The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Hello, Book Thinkers family. I have a very challenging question for you. Let's see if you can answer it correctly. If you were to take a simple piece of paper and double it, fold it over on itself 50 times, how tall do you think that stack of paper would be? And I'll give you a second to think about it. Do you think it'd be maybe 3 feet tall, 6 feet tall? It's about how tall I am, maybe a little bit taller. Think about it, 50 times. The actual answer to that question is that the new height of that stack would represent the same distance as here to the sun. That's over 80 million miles tall, and that's very hard for us to understand. But I'll answer how it's possible in just a second. Today's book tip is going to come from *The Tipping Point* by Malcolm Gladwell. I absolutely love this book. The subtitle is *How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference*. You know me, I'm all about the compound effect and leveraging the different variables and the different strategies that surround the compound effect. This book deals with the question of epidemics: How can things spread? How How do different trends spread the same way as a virus? And that question about, you know, the distance between here to the sun, it's very hard for us to think about because when we think of progression, we think about slow, steady progression. Let's use time as an example. We know time as a yardstick because it's very easy to measure. We have minutes, we have hours, we have days, we have weeks, we have months, and we have years. And so it's very easy to measure things and compare things to that same slow, steady passing of time. But the compound effect follows more of a geometric progression. And so it's very hard for us to understand the doubling of different variables. And so think about that same question. If you were to fold over the paper one more time, now it's from here to the sun and back because you've just doubled the distance. In epidemics and viruses, they follow that same kind of geometric progression. And so it's exciting for me to study these things right now because at BookThinkers we have a new mobile application coming out. And so if I can remove that foundation of the slow passing of time and adopt more of a viral mindset, I can understand how to bake in some of these things into the growth of the application or the growth of the business. And so if these concepts interest you, Malcolm Gladwell has 50 more things in this book that'll fascinate you. More metaphors— like, I know everybody has read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, and if you haven't, it's one of my favorite books. And in that book, he gives a similar metaphor. He says, would you rather take $1 million today or a penny that doubles in value every day for 31 days? And because of our human nature, we think, okay, a penny such a small thing. A page, you know, a piece of paper, it's such a small thing. But when that penny doubles in value for 31 days, it ends up being over $10 million. And so throw out, you know, gone are the days of that slow linear progression, and adopt a form of geometric progression into your mind. Understand the concepts, apply them to your business, and you'll be better off. Like I said, if that thing fascinates you like it does me, then read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and all of his other books. They're all fascinating. And that's today's Today's book tip. Bye!