what a big difference I made in his life. But so obviously he sent this to all these other people, and I'm just one of the many people, and he's putting each of our faces on whatever wallet or something. So I thought I should not respond Even to tease him about the text and be like, I got your number. Because then we'll just be in a conversation of him still trying to ask for time that I don't feel like giving.

This may be a good segue to my second to the last question, but I think as a woman, there would be a very different response to that. I think that is over the edge. I would just ignore that. I would throw that away. In fact, I would not only throw it away, I would mark it as spam so that anytime he follows up, it's gone automatically because it is my former student.

So, like, oh, you know this. Yes.

Oh. Oh, that changes things.

Yes. Yeah. It's not random stranger hitting on me or something like creepy like that. So it's just a socially awkward former student, and I just don't have time to give business advice for his thing.

You need to get a virtual assistant who will be your heavy.

Okay, you know what? I have a virtual assistant, but she's not saying no to me. Karis. We're going to have this conversation, and having a virtual assistant for all of you listening will help you be far.

More influential, and it'll help you be more charismatic. Because now people are going to get actual formal nos, and they're going to be so tickled pink to get a response at all. They're going to think that even though she's so busy, at least she responded, so it's a net gain. But if people listening can't afford a virtual assistant, there's the poor man's virtual assistant. So there are these things called text expansion programs. Do you know what these are?

No.

Well, on the Macintosh, Macintosh is built into the keyboard system, so you really don't have to buy anything. But there's ones that do it better. I use one called text Expander. And so what you do is you write a trigger. And so this trigger has to be something that would not occur normally in correspondence.

Oh, I have these. I've programmed a bunch of them. Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

So you type F no. The F can stand for anything you want, but F no, and F no expands to. Thank you very much for reaching out to me. I'm really flattered of your interest. But at this time, I'm just unable to do this because of constraints on my. Whatever. And so they think they got this really personalized, warm, sincere rejection. All you did was type three letters F no.

All right. Nobody could improve on an ethno. That text expands to something beautiful. And about affording a virtual assistant. I didn't mean to be glib about that, but a lot more people can afford a virtual assistant than think that they can afford a virtual assistant. And I started with a virtual assistant. Three hours a week, $25 an hour, and she could do at least 10 hours of work for me in three hours for her.

Yeah, yeah.

Because she's so, so, so, so good at it. So I'm not saying that everybody can get a virtual assistant, but if you have a professional job already, you can.

I just need your best tips for women as they are negotiating, influencing, and persuading.

Women have a little bit more challenge in this domain than men because we get backlash that men don't get more easily when we are not warm. But men listen to this too, because the simple advice about expressing warmth and also asking ambitiously for what you want, need, desire, wish for, would like to do. Warmth and ambition go together really well for women and men. It's just that men don't get dinged as hard as women do if they don't do the warmth part. But warp helps with everybody. We all know about gender pay gaps and things like that. The ambitious asking part is also super important. When women ask for as much as men do, they get paid as much as men do. It's just that for a variety of reasons, we don't ask for as much as men do and we don't ask as often as men do for things like raises and promotions. We don't ask for as much money as men do when we take jobs. And this isn't the whole reason for the gender pay gap, but this is a contributor to the gender pay gap. And there are multiple studies that I write about in my book showing that it's not that people hint for asking for more and often they're happy to say yes. It's just that because of sexism, we need to be warm when we do it.

Wait, so that's your tip. Ask for more more often and.

And be warm. But like, you're not going to go to your boss 89 times and ask for more raises. But another mistake that women make is when we're looking for benchmarks because you want to go in with evidence to say, here's what I would like to have earn make you want to give some reasons to say, and here's what other people are making. Here's what I could get in this other situation. So you want evidence. And it's very important to not just ask women for that evidence because of the pay gap that we talked about. So it's really important to ask men as well as women. It can be hard to ask people or sometimes rude to ask people, hey, what are they paying you? Can be super awkward, but people are very forthcoming when they're at a higher position in the organization to say, hey, what are people in the roles below you earning? Or back when you were in that role, what was the salary range for that kind of thing? And they're much more willing to tell you numbers.

Why don't women just figure out what they want and add 25%?

Well, for a lot of women, it should be far more than 25%.

Oh, even better.

It really depends for the specific person. But I would say unscientifically, start by asking your girlfriends for advice, and your girlfriends will have a better idea than you do. What? You might be worse in this situation that you're in. And definitely ask your guy friends as well. And when I say girlfriends, I mean, like, girlfriends outside of work. Women and men have different social networks where men tend to socialize at work and women tend to socialize outside of work. So those women outside of work will just be saying, you've got this. You're worth more than that. And they will pump you up and help you out, make a bigger ask.

Okay, my very last question. Let's say Joe Biden calls you up and says, zoe, leave academia, join politics. I'm going to name you to the secretary of influence.

You're on, Joe. Done.

Okay. And what would you do for vaccination, for voter rights, whatever? How would you advise Joe Biden to be more persuasive, more successful, more whatever?

So I feel like I'm going to fall into a hole in this conversation wherever it goes. But also, what you're asking me, essentially, guy, is, Zoe, how would you solve the intractable problems in our country that everyone's been trying to solve for the past three years or more, and for many of these that billions of dollars in foreign superpowers are working against? So. Exactly.

That's what I said.

That's all right. That's all, really, I guess that one of the things that I would start with just very simply would be regulation of social media. And it's been way, way, way, way, way too long that we've let it go on as the Wild west and imagining that companies like Facebook are going to regulate themselves. And that's just obviously insane. And this is where much of the misinformation and disinformation campaigns are going on that are powerfully, powerfully swaying people's minds and the Media conglomeration that's happening is also really doing a disservice to democracy. So I would invest in public broadcasting as well. And I would definitely, if I just got to have a magic wand that I could sweep and anything would happen. One of the big policies that I would change for long run, real massive societal influence would be to sweep away the laws that have property taxes be what funds education, because we are just reinforcing the inequities that we have. And I would invest broadly in public education. I hope that Jill Biden could somehow find a way to do that. And when we have better educated people and more equitably educated people, they'll also be better equipped to make these decisions. Right.

But just so I can be sure I'm reading properly between the tea leaves here. So you're saying that because education is dependent on property taxes and property taxes are lower where people are less educated, it becomes a downward spiral.

Yes, yes. And vice versa for the upward spiral in the wealthy areas. Yeah. It's insane. And I don't know of other countries that do this. It's totally crazy.

Another insane and totally crazy thing is look at the amount of money we spend, even adjusted for population, on the military. Let's just have one less aircraft carrier and double the Department of Education budget. I mean I, I don't understand that at all.

It's a lot. And I don't understand at all the nuances of where that money goes. I know that having the most powerful military in the world does a whole lot for the security of the United States.

Are you being sarcastic or serious?

No, no, I'm serious about that part. It is like it props. The military that we have helps prop up our economy and it also does a lot of things around the world that are terrible. So I have a lot of vets in my class who come through. I teach a lot of military guys and my dad was in the military as well. These people are some of the greatest students. I don't know. So the military does a phenomenal job of educating leadership. And lots of professors will talk about. We love having vets in our class because they do the reading, they pay attention, they listen, they ask follow up questions and they listen to their fellow.