In this segment of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr delivers a concise masterclass on influencing people. He frames influence as a psychological skill akin to copywriting, warning that it can be used for good or ill. Parr outlines several classic persuasion principles—most notably the foot‑in‑the‑door technique (starting with a small request to secure agreement to a larger one) and the rule of reciprocity (leveraging a favor to elicit a larger favor). He illustrates these concepts with vivid anecdotes: asking a homeowner to place a tiny sticker before requesting a massive billboard, and offering a free Coke before negotiating a $22,000 motorcycle purchase. Parr recommends two foundational books—Robert Cialdini’s Influence and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People—as essential reading. He also shares a personal story of using these tactics to meet his now‑wife, underscoring the practical, everyday power of influence for business, entrepreneurship, emotional balance, and relationships. The segment balances instructional enthusiasm with a cautionary note about ethical misuse.
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Okay, the fourth and final skill set that I want people to take away from this rambling is how to influence people. Influence— well, you— I'll call it persuasion or influence. It's very similar to, similar to copywriting, but this one's a little bit more psychological. But it's similar. And what most people don't realize is how to get people to do what you want them to do or how to influence them to think how you think. And that sounds evil, but that's not how I mean it. I mean, you could use it for evil ways. I mean, the stuff that you convince people to give to a nonprofit or you convince people of certain morals or why something's bad and something's good, it's the same stuff that you can use to get people to do a lot of really bad things. And so this is definitely a scary skill set to learn. But if you— but the thing is, is that people are like animals. I mean, in the same way that if you show a dog food, you know, what's that Pavlovian experiment where you show a dog food and you ring a bell so the dog starts associating the bell with the food? And so whenever you ring the bell, he starts slobbering. People are the same way. You can— there's all these little tricks that you can do to get people to say yes to certain things or get them to buy into certain things more. So for example, If I'm a politician and I want to put a huge billboard in your front yard, the likelihood that I— of me just knocking on your door and asking to put this big billboard in your yard, the likelihood of you saying yes is pretty low. But if I go in there and I say, hey, can I put this small little sticker on your window? And you— and the likelihood of you saying yes to that is quite high. Now, if I go back a week later and ask you to put this big billboard in your front yard, the likelihood then that you're going to say yes is a lot higher than had I not asked you to put that small sticker because you're already bought in. And there's about 8 or 9 principles just like this of getting you to buy into things. So another one's the rule of reciprocity. And so what that means is let's say that I go out or let's say that you go out of town and you and I'm your neighbor and you ask me to check your mail for you when I'm gone. And I say, yeah, sure, no problem, I'll check your mail. You— I've just done a favor for you. Now you owe me a favor. And this is how humans work. We all— we work on favors. And so now let's say next week I go, hey, look, I watched— I, I, um, I checked your mail last week. Can I borrow your car for a day? The likelihood that you're going to say yes is actually a lot higher because I've already done you a favor. And so the interesting thing about the rule of reciprocity is that people pay it back disproportionately, meaning I can do a really small favor for someone and then I can ask them to do a much bigger favor. And shockingly, a lot of times they'll say yes. And so there's about 8 or 9 of these principles that are incredibly effective for influencing people. Um, another example, I've used this before. I wanted to go, I went and bought a motorcycle for a guy for 3 grand, or he was asking 3 grand for it. And I thought it was— I thought, yeah, I'd be willing to pay about $2,200 for this. And so I went and bought a can of Coke. I bought 2 of them. And when I showed up to the place, I opened up one, I started drinking. I go, hey man, you thirsty? You want a Coke? I was just down the street and I bought one and I thought maybe you'd want one too. He opened it up and he starts drinking it. And I go, cool motorcycle, I'll give you $22,000. And he goes, ah, everyone's been offering me that. I'm not going to do it. But you seem like a nice guy. I'll do it. Fine. And so I don't know if the Coke was the reason, but that's just an example of there's all these little tiny things that if you do 'em effectively, they kind of add up to be pretty effective. And so to learn these things, there's this great book by Robert Cialdini called Influence. If you just Google influence book, you'll see it. His name's Robert Cialdini. Read that. It's— it's— that book changed my life. And the second one, which is pretty famous, a lot of people know it, it's called How to Win Friends and Influence People. Um, that book, I think that book is one of the best-selling books of all time, the best-selling non-fiction books of all time. It was written in the 1930s, 1920s. It's still 100% effective. Uh, so go and read those two books. And I think that if you learn how to influence people, It's really, really, really effective and it will shock you. Now, like, I was a nerd in high school and I liked women. And so I was always just like any other kid. I wanted to go meet girls. I remember reading this book as a kid. I was like, I want them to like me. How do I do that? And so I read this book and I would apply this stuff to meet girls and it worked. I'm married to an amazing woman and she was way out of my league when I first met her and she still is out of my league. And I remember I used some of these things when I met her. And it helped me kind of get my foot in the door. And so this stuff will help you make money. It will help you start a company. It'll help you balance your emotions, or it will help you meet your, your future spouse. It's incredibly effective. And so.
