The psychological trick behind getting people to say yes | Robert Cialdini

When we talked, he said, is there anything new and exclusive that you could provide to our Genius network members? And I said, well, you know, I'm writing a new edition of my book Influence. And I have to say that book has been very kind to me, sold a lot of copies, a lot of languages. I was in Poland a while ago, and I have a colleague there, Professor Wilhelmina Vosinska. She said, you know, Bob, your book Influence is so famous in Poland, my students think you're dead. And I thought that was an affirming, yet sobering observation on the excess of the book. And that's one reason I decided to write a revision, something new, because I wanted people to know I'm still kicking, I'm still thinking. And so I just finished writing the chapter on reciprocation, the principle of influence, that says people feel obligated to give back to those who have first given to them. And I thought, well, there were several new pieces of information I thought I could share. And as we go through it, I hope you'll think about these insights and see if they're. If they're available for you to use in your own businesses. But let me just provide a first example that sort of takes us through a validation of how this principle works. There was a study done in a candy shop in Southern California one day. For half of the visitors who came in, the manager met them at the door, greeted them warmly, and escorted them to the candy counter. For the other half, he met them, greeted them warmly, gave them a small piece of chocolate, and escorted them to the candy counter, where they bought 42% more candy than those who didn't get a piece of chocolate. And you might explain that in ways other than the rule for reciprocation that people felt that they had to give back after they had received. You might say, well, maybe they liked the chocolate and they wanted more of it. But if you look deeper into the data, the majority of those 42% more people who bought chocolate didn't buy who got chocolate, didn't buy more chocolate. They bought some other kinds of candy. So it wasn't what they had been given. It was that they had been given something that caused them to change their purchase decisions up to 42%. So what we know from that is that the act of reciprocation triggered the act of giving triggers an act of reciprocation. But that doesn't mean that what we give is unimportant just because people get triggered. Here's what the newest research shows about what you can Give first to your customers, your clients, your partners, your colleagues. That will cause them to want to give back to you at the highest possible levels. That will cause them to be ready to give back to you, be standing on the balls of their feet, waiting for the opportunity to give back to you in a major way. There are three things, three features. If what you give is unexpected, it's not just part of the normal exchange. You know how you get a holiday greeting card and you send one in return. That's not unexpected, that's just normal exchanges. Right. Something that's a surprise elevates the willingness of people to want to give back to you. Secondly is if what you give is seen as meaningful by the recipient, that you've gone to a step to give something to them that's meaningful, right? Then they want to give something meaningful in return to you at a higher level. And finally, if what you've given is personalized or customized to their identity, to their preferences, to their current needs or challenges through the roof, they want to give back to you for that kind of kindness. Okay, so let's take some examples. Here's the first one that has to do with unexpected gifts. There was a supermarket chain that sent coupons to their shoppers regularly in the mail. And sometimes they would include a coupon for a free gift, a free half gallon of milk at the store. What they were disappointed in is that many of these shoppers who redeemed the coupon didn't then buy more other things. Right? So that is their total spend wasn't increased by the fact that they got a gift. So they tried something by a consultant, not me, told them about the research that shows when people get an unexpected gift, then they're more motivated to give back at high levels. So they did an experiment where one day everyone who came into the store got a coupon, a surprise coupon for a half a gallon of milk. Those people, their total spend went up by 10%. You know what 10% increase in total spend for a supermarket is? It's unheard of because the gift they got was a surprise. So what's the implication for you? If you're working online with people, send them a coupon out of the blue for one of your popular items or services, something at least a discount for it. They're going to feel from that surprise more obligated to give something back to you. Okay, so that's the idea of something unexpected elevates the power of the rule for reciprocation. How about this meaningful thing? Let's Go inside your organization. Suppose you have an idea, an initiative that you're in charge of, and if it is successful, it'll elevate the outcomes of your organization. It will elevate your reputation within it. And you want the people inside your organization to get on board to embrace this. And you send them information about this new initiative and you want them to incorporate it into the way they behave. Is there anything you can do to ensure the likelihood that they will do that? Here's a study that was done in the UK that gives us an example. It was done by the British National Employment Service Office who tried to get people who were not working, who were unemployed to apply for and appear for interviews for a new job. And a lot of these folks, they weren't interested in getting off corporate, off welfare. They liked getting their unemployment and they didn't show up for these interviews. They would be scheduled for interviews and they just were no shows. What the researchers asked the office to do is instead of just saying to these individuals in a letter, we have scheduled an interview for a job at such and such a time, on such and such a date with Mr. Jones. Here's the time and the place, please appear. They said in the letter, here's what we did to secure that interview for you. We called the office, we got a return call, we talked with the supervising manager. The supervising manager saw what was the most appropriate fit for you. We contacted that person and we made this appointment. In other words, they talked about the effort that they had gone through to get the appointment. And as a consequence, people spent the effort then to appear for it. They gave back in true reciprocal form what they had received. So what's the implication in your initiative? You need to tell people who you want to expend effort to get on board, the effort that you expended to develop the initiative, how many months it took, how many meetings it involved, how much interplay and revision of the initiative occurred before I'm presenting it to you now, that will cause the them to be spurred more likely into action. Okay, so that's unexpected and meaningful. What's seen as a meaningful effort that you undertook to provide that gift or service first or favor? How about the last of these issues? Personalized, customized to the identity or the preferences or the challenges of the recipient. I like this one. This is the one I think is more important than the other two combined. If you can convince people that what you're giving represents something for them personally, has been customized for them. Right. They will want to give back to you for you and your outcomes. I have a friend who's a consultant who told me about a problem she was having with a particular client, a particular customer who was notoriously a slow payer, when she would send an invoice. And this was true of all of her friends in the industry as well. It would be typically about six months before he would pay. And she said, what can I do about this? What do we know about influence? I said, well, what do you know about this guy? And she said, you know, he lives in a different city, and I really can't find very much about him except that I know that he's an art lover. So here's what we decided to do. When she sent the next invoice, before she did that, she went to the art museums and galleries in her town where he would not have had access. And she got a little postcard that depicted one of the exhibits there at the museum that he wouldn't have been able to see. And she wrote on the back of it from Anna and enclosed it with the invoice. I got an email from her. She said, you won't believe this. That postcard cut the delay in receipt of our money in half. We went from six months to three months for the cost of that postcard because it was personalized to something that she knew he liked. And then it was inscribed to him by her. Now, she didn't need me for this. She took the next step. She found out that not only was he an art lover, he collected modern art. So the next time, and the time after that that she sent him an invoice, right, she included a postcard of a piece of modern art that he wouldn't have had access to right now. This time she didn't write me an email. She called me, she said, you won't believe this. I'm getting paid immediately. Immediately. And all my friends want to know, how did you do this? And she said, I'm not telling them, but I'm telling you. You know how this will work. Now, with an invoice, include something so that in the moment that invoice is open, there's a gift. The rule for reciprocity dominates that situation right there. And that man, in this case anyway, succumbed to the rule of reciprocity. He wrote a check in that moment, right? And I think that's important for us, right? When we. When we give anything, if we personalize, becomes more valuable. Valuable.

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Let me ask, I'll give you one more example. It doesn't have to be just with a preference. It can be with a person's identity. How many of you have seen or maybe your companies do this, that you send. You give gifts to customers and clients. Like a pen, right? With your company's name on it. A calendar at holiday with your company's holidays with your company's name on it. How many of you have seen that or actually participated?

Right.

It's the wrong name. Sorry, it's the wrong name. It's your name. Not that customer's name, not that prospect's name. And that's what happened to me when I get things like this. This is from some company. I throw it in the drawer with 50 other pins with a hundred other, you know, with all these other names on them. And then I had one customer who gave me this pen that has my name on it, my name, it's for me. And on the other side is their name. And you know what I do with this pen? I carry it wherever I go. And every time I take out this pen, I notice and I remember the gift, the personalized gift that was given to me. It wasn't an advertising device, it was a gift, a personalized gift. Everywhere I go it's in my pocket. You know how much this costs to do? Now you might say, come on, I've got thousands of customers. How about for your best customers? How about for your biggest customers? Talk. It takes about $3 to do that. Are your biggest customers worth that? I think so. Okay, let me give you. I'm gonna finish now. In this new book that I'm writing, we have something called Readers Reports where people write who've read the book influence write to me. I ask them to write to me with examples of how one or they've seen one or another of these principles and used on them or by them with great effect. And as regards the principle of reciprocity, here's a reader's report that I got from a guy in Australia. Here's what he says. Not long ago we moved to Australia where my five year old daughter has been struggling to adapt to the new culture and find new friends. We recently on walks around the neighborhood with my wife, she tried leaving gifts in neighbors Letterboxes. These were really just drawings scribbled in crayon and then folded and taped together into a letter addressed to my new neighbors from Carlee at. And then she included her address. And this guy goes on to say, I thought it was pretty harmless. And I was more concerned that it might be perceived as a nuisance. I worried that we would be known as the phantom letterbox litterers. Then funny things started happening in our mailbox. We started finding cards, proper Hallmark cards addressed to my daughter that cost anywhere from $3 to $5 a piece of. Then packets of sweets and small toys started appearing there. If it wasn't for reading your book, I wouldn't have understood this. But the power of reciprocity is unbelievable. She now has a group of friends she plays with in the park across the road every day. Why I like this story is you see each of the three features that amplifies the power of the rule for reciprocity was included in those small gifts. As tiny as they were, they were unexpected. Suddenly there's a letter in the box from this little girl. It was meaningful because she created those letters herself. Right. She went to the. To the effort. Right. And customized for my new neighbors from Carly. Lovely. I love that example. So if we can all do that, Take that counsel. Right. I'm sorry, if we. I don't think this is working either. No. Hello. I'm going to use my old professor voice and just shout this out. If we all can do this right, we will dramatically leverage the power of what we give first. If we can include one or another of these principles, and if we can include all of them. Yeah. And if we can include all of them, then everybody wins. Everybody wins. People get gifts, services, and favors that are for them, that benefit them, that give them joy, and they give back to us what's warranted from those kinds of resources.

I recently have done my own research on your beautiful premise of reason why. And I want to ask you why you think humans are so much more willing to follow a leader or a marketer when you give them the reason why. It's amazing. My clients, they might be misbehaving or not following my rules. If I'm running a big event, which I did last week, and I give them the reason why, and it's magic. So I just wanted you to talk a little bit about reason why. It's been so effective for me as a business owner, with employees, with clients, as a marketer. If you give people the reason why, it's like a magic to their brain about decision making. So if you could speak to that, I would love it.

People need reasons before they act. There's a good evolutionary account of that. We don't want to see ourselves as moving about in some sort of impulsive, spontaneous way. We want to see ourselves as having a rationale for what we do that's consistent with our self concept. So if we give people a reason, and sometimes the reason why we give them can be nonsense, but they still move if there is a reason offered in addition to a recommendation itself, we have to give them that justification for it. And it satisfies that primal need to move forward. Only if you have a strong reason to undertake that step.

Right?

Yes.

Mr. Tim Larkin. Hi.

Hello, Tim.

Obviously, Scott Adams is a huge fan of yours. Read his book Think Bigly and read everything you've done without getting political. I just think it's really interesting, the influence that was used on both sides and what's currently being used and how a lot of it is literally bypassing facts, bypassing things. From a marketing standpoint, it's very interesting. It can be misused, obviously. What's your opinion, a on the current state of influencing people via, you know, the political situation that we have going on right now? And then also, do you agree with Adams on how he looked at Trump's use of persuasion techniques during the campaign?

No. I think Trump was very effective in his use of especially using the principle of social proof that we've just talked about about. For example, before he would begin a rally during his campaign, he would tell the television cameras, turn around. Now, Donald Trump is not known for taking the focus off himself. Right. But he knew enough to say, turn around, look at the crowd, and that legitimized him. He was an outsider. But if all these people were here now in an act of what I'm going to call pre suasion, he had pre suaded the television audience, not his physical audience, the television audience, to say, this guy is worth listening to. Look at all these people who are here listening to him. And I think that he was entitled to that, if indeed he had that kind of ability to bring in that many people. There was a need for change that was afoot. In fact, in that election, in the last 100 years, when one political party has had the presidency for two terms, in 80% of the next election, the other party takes the presidency. It was a change election. It was a change election. He was the candidate of change. Hillary Clinton was the continuity candidate. So he knew that if he could establish himself with Legitimacy. A lot of people want to listen to his vision of change. He was going to get not just the people in that room, but he was going to get a lot of the viewers to say, okay, this guy is worth listening to at this point. Yes, hello.

So not really a question, but testimonial for you is. I was at the meeting in Tempe when you spoke, and we got your persuasion book and we had a small business issue. It wasn't a giant thing, but it was something that was significant enough that I was like, I have to find a solution. So simply by using your information in the subject line of the email, I said, let's work together to find a solution. And it worked.

And it worked great. Yeah. It's amazing how many opportunities go unemployed when we fail to recognize that persuasion is not just about the merits of our case. It's not about what we say or do inside our message. It's also what we say or do in the moment before, before we send the message that puts people in a frame of mind that is aligned with the message they are yet to encounter. I got an email from a guy. He said he was. He had two sons who were Boy Scouts. He sent me a picture of the three of them, and he said, we were trying to sell popcorn to support the Boy Scouts. Outside of supermarkets. We'd set up a table. You've probably seen these things. And as people came out, we would say to them, excuse me, would you like to buy some popcorn? It would support the Boy Scouts. Well, if they wanted popcorn, they would have bought some already. But the question, do you want to buy some popcorn? Focused them on whether they wanted popcorn. Right. He said, then we read your book and we changed the question to do you want to support the Boy Scouts? You could do so by buying some popcorn. We went from 15% to 75% per. And he said the people who didn't buy the popcorn would give us money anyway. They said, we don't really want any popcorn, but we want to support. So where do you focus people first? That's the thing that will come to importance in their mind, because what's focal is seen as more important to us because we are paying attention to it. So as communicators, the key to pre suasion is to focus people's attention on a concept that they're yet to encounter. But they will, when they experience your message now they've been readied for it and they will be more sympathetic to it.

Yes, this is an ethical consideration. And I'm curious When you're trying to persuade or influence someone, is it, is there any limit to how much emotion you use to persuade or influence? Is there any heuristic you would recommend about adjusting that?

You know, I don't think the issue is emotion. If I want to be, if I want something, one cue that I have is how emotionally I desire that thing. So I'm not going to say that, just that because it's emotional, it's off, it's off limits. Here's what I would say.

I guess what I'm asking is, is there any limit to the amount of emotion you bring into the influence or to the persuasive conversation? Just as much as. Yeah, I mean, can you just bring as much as you can to get the outcome you want or do you check the outcome along some value set?

Yeah. So here's what I would say. Emotion is one way people decide what to do. If we just come in there and get them emotional and then lead them in the direction of this product or idea, then I have some problem with that. But if we decide ahead of time what we have is valuable to them, if we know that they will increase their outcomes as a result of the merits of the case, not the emotions supporting it, then I'm okay with getting them excited about this because they're still going in the direction of a properly made decision based on the merits, not the emotions.

Got it.

Thank you.

I'll tell you something, this is an interesting thing. We talk about 25 years that, like it was yesterday, because it feels like yesterday that we were at the Wigwam having dinner with Evan and Bobette and hanging out. But I had an experience a couple of summers ago. I had somebody come to one of my breakthrough blueprint events. And she was 30 years old, young, you know, bright young, you know, go getter marketer. And in that moment I realized, you know, she was born in 1990 is when she was born. And I thought, wow, we've got a whole new generation. I bet a lot of the people that are listening that's even on the zoom here, are, you know, 30ish type of people who weren't around when the first, when Influence first came out. So I think it'd be good if you could maybe tell a little bit about the background of your work because it's been kind of defined your life's work since then.

Well, as your very gracious introduction suggested, I started out as a traditionally trained and traditionally practicing academic doing research on my college campus with college sophomores pretty much as the Students in laboratory settings and recognized there was something missing there. And I needed to get away from those academic constraints, into the environment where the influence wars are being waged every day. After all, we're always either sending out influence appeals or receiving influence appeals of one sort or another every day. And there are certain people who know how to do this because their economic livelihoods depend on, on using the influence process properly and effectively. And it seemed to me that those professions, sales, management, recruiting, fundraising, marketing, advertising and so on, those were the people who really knew what I should be focusing my, my thinking on. So I began to infiltrate their training programs with disguised identity, disguised intent to learn what they had done that produced yes from people regularly. And I spent two and a half years in that undercover activity to learn something beyond the college campus where I had been studying this process.

And I remember you saying how it was initially because you wanted to learn about these things, not to be a practitioner of them, but to protect yourself from them or to help people protect themselves from the sort of illicit use of these, of those principles.

Right?

People could recognize them.

Exactly. Recognize, resist, deflect, defend. But it turned out soon after the publication of Influence, that a lot of people were interested, besides that, in harnessing the process in ethical ways, in morally responsible ways, to move people into positive choices that they could make that they were hesitant to make. They were sitting on the fence. They were, they just were dithering. They weren't thinking through what exactly the costs and benefits might be. The merits of one's case were simply not being presented to them in an optimal way. And so they wanted to know about optimization of the persuasion process for that reason as well.

That's what I found when I first started studying it. Like I've always told you, from the moment I read your book, just the understanding, it was like having a pair of 3D glasses all of a sudden that you see the mechanisms that are at work and why things are turning out the way they are. And this kind of underlying understanding of influence has really helped me in applying the marketing principles. Then that you can overlay on top of that, when you've got an understanding of why people are reacting, how our brains are responding to things. And one of the greatest phrases that you used in the description is that when these are presented, they trigger this click were pattern that it's just, it's almost like an autopilot thing when somebody is presented with this, with into the right circumstances, one of the elements of influence. It's almost like instinctual. We can't Even it's not a. They're not reasoning or thinking it. It's just happening automatically.

And you know the thing about the click that you were talking about, the thing that triggers their response? It can be a very small thing. I like the metaphor of a light switch. Suppose you were in charge of lighting a stadium for a night match or game of some sort or another. And you're down in the bowels of the stadium and there's a switch that you just flip and suddenly everything is illuminated. All of a sudden things are possible that weren't possible before. It didn't take a lot of strength or effort or time on your part. You just had to know how to locate that switch. And then it's just a little bit of effort. And all of the power that's stored in in the power system of that arena flows because of that small thing you did. It goes against the rule of proportionality. There's a belief that in order to get big effects, we need to do big things to change people in substantial ways. It's just not true. There are big power sources inside people, and our job is to locate the switch that flicks them on that then drives their behavior.

Now I'm going to ask you. So when Joe Polish and I did our first I Love Marketing conference, it's all about our eight profit activators. And he asked me a question that was just funny because he asked me, do I know all the eight profit activators? Like, without looking. And I'm going to ask you, just for fun of the. To just maybe quickly name what the six elements of influence are so we can set the context for what we're talking about here.

Sure. Would you prefer that I just label them and how they work, or give an example?

Let's just name them first and then we'll pick and go through some of them because we've got so many stories. Yeah.

The first is the rule of reciprocation. People want to say yes to those people who have given to them first, done a favor, a service provided, a gift. People want to give back. So you go into a room where you want to be more influential. Your first question should not be, who can help me here? It should be, whom can I help here? Whose circumstances can I elevate? Whose outcomes can I increase? They will stand on the balls of their feet wanting to do the same for you. Next principle is liking. Nobody's surprised that we prefer to say yes to those we like. But there are two small things we can do that substantially enhance the Feeling of rapport that people feel with us. And one is to point out genuine similarities and the other is to give genuine compliments or praise as warranted. Next principle is social proof. This is a term, by the way, that's used, we coined it back in with the first edition. Influence. Social proof didn't exist before. I'm so glad because I was thinking of using people proof. Right. What's happened with social media now? Yeah, think about social media. I'm so glad that I used the term social proof. Where the, the fact that a lot of other people are doing something, especially people like us, is the proof that we should do it too. It's not fact based proofs, it's not scientific proof, it's not logical proof, it's social proof. So that's the other thing, simply letting people know of the others who are around them, like them, who are choosing or have been choosing our recommended step forward.

Robert, what year, before you say, what year did the first book come out?

The first book came out in 1984.

Okay. So this was well before anything with the Internet. I mean it was really okay because I was turned onto it in 1996, as you know, so already been out for 12 years. But that was just at the very beginning of the Internet. So I'm sorry for interrupting your train, but.

No, no, that's exactly the people say to me, you know, Bobby, your book is called the Bible of Digital Commerce. There wasn't digital commerce. How did you see, how, how did you foresee this? How did you look forward and see this 40 years, 35 years later? Yeah. And it was by looking back, right, at what were the factors that have always driven behavior in our species. Look back at the evidence to be able to predict how we as a species will behave in the future.

Yeah, love it. Okay, so social proof then. Carry on.

Next is authority. If we're uncertain about something, one way to reduce our uncertainty is to see what the experts are saying and what they are doing. And if we have expertise, we have to be sure that the people who we're trying to move in our direction are properly informed of that before we ever try to influence them. Next principle is the principle of scarcity. Right. People want more of those things they can have less of. It's just the way we are.

Right.

So things that are rare, scarce, dwindling in availability, if we properly inform people of those characteristics, they get a little crazy to have you what?

That's the absolute truth. I've got some. I'm, I'm hyper Vigilant of what's going on in my world because I'm aware of all of these things. And so I always kind of observe the, the situations that I get into and I see how influences that work in my life too. And I'll share a couple of stories with you as we go on, but please continue. Yeah.

Then the next principle is commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent with what they have already said or done, especially in our presence, especially publicly. They don't want to, to say one thing, do another, or misspeak by saying one thing and then contradicting it the next time. They want to be congruent with what they have already made a commitment to. So asking people to take very small steps in our direction causes them to be much more likely to want to continue to take steps, even outsize steps in our direction in the future. And then finally there's a new principle.

That's what I was going to ask you about. So now this is exciting that you got to the point that's masterwork of the six. And then in revisiting now you've discovered a final. A new one.

Yes. And I'm calling it Unity.

I love that.

But it has to do really with membership in a particular group.

Yes.

Right.

A tribe, some in group that defines us. And if a communicator can arrange for us to see him or her as inside that group, one of us.

All.

The influence barriers come down for that communicator. We say yes to those people, we cooperate with them, we believe them, we trust them. Those people who are of us become people who we want to favor and follow.

So my thing as, as being more of a giver and then you know, sometimes in naive ways. Right. I never really liked networking that much because in traditional ways I always just wanted to go and see what I could give. And so I'm, you know, right now taking advantage of learning new skills and really appreciate the book. And I, I'm really excited about the new career that I'm starting and there are certain people that I want to reach out to that feel like in terms of where, where I am and the, in the thoughts that, you know, like in terms of future thought leadership. They feel like they will be my peers and for me to reach out at this point, it's hard. Like I'm not sure exactly how to reach out without having taker energy since I'm just basically starting and you know, these are more established people. Like for example, Annie Lala in the book I think is just one of the Most brilliant minds around love. And I really want to be in conversation with her. I'm starting a podcast and it's in pre production and it, you know, I don't know how to sort of like go in with giver energy when there is that space where, you know, I'm not, I'm not at that point right now at that level career wise and how to make those contacts in a way that is an intaker energy and is in giver energy and feels good to everybody.

Well, here's what I would say and first off, we all start out with where we're at and then we're going to go go to a different level. We have to develop the skills and capabilities and the resources in order to do it. So what everyone has, if they don't have time, they have money, they have attention, they have energy, they have effort. At this gym I work out at, there's a big thing on the wall that says effort is your responsibility. So what most people that are really awesome, cool and appreciate is when someone actually knows their work. So if someone I get, you know, I cannot tell you how many it's. It's now in the thousands of podcast and interview requests over the last decade that we have said no to because people show up with just a lot like, hey, I want to interview. They don't even like, you know, they haven't listened to any of our podcast. Dean gets the same thing. You know, people request they haven't listened to, they don't cite a single episode that they've listened to. They do not give sincere compliments. It's like those spam things you'll get on social media. Would you really like to grow your following in your channel? We're an agency that. And it's like how, how dumb and in like how much of an amateur do you have to be to even try to fake sincerity if you can't, if you don't even have any, you know, but, and I talk about in the book as, you know, like, you know, flattery works, but it's not really, it's like cotton candy. It's not really sincere. And so one of the things that anyone that's a genuine giver, if someone reads that like for Annie, if you wrote Annie a sincere letter like, you know, I really like your work and here's why that would be, that could be a way to get her attention. Secondly, and I don't mean just the attention that'll get her attention, but to really want her to be is to, is to write Someone a letter if you have. And I'm not saying making this up. I mean it needs to be real in or you'll develop a reputation of being a taker. But if you were really impacted by someone, like they were a domino for you, or you found their material just useful and interesting, if you wrote them an ad saying, hey, I read your book or I looked at your website and here's three things that I think would be valuable to you, and I wanted to provide these to you because I have an ask, and I don't just want to ask you blindly. I admire you, I think you're smart. I'm trying to build a following here, and I love to have you be one of my guests. And if you can, either now, in the future. But here's what I got for you. And if I'd love for you to say yes. And if you're not able to, what could I do? Or what would need to be required in order for you to say yes to my request? So you can show up with value, you can show up with connections, you can show up with ideas and strategies. If you can get the physical address of somebody and mail them something that is sincere, I mean, here's the wrong way to do it. Like, people often will send me their books that have never read any of my books, and they'll ask for a book blurb, and they don't. They're not a client. I have no relationship with them. I don't even know who the hell they are. And they're sending me a book, asking me to blurb a book. And it's just like, you know, I charge $6,000 an hour when I do consulting. And I like, do you want me to. Do you want to pay me to read your book? And even if you're paying me, I wouldn't read the book if I'm not interested in the topic. And they don't. And a lot of people send me stuff that they could find out on social media what the hell I'm interested in versus what I'm not. And so you come across as a really sincere, genuine person, or you wouldn't even have asked the question. Like, that you don't want to come across. So that sort of energy is just good energy to begin with because you can sense it, that you don't want to be like, you read my whole book, right? I actually want to help you because you read my whole book for no other reason that I like people that actually read my stuff, right? And so what I did in the beginning, like with carpet cleaners, I'm going to share something with you and you can extrapolate this into a million different ways. There was all these carpet cleaners that were selling something nobody wants to buy. I had to figure out how to successfully persuade people that don't have that don't want to buy carpet cleaning. Nobody. Some things are bought. You were going to go buy food, you're going to go buy clothes, you're going to go buy entertainment. Some shit has to be sold, right? No one wants to hire a carpet cleaner. No one's like, really can't wait till the cat pees in the corner so I can call a carpet cleaner. Like, no one's doing that. So I had to figure out how to sell this stuff. So I would read books like Influence by my buddy Dr. Robert Cialdini. Gina, if you could please post the interview I did with Robert in the chat, that would be great. Watch my interview with, with, with Robert Chris Voss on negotiation. Gina, I'll ask you if you could post an interview I did with Chris Voss in the chat. These are all trainings on, on how to, you know, be better at this sort of stuff. But with the carpet cleaners, they always needed to get into. And now I'm really going to be behind on my. I do this to myself. This is one of my crypto kn is I go too long. So I would identify Mr. And Mrs. Bigwig and all the carpet cleaners they're competing with were doing quotes and estimates and they. And everyone does a quota estimate. And what I would say is like they would run across the gatekeeper and they, they weren't talking to the decision maker. And it was like a terrible way to present themselves. And I said, find the decision maker who they are, man or woman, and find their shoe size. And this was before the Internet existed. It was way harder to find information on people prior to the Internet. Now you can just do searches and literally in a matter of minutes you can find things about people that before took hours to find. And I would say, get a pair of shoes. And back then it was like Reeboks or Nike were the two big. When I first started doing this, those are the two big shoe brands. Now there's a million. But I said find their shoe size and then write a letter that says dear so. And so I needed a way to get my foot in the door and I wanted to come up with a clever idea to meet you. And so I wanted to send you one shoe. I'd love to meet with you next week, either on Tuesday or Thursday, because I've got ways that you can really make the, you know, the environment of your building look better. And it was usually done for commercial work, for commercial carpet cleaning. And they would send them one shoe by a uniform courier, so the person had the sign for it. And I said, most of you are not going to do this because it's logistically involved, but if you do, you're going to get. If you send out five to 10 pairs of shoes, you're probably going to get calls from between one to three people, and they're going to call you, they're going to meet with you, and they're going to hire you. And I would tell this to groups of people. You'd be lucky if one out of 100 did it. But every single person that would do it, they would always get the call and they would always get their foot in the door. And they basically said in the letter, I needed a way to get my foot in the door, and I'll bring the other shoe and the other. No matter how rich they are, no matter they want the other shoe. And it became a very clever. But here's the other thing. It doesn't just hit the emotional side of someone wanting something. What it does is it actually demonstrates this is a very creative person, and I want to meet them. So you could send whatever you want to send. It doesn't necessarily need to be a shoe, but. But if you can send physical things or you send a really sincere video and you just start developing rapport, and you say, look, I don't have a lot to offer you right now, but I'd love to have you on my show, and here's why. And you give them the real reasons why or whatever the request is, and if you can offer anything that they're looking for is because here's the thing. You know, what needs solved. Everybody has some pain or angst in their life. And if someone could show up and bring some relief or solve it, that's a way to make it happen. So those are some of the exercises I would do. And then finally, since you have my book, the McKay 66, that's Harvey McKay's formula. If you actually did that with, like, the top five people that you want to meet, and you'll meet every single one of them, I mean, anyone, no matter who they are, if they're. If they're reachable, like, you know, I mean, and obviously don't, you know, don't try. Everyone wants to meet Oprah. Everyone you know, and frankly, some of the most interesting, valuable people on the planet are not famous. And knowing famous people, and I know a shit ton of them, has nothing to do with reaching opportunities. It's really finding people that you can collaborate with and that you can be useful with. And that's where genius networking comes in. The reason I call it genius networking is it's not normal networking. It's finding people that have skills and capabilities that will collaborate with your skills and capabilities. And together you can create something and you can facilitate them getting what they want. And that's the list you make. First. The list is, what do they. Who are they? What's their skill? How can I help them? Make that list of all the ways you can help them and then help them with that. And then as a result of doing that, they'll probably help you. Does that help?

It helps a lot. Thank you.

Today I'm going to talk about how to become a key person of influence. Because I actually figured out I had been doing this for a long time, but when I met a bunch of the other sharks, and there's now 10 of us, and each one of these, you're going to see some new ones. John Paul DiGiorio on the end there, and Steve Tisch. This year coming out, Jeff Foxworthy was a shark for a season. I did three seasons, 175 segments. I learned a lot from these sharks, learned that they were key people of influence in their industry. And so I said, you know what? Let me write down how I became a key person in my industry. And it was really kind of simple when you think about it. It's the old 9010 rules. 10% of the people make 90% of the income. But actually, really, today, it's almost 2% of the people are making 98% of the income. So, you know, that's, you know, this middle 10% actually have 90, but it's now becoming even closer to a 98.2percent ratio. So there's five things that I say that you need in order to become this key person of influence. We're going to go into each one of these very shortly today because of the time constraints, but get a perfect pitch, publish your ideas, productize your value, raise your profile, and also then seek great partnerships. And I think that's one of the reasons why many of us are here today, is to seek great partnerships. So the perfect pitch, I have a formula I use for this. T's, please, and C's are the three steps of that. And the guy that gave Me, the most unbelievable perfect pitch. The first time I realized it, his name was Arnold Morris and he was at the Philadelphia home show with the knife. He's cutting through a Coca Cola can, then a hammerhead and a muffler. And then he said, it's so powerful, this knife, that it can still cut through a tomato and you can read the Sunday newspaper through it. This was called the Ginsu knife. I said, Arnold, that pitch you just gave, I'm going to put it on tv, take a camera, capture it and take it to millions. Because he'd only been taking it to 10 people at a time for 30 years. He had a perfect pitch. But I said, let's take it to the masses. That was the perfect pitch. Not somebody like this that came on Shark Tank and couldn't even talk. Okay, so that makes a bad pitch when you cry. All right. In fact, you know, when I got done with Arnold, we went back to the Philadelphia home show and watch this. Billy Mays, I'd like to introduce to you the Washmatic International. It's the only washing system in the world that works direct from a bucket. Who cares? All right, all right. That was not a good pitch.

All right.

That was Billy's first infomercial. God bless him. I did that infomercial. Fortunately, I didn't lose a lot of money, but I learned early on you need to create a perfect pitch. And here is Billy's last infomercial. The Dole Sol is no ordinary saw. It uses counter rotating technology to cut through all types of material with unmatched safety, speed and precision. It's a process that took eight years and cost millions of dollars to develop. That's a perfect pitch. $100 million in sales. God bless Billy Mays. His family still gets a royalty to this day now that he's passed away a few years ago, but that when he passed away. 62 products on television when he died. God bless him. So, yeah, there's other people we can talk about. Lazo Freeman, a personal trainer over in the uk, came to us and I said, what's your perfect pitch, Lazo? I get a kick from motivating individuals to be the best they can be. That sounds a little bit generic to me. Not a great pitch, but this is what we turned it into. I only do exclusive radical 12 week body transformations with business leaders, celebrities and public figures who achieve amazing things at work. But ordinary things naked.

Okay, how about that one?

All right, this guy has a 12 week waiting list now for people that want to use his services. That's what I call a perfect pitch. And by the way, you should have a 30 second perfect pitch. A 60 second, a 90 second, 120 seconds. You never know when and who, who you might have to make that pitch to. T's please and C's Publish now. There's a lot of people here. I've seen a lot of people have their own books already. So yes, having a book is great. I had my own book and that helped me get on Shark Tank. Actually, I can talk a little bit about that afterwards maybe. But books and blogs and newsletters, trade journals, newspaper articles, magazines. Publishing creates credibility. And without a doubt, I know there's, I see folks here that go on the Today show. We know who we are here and things like this. So everybody knows they need to get the publishing credibility because you know, you keep your customers. If you have a newsletter that comes out, you get new customers. We talked about credibility. You stand out from the competition, you enhance your reputation as an expert, you build your brand. And it has a longer shelf life than other marketing because you can give your book out, your newsletter continuity, you can do clubs, et cetera. So yes, publishing is very, very powerful. And this lady, Hadi Hassan, she was a struggling female plumber and she said, what can I do? I don't know. What, what do you have for me? I said, well, let's come up with something. We've now published over 350 books for people through our organization now. And what we did with Hadi is we said the Joy of Plumbing. And that book now has taken off. It's a best seller over in the uk. This book has positioned her. Now she started her own association. She does radio talk shows, television shows. She's got a 16 DVD set of DVDs that she sells on an ongoing basis. And she now is a rock star plumber. So publishing has put her into a whole new league. Third step, productize. Because a product never sleeps. I have friends that are chiropractors, doctors, lawyers. They can't bill while they're sleeping. All right? So I say you've got to productize your assets. We live in a global idea economy right now. And productizing is what it's all about. In fact, when I met Tony Little, he was a bodybuilder, personal trainer. All right, look at Tony. He looks a little different today, but Tony Little, I said, how do you make money, Tony? I get $40 an hour. I start at 5 o' clock in the morning and I work people out all day long. So at the end of the day he made a couple hundred, 500 bucks, maybe if he had 10, 12 sessions like Tony. How can we unpack your valuable IP? He said, Kevin, he said, what I do, I can target train women primarily if they got a little bit of arm fat here. Love handles, glutes, you name it, I target train them. I said, boom. Okay, brought him into the studio. We shot six one hour DVDs, created the target training DVD set. Here it is. $300 million in sales for Tony Little. He was getting a check for about a million dollars a month actually at one time. So this was all by productizing his valuable ip, Tony's done billions. We went on to do the Gazelle with Tony Little, which actually has now done over $1 billion in sales by productizing. Here's another guy, Jack Lalanne, he's a healthy old fitness guru. Another guy that's passed away, God bless him. But I said, jack, he hadn't made any money. This is about 20 some years ago. And I said, what do you do to stay so healthy? I drink juice every day. Okay, Jack, here it is. We're going to make you now a healthy and wealthy old Fitness Guru. Okay, $1 billion in juicer sales. Jack Lane, unpack your valuable IP. Fourth thing. Profile. Raise your profile. So important, you know. Let's talk about the evolution of the industry. It took radio 38 years to get to 50 million people. Took television 13 years. The Internet four years, iPod three years, Facebook two years. But guess what? This guy, he did it in six months to a billion people. Psy. Okay, the Gangnam guy, this guy just blew the market away because what did he do? He didn't use the old media. A few channels broadcasting to millions. He used new media, which is millions of channels broadcasting to a few. And that is the new big. Small is the new big. Big companies have a harder time competing against you because just like this right here, I have a 35,000 square foot studio. I shoot my infomercials. I can shoot the same quality on this little iPhone that I do in my studio. And that's where we're going with this because here's a guy, Phil Gere, 810 million views. What mattered to me today, Michelle Phan, 580 million views. She gets seven figure sponsorships from companies that pay her to show how to put makeup on for Asian girls. And Jenna Marbles. Over a billion views. How to trick people into thinking you're good looking. So you know, who would want me on tv? A lot of people say, well, if a blanket with arms can become a TV sensation. So can you. The Snuggie $400 million in sales, 26 million units. Last thing, partnerships. And I'm out of time so I'm just going to wrap it up here. I went to Guthy Ranker. They do beauty, I do hard goods. I said let's form a venture. We'll take people that come to you with hard good products, bring them into the venture. People come to me with beauty products. We formed a 5050 joint venture, very successful. Everybody in this room has the ability to partner. Just like Invent help which helps inventors. They come to us. We have a program where we line up 7,000 companies to invest in inventors ideas. And that's because we have engineers, we have manufacturing companies, we have every kind of company that can help an inventor with his idea. It's all about partnerships. And that's what everybody hears here today, this week to do.

Yes, something we're doing in house too that may be a benefit. Tying this in is, you know, talking about increasing capabilities as many of us are, as entrepreneurs are looking to do more with less. Most people are probably familiar with sites like Elance, Guru, Freelancer, that type of thing. I see a lot of people will hire and source out. I'm looking for this person to do this and then you have to go through. It's almost like hiring someone in house and it becomes a taxing type of thing, complexity wise. One of the things we've been doing for about six months from designing websites to writing copy, to creating tests against our control pieces in the full page ads with magazines, I mean a whole variety. I bet you we've done at least 20 projects recently. We were working on a campaign with Ariana and we wanted a redesign of a site and so we submitted it not just to hire somebody but as a contest. The way Joe talked about it went through the crowdsource blueprint process, posted it up $150 contest. We got over 40 different versions submitted to us to pick and choose the best. Now we didn't go with any of them but we pulled out an idea from this one, an idea from that one and we rewarded the number one which I recommend, guarantee a prize winner in it because you'll get more people engaging in it. But think about writing copy, think about designing mail pieces, designing ads. You know, all the different entire Joe talked about is instead of looking to hire it, look at it from a perspective of running a crowd sourced contest to make that happen. It's a huge multiplier Huge capability. I mean, we're seeing huge dividends here in the company overall, just using it on that small of a scale. We're getting ready for 2015 to really take it to a whole other level with marketing, advertising, the way Joe described.

What if we did an I Love marketing meetup specifically designed on this idea where everyone would have to fill out the thing if I gave it to you, but you had to pay 100 bucks to come to the meeting. How many of you would do it?

Absolutely.

Okay, so if you're interested in that, then give us a card and we'll do it. And what I'll do is I'll give 100% of that money to Charlie here because she has to freaking organize these things and do that. And you can spend the money on food or drugs, even hookers if you want. I don't really care. Yeah, but I think we should do that. And then we'll figure out if people, if they pay. If they pay more attention and that sort of thing, because this idea is completely and utterly badass.

Do you want to talk about Tony and what you're doing with this?

No, no, no. Just because of time. Just because of time. So, you know, but that's, I mean, that's just, that's where my thinking is right now. And we have several very high level people that are putting together contests and we're putting it together. So over the next few months, we're going to learn, we're going to have real campaigns that we launch kind of similar. Yeah, yeah. He did the EAS physique transformation. They ended up becoming the body for life contest. Contests are huge.

Right?

Well, see, everything measured and reported, you know, it's the whole. Everything measured improves. Everything measured and reported improves exponentially. If you look at any sort of contest from super bowl, imagine the Olympics without gold medals. How hard would people work? You know, we live in a world, you know, it's like the pussification of America with a lot of stuff. And that's a technical term, by the way. Way. But it's where, you know. Yeah. Oh, like, you know, everyone, you know, it's like this equality thing. No, you actually. People win, people lose. And whoever kicks ass wins big. You know, and if you and people love a challenge, I mean, you know, you want to give people a reason to work hard. Like, one of the things I learned in contests was I can teach goal setting. I can teach marketing to people. The moment I said to a carpet cleaner, if you do a really good job systemizing your marketing and Your advertising or increasing your net or gross profits. Because my two categories when I first started this, and it was a spokesperson contest. Because what I learned is if you charge people money to just try to buy things from you so that they can win, you're running a lottery. But if you have a spokesperson contest where they're competing to be a spokesperson and it happens to come with prizes, that's how you do it legally. Now, there are certain states that you can't do any contests at all. However, there's plenty that there are, so it doesn't matter. What I learned is that I can teach people marketing strategies. And I sold them in books and courses and still do. I mean, we sell courses like all these marketing strategies. If you want exact step by step things, sample sales letters, copy, we sell all that stuff. If you guys don't want to recreate the stuff, you can give us money. We'll give you some of that stuff. What I learned is that the moment you start giving someone an opportunity to win a prize, they just work harder. It ignites something inside people that cannot be ignited any other way. There's a community. Even when you see all these charity races, you know, you give people a goal. Here's what we're trying to do, you know? You know what I loved about the. What was the Ice Bucket Challenge? That was such an intrusive sort of contest? Because I thought, well, more of a. Not even called a contest, but it's like you have people on Facebook. It was a direct response campaign. Okay? You have 24 hours to dump a bucket of ice on your head and share this with how many people? Was it three? Call them out. And people are sitting there just trying to waste their time on Facebook like most of the country does, just kind of going through. And all of a sudden they've been called out and challenged. And all of a sudden it created this massive viral campaign. And if you just look at the aspects of that, it created a sense of urgency. 24 hours. You had to call someone out, right? And if they didn't do it, they look like an asshole. Or at least you want them to think that. I had a million people call me. I didn't dump a bucket of ice on my head. Fuck that. But what I did do is I freaking go to Dean Graziosi, who calls me out. Tony Robbins and Brendan. Brendan Bouchard. And I called the Make a Wish foundation because I gave Bill Phillips the idea to donate money to Make a Wish. And because of my idea, he became the single largest individual contributor in the history of the world to make a wish. So I know the CEO of Make a wish and everything. The main headquarters of Make a Wish is here in Phoenix. So I go down there, and Dean did this contest. He goes, I'm going to give money to als. But what I'm going to do, I want to raise $100,000 for up to $100,000 for make a Wish. And so whoever shares this video, I'll donate a dollar. Whoever likes it, I'll donate a dollar. Whoever shares it, I'll give $2 up to 100 grand. Within a matter of, like, two weeks, he had over 5 million views on that video through Facebook. And so he raised his 100 grand, but now he's going to multiply it and make a wish. I gave them the idea because they have this blue day coming in. I think it's in April of 2015. They want the world to know about Make a Wish on blue. So I show them this freelancer video. I said, here's what you do. You crowdsource. You have freaking people, wear blue T shirts, do anything blue, and just share it. Whoever does it good is going to win all this stuff. But they're not even going to win money. They're going to donate money. I go, it'll be the biggest thing that's ever happened to Make a Wish. Now, because nonprofits and charities are very bureaucratic, we'll see if they can get this shit done. But Dean is actually, Dean himself will probably end up donating $500,000 just to make a wish. With the way he's spending it any, he'll do more one individual using marketing than, like, half of their employees combined. So anyway, there's so many different ways that you can spin this stuff, so I will shut up because we're past time and we're going to do this parody. So was that a good use of your time? Okay.

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