Dr. Robert Cialdini - Understanding Influence In The Digital Age
16 Jul 2023 · 79 min
Podcast interview (hosts Joe Fier and Matt Wolfe) with Dr. Robert Cialdini discussing his book Influence (expanded edition) and the science of persuasion. They review Cialdini’s seven principles (reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, commitment/consistency, scarcity, and the new ‘unity’ principle), ethical use in digital marketing, and tactical applications (e.g., credibility signals, early disclosure of drawbacks, using trends and scarcity online).
Chapters
Somebody once told me, you know, Bob, your book Influence is considered the bible of Internet marketing, of digital commerce. But when you first wrote it, Internet commerce didn't exist. How could you look ahead? How could you see all of this back then? The truth is, I didn't look ahead. I looked inside us.
What are the factors that have always been part of the human condition, that have always informed us, usually, well, as to when to say yes to a request or a proposal or a recommendation.
This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.
Hustle and Flow chart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, welcome back.
Yo.
We're here. And we have got another legend. And we've been saying that a lot lately, but this is true Legend. Another true legend.
He is one who. We were just talking about this actually. You know, this is one of the top three or the first three books that we got when we began in business. And this one for sure has infiltrated every way that we do our marketing and, and how we think through marketing and how we're on the lookout for things.
And pretty much every copywriter on the planet has probably read his book. If they haven't, then they're probably not a copywriter worth working with.
That's a good little checkbox there. Ask your copywriter. Have you read Influence?
Yes. So, yeah, we buried the lead a little bit. We were talking to Dr. Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence and Pre Suasion today and definitely fanboyed out on this one a little bit.
He is, I mean, he is the godfather of Influence and, and I'm not sure I didn't make that up. I don't even know exactly where I got that from. But he is, there's no doubt about it. So Dr. Cialdini is globally known as the foundational expert in the science of influence and how to actually apply it ethically in business. It was created for consumers, he said, but folks in business, I mean, this is definitely a book you want to understand. So he now has seven principles. It used to be six principles in his previous version of Influence. So if you're not aware that he actually has a new version, came out a couple months ago. A few months ago. Get it? It's like 220 extra pages, packed, reworked, re engineered. It's way more practical. He even puts in things to look out for the downside of these principles if someone's trying to use these on you. And also a new principle called unity, which is the seventh now of his original six. It just built on top of that.
So on this episode, we're going to dive into a handful of his principles and really narrow on, you know, how these are relevant and how you can use them in the digital age right now. So you are going to dig this episode because it's actually a pretty useful tactical episode on how to leverage these principles in your business quite a bit. So make sure you grab the notes on this one. If you go to flowchart group.com you can get access to all of the notes. You will be joining our Facebook group, but one of the questions to join the Facebook group is give us your email. You give us your email, we'll send you the action guide to this episode. So go do that@flowchart group.com great.
And we have a great sponsor as well helping us out here. So let's go check them out.
All right, so check it out if you need to record your screen or your webcam or both. So you can make things like product demos and customer testimonials, you know, livestream Q and A's. If you want to make videos just really quick, you need to go check out Vidyard. With Vidyard, you can even upload marketing videos and embed them into email campaigns right on landing pages, right into blog posts. You can embed them everywhere for all of your sales ready leads. You could use these interactive video elements in these like cool video personalizations to boost the engagement and accelerate the buyer journey. It's a really, really cool tool. It's got all the analytics you need to know how your videos are performing. It's just a really, really cool video tool over at Vidyard. And I highly recommend signing up for Vidyard for free today. Simply go over to Vidyard.com flow and just like you guys, the team over at Vidyard, they can't keep up with all the promo codes and things like that that are being shouted out on pod. So all you got to do is go to vidyard.com flow don't have to worry about a coupon code, just vidyard.com flow they're hooking you up with Vidyard completely for free and they're going to hook you up with a 2021 B2B video trends guide. Go check it out. Vidyard.com flow.
Alrighty, it's go time. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Robert Cialdini. This is a pleasure. We've been, I mean you probably hear this all the time, so it's probably a broken record, but foundation of so much of what we do reading Influence, your original. You have the copy, Matt, to the left of you over there. But this expanded version has been blowing our minds in terms of how practical it is. It feels like you've expanded the practicalness of all of the principles and added another principle as well.
Well, I'm glad to be with you. And you're right about the practical aspect. That seemed to me to be one thing that I really needed to step up the game. Because people want takeaways. They want to be able not just to participate in the exchange of information the way you would in a university class, they want to be able to employ the insights that come from that information in ways that improve their outcomes and the outcomes of the people around them.
Yeah, so we have a primary. A marketing audience here, a lot of entrepreneurs, and so many people reference influence and so many of their works in terms of, you know, copywriting or, you know, just. Just persuasive selling and things like that. And we were talking about, you know, there's obviously an ethical portion of this as well that we should always put forefront in our minds with all the principles. I'm sure most people have probably heard them, but we'll do a nice recap of of all of them now. Seven principles.
I think that makes eminent sense.
Yeah, perfect.
Do a tour through them and then highlight what's new.
Yeah, Very cool. Before we do, do you mind if I ask how you actually got into the work of influence? Why did you decide to go down this rabbit hole of studying influence?
All my life I've been a sucker.
That's a good answer.
An easy mark for the appeals of various kinds of salespeople or fundraisers who would come to my door and I would find myself in unwanted possession of things. I. Did you know that I didn't really understand why that was the case. And it seemed to me, oh, wait a minute. It must be something other than the content. It must be something other than the features of the thing. It must be the way the features of the thing were presented to me psychologically in a compelling way that got me to move in their direction. Oh, this is worthy of study. Not just for reasons of self defense, but because people would be interested in knowing the factors that incline them toward. Yes.
Both when they are the originators of appeal and when they're the recipients of an appeal and want to know not just how to generate yes, but how to deflect or reject it when somebody uses it on them in an inopportune or an undue unwelcome way, let's say that.
Yeah. And I know for me, it's really helped me understand some of the just innate things I have with myself, the way I lead with my personality. You know, understanding the liking principle in this book specifically, I was able to really understand a couple. I was like, wow, okay. So, I mean, I think all of us, or a lot of us, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. We have maybe some of these principles baked into us, but we don't maybe necessarily know we're doing them and we're kind of blind to our own maybe persuasion abilities.
I think that is the case. People who are successful have recognized how these principles work at some level. What they often don't recognize is how to optimize them. Steps to take that really not only activate the principle, but maximize its impact in the situation. So that's what I tried to do in the book, to make sure that people got more than just a concept regarding each of the principles, but something other than that that allowed them to.
Implement.
And harness the principles more successfully.
Yeah, no, this is great. So before we hop into the principles and dive in, because I'm sure that's the meat that most people want.
I would be remiss to think that the technology that we all have at our fingertips right now, I think it's your very last chapter. Everything's moving so quickly now and it's probably not ever going to slow down, at least for a while. In terms of the tech, you know, the graph, I think it's Moore's Law where it's just spiking. So with that comes all these different persuasion elements mixed in through technology, social media, not just talking with people anymore. So I found that super fascinating, is another reason or benefit to really understand these and harness these now rather than just kind of let that happen to you. Even through technology.
Right. I mean, information is racing, technology is exploding.
And we have to be ready to analyze and recognize what's going on inside those trends, those burgeoning phenomena within the society so that we can get a good handle on them and once again.
Operate on them in a way that doesn't sweep us away, but that we in fact get. We hook our wagons onto those power sources that are sweeping the society along.
Yeah, and just a little reference to this too, as we chatted with BJ Fogg earlier this week actually, and I know he was mentioned on the back cover, he gave you some praise and there was a cool story of him actually taking your influence principles and doing a study. I think about 10 years ago in technology. And it's interesting now, 10 years later, now people are paying attention and you're writing about it as well. So it's kind of a cool full circle there. So little shout out for bj. That's right.
Somebody once told me, bob, your book Influence is considered the bible of Internet marketing of digital commerce. But when you first wrote it, Internet commerce didn't exist. How could you look ahead? How could you see all of this back then? And the truth is, I didn't look ahead. I looked inside us.
What are the factors that have always been part of the human condition, that have always informed us, usually, well, as to when to say yes to a request or proposal or a recommendation? Those factors haven't changed in the last 15 years. Those things are still part of who we are as a species and how we've evolved and how we've socialized ourselves into behaving in social interactions. Those are the things that I chronicled and put into the book, one to a chapter, the major influences on the influence process. And those have, I think, stood the test of time because the platforms can change, the vehicles of delivery can change, but the motivations to say yes in order to do well in a situation, those things have stayed the same for us as a species.
Yeah. When you wrote the book, did, you know, set aside Internet marketing? Did you see it being used as sort of a bible for marketers? You know, not necessarily Internet marketing just did. Was it written in a way that you thought marketers would take it and use these strategies in their marketing?
No, the opposite. I wrote it for the consumer. How to recognize and resist and deflect these principles when they are used on us in unethical ways.
But, guys, no consumer group has ever called me, but my phone hasn't stopped ringing. My Internet hasn't stopped lighting up with requests from people who say, you know.
I would like to harness these principles. I'd like to make them part of the way that I do business ethically, that lends itself to a better outcome for all concerned. And so over the editions, I've shifted.
To.
The implementation, again, ethical implementation of these levers of influence.
Yeah, well, let's get into the principles. I'm sure folks really want to hear it from you and not us skating around them. So, you know, you have the original six. Were those always the original? I know Matt has the. The previous version to this, but yeah, run us through those and maybe some quick details and we'll go through.
They were always the original. I just counted six and by the way, the way I did it was not to sit in my office at a university and just read all the literature on experiments and studies that had been done, but to actually infiltrate the training programs of as many influence professions as I could get access to. I entered the training programs of various kinds of sales organizations. I learned how to sell insurance from an office. I learned how to sell portrait photography over the phone. I learned how to sell nutritional supplements door to door.
And I didn't stop there. I also infiltrated the training programs of charity organizations. How do the fundraisers, what do they say? What do they do? I did the same thing for recruiters, the same thing for public relations specialists. And I tried to see what was in common across all of these professions dedicated to getting others to say yes. I only counted six things. I was shocked by the small footprint that I found when I looked at the universals, the things that appeared in every profession, taught to every practitioner. You need to do this in order to be more successful. We've found that. Well, so these folks, you know, had done a much grander experiment than I could ever have done in my laboratory, you know, studying behaviors of, of subjects in some kind of experiment. There was an experiment that was going on for decades in all kinds of professions, and there were only six things that rose to the surface, each that were.
Instructed by the trainers. Do this because this leads to ascent. Say this.
Give yourself this image or that kind of phrasing or wording, and you get more ascent. That's the biggest surprise that I got.
Wow. Yeah, no, that's. It's fascinating. I know. Yeah. All the undercover work and you took sabbaticals to do all this stuff. So you were, you know, boots on the ground, you were out there getting dirty and seeing it firsthand. And I think that's super fascinating. So walk us through. Do you have a. Are they in order? Would that, would that be the best way to present these? Or do you like to kind of pick and choose?
You know, I have now put them in order.
Previously because they weren't, they didn't occur in some sort of lock step sequence where you needed to do this in order to do the next and then the next. I never gave them a particular sequencing, but that's changed now because my colleague, Dr. Gregory Neidert has developed his core motives, model social influence, in which he says there are three.
Basic motives, motivations.
That people use to decide whether to say yes. The first set involve.
Getting people to like us, getting people to feel bonded with us, to feel A positive association with us. That's the first step. If you don't have that, you're probably not going to go very far with any of the others. And so principles like reciprocation, giving first, principles like liking, principles like the new one that I've come to, the seventh one called unity, the sense of belonging together with, in, in a category with another person, those things should be established first. And so that's the first set that I talk about. Then after that, if you've got that established a good rapport, then the question is how do we reduce the uncertainty people have about whether to move in our direction.
And whether this is the time to do it? Well, there are two others that really reduce uncertainty and satisfy that particular motive for our audiences. One is what we call social proof. The extent to which evidence exists that a lot of others like us are doing this thing, that we are recommending that as communicators, we're recommending to our audience that reduces uncertainty. If we see a lot of people doing it just like us, that they've beta tested it, they've already determined that this is something that makes sense for them to do and if they're like us, it makes sense for us to follow. Second is authority. If the experts are all saying that this is the right move to take, or we can show testimonials from people who are knowledgeable and legitimate authorities on a topic.
Once again, it reduces our audience members uncertainty that what we have to offer is a good thing for them. So then you get uncertainty reduced. And then finally there's a third motivation that we have to be sure that we.
That we engage. And that is to get people to act.
It's not enough to get them to like us and even to get them to reduce their uncertainty about, you know, whether what we have is a good thing. I can, like the, the guy at the gym who trains me and I can reduce my uncertainty that going to the gym is a good thing. But that doesn't get me up in.
The morning, that's for sure.
Always right. You need something else to get you going, to get you moving in that direction. And there are two things that get people.
Mobilized into action. Two other principles. One is commitment and consistency. If we make a public, effortful.
Visible and internal commitment to something, right, where we take a stand, go on record, right, Publicize our belief in a particular thing, we're much more likely to take action. That's congruent with that, right? So, oh yeah, so yes, I've gone on record, I've told my family members, I've told my friends, I'm gonna get. I'm gonna lose five pounds, I'm gonna get to the gym. If I've said that, it makes it much more likely that I'll actually undertake that action. And then the last one is scarcity. If these opportunities are rare or scarce or dwindling in availability, that gets me moving, that gets me taking a step so that I don't lose those scarce opportunities that may be gone if I don't take that step. So those are the three stages in which we now present the material in the book. Although I have taken the unity principle because it's the new one, I have put that at the end, but I characterize it in terms of one of those things that builds a sense of connection to others, that makes them feel that.
We'Ve got a togetherness thing going here.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious if there's any one of those seven principles that you find people misinterpret often or use in completely unintended way than the way you meant it.
Yes, there's a couple, actually, but the first is authority. And people often think that means being in charge or being the boss. Being in authority. Right. Yeah. You can get people to move in your direction. That's power. That's what I consider power. Hierarchical power. You can coerce people, you can twist their arms, you can bribe them, you can punish them. I mean, there are all those things that is available to somebody in the hierarchy who can. Who can change your outcomes. But I'm really talking about not being in authority. I'm talking about being an authority, somebody who is seen as knowledgeable, experienced, is credentialed. That doesn't require any twisting of arms. People want to go in the direction of the voice of authority, who is, after all, wise and experienced in this arena. That's what we're really talking about there. And people often make that mistake. Another is commitment and consistency, where.
People say, you know, so what that means is I need to show people that I am consistent in my message. Right. I'm committed to this message and I am congruent with it in all the aspects of my marketing plan or how I. How I present myself and so on. That is important. I don't doubt that. But that's not what we're talking about. What we're really talking about is a desire inside our audience members to be consistent within themselves, within what they have said or done previously. So that if we can.
Get somebody, arrange for People to take a step in our direction in order to be consistent with what they have now already done. They will be significantly more likely to take another step in our direction.
In order to stay consistent with the position that they've publicly made taken.
Yeah, yeah.
So those two things we often have to sort of.
Debrief to people who have thought about them differently.
Yeah, that makes sense. I want to go back to authority really quick because that one stood out. When I heard you on some podcasts, we were doing deep research and all this fun stuff and you broke down authority, as I believe it was expertise and trustworthiness. And you know, the expertise kind of stands for itself. It's the credentials, it's the stuff that people kind of say about you. But I was really curious about the trustworthy part of that. You know, that element. Could you break that down and some of these elements that really make up authority.
Yes. And so what we found in research around the world, by the way, in Korea, in Japan, in Sweden, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, in the United States, all the research shows the same thing. There's one particular kind of authority that if you have in the minds of your audience, no one can beat you as a communicator. It's to be a credible authority. And what a credible authority possesses is these two elements that you just mentioned, Joe. One is expertise, knowledge, and that sort of background of experiences. Right. So you're knowledgeable. The other is trustworthiness. That this expert information you're providing being offered.
In a way that's designed to accurately depict reality. It's not designed to, to line your own pockets or.
Get a profit. It's designed to honestly inform people of the true state of affairs.
Yeah.
If you've got those two.
That'S as good as you can get as an expert communicator. No one, all other things equal, can beat you if you've got those.
Wow.
So we talk in, you know, our programs and in the book about how you present yourself so that you're not seen as boastful braggart and so on, but people recognize your true expertise in the area.
And also how you generate a perception of trustworthiness. So let's take a couple those two in turn. One thing you have to remember is that you're going to be seen negatively if you're a broker of positive information about yourself in a face to face interaction. I couldn't sit down in front of you guys and say, before we begin, let me, let you remind, let me remind you of how great I really Am. No, it goes against all the rules. You can't do it. Right. So it has to precede you. It has to come in written form in a.
An email that you send, giving people a link to your LinkedIn page and so on. Or you get somebody else who knows both of you to send that message about your expertise and accomplishments and how successful you were in helping him or her. Right. That kind of evidence is really much more successful than you trying to promote your, your own.
Qualities.
Yeah.
So one of the things, for example, we once did a study in a hospital of stroke patients who were given.
When they left the hospital after they had, you know, been treated. They were given home exercise programs, regimens to do by the physical therapists. And when they would come back to be evaluated every so often, it was clear they weren't doing their exercises. And so the hospital administrators asked us to go interview those people and see what the problem was. And they said, you know, we know what the background and experience and credentials of our doctors are. Right. They've got their diplomas on the walls.
But the physical therapy staff, we didn't know anything about their expertise. Well, it turns out those people were very well credentialed. So all we did was to have the physical therapy staff put in a little. There was a little room where they gave people the regimens and explained how they should do these home exercises. We had them put all of their credentials, their diplomas, their certificates, their accreditations on the wall.
We got 31% better exercise compliance just from showing people rather than telling them about our expertise and authority. So that's one thing, that's a nuance there. The other thing, which is I think even trickier, is trustworthiness. How do you show people that you're being honest with them? You're not providing some biased view of the, of the situation to in, you know, enhance your own outcomes. You're really leveling with them. And what most of the training programs I engage, I infiltrated told us is that, well, this is going to take a while to become the.
The trustworthy advisor for people, the person that they automatically assign trustworthiness to after you've dealt with them for weeks or months or years, if you've been a straight shooter, that perception surfaces, it just evolves. Well, true, but what if you don't have weeks or months or longer?
Yeah.
What if you're, what if you're dealing with somebody for the first time, you are being altogether straight with them? You're really trying to maximize their interest in the situation with this expert information that you're providing them, how do you get them to see that it's there, it's really in there. How do you do it? It turns out there's a small.
Practice, a small technique, a small change that you can employ.
That produces instant trustworthiness.
But it requires that you go against everything that you've been told to do in a sales or marketing interaction.
Very intriguing.
Yeah.
What we've always been told to do is you begin with your strongest suit. You provide all the evidence that moves people in your direction based on your. Your, Your most compelling argument, your most attractive feature, the thing that most differentiates you from all your competitors in a positive way. You. You begin. And then, because all cases have strengths and weaknesses.
After you've got people leaning in your direction, you mention a weakness. In your case, you mention, you know, this. We're. We might be a little more expensive than our competitors, or what I'm suggesting may take a little longer to produce the results that you are interested in, or the tax consequences may take a while to.
To make themselves shown.
Right.
You say that at the end, and that's a mistake. If these people don't know you, don't know about your credibility, don't know about your truthfulness, why should they believe your strongest arguments when you present them? They're not ready yet. Those arguments are going to bounce off this wall of doubt that they have about you. You've got to bring the wall down. And the way to do it is to mention that weakness or that drawback. In your case, early. Not the first thing you don't sit down and say. Before we begin, let me tell you all the things that are wrong with me. My organization, our products and services. No, but be relatively early. You.
Own the drawback. You tell them. Here's the thing that you. I do need to tell you about. What that does is to immediately make you the most powerful authority communicator we have ever found in, in behavioral science research. It makes you knowledgeable in their eyes because you've just shown them. I know not just the pluses. I know the minuses too.
Yeah. And we're not trying to hide them.
Yeah, exactly. And that's the credibility part. The trustworthy. I'm. And I'm not trying to pull a blanket of positivity over your eyes. I'll tell you the strengths and the weaknesses right up front.
Okay, now here's the key. After you've mentioned that weakness, you say the word but.
And you use it as a bridge to now mentioning Your strongest argument, your most positive feature, because they will be processing it more deeply and believing it more fully now.
Because you've demonstrated your credibility. And everything you say now that's positive gets incorporated at a different level because it's coming from a credible source.
Right.
But the key is the word but. Or you could use however or nonetheless, or at the same time.
I have a friend who is a psycholinguist. She studies the psychology of language. She said, do you know what the word but signifies in every human language? To the recipient of that word, it says to that person, take what I've just told you and put it away. Don't think about it now. Think about the next thing. Focus on the next thing I'm about to say.
That's the place for your strongest argument. Immediately after you've mentioned a weakness and bridged to a strength that wipes away the weakness, just knocks it off its pins. Because this strength is so overpowering compared to that weakness.
Yeah, no, that makes it cool. It sort of reminds. And I could be on the wrong track here, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but it sort of reminds me of like the. The old P90X ads, where they would come out with the ad and the ad would be like, this is going to be really hard. You're going to have to have discipline. It's going to be a lot of work. You're going to hate it, but you're going to have the best body of your life and feel better than you've ever felt. Right. And that was sort of the P90X marketing.
Yeah, exactly right. You can go back further. You guys aren't old enough to remember. I remember there was an ad campaign that Avis rental car ran back in the 70s and 80s. It went like this. When they were the distant second place provider to Hertz. They said, we're number two.
I do.
Yeah, but we try harder.
They got a 700% increase in market share in one year.
More recently, L', Oreal.
You know, famous cosmetics provider, had an ad that went like this.
L', Oreal, we're expensive.
But you're worth it.
300% increase in market share during the. The duration of that campaign.
So this works.
It's like the two parts. There's the human element where you're humanizing yourself or your brand in a way and pointing out the flaws or potential objections in someone's mind. And then there's like that reset with the. But it's like a mental reset. But that Stuff's still conditioned somehow in. It seems like it's anchored. You're anchoring the human element. And then all of a sudden you get them with the next statement there.
And you know, a lot of the time, because your rivals have done this job for you or your audience members have done their research, they know the weakness, they know that you're the more expensive.
By bringing it up yourself, you give them something they didn't know, that you're honest, that you're a credible source of.
Information from your mouth, not someone else. Yeah.
So you haven't lost anything. It's not like you've given them some sort of reason not to move in your direction. They already had it. You've just given them a reason to move in your direction because you're a straight shooter.
Yeah. It's kind of funny. I'm just thinking of the course of this podcast for us. Like, we have these. We've had therapy sessions. That's when him and I, Matt and I are alone, kind of talking about the flaw struggles, and then we'll talk about what we're thinking about. But I feel like that it's gotten easier over time to almost get into that habit, similar to this format that you're saying here. And it. I don't know, just. There's a more of a bond overall. I know we've heard it from our audience and it's. I just feel like it's a little bit freer in our language to share the weaknesses and then follow it up with. With something else.
We've all got them.
Oh, yeah, of course. So might as well lay them out there in the right spot.
I want to dig in on the scarcity principle for a minute too, because I feel like the scarcity principle in the sort of digital landscape we're in is one of the principles that I feel is used in one of the more icky kind of ways. A lot of times you see a lot of stuff online where maybe it's a digital ebook, but they're saying only 200 left, so buy now. Or you see these landing pages where they have a countdown timer, and then the next day you go back to the site and the countdown timers just reset again. And you see all these people trying to, like, fake the scarcity, to manipulate people to buy. And so I'm curious if there is no real scarcity, like a digital product, a software ebook, something like that. How do you implement scarcity in those sorts of situations?
You do it by showing how you are unique.
That you have something that none of your rivals have and your audience can't have them, can't get them unless they move in your direction. Right. Now, a lot of times, that's not one thing. It's a suite of things, a particular combination that only you provide. Right. That should be at the top of your presentation. The scarcity, the uniqueness, the uncommonness, the thing that people can't get if they don't move in your direction. And it makes people crazy not to be able to get something that they want. So if you make that point, here's how I do. But also you can do it with campaigns where you can say, you know, we've got this special feature or bonus only for the following period of time that we can provide it, or we only have X number that. That include that this feature or this particular bonus. There was a study done of 6700 online marketing sites and the A B tests that they did to examine the effect of certain features inside those tests, inside those sites to produce conversions.
And some of the features were.
Were like economic, providing free delivery.
Right.
Some were technological. Is there a search function on the site that allows people easy access to the material? Some of them were.
Persuasive. Is there a call to action line at the end of every appeal? Those kinds of things. And they had 29 of them that they looked at.
The top set were the principles of influence.
Those things didn't matter as much as scarcity or social proof or authority or consistent commitment and consistency. Now, of those principles, scarcity was at the top.
Online.
Telling people that there's a limited supply or a limited period of time in which to move gets them off the fence.
And it seems like in the list. I like how you prioritized earlier the principles. And I'm kind of. Look, I marked them down and scarcity was the last one, I believe you said, there out of all of them. And it's like that's. Yeah. That just kind of pushes them over the line or like the last motivator, it seems like. But there's.
For those people who are still dithering, you know, for sitting on the fence, they're standing on the sidelines that you just can't get them into the game. They like you, they like your products and. But they don't move.
Yeah.
Scarcity.
Mobilizes them into action.
Yeah. So, yeah, take a look at the other principles and maybe, you know, layer those in prior to.
Absolutely.
Going into scarcity.
Yeah.
The next most powerful was social proof, this idea that if a lot of other people like me are doing this and they show evidence of, you know, other people buying and the number of five star ratings we've got and all this kind of thing, that's the second most powerful. But there's some new research, by the way. Suppose you're a startup or you have a brand new model and you don't have a lot of ratings yet, you don't have a lot of market share, you don't have a lot of purchases yet, but you've got a good product, but it's only like 15%.
Are moving in your direction and you want much more of the market than that. If you show them a trend to 15%.
They project that into the future.
Consistency, Right, right, consistency.
So even if you don't have the majority on your side yet, most people doing this, if you show that there's a trajectory in that direction, people will be more persuaded by that piece of information than simply the 15%. The 15% actually could take them away from you. They'll say, oh, that I can do them the arithmetic. That means 85% are not moving in. Right. But if they see that movement, that growth.
And here's what I'm going to recommend. When you give them the evidence of a Trend.
Give them three data points.
Don't just say six months ago it was five percent, now it's 15%.
Because it could be that three months ago it was 25% and it's down to 15%. Right, right. No, say six months ago it was 5%, three months ago it was 10%, today it's 15%. Give them three data points, which allows you to, to then use a very powerful piece of.
Phrasing and that is to say not just more people are moving in our direction, but to say more and more people are moving in my. That's three points more is five to 10 and another more, that's another jump. More and more, greater and greater, better and better, larger and larger. Three data points. Yeah, if you've got the data. Honestly, we'd be fools of the influence process if we didn't set them out to show people the direction and the growth that's occurring.
Yeah, well, it seems like that growth too could also create some implied scarcity. Like you want to get in now? Because look at the trajectory. Like do you want to get in here? Do you want to get in up here? So it almost sort of marries well to the scarcity principle as well.
Yeah, that's an excellent point.
Well, and it actually strikes a bell for unity for me as well. It's like, do you want to be part of the cool kids, the in group?
That's right. You want to be part of the early adopters who really understand, stand and are benefiting before everybody else?
For sure. Yeah. Well, I think unity is so fascinating in that sense because there's a lot of it, I think in just society these days, we're seeing it all over the place. I mean from the health stuff with COVID of course, politics, but business. And we just said early adopters. That's a wave of people. People identify as early adopters, so they're out buying the stuff. And so speak a little bit more on unity because this is the newest principle. So what, what sparked unity as making it into the book as one of the the seven now principles?
You know, part of it was just looking at what's happening in society right now that, that we, we are tribalizing, we're balkanizing, we're, we're finding ourselves in membership groups that we use to identify who we are. And that identity, if it is shared by someone else.
Really causes us to feel very positively toward that person, to want to cooperate with that individual, to trust that person more, to agree with that person more, and the research shows to say yes to that person, person more. So it really does deserve something separate from mere similarity. So for example, one of the things we say produces liking is just being, showing people that you have similar tastes or preferences or styles, you know, that, that you, you, you like. This is not about similarity as much as it is about belonging together. That I am of this.
Group, that this person shares an identity with. And as a consequence, here's an example from a study that was done on a university campus. But outside on the campus, researchers had a young woman about college age, dressed like a college student, would stand on a heavily trafficked part of campus and ask for donations to a good cause. I think it was the United Way and she was getting some kind of response. But if for half of the people who passed by, she added one more sentence to the request, the sentence was.
I'm a student here too.
I'm one of you.
Donations increased by 450.
Oh wow.
This isn't something small. No, this is a big lever of influence.
So where you have shared identities, they can be local identities, members of the same community, for example, or neighborhood or, you know, even in, in the Olympics, the nation, you know, when, when we're against the others and we're Americans, we really wanted those people to win. So anyway, those, those, those shared identities, those senses of Shared belonging make a big difference in whether people say yes to us or not.
Do you think there's going to be any additional principles added in the future or do you think it's pretty locked in at 7? Are there like other things that you're sort of paying attention to?
I'm not going to say no to the possibility, but it took a long time for me to figure out that the principle of unity was really a separate principle. It wasn't just something that undergirded the success of all the others. That if you had unity then scarcity would work better for you and social proof would work better. No, no, this was. You could take it away from all the others and it would be by itself powerful.
Was there. So we had some questions from our community and this is from a gentleman, Larry Ludwig, he's been on our show too. And he asked did you ever expect your book or this whole body of work, everything you've done since at least what 1984 I think was your first published year? Did you expect it to be as popular as it has become?
I could not have sensibly imagined this. I just couldn't have. First of all, at that time there were no books that translated.
Behavioral science for the larger non academic audience. They just didn't exist. And I know the reason why. There's a quote from a British legal scholar, James Boyle, his name is. He said, you have never heard true condescension until you've heard an academic pronounce the word popularizer.
We were all afraid that if we wrote for a popular audience we would be seen as watering down our insights and our information and making it pablum and you know.
Pandering to the lowest denominator. So I never thought that this would have, it would catch on the way it did. But now there's an entire literary category called popular behavioral science where there are books all the time that are being published and they're lovely, you know, they give us as a discipline, behavioral science, a chance to pay back the non academic community that has paid for our research. Let's be honest.
Good point.
Where do we get the funds for that research is from your tax dollars?
It's gotta be. Yeah.
Or your donations to our universities. That's how we're obligated to give back the information that we found out with your money to you. Right.
Thank you for doing that.
Yeah.
It's fascinating because yeah, I did hear bits of that story and how, you know, it was, I don't know if taboo is the right word. But yeah, it was kind of just an internal dialogue. All these replacements reports passed among different folks researching and the outside world was not aware as much with the real science behind behavior. And it's fascinating, it's interesting how it's developed over the years and I'm sure it will continue with technology and the implications and all these different things happening now.
Right?
No, this has been amazing. Honestly, I'm sort of pinching myself that we even get to have this conversation with you because you have been such a big part of our journey. You know, this book is something we reference constantly and this is a surreal moment for us. So I just want to show my appreciation and thank you for taking the time with us today.
For sure.
Well, guys, I have to say I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I'm happy you did. That's always our goal with these things anyway. We got to make them light hearted, fun and very practical for folks.
Is there anywhere that's a best place to send people to go grab the book or should they just go to Amazon? What's the best way?
Way, the best place to go? Well, Amazon is of course, or one of the booksellers, Barnes and Nobles or wherever. But to get a. If there's a single place where you can get the most information about what we are, what we do.
It'S influenceatwork.com you can find information about our training programs, our online.
Seminars, our books, our consulting and so on. Anything that you would be interested in to know more about behavioral science. The behavioral science of influence. That's a good place to start.
Perfect.
Influenceatwork.com so everybody needs to go check that out.
Definitely. And grab the new copy, even if you have all the previous versions. Definitely. I think it's an extra, what, 220 pages in here?
That's right.
Well, here's the difference. I've got both copies.
There you go. So it is worth every, every ounce of energy and effort you put into reading and applying the principles because they work, they're fabulous. So thank you very much again. It's been a pleasure.
So long for now.
So that was a legend we just had a conversation with. Yeah, man, let's act like, let's act like we just had that conversation. Even though we're wearing different clothes, we've.
Been marinating, we've been thinking about it and yeah, so Robert Cialdini, man, what a legend. Super dang cool. Yeah, it was just a pleasure to have him on here. I mean, it's just a super big honor and we've said that to him. And it's like, ah, I don't know. It's like. I feel like that's not even a good enough word for it because, like, he's been the foundation of how we think through marketing. Yeah. Well, since the beginning.
Yeah. When we got into marketing, entrepreneurship, whatever you want to call the rabbit hole we went down 13 or so years ago. I would say, like, it was in one of the first three books that was recommended that we read. Rich dad, Poor dad was the first one. I remember that. And then I think we read like.
Four Hour Work Week that was in there.
And then Influence was probably the very next book after those two that we got introduced to. Because the first. The first two, Rich Dad, Poor dad, and Four Hour Workweek, are kind of like, look, here's what's possible.
I feel like that was the mental shift.
Yeah, that was the mental shift of, like, look, here's what's possible. Here's what your life could be. Right. That's what those two books were. And we went, okay, let's strive for this. The very next book we picked up was Influence.
Yeah. And that's where we're like, okay, cool. So now we know what we want to do. Like, what we're interested in, how to actually kind of do it mentally. Now, here are the principles on how to execute whatever it is we're gonna put out into the world and get attention and get that. Yes. Because that's what he's all about. Yeah, he's. He's getting the ethical. Yes. I mean, so that was the big thing, you know, that before starting this interview with Robert Cialdini is, you know, making it very clear that you can use these for good and bad reasons. Of course, you know, persuasion. So he's a massive proponent of being ethical, of course, with all the principles. And now there's a seventh principle added into the mix, the unity principle. So, yeah, definitely get. Get the new version of Influence. So you can find it on, you know, on Amazon. All the. All the places out there. They're out there. Yeah, it's way more practical, I would say. I mean, the previous ones are amazing, but this one is just like, deep dive into, like, here's how to do it. Here's how to even look out for, like, the red flags. We don't really talk about that in the episode, but he has sections in every chapter.
Yeah, well, he's got a website, influenceatwork.com too, so you can check that out. I believe there's. I think you can get the book through that site. And all the links are available there as well. But yeah, I mean, if it sounded like we were fanboying out a little bit on that episode, we were. It's because we were like, he was a very influential person in our lives, and we got to speak to him, and that is freaking awesome. We're not gonna lie.
Wouldn't you fan girl or fanboy as well?
Yeah.
So what stood out? Because I know we both have pages of notes in our own way, and I don't even know where to start. I know we. We lined out all of the principles, so we kind of, like, pick and chose.
We picked a few. Yeah. And I feel like we kind of honed in on the ones that are, like, sort of more relevant that you hear a lot of the Internet marketers talk about. Like, for me, the scarcity one is one where, you know, I even said it to him. Like, I feel like people use scarcity in, like, a fairly unethical way. Like when you go and see, like, oh, there's only 100 available. Well, it's a software. It's an ebook. Like, no, that's bs. You can duplicate this code to as many people as you want. There is no physical limitation for you to be able to get. Give it to people.
Right.
So that feels a little BS when people say limited quantities on a digital product, and then people use this sort of time scarcity, the countdown scarcity, all the time. But you see it where, like, you land on a page, the countdown ends, you come back to the same page, the next day, the countdown just started over again. Like, that just feels gross.
Right.
And so I wanted to. I wanted to get his opinion on that because obviously those things didn't exist when he first wrote the book. There was no, like, only 100 ebooks available. There was no, like, automated countdown timers on, you know, on webpages. Like, that stuff wasn't a thing when he put this book out here. So I was kind of curious about his thoughts now that the digital marketer world has taken it and run with it and are using his principles. But they're almost sort of like using his principles in a way that's like. Yeah, that just doesn't feel right.
Yeah, it's very possible. I mean, now it's so much easier to do that because tools are made not for that purpose of unethical reasons, but again, just like any tool. You know, like things like countdown timer, let's say, you know, like our buddy out there, Jack Bourne, who created Countdown Timer, There's Deadline Funnel. Yeah. Deadline funnel. What did I say?
Countdown.
Oh, yeah. Deadline funnel. Duh. Sorry, Jack. I know you listen as well, and I know you know, Jack, he's a big proponent of ethical. Massively ethical scarcity. And that's the thing is, like, every tool, just like these persuasion principles from Cialdini, you know, there's always a downside, so it's good to be aware of them. But also it's good to be able to spot these in action. Yeah. Some are a little bit more obvious, like those. Yeah. But, yeah, it's just. It's kind of icky, you know, like you were saying.
Yeah. And you know, the new book that he just put out, he did update it to talk about the digital marketing world. So it is stuff that he has. He. He is covering in the new book is, like, how these, like, these things apply.
Yeah.
In that world, for sure. We also had the opportunity to. To ask some questions from the audience on this episode, which we don't do on every episode, but we felt like Cialdini would be a good one to do it. So I actually want to.
We got some in there. We didn't name everyone because it was kind of like some of them were molded into the questioning.
Yeah. Some of them answered without us even needing to ask because they were sort of baked into other questions. But I think it'd be kind of cool to shout out the people that ask the questions.
For sure. Yeah. Well, actually, I know one of the questions that were answered, I think, by Cialdini was from our buddy Angelo Cisco. He was asking something around, like the, you know, basically how to use it ethically and not ethically, you know, like the downsides of it. But yeah, we kind of. I think we started off kind of talking about that. But a couple other. I'll just shout out some names here. Alex Tucker asked, you know, he had a question for him. Larry Ludwig. We actually asked that one. We got to get that one. That one. And it's basically like, hey, did you expect how popular this book would be or become?
Yeah. And did you expect it to, like, be picked up and ran with by the marketing.
By the marketers everywhere?
Because, like, he didn't write it as a book. I mean, basically his answer was, he didn't write it as a book for marketers. He wrote it as a book to learn how to avoid being influenced by.
Others, the consumer side.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So a couple other folks that. And I think there were more questions, but I have them in front of me. Joshua Emanuel asked a couple great questions, and Then Julie Hood. So thank you all. You gave us some, some, some inspiration there, and we got to kind of sneak in some of these.
Yeah. So hopefully, hopefully throughout the course of that conversation, your, your questions got answered, but we really appreciate you asking them. We're going to do more stuff like that where we, we want to, you know, hear what you want to hear.
From people all the time.
That's what the community's there for. So definitely share your thoughts on these episodes. Share your questions when we tell you we have guests coming up and we'll do our best to work them in.
Oh, yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot to debrief on this one, man. But I would say get the book and start to think about, like, there, I guess a couple things that stand out is the unity principle. I'm seeing that pop up more and more in just like, society in general. Like, we talked about it with, you know, with Josh Bartlett. Actually, we had a call after Cialdini, and we were just kind of like, you know, it's interesting to see the groups of people and how, you know, decisions are made and how interactions happen when you have this kind of like, we ness is like, what? That's we ness.
There's two words.
There's a dash.
But it's like this.
Well, isn't a we ness like, really, like your elbow?
Yeah, you're right. That's true.
It's just a funny word.
I like it. So.
But, like, really understanding it is like, it's interesting because you kind of look at things a little differently. You can. I mean, that's all these principles. You start to almost see the matrix maybe a little bit when you start to understand these seven principles now.
Well, the unity principle, one company that I feel like has been doing it Fairly decently is ClickFunnels. If you look at ClickFunnels, they essentially built a tribe of people that go, I'm a funnel hacker. Right? They. They created an event funnel hacker Live. If you buy click funnels, they send you a shirt that says, I'm a funnel hacker. They send you stickers that say, I'm a funnel hacker.
You're in the tribe.
You're now in the funnel hacker tribe. Right? That's the unity principle at work. If everybody feels like they're all part of the same tribe, when somebody in that tribe that they relate to as being part of the tribe tries to sell you something, the barrier to buying is a lot easier. Right. You actually see it sort of culturally a lot, too. You see it with.
Like, An Asian family who's going to buy a new house. A lot of times you see they go and find an Asian real estate realtor. Like you see that kind of thing happen a lot where people will go and work with the companies or the professionals that sort of fit into that community that they see themselves as a part of. Right.
It's a likeness between groups. I mean, it's like languages is the same way. Interests you into music. Oh, I'm into music. I mean like literally we bonded over music when you and I met for the first time. So I mean there was already some kind of commonalities there. So it's just one less thing to gain trust with the people around you. But then you start to look at it, you're like, yeah. When you're outside of the group, obviously there's different things to work in. It's very interesting. So definitely studying the unity principle since it is the newest one. And there's. He obviously had really good reason to put it in the book. Is one to understand, I think. And it's timely too. And with technology there's probably a lot more of this unity thing happening because we all have Facebook groups. Are you in the group? Oh, you're not in the group. Oh, we gotta ban him from the group. It's like now we all control these groups. Like we all have the ability to create a following of some sort, a brand around that following language that's used within that group.
Well, we talked about, we talked about, we had an episode not too long ago all about branding and how like Apple is using branding and, and all that sort of thing. And that, that's the unity principle, like in play, like perfectly. Right. Like people identify as an Apple user or an Apple hater.
Right.
And if you identify as an Apple user and all of the sort of things that come with being an Apple user, it's a lot easier to sell you Apple products for sure. Right.
Or hate on Apple if you're a Samsung. You know, in their case.
Well, in that case there was Apple lovers and Apple haters. It wasn't Apple lovers and Samsung lovers.
It was like haters.
It was like a, like a kind of a binary thing. You either love Apple or you hate Apple. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, that was interesting. And then the other thing that we touched on that I think you and I both kind of found fascinating because it's something we sort of unconsciously have been doing was the whole trustworthy worthiness thing, right. Where when you're going to go sell something. Ben Settle used To call this making the Skeletons dance. Right. You present the sort of negative things first, then they trust you because, oh, you just showed me the bad stuff, and then you showed me the good stuff.
That was so good. Right.
And so, like, there's a scene, and I think I've referenced it in the podcast before, but if you've ever watched 8 Mile, like the. Basically the sort of kind of biographical story of Eminem, right. Like, at the end, he does this rap battle, and he steps up, and his very first, like, rap battle, he steps up, he basically disses himself. Like, he sings all of this stuff about, like, you know, I'm short, I'm white, I, blah, blah, blah, like, I'm poor, whatever. He raps about, like, all of the negative stuff in his life. So he takes that power away from the person that he's battling.
Right.
So now that. When. When it goes to the other person's turn, the guy's like, I have nothing to rip on. Right. But that's kind of like a similar. Like, it's obviously not a trustworthiness thing, but I think there's a good analogy there of, like.
Well, actually, it's a perfect analogy because that's under the authority principle, is the trustworthy. That's one of the components. The other one was expertise.
Yeah.
So. And I guess in the Eminem example there, like, he's basically authoritating him. He's establishing authority with the audience. Yeah. Because that was the whole thing. Right? So, like, he's creating trust and a bond with the audience because he's basically putting out all this crap. Yeah. Right there on show for him unexpectedly. Because they weren't expecting that, but nor was the other guy. And then all of a sudden they're like, wait, what? And then he hits them with bombs, too, after that, and then they're just like, okay, yeah, that was unexpected, but I like it.
But I think, like, on our podcast, too, like, we've done that a lot, but it wasn't, like, a methodical thing. We weren't like, hey, let's go share all the bad stuff so that people will like us more or trust us more. We've never done that. We've just kind of always felt like, hey, you know, when it comes to running a business, when it comes to running a podcast, when it comes to being a marketer, there's good shit and there's bad shit. Right.
Like, well, that was the point. That's why I brought up share it all therapy sessions. I brought that up when we're live with Them. And because I was reading this in the book, you know, this. Authority. Authority communicators is what I wrote down here in my notes, at least. And that's where, you know, you can be the most authoritative communicator if you establish your credit or your trust, sorry, your expertise, which are the credentials. And then the trustworthiness is what you're talking about here. So it's like the expertise is kind of like the unsaid. That's just what's known about you. And then this other thing, we have the control to control our language. And, yeah, I feel like naturally on the podcast, we've. I don't know what the heck it was that got us to start sharing a bunch of the stuff that wasn't working over the years.
I don't know, I feel like a.
Couple years back, I think.
I think with our podcast, a lot of it was just being vulnerable to our guests. Because when we're vulnerable to our guests, they tend to open up to us a lot more. That's part of it. I think that was the path that we went down was. And that was a little more methodical. We've had discussions about that in the past where we're like, you know, if we tell our guests that, like, we're struggling with this, or if we share, like, some sort of stat into our business or we share something, that kind of opens us up a little bit, kind of shows that, like, we're not perfect, vulnerable. We're like, we screw up a lot, too. When we start sharing that stuff with the guests, we find that the guests tend to also, in return, really open up to us.
That's right.
And so we were doing that early, and then we started making our, like, therapy session episodes where we just kind of talked about what was going on in our business. And I think that kind of those kinds of discussions just float into those, too. Now it's just you and me having discussions about, like, well, here's what didn't work and here's what did work, and here's what I'm worried about right now, but here's what's going on that's good right now. And, you know, I think it just sort of bled into those episodes a bit.
Yeah. And looking at this, it's like, wow, there's actually a lot of power in that. I didn't realize that was. That was what makes a very effective, I guess, authority with communication. And, I mean, we can all do this. We all have the ability to just show some of the. Some of the Stuff that's not so pleasant, maybe. But then back it up with something that's, like, hugely beneficial and that could be done in so many ways. And obviously in sales conversations, it could be like, yeah, you're really expensive. But. And I love that. Reset that. Like, but, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do so much. All these cool things for you. Yeah. Or we're second, but we're gonna do harder. We're gonna try harder.
Yeah.
You know, I think Avis, that was the thing he referenced there.
Yes. Our podcast sponsorships are expensive, but we're going to get you in front of 500,000 people.
Bam.
I like it. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing.
There we go. Part of the angle right there.
Cool, man. Well, I mean, there was a lot there, so definitely action guides. I don't know if we. We already prompted you, but definitely get the action guides for this episode. You got a couple weeks. At the time of this going live, go to flowchart group.com flowchartgroup.com and plug in your email address when it asks you to. It's going to redirect you to our Facebook group at the same time. So it's a twofer. So plug in your email address and go do that@flowchartgroup.com yes, sir. What else we got?
Easy Webinar, who is graciously sponsoring this episode as they have done for probably 3ish years now.
Thank you, Easy Webinar Crew. And, well, there's a reason. It's obviously because you guys love them, too. So I know a lot of folks in our community are using Easy Webinar and it's. There's a reason why they've been growing and keep optimizing what they're doing. So if you're in the webinar game and you're not aware of these guys, you definitely just give them a peek. But if you're thinking about putting webinars into your biz as another channel for marketing, sales, all that fun stuff, I mean, that's the one stop shop that you need to have in your rolodex.
So there's easywebinar.com hustle.
They are giving you a big discount if you use that link right there. Yes.
So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle hustle and flowchart listeners get a percentage off sales. So definitely go to that link when you go to buy Easy Webinar because you're gonna get a discount.
You will, guaranteed yes. All right. And check us out on YouTube.
Oh, yeah, let's just go with all of them.
All the call to actions are about to begin.
Yeah, let's just keep on going.
So, I mean, you're probably watching us. If you haven't, then go check us out on YouTube, hustleandflowchart TV, and then hit the subscribe button. And that's just going to help us give these great insights to more people. That's our goal, is to put a bigger ripple effect to impact many of people. We got to define what mini is for us, but it's a lot of people, and we're on a warpath to just spread.
I also learned that you could go into the backend dashboard and actually see who is subscribed.
Oh, on YouTube.
On YouTube, there's actually a page where it'll show you who's subscribed and it'll show, like, the YouTube usernames of all your.
Maybe we should reward folks.
So that's what I'm thinking. Like, since we can see recent subscribers.
Bribery.
You can actually go and, like, pick one at random and be like, hey, here's a gift. And we can just, like, give stuff away to people who subscribe on YouTube.
I like that a lot. So I think we will incorporate that. Definitely. To be in the mix, there got to be a subscriber. Yeah. Hustleandflowchart TV. Go find us on YouTube. And those videos are becoming Moy Bian.
Yes.
There we're editing. Magic is just excelling.
This isn't us tooting our own horns. We've got some awesome editors, Jacob and Eric, who are just, like, making really killer videos lately. So, like, the YouTube game just keeps.
Getting upped and it's impressing us, at least. Yeah. But go check it out. And then Pod Hacker, of course, that's our flagship offer where we train anyone who wants to get trained and learn our processes around our podcast. Growing this as a brand, a business, and, you know, growth. Hacking it along the way to get to crazy download numbers. Not that crazy when you know the mechanisms, though.
Yeah.
And then. And then, of course, how to make money across the whole thing.
And I think we brush over this a lot with Pod Hacker, too. But, like, there's templates for everything, right? There are like, literally, if you want an email to pitch a sponsor, we've written the email for you. You want a contract that you want your sponsor to sign. We wrote that for. For you, too. You want a cold outreach to get a guest on your show. We wrote that for you. You want a thank you email for after somebody was on the show.
Done.
We did that for you. You want to know how to, like, ask the right questions when somebody books into your show? Yeah, we already gave that to you as well. So, like, Pod Hacker, we basically gave you everything in a box. I don't want to call it a business in a box because not everybody's in it for the money, but we've given you everything to just go.
It's all in there. Yeah.
Like, virtual box. The documents, the emails, the templates, everything are just in Podhacker for you.
So Pod Hackers, legit. Yeah. So go check it out. Podhacker.com and yeah, that's about that. Because there's a lot more than what we're saying. But we'll leave it right there. Yes, sir. Other than that, share this episode. If you learned anything from this, and I hope you did, I'm pretty.
We just talked to Robert Cialdini. If you didn't learn something from this episode, then, you know, you're probably like a chef that doesn't have anything to do with marketing or something. I don't know.
You live in a box by yourself.
Not that there's anything wrong with chefs. I'm just saying maybe an episode about marketing wasn't the right one for you.
Yeah, but still, you deal with people, right? Or you probably should know about the principles. Yeah.
You might not want to be influenced so easily influenced. So, chefs, welcome.
Always the flip side, right? It was created for folks like them anyway. Consumers.
That's true.
And creators.
All right.
All that to say is share this around. Anyone you think that would love what you just heard or watched, we would be extremely grateful. And go tell people about it and let them know. Or let let us know that you're doing this and we'll hook you up with something cool too. I always want to help the folks that are helping us out. So sweet. Thank you very much. This is a fun time. We'll do it again soon. Boom.
More from Joe
The Next Wave - AI Tool Better Than OpenClaw? + NVIDIA’S $1T Prediction & AI Image Wars
The Next Wave - Meta Replacing Creators? + Sam Altman’s Mistake & 3 Big AI Updates
The Next Wave - NotebookLM Just Killed After Effects? + ChatGPT vs Anthropic War
Are You Treating Podcast Guesting Like a Hobby Instead of Marketing? - Tom Schwab
