The World's Greatest Conversation on Behavior, Influence, and Negotiation: A One-of-Kind Interview by Joe Polish with B.J. Fogg PhD, Dr. Robert Cialdini, and Chris Voss - I Love Marketing Episode #464

You're not going to change human nature, which is about self interest. You've got to show them how being ethical is in their self interest. You have to be able to show people in a way that they can easily access and process and internalize the losses that are associated with unethical conduct. There are certain universal principles of influence, let's say authority, having authority on your side. If you counterfeit the authority, if you lie with the evidence or you exaggerate what somebody said and so on, that's going to come, come back and bite you. But if you point to it, if you have authority and what you've done is to uncover it and point to the genuine credibility associated with your position, your offering your idea as manifest in the authority that you can marshal to show it. Not only have you been ethically acceptable, you have been ethically commendable, you have steered people correctly.

Chris is known as the master negotiator, a title earned throughout his time serving as, as the lead crisis negotiator for the New York City division of the FBI and then as the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI where he helped develop the skills still used today across FBI hostage negotiators. He proceeded to teach business negotiations at UCA Georgetown and Harvard Business School. In 2008, Chris founded the Black Swan Group which specializes in teaching you how to never leave money on the table by using hostage negotiation techniques. In May 2016, he published the national bestseller never split the negotiation as if your life depended on it. To teach people everywhere how to apply these life changing hostage negotiation techniques in their daily lives. He is proficient in negotiating with real terrorists, giving him plenty of context to help in the corporate world where companies seem to get legally taken hostage all the time. So let's talk about.

What would you like to have, how would you like to play this out today? Because we're about to bring on just the most amazing panel of individuals, you being one of them, to talk about behavior, influence and negotiation. And so that everyone here leaves a lot more, with a lot more confidence, capability, clarity and direction, which are words I got from our buddy Dan Sullivan that they could apply to their personal life and to their business life. So what would you like to say first? Before we start with, with all that?

Just touch on a couple things on the way. I would define empathy and what difference it makes and you know what to look for and I'm looking forward to hearing what these guys have to say. So.

We got, we got, we got a, we're working, working on a deal with Mark Wahlberg's production company. I haven't met Mark. I know Gino turned him down. Mark wanted to play golf with him, and Gino said, you're not important enough for me to play golf. I got to do. I haven't even got to that point yet. So we're talking to his production company about a possible TV show. And I was on the phone with him the other day and I said, the real problem here is great negotiation is not exciting. It's astonishing. It's not exciting. And a lot of tv, non scripted TV shows, Real Housewives are screaming at each other. In every TV show does really good people are screaming at each other. I said, that ain't gonna happen. And if you guys are bankrupt on that for this to be a good TV show, it'll never happen. So the difference between exciting and astonishing, if you use empathy properly, you're going to be astonished at what happens. Because until you know what is really going on, it doesn't feel great for you. You know, exciting is great. It's celebratory.

It's what keeps Vegas in business, which is, you know, where I happen to live. But I've always used Las Vegas as the analogy. It's exciting to win at the slots. Exciting. And one of the books I read recently said, you know, they got it down to a specific number. You win one in every 84 polls.

So think about the failure rate.

But when it's exciting, you continue to do behavior that really works against you. And, you know, the table pounding, negotiation, the threatening. I had them over barrel. There was nothing they could do. That's exciting. And you're a failure if you do that now. Astonishing. And always happens with people that come into my company because we, you know, we got. They got to relearn negotiation. They're like, I was shocked we made the deal. Like the person who was my adversary is now my best friend. And it's astonishing until you know, until you know what happens. So what difference does it make to make somebody feel heard? And we were talking about that a little bit last night after the film.

You know, if I make you feel heard, unless I know what's going on with you, it's not very satisfying to me. It's not exciting.

I really don't feel it unless I know what's happening with you. But then I'm astonished when we make the deal. When you feel heard.

You feel cared for.

Suddenly you're far more inclined to collaborate with me. I thought we were adversaries. And, you know, there's a switch that happens inside you, and suddenly you're making a deal with me or you're interacting with me, and I never made my case. You know, it feels good to make an argument.

And, you know, the attorneys want us to believe that negotiation is argumentation. You know, I'm making an argument here. Kind of my definition for argument now is somebody's expressing a deeply held belief. They believe in it so strongly, they want to argue about it. And arguing is very self indulgent. You know, it feels good to you. The other side hates it, but it feels so good to you that you don't even notice. Real empathy is the opposite. You know, you feel really good about being heard. You feel cared for. Downstairs, some of you guys have met Troy. Troy Smith is with me. And one of Troy's favorite phrases is, people don't care what you know till they know how much you care. And I actually stopped him from using that because empathy is not about me caring about you. And then I thought.

Does that mean.

We don't care about people?

I can't embrace that.

We do, but the more important thing is that you feel cared for. And then what happens? What happens? What good does that do in a negotiation or an argument, if you will, or. One of the guys that's working for me now, retired Vegas police, he's still doing security work. He's hunting fugitives. And in Vegas now, besides working for us. And he's catching people that are voluntarily giving themselves up to him because he's making them feel hurt and suddenly sitting down for coffee with them, and they're accepting a subpoena from him. And they're not angry at him. He's astonished that this is going on. So here's what happens to you when you feel hurt. It's the thing I love about the neuroscience. I'm a student. More students of neuroscience these days.

Than anything else. So colleague, friend, somebody I admire. Andrew Huberman, Huberman Labs Podcast.

One of his podcasts about love and relationships. You want solid neuroscience data, you're going to get it from Andrew. Oxytocin. That's what you feel. If you feel heard, you get a hit of oxytocin. What happens when you get a hit of oxytocin? You bond to me.

What also happens when you get ahead of oxytocin? You are more likely to tell the truth.

And then the follow on neurochemical you get is serotonin. When you feel heard, it's the neurochemical of satisfaction, which means you want less.

So if you And I sit down with completely opposing points of view without uttering one single word defending my position at all. If I make you feel heard, you're going to bond to me. You're going to be honest with me. You're going to want less. What more do you want from a negotiation? And that's the astonishing thing about empathy, because suddenly, I never made a counteroffer. I never gave you my elevator speech. I never told you my value proposition. If I can make you feel thoroughly heard, the deal will either come all the way to me, or it'll come so close to me that I can reach out and just make a tiny little move. And we've made the deal. And that's astonishing. But for the user, it's not exciting.

And that's what I'm really trying to help people understand. It's not exciting to be a great negotiator or to make people feel cared for. The results are astonishing.

That's good.

You ready to bring up the panel?

Bring it on. They got better stuff to say than I do anyway.

Okay, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to introduce everyone.

Wait right here.

Sorry. You see? What? Don't know where I put my stuff half the time. All right, now, this is a. I think a historic moment because this has never happened before. I don't know if it'll ever happen again unless I'm very persuasive and can influence and negotiate all of them to borrow their behavior for everyone. So let me introduce the three people that we're going to have a conversation with. We already got Chris Voss up here. You'll hear about him in a moment. Again. So how do you get what you want? Really? How do you get what you want in a love relationship, in a business relationship, in a social situation, in a financial deal, you have to negotiate. Other times, you have to adjust your behavior or read the behavior of others. To get what you want, you need to influence the behavior of other human beings. What's the best way to do this as a Genius Network member? The best way is by paying attention to what three of the most knowledgeable, experienced, and wisest thought leaders of today have to say in this unique conversation you're going to hear and participate in. Two of them are members, and one of them is a frequent guest at Genius Network meetings. You most likely know who they are. Let me just give you a few tidbits about their amazing careers and the success they've had, they've achieved in their specialty area. Let's do this. In alphabetical order, starting with BJ Fogg. BJ Is a behavioral scientist with deep experience in innovation and teaching. At Stanford University, he's directed a research Lab for over 20 years. His best selling book, Tiny Habits is a New York Times bestseller and has been widely read by many members of Genius Network. BJ represents the behavioral science portion of this illustrious panel. So come on up, B.J. thank you.

Yeah, wherever you want.

I'll sit over here like Carson. I'll move down the couch and you sit closer.

Awesome.

Thank you. So, Chris Voss. This guy first gained fame as the lead international kidnapping hostage negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, better known as the FBI. Chris has taught his negotiation at Harvard University and other schools where business is taught. His breakthrough book, Never Split the Difference, is another best seller and opened the doors for very lucrative coaching contracts for his growing business. Chris represents the negotiation portion of this panel. And your third Genius is a frequent guest at these meetings and also a very close friend of mine. We've known each other for 30 years, Dr. Robert Cialdini. And his books Pre Suasion and Influence have become the cornerstone of a worldwide movement on how you influence people. Robert is the CEO of Influence at Work, which is a global provider of corporate keynotes, consulting and training done by a team of his trainers. His clients are some of the world's best, biggest, and most successful companies who hang on to every word he has to say about influence. So give it up for Dr. Robert Cialdini.

Thank you, sir.

Awesome.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, those are your three special guests here as we leap into this discussion that can be a game changer for your business as well as your personal life. Those three words again are behavior, influence, negotiation. So want to welcome all of them. And these are literally the best in the world, the top influence guy in the world, the top behavioral professor in the world, and the top negotiation guy in the world. And what I say in the world is the impact that they've had. I mean, literally, between the three of them, millions of copies of books sold. Also just, I mean, you've got Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger that endorsed your book. One of your students is the co founder of Instagram, amongst many other things. And Chris, I mean, you've done everything under the sun, working with celebrities, working with all kinds of people at the super high level. And you know, this has never happened before. So you've got, when you're thinking industry Transformer, these are industry transformers. And the impact of your work is literally in the hundreds of billions of dollars range. I mean, literally, it is. And so give it up for all three of these. This is awesome.

All right, here I am with the top industry, Transformers in the world. Dr. Robert Cialdini, the top influence expert on the planet, BJ Fogg, top behavioral professor at Stanford, and Chris Voss, the top negotiation expert in the world. Get their books, Influence and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, and Never Split the Difference by Chris V. Boss, and share them with your team. Share them with anyone that needs to build better skills, capabilities, and character, because these books can and will be dominoes and change your life. So let me just start with this one. From your perspective, what is behavior, influence, persuasion, and negotiation? And how do they all work, how they all tie in together? And maybe start with you, Bob.

For me, it involves moving people in our direction without changing the merits of our case. But how we change the delivery of our case, how we change the presentation of our case, that's what influences. That's what negotiation is. That's what.

All of the things you suggested. And.

There'S an arena of persuasive power that surrounds your case. It's a neighborhood that your case lives in. If you can construct that neighborhood to be more conducive to the way people hear and process and employ your case, you win. You beach your competitors every time.

Awesome. That was good.

Okay.

Tough question. I think the way I would think about the relationship between those things and what we're doing here is we're all thinking about what's the outcome, or we're helping people achieve an outcome. And I think all of our methods and all of our work is what is the simplest way to achieve that outcome? I've been fascinated with that for a long time. I've given that principle a name. I call it the feather principle. What's the smallest thing with the biggest impact? Bob has a word for that. The small big. If you get into the more academic research, in some contexts, those are called channel factors. But I think that's what we all have in common with our work, is what's the smallest thing that will have the biggest impact and lead to the outcomes that we or the clients or our students are hoping to achieve?

Awesome.

All right, so try to say something better.

And make it small.

I could just tell it to you.

In an concise manner, please.

Now, the three are interrelated, and there's a fair amount of discussion right now about outcome and the environment and the pitch and the rest of that. But part of what came up with Gino yesterday Is letting go of the outcome. So again.

It was a contention of the point of the book when we were writing with tal rahs because Saul said, you know, we got to have something about goals. And my son Brandon and I said, no, no, there are no goals. Huberman again says you as a human being, you think of things in three ways. Duration, path, and outcome. Where do you want to go, how you want to get there, how long is it going to take? Which then gives you some tunnel vision. So we really went tall. Rod's a brilliant, brilliant business book writer. Understand what everybody's good at. Tal. I love tal. If he wrote a fiction, I wouldn't read it or my expectations would be low. But business is really high. So he says people have to have goals, otherwise they get lost. And so what we agreed to and conceded with him on that was okay, your goal is to exceed your goal. So you can careful fixing on a goal because it will give you tunnel vision. The more goal focused you are, the more tunnel vision you have. Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better.

Just how do you get something better? Be careful about being too goal focused. Because then the journey, which very much came up a lot with geno yesterday, then the journey is a journey of discovery. And it's a black swan. It's a small, it's a feather. Something happens along the way where you're not that you. You know it's there. It's not that you're hoping it's there. You know it's there. So you're going to keep your eyes open, keep your vision wide enough so as you're going on the journey, you end up someplace better than what you had in mind.

Do you think it's harder today to influence people? And if so, why?

We'll start with no. No.

Okay.

Human nature hasn't changed in 5,000 years.

It hasn't. We're wired exactly the same we were 5,000 years ago. Now a lot of the context has changed. And I was thinking about this a little bit last night. We're more aware of the echo chambers, but the echo chambers were always there. You know, I'm listening to a sports interview this morning. Sportswriters asking him stupid, provocative questions, trying to get him to say something so that he can write an attacking article. Sportswriters have been doing that for. Since the last century. I'm a last century guy. There are a few last century people, not that many, but they were doing that 40, 50 years ago. We're just a little More aware of it now. And the other thing that I worry about, like, Joe, you know, yesterday you're going like, I'm worried about the world today. You know, kids these days.

No, no, not kids. The people that are influencing these kids.

But wasn't that the same thing that the adults were saying when we were 21 years old?

Yeah.

Has that really changed? So, and then the last thing I'll say on that paraphrase, Bezos, he said somebody asked him a while back, you know how on Amazon, how you planning for change? His answer was, we don't. He's like, you don't?

No.

We plan for what isn't going to change. People are never not going to want the best price. They're always going to want the fast delivery. We build around that. That's never going to change. Human nature is never going to change.

I'm going to reinforce that by saying, that's exactly how I feel. We've evolved to these triggers for change, the things that cause people to want to move in our direction. That hasn't changed. What's changed is the platforms where we use to pull those triggers to get those people to move in our direction. We have now evolved a set of technologies that separate us. They make us remotely connected to one another. We work remotely, we shop remotely, we meet remotely, and so on. And what that has caused is a hunger for the connection. That's what special changed we. Now, if we can put a small change into the way that we deliver our message online.

That harks back to personalism and human connection, we increase conversions significantly. Here's a small, big BJ is exactly right. I'm very. I think it's very important to be able to give people takeaways.

What's a takeaway? What's the most effective takeaway? It's a small thing they can do to make a difference next week when they go back home. And there's a second level to that which we can talk about later, which is not just give them the takeaway. Show them why that takeaway worked in terms of human motivation and so on. But here's a takeaway. So there's a study done, 6,700 online commercial websites. And they looked at AB tests within those of 29 separate factors that have the capacity to increase conversions. Some were economic, like free shipping. Some were technological, like there's a search function within the site. You can search for what you need when you need it. Some were actually sales oriented. Was there a call to action line at the end of each offer and so on.

None of those rose to the top. The ones that rose to the top.

Were human principles of motivation and influence.

And I tried to capture what seven of those are. But here's one that's very difficult to employ online. The liking principle. How do you get people to move in your direction because they like you when they've never met you, You've never had an interaction with them, you've had no sociable exchange with with them.

And here it is, the small big.

That brings humanity back. On the landing page, there's a welcoming statement to the visitor.

Welcome to our site. We're so glad that you're here. We want to be able to help you in any way we can. Significantly increases conversions to whatever they're selling on that site. A welcoming statement, a small, the smallest thing. But it's big because it reinstates the human connection that people are hungry for now that we're being deprived of by these magnificent technologies. Those are, they are amazing technologies. But there's an old, there's a line from an old song in the 70s and.

What you lose.

The glow. And I think that's technology replaces, but what you gain, the glow erases. So this is what technology does. It takes away and it gives. What we have to do do is arrange ourselves for those things that give to us. Well, technology has pulled away a lot of personal connection. If we replace that with something like a welcoming statement.

On our website, on our landing page, we get significantly more conversions.

Awesome.

Nice.

So the way I think about most things is in terms of behavior specific behaviors. And there are 15 ways behaviors can change. I mapped it out in a framework I call the behavior grid. And I won't go into all 15. You can put it into three buckets.

Simpler, more practical approach I call behavior buckets. You have one time actions, you have lasting change, habits and routines and practices and then you have stopping behaviors. Most people in this room and most people I train outside of Stanford are not really concerned about the stopping. It's the one time actions and lasting change. So when I hear a question like that, I'm going to give two answers. One answer.

Is that it is easier now with technology to get people to do the one time actions than it was before. Whereas it harder to get them to make the lasting change. So I would split it up those ways and I can fish for reasons and examples, but I won't do that in this context. I'll just kind of leave it out there that you know, if you think of it in those two ways, you know Being able to get in front of somebody in the moment that they're.

They go to the website, there's a reason they go to the website, they're unusually motivated to go there or they're outraged by something, do a one time action. But when it comes to lasting change, a lot of that is about our identity and our communities we belong to. And those seem to be more persistent and less influenceable by technology. Yes, you can change that, but the one time actions, I think we can get that to happen more readily than ever before.

Gotcha. Okay, great. So this one's an interesting one. I thought about, of how to ask you guys with all the propaganda in the media and in social media today and I know that propaganda has been around for a long time. It just seems to be propaganda at scale. And there's a lot of fear porn that I like to call it that is just pumped out to the world right now. Fear, fear, fear. How does someone have good discernment when trying to make decisions?

It's about uncertainty. You want to reduce uncertainty. And there are two things that allow people.

To get off the fence and get off the sidelines and into the game with you that reduces their uncertainty. One is authority. Testimonials that you can show are congruent with what it is you're recommending, what you're doing, features, products, offer have to do. If you can get authorities, you can recruit those messages and get those people and put them on your, in your messaging first. Don't put them in the middle, don't put them at the end. You never see.

Websites with the testimonials first. In fact, sometimes you have to go to a, a page where you can get the testimonials. I would like you to put authority credibility that is honestly afforded to you before every word so that that aura of authority transfers to the first sentence, to everything you say. Right? That's the first thing. There's also another thing. Thing is don't allow yourself to be satisfied with one authority endorsement or testimonial advertisers will tell you use the best one, use your best one. Put the others someplace else in another page.

Right.

The research is wrong. The research shows that's wrong. Those additional testimonials that you can listen don't dilute the best one. They reinforce the best one.

Significantly greater conversions if you have multiple testimonials than if you have a single one. Okay, so that's one and here's the other one. What are my peers doing? That's another thing that allows me to reduce my uncertainty about what I should do in that situation. But there's a particular kind of peer, the comparable peer, the people who are just like you. That way you can say, oh, they've beta tested this for me. I don't need to sit on the fence anymore. I can reduce my uncertainty and move forward because I see that a lot of other people like me can do it. And here's what the newest research shows. Suppose you have a relatively new addition or feature or product and you can't point to a lot of people already having chosen it because you've only got, it's relatively new. You've only got, let's say 30% of your customer base have adopted it. Don't say 30% have adopted it because it means 70% have not. You've sent them the message that says the majority of, of people aren't choosing in this. But if you show them the trend to 30%.

They project that into the future. So if you've got 30%, tell them that 10 months ago it was 15%.

Four months ago it was 25%. Now it's 30%. And that, and that 30% that was a deficit now becomes a plus for you because people project trends into the future.

I'll break it down into behavior again, which isn't quite the question, but share where I can share. So many of you know, in the fog behavior model, it's three things for behavior to happen. Prompt, ability, and motivation. And when you're designing for behavior, you want somebody to do a behavior. It's not so much propaganda getting through it, but it is how, how do we get somebody to take action? And they may have, they may not be taking the action that you want. Number one, you prompt the behavior, make sure there's something that's do this behavior now. And there are certain people that will do that as soon as they're prompted. In behavior design, we call those dolphins. They have sufficient motivation, sufficient ability. Once you get the dolphins doing it, then you look at the people that are lacking ability, not motivation yet ability. So that's kind of the shift here. And we call those turtles. They're below the action line on the behavior model. They have sufficient motivation, but it's too hard to do or they think it's too hard to do okay, especially for one time action, if they perceive. So you say, well, what's making it hard for them? And it's one of five things that's in the ability chain model that I share. And you make it easier so they, you don't have to increase their motivation. You just have to make it easier or seem easier to do. Then once you've done prompt and ability, then you look at the motivation. That's the trickiest piece. You save that for the end. For a variety of reasons. There are people that are not taking the action or making the decision.

Because the motivation isn't high enough. The right way, I believe, to think about motivation is like vectors in physics. And if you lay it out into my behavior model, you have motivation that's pushing them up and demotivators that are pushing them down. And if the demotivators are very strong, even though they have some motivation, they're going to be below the action line. And the demotivators are often things like pain or fear or I'll look bad to my friends. You know, there's. And so what you do, rather than trying to push up the motivation, you try to figure out what's demotivating this behavior and addressing that, and you get rid of the demotivator and then the motivation can emerge and it'll be above the action line. I think the best. And this is not this analogy is not in the book, at least I don't think so. Is think of a hot air balloon that's just sitting in place. It's got.

Buoyancy upward, but it also has ballast that's holding it down. So you could pump more air and push it up. But the best thing to first do is cut the ballast, get rid of the demotivator, and let the buoyancy that's already there, the motivators that are there, push them above the action line. And this probably goes to both.

Bob and Chris's approach. It's like, what is the demotivator? And understanding that and addressing that. So that's how I would think about it systematically. The behavior design approach.

That's great.

Thank you. All right.

So what I'm working on, myself personally and the people on my team, and then the people we're trying to coach, separate your amygdala from your gut.

So your amygdala is going to overreact. And I'm simplifying this too for you, those that know more about neuroscience and brain architecture. I realize that I'm a caveman in my description. I have to point that out to me. I'm a layman. I'm not a PhD, so I don't have to have the fully complex description. So your amygdala is going to get triggered with fear or hope.

Whereas you. And so means most of the time, it's going to be wrong. However, your gut is a remarkable machine, and your gut doesn't need that much instinct. Now the difference is separating them out. And sometimes I ask myself, what's my. My gut telling me? Because my amygdala, which is either fear or hope. And I know.

It'S mostly fear for me, but I see some people like, I hope this would work out. I ain't got a chance in hell and working out. But you're reacting to however you're wired in your emotional architecture, your gut again, the biology belief. I think Thomas Lippman might have been the article cell biologist. He made this comparison, and he said your conscious mind processes roughly 40 bits of information per second. Whatever. A bit is your subconscious mind. 20 million per second, 500,000 to 1 ratio, if you're willing to accept those definitions.

That's why your gut is so ridiculously accurate and powerful. And everybody's struggle is to figure out which one is influencing your decision. Is it your fear center, hope center, or is it your actual experience in the absence of actual experience, which is what most goes on on media, you know, because they're trying to hit our amygdala on issues we haven't got experience with? How do you feed your gut to make the difference? Well, as Bob said says, look for another source. Try to pull in information outside of your echo chamber. Just get some comparative data to start to line it up. And then just really for me personally, sometimes I will ask myself, what's my gut telling me? Because I will overreact on a decision off the emotional centers in my brain with a supercomputer that I got is pretty accurate without that much help.

Okay, good.

You know, one thing that I want to point out with the three of you is that from my experience, and one of the things I've always resonated with you on, Bob, because the first time I did an interview with you was like literally.

Nearly three decades ago.

We were teenagers.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Was that in the community college?

I actually went down to ASU because Bob, you know, had his office there and. Do you still have an office there?

I do.

Okay, cool. And, yeah, I've been down there a long time, but, you know, regent professor of psychology at Arizona State, the most cited living social psychologist in the world. You know, all these things. And, you know, I young guy, just trying to learn about how to build a better business, be a better marketer. And the thing came up about ethics, you know, because there's a lot of people that use Marketing in bullshit ways. Right? There's a big difference between pursuing an opportunity versus being an opportunist. And they, you know, and I have a little riff that I use where I say, you know, hype used ethically is massive enthusiasm for what you're selling. Hype you unethically is misleading, lying, bullshitting, exaggerating. And even the word hype doesn't have a really positive connotation to it. Right. Or the word manipulation. You know, it just sounds like negative. Right. And you've had. You've really drilled down about using all of these influence techniques in an ethical manner, not taking advantage. You know, Chris, in the environment of hostage negotiation. It was fascinating to me when I first heard Chris. And we've done many interviews where you talk about what's in it for them. Like the title of my book, which all of you have read and endorsed, thank you very much.

The whole concept of what's in it for them. And of course you, bj, you're just one of the kindest, nicest humans ever. And you always talk about making sure that you don't manipulate people, you don't put people into a bad situation. So all of your work is. Is built around to use the definition of an entrepreneur. Taking resources from a lower level to a higher level of productivity. You can make a lot of money selling things to people that make their lives worse. Poisonous food, crappy things. I mean, all kinds of toxic stuff. The world you guys swim in is showing people how to be better. And you have made a very positive impact on that way. So I'd love to. To just get your opinion on what are the right and wrong ways to use influence, negotiation and behavior. Because there are a lot of people that are trying to learn how to be better salespeople, be more effective, get people to do what they want them to do, get the deal that they want. But a lot of it is coming from just all they care about is themselves, and it's not. So I'd love to have you speak to ethics and the use of these tools, because these tools are very, very powerful. Put into the hands of wrong people, though we can look around the world and there's a lot of people using influence and negotiation and behavior to, you know, be tyrants.

This is a. I'm honored to be on this panel with these two guys. But there are a couple of quotes from folks as smart as these guys from much long longer ago. Benjamin Franklin. Now I study persuasion. Here's what he said to advise people to be more persuasive speak not to argument, speak to self interest.

You're not going to change human nature, which is about self interest.

When you speak to ethics.

Right. You've got to show them how being ethical is in their self interest. Now I'm going to go back even a little further. Hesiod, great philosopher, ancient philosopher, said.

Seek not dishonest gains. Dishonest gains are losses.

Wow, that's a good one.

So you have to drill that in. I say that again. Seek not dishonest gains. Dishonest gains are losses. You have to be able to show people in a way that they can easily access and process and internalize the losses, associate the losses that are associated with unethical conduct. And now you've harnessed yourself to self interest. Right. That's the way to do it. Now, to be specific about it. Maybe we can talk about that later. What I always claim is that there are certain universal principles of influence and let's say authority. We're just talking about authority. Having authority on your side. And if you counterfeit the authority, if you, if you lie with the evidence or you exaggerate what somebody said and so on, okay, that's going to come back and bite you when.

But if you point to it, if you have authority and your. What you've done is to uncover it and point to the genuine credibility associated with your position, your offering your idea as manifest in the authority that you can marshal to show it, not only have you been ethically acceptable, you have been ethically commendable. You have steered people correctly.

So you take what's there in the situation and you bring it to the surface. That story I said about welcoming, isn't it true that you want to welcome the people who are interested in your. That you really feel welcoming toward them? Take that out of your.

Gut and put it on the page. And now who's lost under those? Who. Nobody loses under those circumstances.

That's great. That's great.

Great.

So let's go to you, Chris. How do you. I mean, you have, you've had to sit and negotiate with some people that would be considered scoundrels.

Yeah. And that was early on, trying to teach hostage negotiators how to never lie ever, and what the consequences are, no matter what. And I'm trying to think of the best analogy. I mean, to not have ethics, to lie, to deceive, even by deception by omission or deception by literal truth, which vast majority of corporate America completely accepts. Deception by omission. You know, we didn't actually lie. You know, we said was technically a lie. And how do I really make that come alive to people? And what I was thinking is, what we were talking is, what was it Marie Antoinette said? Let them eat cake. And was it Louis the 16th when the French Revolution. You are going to face the mob, and they are going to put you eventually on the guillotine. You are going to face the guillotine eventually. If you lie and deceive, you're going to get your head cut off. You could be the king, queen of France, and you could live in Versailles. And I don't know if you've ever been to Versailles.

And take the tour and they take you to the spot where the king and queen of France faced the mob with no protection and had nowhere to go. And they were out there and they were getting ready to be drug out to the guillotine. That's gonna happen to you eventually. On the way. You might have some wonderful moments.

Before then. You're the king of France. You know, you got all the food, you got all everything. You got all the decadence, you got all the celebratory, you got all the exciting stuff that you could possibly want. The world is at your feet. But eventually the mob's coming for you. If you don't exercise with ethics and, and then on the journey.

If you stick to ethics that are acceptable, that you never have to hide, and you never have to get caught with the literal truth again, there's going to be some astonishingly good things happen on the journey. You're going to be astonished at how much better your life is. So, you know, do you want to guarantee that the mob's coming for.

For you? Can I just add this to that?

That's really a good. That's such a good point. Let's go back to Versailles. Anybody toured Versailles? Go through the hall of mirrors.

You get to look at yourself there.

I can't tell you how many times when I speak about effective and ethical influence I have people, people come up and say thank you for the ethical component, because I don't want to have to look at myself in the mirror and see a worm.

If the mob doesn't come after you, you're going to come after yourself, too. You're going to have to see yourself as someone who can only succeed by cheating. That's self. I mean, that's damaging. So, man, stay awake.

I'll tell you, like a lot of the people that I know that are mired in addiction.

It'S because of how their external behavior is hit their front Stage is bullshit. They're doing stuff behind the scenes and they have to. And it eats at them. It's like a parasite. Because, you know, unless you're a full blown, you know, psychopath sociopath, incapable of any sort of, you know, empathy whatsoever, you know, every time you do a misdeed or you contract someone you take advantage of, I think it just. You give a little piece of that puzzle of your soul away. And you may make a lot of money and you may, like you said, all the decadence, you may have all the trappings. It's interesting that they call it trappings. Right? Trappings as well, because there's a lot.

Trapping is a good word. Trap.

Yes.

Yeah. There's a lot of people that are prisoners that live in golden bars of their own making because of how they behave. And there's people that have been colleagues of mine and that have been members, have been in this room before that I used to think were decent people. And then they hit it pretty well. And there's a point where you see how they treat people. Their methods of selling, their methods of negotiation, their methods of existence, extracting and. Yeah. So thank you for speaking.

Can I just say one more thing?

Of course not.

This is great.

So even if you are that psychopath, right? Even if you aren't bothered by what you have to see of yourself, even if there are people, you're just okay. How many people here have teams? How many people are involved? Multi person teams. Here's what our latest research shows. If you're unethical inside your organization toward your customers, your clients, your vendors, your partners and so on, there are people in your team who aren't comfortable with the dishonesty, right? And they leave.

And you know who's left? Cheaters. People who are happy with cheaters or satisfied with being a cheater. And here's what our research shows. They cheat you.

They run scams under the table with. They steal equipment, they sabotage equipment so that they don't have to work that day. I mean, you pull the viper under your coat.

It's such a. This is so good. And I'll tell you, I'm sure you guys have all heard it in your own versions many times from when I've had a lot of people that have come into Genius Network. And even when I was. Because I created ethical services for carpet and upholstery cleaners back in 1999, I did an undercover thing, which you can still watch the Damn video on YouTube. On ABC's 20 20, it was the investigative reporter Arnold D. And Barbara Walters was the host. She's become kind of a trip. But anyway.

I was dressed up. Remember that movie Boogie Nights with Mark Wahlberg? Right. Of all things. Right. So the makeup artist for Boogie Nights, actually, I had a ponytail, long hair in a ponytail, did all my makeup to try to turn me into an old man. And back then they had these undercover cameras, and they were. None of this stuff was wireless, like iPhones. They were like packs. And they had glasses I was wearing that had a camera. And then they had the camera and a lamp and a toaster and a plant. They had all this undercover stuff. And we were filming, you know, bait and switch carpet cleaners. And I said, I'll do a story on that, but I'm helping people that are in the carpet upholstery cleaning business to hire a professional. So I don't want to scare the shit out of everyone about hiring a professional carpet cleaner. I'll do the story for you if you're willing to. To put out information on how to hire professional carpet cleaners. So I literally got them to give out the name on their website for the largest certification organization for carpet cleaners at the time. And 20 million people watched this damn show. And they didn't tell me exactly when it was going to come out. But I had created my consumer guide to Carpet Cleaning, how to hire a Carpet Cleaner. And millions of people read my consumer awareness guide for Carpet Clean cleaners on how to hire professional carpet cleaner. And I started ethicalservices.com so even way back then, I was teaching this stuff to carpet cleaners because learning marketing. I was learning marketing from, frankly, a lot of con artists. There were like, great ideas, but they were just pushing the envelope. And I'm like, okay. And I had so many service businesses say thank you for showing me another way. I thought this was the only way that you could actually. You had to use low prices and you had to high pressure people. And I'll tell you, I didn't even piece this together until just thinking about it. A lot of that came from reading Influence with reciprocity and scarcity and all of the six principles, which are now seven right in your updated version of Influence. But so much of it I just learned, it's like I said it yesterday, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you're going to meet on the way down. If you leave scorched earth, you will run into these people again. They will remember. And every time you screw someone, every time you mislead someone, they keep track of it, even if it's on a very subtle level. So yeah, behave properly and you will be rewarded, I think in kind. So anything you want to add to any of this?

These are great answers.

There's a history. So I worked on persuasive technology is a term that I coined. I took the Cialdini principles and showed that computers could use them. And this was mid-90s. And I was like, hey everybody, this is great news and terrible news. Nobody cared about my research back then. They thought it was insane. I was like, no, this is coming and we have to be ready for this. And it was mostly ignored until about 2012 and 13. And my work had moved on from persuasive technology at that point.

So.

But we did conferences on ethics, wrote a chapter very inspired by Bob's work and how he approached it. Fast forward to today where I consider my work. I call it Behavior Design. It's not about technology and it's not about persuasion. It's about helping people change behavior, especially in the long term. And the one. This will be the end of my answer. The fog maxim number one is help people do what they already want to do. So it's not persuading them, it's helpful. Help people do what they already want to do. Now that's not a perfect answer because sometimes they want to do things that may not be good for them or others, but it's a pretty good maxim and it's a very good maxim if you want to create a product or service that engages people or lasts over time. Again, it's the lasting change, not the one time action. So that is.

How I talk about it today in a limited way. It's a partial answer and maybe it should be updated to say help people do.

What they already want to do in the service of becoming their best selves. Because some people might want to go out and gamble and say, okay, we're going to create better gambling software. I'm not good with that. So there might be a modification. That's a better answer than.

Help people do what they already want to do.

Okay, so this leads me to both of you are professors, you're a teacher. I mean you're all teachers, right? How do you. What is. What have you learned as the most effective way to a be a student and to learn? I mean, because like what I love about the three of you is that you're all avid learners. Read a lot, study a lot, not so arrogant to think. I mean, I don't consider you arrogant at all. I mean, I think all of you have a very. Have learned how to utilize your ego in positive ways. And I meet people all day long that think they are the smartest person in the room and they know more than everyone. And you guys can smoke almost any of these people just from your sheer track record knowledge basis. So you're all great students. You teach people. So what's the most effective ways on how to become better? Because I think right now, I mean, none of you would have written books and teach if you didn't want to help other people learn these skills. And you, you became who you are as a result of being really good at being a student and learning.

For me, it's trying to pick who to learn from or how to categorize the information.

And it's, you know, never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with.

Don't take direction from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. Like, there are a lot of great quotes out there, and I'll always take a look at the life the person lived that's being quoted. And there's a couple people out there that are constantly quoted, and their life was a train wreck. So I'm like, all right, maybe the quote's good. I'm gonna to take a look at somebody else. So I try to take a hard look at. I try to figure out who to learn from, you know, would I be satisfied with their reputation.

Again, Huberman, the way he decides who to listen to, to some degree, has guided me in a lot of ways.

Really understanding. He's a curious scientist. He about talks. Talks about stuff. You know, I'll read something, a book that he's recommended, and I'll pick something up from him because I admire, you know, his effectiveness. And, dude, I don't know how many years ago, nobody knew who the hell he was. And now he's got one of the most popular podcasts on planet Earth, and everybody knows who he is. So I'm like, all right, so this guy's doing something right. I want to figure out how he's doing, what he's doing, and on. And Lex Friedman on his podcast, again, understanding who to listen to, which is mostly not critics. Sam Harris was on it, and he was talking about who to listen to. And he said, all right, so imagine you're flying an airplane in a storm, and you're having trouble keeping a loft, and your instruments have gone out, and you're not sure what to do, and somebody comes walking up from the back and says, hey, try this.

Now, that guy might be right, but if he's not a pilot, are you gambling the plane on that guy's advice? Just because he might be right isn't good enough reason to listen. So I look a lot at who do I want to learn from? Now, I love reading from these two guys stuff as much as what they're curious about. Interest.

Now, I might not necessarily agree on a conclusion that either one of them has come to, but I'm fascinated by what fascinates them. So if I'm looking for stuff to dig into, I want to see what these guys are digging into.

You're going to set up another question for me then?

Yeah.

Okay, go ahead.

Well, I'll address this question from the point of view of I love teaching. I love teaching. I taught Stanford for over 30 years now. About 30 years at this point and before that.

And I'm always a student of how can I be a better teacher? I mean, a lot of you are here gleaning and learning how to teach and present better.

The classroom setting is different from the real world, right? In the real world, you really do have to help people do what they already want to do or it's not going to fly. In the classroom they've enrolled in the class, you have a certain power over them, and it's called a grade. You're going to get a grade. And so you can get them to do things they don't necessarily want to do. Kind of an artificial environment. There's other contexts like military and so on, where you have this artificial environment. So it is a great setting to get people to do things that they may not want to do or part of them doesn't want to do they're afraid to do. Right. But you've got a grade, so you can leverage that. Let me give an example of my current focus at Stanford. And this is almost entirely, I should say, entirely thanks to Joe and Genius Recovery foundation and people in Genius Network is all about helping people build stronger relationships. So using behavior design and tiny habits for building stronger relationships. So this is class number three in the series exploring how to do this well, you know, making mistakes and doing better the next time. So one of the assignments I gave my students was because part of the feedback I got from last fall's class was, hey, we wanted to get to meet each other and build relationships with each other. And I was like, oh, I was helping you build relationships with people outside the class. And they were dissatisfied. So this class, we're helping them connect with each other. And so the assessment assignment was, okay, each of you, I'm going to pair you up in this random way, this random playful way. And by next class, you have to get your parents on zoom with each other. So if it's you and you, you bring your parents in, right? And for 15 minutes, have a zoom chat with each other. And the class just went.

They were just freaking out. I was just excited by this. I mean, it was just an idea that came to me in the middle of the night and I wrote it down. I didn't realize how afraid they were going to be to do this.

But.

It'S like just 15 minutes. I mean, they know how to use zoom and everything. And Stephen Crane, my co teacher, he and I said, we'll do it too, and so on. So they did it. They came back. It was an amazing, amazing experience. You know, that 15 minutes of, you know, the point was to how do you build that relationship and meeting the other person's. And if it couldn't be parents, it could be siblings. Like some people, their parents only speak Chinese or whatever. And so that experience that I could basically force them to do, right, Because I have that leverage of grades got them to do this experience, which I think might have been the most impactful 15 minutes of the entire course for them. So that is a special context and getting them to do something again, the fear is demotivating them. And I guess I didn't work that hard. No, I said, you could. This ended up being an important part of the assignment. I said, if you want with your classmate right now, exchange talking points, like coordinate right now during class. Da da, da, da da. And I said, you're a job is to make your classmate look good. That is your job on this call. So you make your classmate look good. And one woman came to me and said, oh, I'm kind of like in a bad way with my parents. My parents were really mad at me. I said, great exchange talking points. And on the call. And Stephen Crane and I did it and it was great. People were crying on the call. Stephen was saying great things about me. I was saying great things about Stephen. It was just amaz amazing. So there are those opportunities where you can get people to do something that they might be afraid to do, but in these special contexts like that, you can get them to do this special experience. So we'll do it again and again and see what the secret sauce is. But I think those are some of the pieces.

Yeah, I think we're going to do one of the Next genius network meetings where it'll be like a family week at a rehab treatment center. It's like a week of the 30 or 60, 60 days that you bring in your whole family. We may try that here. Just to see the level of dysfunction. To get some of that on video would be phenomenal.

So for me, it's to be a true student of information that I receive, that I try to do, and also to try to get my students to adopt is to move from the how to the why. So I can provide various techniques we just talked about have a welcoming message. Well, why? It's because it installs personalism and human interaction. You've learned something there besides that recipe. You've gone from being a short order cook to being a chef. If you understand why that particular recipe works, you can improve that to all kinds of other situations and dishes and so on where you interject personalism to have the same result. And so that's the sort of thing whenever I get a. Whenever I see a result from a study and so on that works. I want to know why it worked, what was the causal factor that produced that success. And I get ruthless about that. I even go back to, I call the researcher. I tried to get internal data. There's a lovely small, big that we just saw. Almost everybody here has teams, right? You have people. Have you ever been in a situation where you've had an initiative, you've had a goal for the team, and they've made progress toward it, and you congratulate them on that, and then they slow down, they take their foot off the gas.

Because they've got me time, right? And it turns out it's the. It turns out that it turns on one word that you use when you congratulate them. If you congratulate them on their progress.

They turn around. Where do they look? They look at where they've been, what they've accomplished and what they're entitled to. If you say congratulations on your progress, you have to say congratulations because they've earned that. Congratulations on your progress to our goal. If instead you say congratulations on your commitment to. To our goal, they look ahead. They look to the goal, they look to the real estate that's yet to be traversed.

And the research shows if you change that word from progress to commitment, you get significant. They don't take their foot off the gas. They keep moving forward because that's where you focus themselves. So why is that? Because what's salient in consciousness drives our behavior.

You've put the goal back at the Top of mind. You've put the commitment that they've made at the top of mind, which drives them to the goal.

So good.

That's why.

Did you find that useful? Yeah. So here's the thing.

What do you hope?

Because anyone that has not read these books, I would like you to read them.

And.

What will happen to someone as a result of becoming either a little bit or a lot more masterful with these skills that all of you have? What is your hope? If you could only have a couple of minutes to say, you know, here's what I've produced, here's what I've written down, here's what I've documented my life's work, here's what I hope it does for you.

I'll go first, I'll be short.

What you'll get is you'll see that you'll build the confidence you can change, you can change huge things in your life. And you do that by, in these tiny ways. And so it gives you confidence, which in part means reducing the fear and reducing the anxiety.

Awesome.

I'll stop there.

How about you, Chris?

You're going to make life changing agreements different than you've ever made before. And none of them you're going to be embarrassed about. Like you could talk about it with the person that you made the deal with. And I said both of the CEO and his top salesperson and they knowingly use my, my book when they negotiate the salesperson's inner deal, job compensation with the CEO and they were both good with it.

You know, we're often in what is called the information age. It's never been called the knowledge age. Information is not the same as knowledge. You have to, you have to take it in, you have to process it, you have to understand it and if you're at your best, you apply it. So what I would hope is that there's information in these books, but I'm going to hark back to understanding the why, why that works, why it produces the persuasive successes you're hoping for and then you can export that to all kinds of other situations as a result.

Awesome. What I would say is, even what I've attempted to do in my book, I don't think a panel like this would exist if I did not learn how to do the things that I've done my best to try to share here, which is how to win the right friends and influence the right people. Because you can win friends and influence people, but there needs to be alignment. If you think about, about what's in it for them. I do my best to set things up so that it's always focusing on the other person. Because always make your give equal to or greater than your want. And if you do that, you tend to become more attractive to people that are reciprocal and like you and are willing to do things with you. And I think that's what it's not just about doing business stuff. It's about having fun. So it's about elf. Don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today at ilovemarketing. Com. Subscribe if you'd like access to the show Notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit ilovemarketing. Com 464.