218: The Catalyst by Jonah Berger

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike. Welcome back. How was your conference?
2. 00:00:03 It was great. I was at the newsletter marketing summit in Austin.
3. 00:00:08 Pro-show listeners just heard me talk about my trip to the painted porch bookstore,
4. 00:00:14 which is Ryan Holiday's bookstore in Bastrop, Texas.
5. 00:00:17 I think that's the name of the town. It's not actually in Austin proper.
6. 00:00:20 It's a bit of a drive to get there, but very cool bookstore.
7. 00:00:24 And yeah, it was, it was a, a lot of fun.
8. 00:00:28 It was a kind of a whirlwind 48 hours, but I learned lots more than I ever could have imagined
9. 00:00:35 about newsletters and changes coming to mind shortly.
10. 00:00:40 I'll mention that my newsletter, I sent it today as we record this.
11. 00:00:45 And I shared a couple of the lessons that I learned from that, that conference.
12. 00:00:49 And I, that I think are generally applicable to anybody who's interested in PKM
13. 00:00:53 and wants to use it to be more productive or creative.
14. 00:00:56 There were some really cool people, really cool sessions.
15. 00:00:59 And in that newsletter, I also included my sketch notes from the conference.
16. 00:01:03 So I published those, I mean, I send out the newsletter.
17. 00:01:07 Obviously, they also publish them publicly.
18. 00:01:09 So I'll include the link to the newsletter that people are interested in taking a look at that.
19. 00:01:14 Yeah, Mike, as you're thinking about which of these conferences you go to
20. 00:01:18 and what you engage in, how do you make your decisions?
21. 00:01:21 Like what, what makes a conference rise to the level of like committing your time to it?
22. 00:01:26 The travel, the cost, all of that stuff.
23. 00:01:30 Good question.
24. 00:01:31 I do not know other than like, I see something and I'm like, that looks interesting.
25. 00:01:38 The newsletter marketing summit, I didn't actually go there because, you know,
26. 00:01:42 I want to learn a bunch about newsletters.
27. 00:01:45 It was more so I saw some of the people that were going to be there and they were my people.
28. 00:01:50 So I got it.
29. 00:01:52 I don't know how to say this without sounding a little bit precious,
30. 00:01:55 but it's a little bit lonely being an internet creator in Wisconsin.
31. 00:02:02 Yeah, that doesn't sound precious at all.
32. 00:02:04 That seems very, very understandable.
33. 00:02:06 Okay.
34. 00:02:06 So yeah, every once in a while, I just got to get out of here and get around some people who are
35. 00:02:11 doing the same sort of thing that I do.
36. 00:02:14 And yeah, saw Jay Klaus, saw Nathan Berry, saw Chanel Basilio,
37. 00:02:18 who are all some of my favorite creator people on the internet.
38. 00:02:23 I'm in all of their communities and courses.
39. 00:02:26 So yeah, it was really cool.
40. 00:02:29 I actually got to get coffee with Jay Klaus one morning.
41. 00:02:32 Picked his brain about community platforms.
42. 00:02:35 So yeah, I met Stacey Harmon for the first time.
43. 00:02:39 She's kind of the Evernote expert.
44. 00:02:42 And Evernote, by the way, she's kind of filling me in because I was familiar with
45. 00:02:45 the path and being acquired by bending spoons and didn't sound like it was going real great.
46. 00:02:49 But kind of I've been noticing from the outside lately, it seems like they're doing
47. 00:02:53 the right things and they're making a lot of improvements.
48. 00:02:56 And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm part of the partner program.
49. 00:02:58 And they've been including me on all of their roadmaps and stuff.
50. 00:03:01 And she's like, they're really listening.
51. 00:03:02 They're implementing a lot of this stuff.
52. 00:03:04 She's like, every note's got a bright future.
53. 00:03:05 I'm like, cool.
54. 00:03:07 Never would have guessed it would turn out that way.
55. 00:03:09 But yeah, I had no idea it even existed anymore.
56. 00:03:12 Like I did not know that it was even a thing anymore.
57. 00:03:16 Yeah, so yeah, I got to meet Stacey and a bunch of other people.
58. 00:03:21 I actually met Stacey at impromptu dinner thing after the conference at Terry Blacks,
59. 00:03:27 which is like one of the famous barbecue places in Texas, where you have to like get
60. 00:03:31 there, stand in line and the line wraps, you know, all the way outside the restaurant,
61. 00:03:35 around the restaurant, around the parking lot.
62. 00:03:38 Just to get some meat.
63. 00:03:40 And you just hope they still have what you want when you walk up to the door,
64. 00:03:43 because they're probably one of those places where it's like, oh, we sold out of that 15
65. 00:03:46 minutes ago and we only make as much as we need.
66. 00:03:48 Well, they, I mean, I was there at 7 o'clock.
67. 00:03:50 They just keep making it.
68. 00:03:51 I mean, they've got a whole bunch of these smokers that are running all the time.
69. 00:03:55 So yeah, it was delicious.
70. 00:03:58 Yeah, awesome.
71. 00:03:59 All righty.
72. 00:04:00 Before we get into our book, let's do some follow up.
73. 00:04:03 I will start.
74. 00:04:05 I was supposed to think about the things I want to learn and how do I apply the
75. 00:04:11 concepts from the last book into that? So that would be, you know, space repetition,
76. 00:04:16 interleaving, varying what's in there.
77. 00:04:20 I focused in on this one for this week in terms of it actually ties into some,
78. 00:04:26 some things I'm doing in class and with my, with my students.
79. 00:04:31 But I think I'm going to think about scripture and how do I develop my own app to do space
80. 00:04:39 repetition to interleave different types of scripture and then to vary the,
81. 00:04:43 the scripture that I'm trying to memorize.
82. 00:04:45 So I'm going to hold it off for there because I don't want to like,
83. 00:04:48 you know, it's still in the development.
84. 00:04:49 But like, I'm thinking about how do I develop an app that allows me to, to do that stuff.
85. 00:04:54 So I'm going to say green check mark on this one.
86. 00:04:57 Like I think I've achieved a green check mark because while I didn't think about
87. 00:05:01 all the things I want to learn, I would think about one.
88. 00:05:04 And I, and I thought pretty hard about it.
89. 00:05:05 So pretty cool about that. Yeah. How about you kudos to you.
90. 00:05:10 So mine, I guess technically it's done because I did explore it.
91. 00:05:15 That it's actually in the thing, exploration is the goal.
92. 00:05:18 And that's the space repetition via read wise.
93. 00:05:21 So I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to use read wise,
94. 00:05:27 but I am not going to use it for book notes at all.
95. 00:05:31 I'm going to use it as a place where I collect different feeds and things.
96. 00:05:38 And as a like research type of thing, that's one of the things that I set out to me from the
97. 00:05:44 newsletter marketing summit was like people are doing all this, this research and they're
98. 00:05:48 kind of aggregating the things that are important and into a single place.
99. 00:05:52 And it just makes sense that RSS would be a part of that for me.
100. 00:05:55 And then from there using the highlights, piping those over to obsidian using something
101. 00:06:02 like the obsidian web clipper, I think is going to be the workflow there.
102. 00:06:07 I don't want everything, you know, in obsidian.
103. 00:06:09 I just want like the bits and pieces that are really important from the stuff that I'm
104. 00:06:13 I'm reading that I want to like take action on.
105. 00:06:15 And this is the type of stuff where it's like, for example, every time I send a newsletter,
106. 00:06:20 I've got a something cool section.
107. 00:06:22 And one of the things in addition to the sketch notes this time,
108. 00:06:25 was the announcement about obsidian being free for commercial use that that's cool.
109. 00:06:30 So like I might highlight a section out of that clip it to obsidian or clip.
110. 00:06:34 So that when I sit down to write my newsletter, I've got that, you know, that the piece of text
111. 00:06:38 that's available.
112. 00:06:39 None of that is implemented yet.
113. 00:06:41 So there's still some work to be done there, but I do think that read wise is going to stick.
114. 00:06:48 We'll see though.
115. 00:06:50 Nice.
116. 00:06:51 Awesome. Are you ready to bounce into today's book?
117. 00:06:56 I am. Let's do it.
118. 00:06:58 All right.
119. 00:06:58 So today's book is called the catalyst how to change anyone's mind.
120. 00:07:02 It's by Jonah Berger.
121. 00:07:05 Jonah is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
122. 00:07:10 He's written multiple different books.
123. 00:07:13 So one's called contagious one called an invisible influence.
124. 00:07:15 Then there's the catalyst. He does research and work on word of mouth,
125. 00:07:22 social influence, customer behavior, consumer behavior.
126. 00:07:26 The catalyst is all about changing people's minds and thinking about changing people's minds.
127. 00:07:32 We thought this won't be a good one.
128. 00:07:33 This is actually a recommendation from one of the bookworm listeners.
129. 00:07:38 We took this as a recommendation and just to kind of throw a plug out here,
130. 00:07:43 we actually have a link in the show notes that if you'd like to recommend a book for us to read
131. 00:07:47 on bookworm, you can feel free to go hit that link, fill out the little form.
132. 00:07:51 It'll recommend the book for us. Throw an Amazon link in there.
133. 00:07:54 That way we know what version of the book that you're wanting us to read.
134. 00:07:58 And then we'll take a look at it. We can't promise that we're going to read them all,
135. 00:08:01 but we'll take a look at it and we'll evaluate whether or not we think
136. 00:08:04 it makes sense for the bookworm audience.
137. 00:08:06 We did get a couple of those and I think your next book actually is going to be a listener
138. 00:08:11 recommendation. It is both a listener and a mic recommendation.
139. 00:08:17 My favorite books are the ones I don't pick if I'm being very, very honest with you.
140. 00:08:20 I don't know why. I just like reading books that other people suggest.
141. 00:08:24 It makes it fun for me.
142. 00:08:27 Back to the catalyst. We're going to think about basically changing people's minds.
143. 00:08:31 First off, Mike, do you have any thoughts on the catalyst going into it?
144. 00:08:38 Were you interested? Was it like, this is going to be okay?
145. 00:08:42 Like what was your thought going into it?
146. 00:08:45 I was a little bit apprehensive to tell you the truth because the subtitle,
147. 00:08:50 "How to Change Anyone's Mind." This has shades of Robert Green to me.
148. 00:08:57 The image is like a butterfly, but the wings are like a brain.
149. 00:09:06 I mean, it's kind of cool artistic style, but just the whole communicated message there
150. 00:09:15 is sort of free your mind. I don't know. It just kind of rubbed me the wrong way going into it.
151. 00:09:22 I will say though that that's not accurate for the rest of the book.
152. 00:09:26 So I don't want to set a picture here, which is going to paint a negative impression for me of
153. 00:09:36 the rest of the book because I think there's a lot of really great stuff in here.
154. 00:09:40 So maybe if it was up to me, I would redo the title, subtitle, and the cover.
155. 00:09:47 So I went into it going, "Oh, this book sounds great. This sounds really interesting because I
156. 00:09:51 like the idea of how to interact with people, how to change their mind, not in a manipulative way,
157. 00:09:58 but in a convinced them, arguments, sell them type of a thing."
158. 00:10:03 The thing that made me a little bit nervous about it is the reviews. I always like to look at the
159. 00:10:07 reviews. And the reviews are really mixed on this book. So the Amazon reviews got it at 4.6
160. 00:10:13 with a fairly high number of ratings, but the Goodreads review drops it below a 4.
161. 00:10:18 And anytime a book drops below a 4, if it's not really niche, I start to get worried because I'm
162. 00:10:24 like, "Well, hold on." Below a 4, you've got as many 3s as you have 5s, and then you've got your
163. 00:10:33 other situations, or you have more 3s, if you think on average. So I'm like, "Ah, I'm not sure
164. 00:10:39 how I'm going to feel about this one." Overall, I have a similar sentiment to you. I got a good
165. 00:10:45 bit of good stuff out of this one. So I'm excited to talk to you about it and see what else we can
166. 00:10:49 dig out of it. All right. Let's do it. All right. So the introduction. So he starts off pretty
167. 00:10:56 dramatic. And what I'll say is I think the examples he uses throughout the book are dramatic, but not
168. 00:11:04 in a bad way. They're meant to have a purpose. They're meant to have an impact in terms of...
169. 00:11:11 He doesn't pick just these real fluffy examples of how we're trying to change somebody's mind.
170. 00:11:16 He goes into this first example when he's talking about a criminal negotiator and how that
171. 00:11:21 negotiator approaches the situation. Well, there's a bunch of these different examples that he's
172. 00:11:27 going to work through when he's working through his different points. So that was an interesting
173. 00:11:30 idea from number one that started off right from the beginning of the book. But the important
174. 00:11:35 thing that we need to get out of the introduction is his framework. So this book, for those of you
175. 00:11:39 who are thinking about picking it up, this book is 100% driven by a framework. And the framework
176. 00:11:44 is reduce. So he's saying, okay, well, we need to reduce essentially the negative aversion,
177. 00:11:53 whatever it might be, to people actually changing their mind. To people doing what we want them to
178. 00:11:58 do or thinking the way we want them to think. So reduce the six letters. The six letters
179. 00:12:06 are reduced are reactants, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and then corroborating evidence.
180. 00:12:11 And that's how he spells the word reduce. So the reason I got mixed up between five and six
181. 00:12:15 there is because it's only five ideas. The last idea has two words in it. So it's corroborating
182. 00:12:22 evidence. So I'm going to stop here. Mike, what was your thought on the introduction?
183. 00:12:27 The introduction is fine, but that whole model slash framework is ridiculous.
184. 00:12:35 Can we just agree? A six letter acronym for five points is just confusing.
185. 00:12:43 And I got to the end of the book and I was like, there's one more like, there's one more point
186. 00:12:46 that he needs to make. And I was like, Oh, no, there's not because the last point has two
187. 00:12:51 has two letters. So yeah, and some of these are forced. So I actually don't like the framework.
188. 00:12:57 Like I get why people do this sort of thing. But I wish we would just discuss the ideas
189. 00:13:05 for what they are, as opposed to trying to crowbar them into an acrostic, which I don't think is
190. 00:13:13 actually going to help me remember this any better, because it doesn't, it doesn't fit. My
191. 00:13:19 initial thought, if I were to recall that reduce acronym is not a can't be right, because they're
192. 00:13:26 only five points. Yeah. So the point of the reduce, right? So you might be wondering, like, well,
193. 00:13:31 how does reduce get into here? So he starts it off and says, okay, inertia drives everything.
194. 00:13:36 So people want to keep doing what they're what they're doing. You're trying to change their mind.
195. 00:13:40 So what you're trying to do is you're trying to reduce their inertia. You're trying to reduce
196. 00:13:44 their resistance to change. So how do we approach this entire problem, this universal problem of
197. 00:13:51 people having this resistance to change? Oh, well, let's go through the go through the acronym
198. 00:13:56 reduce. So that's essentially what he's trying to do. I agree with Mike here. I don't think that my
199. 00:14:03 takeaway from this book is going to be reduced. I don't really think that I'm going to, you know,
200. 00:14:07 in six months from now, if you're going to ask me, hey, you read the catalyst, like what's your
201. 00:14:11 main takeaway from the catalyst? It's not going to be like, Oh, he had this, you know, cross the
202. 00:14:15 like this reduced thing. And no, that's not going to be it. It's going to be some other other points
203. 00:14:19 of it. So if you're good with it, we can move on to chapter one. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so chapter
204. 00:14:25 one is reactants. So in reactants, he defines it as the unpleasant state that occurs when people
205. 00:14:30 feel their freedom is lost or threatened. So you're coming in, you're telling people to do or to not
206. 00:14:37 do something to change or to not change, right? Like you're giving them this idea, you're trying
207. 00:14:42 to be a catalyst. And they feel as though they've lost their freedom, they've lost their agency in
208. 00:14:48 order to, you know, be part of this, this process. So he's going to say a catalyst in, in this situation,
209. 00:14:56 a catalyst essentially incorporates agency into this process. He gives four different ways to do
210. 00:15:03 that. So provide a menu, ask, don't tell, highlight a gap, and then start with understanding.
211. 00:15:10 And then he's got this other stair step thing, which I'm sure we're probably going to talk about
212. 00:15:14 before we leave the really the reactants chapter. So he's basically saying, okay, the first thing we
213. 00:15:19 need to do is we need to think about the fact that people are going to have some essentially
214. 00:15:23 negative reaction to what you want them to do. And then you have to figure out a way around that.
215. 00:15:28 Yeah, essentially, if you ask, if you tell somebody to do something, they're more likely
216. 00:15:32 not to do it. And they use the story of the tide pods at the beginning, which is just ridiculous.
217. 00:15:39 But it illustrates the point clearly, I guess, you know, where basically tide pods are these
218. 00:15:45 laundry detergent pods, you throw them in the washing machine, and you don't have to measure
219. 00:15:49 things out. Well, apparently there was like a thing where people were eating these and
220. 00:15:55 obviously they don't want to get in trouble. So they're telling people don't eat these,
221. 00:16:00 you will get sick, you could die, whatever, you know, it's kind of like, whenever you see
222. 00:16:05 something like on the McDonald's coffee cups, it's like caution hot. You know, that's there for a
223. 00:16:11 reason. Yeah, because they got sued because someone spilled coffee all over themselves,
224. 00:16:15 there's something the chainsaw blade is sharp. Don't touch. Okay, great. Like, yes, that would
225. 00:16:19 make sense. Yeah, so you get tides response where it's like, we need to formally say,
226. 00:16:25 don't eat these so that if anybody does, and they sue us, we've got it covered. But what happened
227. 00:16:30 after they told people not to eat them is that people kept eating them, and actually they ate
228. 00:16:36 them a lot more, and they paid a whole bunch of money. They had Rob Gronkowski, the Titan from the
229. 00:16:40 Patriots do this advertising came, he's like, do not eat these. And people just kept eating them,
230. 00:16:48 which is ridiculous. But also the point that they're hitting on here is that people have a need for
231. 00:16:55 freedom and autonomy. And essentially, if you tell someone, hey, don't do this, or you can't do this,
232. 00:16:59 that's kind of like, oh, yeah, well, watch me. And it seems weird to think that people would do that
233. 00:17:05 when they could have such negative health consequences from that. That's the part that's a little hard
234. 00:17:15 to grok, I guess. But yeah, the point is that people have this built on anti-persuasion radar,
235. 00:17:23 which I think is a really effective visual. I think the principle here is spot on. If you're
236. 00:17:30 going to come at me and you're going to tell me don't push the red button, the first thing I'm
237. 00:17:33 going to think is, well, why? What happens when I push the red button? I want to push the red button.
238. 00:17:37 Don't tell me not to push the red button. It's very natural to have this reaction. I'm going to move
239. 00:17:44 us to these four key ways to overcome this. And what he would say is reduce reactants. So what
240. 00:17:52 are the four ways to reduce your reactants? Provide menus, ask, don't tell, highlight the gap,
241. 00:17:57 and then start with understanding. The one that I think resonates the most with me
242. 00:18:02 is the ask, don't tell that if you get in there and you start talking to people about,
243. 00:18:08 well, hold on, why do you eat tide pods? What benefit are you getting from tide pods
244. 00:18:14 instead of me telling them? And I think why this one resonates with me so much right now is because
245. 00:18:19 I have young children. And if I go to the young children and I say, child, don't jump off that
246. 00:18:24 10-foot bridge onto the river. And they're going to be like, well, that I want to jump off the
247. 00:18:30 10-foot bridge to the river. But if I go, son, what do you think is going to happen if you jump
248. 00:18:34 off the 10-foot bridge? And he's like, oh, well, I'm going to land on the water. And I say,
249. 00:18:37 how deep do you think the water is under the bridge? And if I ask these questions,
250. 00:18:42 you could almost see the light click in his eyes. And he's like, oh, the water's probably not deep
251. 00:18:49 enough. And I'm probably going to hurt my legs or break my ankles or something. And it's like,
252. 00:18:54 yes, son, yes. But if you come out of the other way, it doesn't work, right? I mean,
253. 00:18:58 so that's the one that resonates with me the most.
254. 00:19:02 Yeah, I don't know that I have a particular one that resonates with me. I kind of feel like
255. 00:19:11 these are different tactics that you could employ strategically. But yeah, I think the big takeaway
256. 00:19:19 for me from this is highlighted. And the thing I have before this in my notes is the truth campaign,
257. 00:19:24 which was a campaign to get kids to stop smoking. And they mentioned that the reason that it was
258. 00:19:32 successful was because it didn't tell them to stop smoking. The way that you would tell, you know,
259. 00:19:39 people not to or not tell them, you know, specifically to stop smoking would be, you know,
260. 00:19:44 you could do it four different ways with those those different methods that you highlighted there.
261. 00:19:49 But I guess if I had to pick one, it would be start with understanding and just kind of highlighting
262. 00:19:57 why someone wants to do something or doesn't want to do something,
263. 00:20:01 kind of being naturally curious. That's a kind of carryover from liminal thinking by
264. 00:20:07 Dave Gray, which I guess ding the bell. I mentioned that one again. Yeah, but my big takeaway from
265. 00:20:13 that was that we have these preconceived notions as bubble belief that we assemble based on our
266. 00:20:20 limited experience. And I remember walking out of that book thinking I need to not resist
267. 00:20:27 viewpoints that are contrary to mine, but actually be better if I was able to just seek them out
268. 00:20:32 more more often. And I try to do that, you know, if you were to follow me around and chronicle how
269. 00:20:38 I spend my day, you could probably point out all the places where I fail with that. But that reading
270. 00:20:43 that book definitely did adjust my mindset to that. So I'd like to at least tell myself a little bit
271. 00:20:49 more open minded. And I feel like this is probably my default now when I'm talking to somebody is,
272. 00:20:56 I want to understand where they're coming from before I just say, well, no, you got to change
273. 00:21:00 your mind about things. Again, you could probably point out a whole bunch of times when I've
274. 00:21:04 failed at that. But I think that's the one that seems to me to really fit most, at least initially.
275. 00:21:14 Yeah. So based building off of that understanding, he puts a diagram in here that basically says
276. 00:21:19 understanding trust and change that they're the staircases. It's the staircase and the steps are
277. 00:21:25 understanding. And once we understand each other, we can build trust with each other. And then once
278. 00:21:29 we build trust with each other, then I can listen to you more and I'm more, I guess I'm less reactive
279. 00:21:35 to a negative feeling towards towards changing for you. Now, one of the things he slides in here
280. 00:21:41 is this idea of active listening. And I thought I'm interested to hear what your perspective is on
281. 00:21:45 this because he really doesn't talk about active listening at all in the chapter, but he throws
282. 00:21:51 it to an appendix at the end and says like, Oh, yeah, and if you want to learn more about active
283. 00:21:55 listening, go see appendix A. And that's okay. But it feels very like disjointed or disconnected.
284. 00:22:02 It's like, Oh, and by the way, active listening, like to see that at the end. It's not part of my
285. 00:22:06 story right now. Yeah, it's a good point. So I don't know, I'm familiar with active listening.
286. 00:22:14 And there have been books that have kind of hit on that super hard. I guess just for quick review
287. 00:22:19 for people, that's kind of where you're, if I'm hearing you right, this is what you're saying.
288. 00:22:24 Yes. Okay. Well, then at least the person that you're talking to feels heard. This is one of
289. 00:22:30 my pet peeves, by the way, is not feeling like I've been heard. And I could totally identify a
290. 00:22:34 whole bunch of situations where I'll say something. And then the person just responds with like,
291. 00:22:39 Well, yeah. And I'm just like, no, you don't get it. Yeah. So I think that's a really valuable
292. 00:22:46 technique. I don't know that it's, I guess a case could be made that it should belong as
293. 00:22:54 material that's actually in this, this chapter. I didn't really think about it until you, you brought
294. 00:23:00 it up, though, that, you know, why isn't, what does it go into more detail about that here? I guess,
295. 00:23:06 maybe he feels like when you start with understanding that's essentially encapsulates the big takeaway
296. 00:23:13 from the active listening process. I mean, obviously he's not talking about the specifics of it. But
297. 00:23:18 there's a lot of stuff in this book where, you know, he talks, talks about some, some stories at the
298. 00:23:23 beginning and some principles. And then, you know, what you can actually do about it's kind of the
299. 00:23:27 formula, I guess, for these, these types of self help nonfiction books. But when he gets to the,
300. 00:23:34 you know, what you can do about it, there's always a couple of, there's always like a list or something
301. 00:23:39 like that. It's a big fan of this, you know, it's not just the reduced framework at the beginning,
302. 00:23:44 where he's talking about the different chapters. So maybe it just didn't really fit very cleanly
303. 00:23:49 with that, which, I mean, I guess I could could see that. I don't think you should determine the
304. 00:23:55 content of the book that way. But maybe he did it. Well, it got, I actually noticed it more at the
305. 00:24:02 very end of the book, because I felt like the book ended quickly. And then there were these like
306. 00:24:07 additional 20 plus pages of like, you know, this appendix, appendix, appendix. But okay, so let's go
307. 00:24:13 on to how he ends every chapter. So he ends every chapter with a case study. And I'm not going to
308. 00:24:18 give my opinion yet. I'm going to ask Mike for his opinion first. Mike, what do you think of the
309. 00:24:23 case studies in in general? Like, did you think they were valuable? Did you like them?
310. 00:24:29 For the most part, I like them. I like the approach of the case studies at the end. And
311. 00:24:35 the case studies are different than the stories he meant he shares at the beginning because
312. 00:24:41 those are kind of like teeing up the the issue or the problem. And the case study is really highlighting
313. 00:24:48 the solution. So I think the case study at the end of the chapter is actually an effective way
314. 00:24:55 to close out the chapter. You could argue about the effectiveness of the specific case studies
315. 00:25:01 that he chose. But for the most part, I thought those were really good too. And to be honest,
316. 00:25:05 you know, there's nothing that was really new in those case studies by the time he got to them.
317. 00:25:10 Agreed. So I don't think I have any notes on the case studies themselves. But I did think they
318. 00:25:17 were really cool. So there was one in particular, and I forget even what chapter it's in, where he's
319. 00:25:21 talking about moving people in terms of their opinion on the political spectrum. And he uses
320. 00:25:27 two examples of someone who grew up very liberal and became conservative, and then someone who
321. 00:25:32 grew up very conservative and became liberal. And they came from the places that you think
322. 00:25:36 conservatives and liberals come from, and just kind of like, doesn't have a dog in this fight,
323. 00:25:42 or a horse in this race, if you want a different metaphor, I guess, maybe that's a better one.
324. 00:25:49 And I thought it was, I thought that was, that was pretty cool. Like there's no agenda here.
325. 00:25:54 I feel like most of the books that we read, there is, if you really want to look for it,
326. 00:25:59 you can find the agenda in some of the things that people are sharing. So I appreciated that.
327. 00:26:05 Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more that I think by the time you hit the case studies,
328. 00:26:08 the way he's constructed the book, the case that he is really doubling down on the points he was
329. 00:26:14 trying to make, and for the most part, they're good, they're good examples of the points he was
330. 00:26:19 trying to make. All right, let's move on to the chapter two endowment. So endowment was the hardest,
331. 00:26:25 I think, chapter for me to like wrap my head around like what we were trying to do. But the idea is
332. 00:26:32 basically like, oh, the thing that we have right now has higher value than whatever you want me to
333. 00:26:40 pay attention to, right? Like, so if you want me to buy a new car, the car that I have right now is
334. 00:26:48 above and beyond, and you're going to have to show me how the thing you want me to get is clearly
335. 00:26:54 above and beyond better than than what I currently have. So it's like this idea of endowment is like,
336. 00:27:00 you know, just what I'm already doing or what I already own, it's almost like the, you know,
337. 00:27:05 you're trying to climb uphill, right? Like you're trying to push the boulder uphill because I'm
338. 00:27:09 already like, okay, with what I'm doing. And he brings up a couple different ideas, you talked about
339. 00:27:14 him like in the list, right, which so he's got him in every almost every chapter. He talks about
340. 00:27:18 the surface, sorry, surface the cost of inaction, and then burn the ships, which I'm a big fan of
341. 00:27:23 burn the ships, but we'll get there too. We'll get there in a little bit. So he's got these two
342. 00:27:26 different ideas that he uses to drive home his key points for the kind of this endowment idea.
343. 00:27:35 Yeah, I don't like the term endowment here that feels like a word chosen so that it fit the
344. 00:27:41 framework that he's trying to to use. I mean, really what he's talking about here is the status
345. 00:27:48 quo. So I feel like status quo would have been a much better chapter title. If you're just going
346. 00:27:55 to take that chapter in isolation and really try to communicate a single specific idea,
347. 00:28:00 which I would argue he's that's what he's doing with his approach to this book. There are no
348. 00:28:05 sections. There's just five chapters introduction and an epilogue. So the content and the structure
349. 00:28:13 of the book I actually really liked don't really like the term here, but in terms of the big ideas,
350. 00:28:19 I think that status quo can be a very powerful influence on our decisions. And that's really
351. 00:28:26 what he's talking about. He shares lots of studies where if you already have something, you value
352. 00:28:32 it at this, if you're going to buy it new, you would value it at like one third of that. Actually,
353. 00:28:37 it's 2.6 times. That's the multiplier for the value for something that we already own versus
354. 00:28:45 something that we are looking to acquire. And I think that that is a really powerful idea.
355. 00:28:54 It's very easy to just stick with something because it's familiar and mentions that at the end that
356. 00:29:01 terrible things tend to get replaced, but the mediocre things tend to stick around. When things
357. 00:29:06 are good, it's easy to just stick with the status quo and not consider any of the other options,
358. 00:29:12 which I think is a fairly sad way to live your life. So you could characterize this as something
359. 00:29:20 we should be pushing back against and trying to overcome. I don't think that's the framing or
360. 00:29:27 the angle that he's coming at this with, because literally in the subtitles, how to change anyone's
361. 00:29:31 mind. So this is really, I feel like when you're talking to other people, how to get them to change
362. 00:29:36 from the status quo. But I don't know. I mean, my brain is naturally goes to how would I apply this
363. 00:29:42 stuff? Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. He references, you know, good to great. So Jim Collins is good to
364. 00:29:52 great in here. And the fact that good is the animated great, we don't have great schools
365. 00:29:57 principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government principally because we have
366. 00:30:00 good government. And I think this might be, well, so this is definitely one of my action items. I
367. 00:30:07 don't know if it's the only action item yet. I'll figure that out later. But this is definitely
368. 00:30:11 one of mine is like, I need to look at essentially do a scan of life and say, what is a situation
369. 00:30:16 where I'm settling for good, right? That I could be driving more towards great. But instead,
370. 00:30:22 I'm settling for good because, you know, it's good enough, right? And I think there are going to be
371. 00:30:28 areas where good enough is good enough. And I'm okay with that. And I don't need to push for great
372. 00:30:33 in that situation. But I think there are areas where I'm going to say, you know what, I'm not happy
373. 00:30:38 with the fact that this area is just good. I want this area to be great. And I want it to be better
374. 00:30:43 than that. We'll get to the last section that I that I really liked. And this was it's the burn
375. 00:30:48 the ships idea. So I had actually never heard of where burn the ships came from. So I really liked
376. 00:30:54 that he went into the background Cortez, basically he's coming over and there's the potential mutiny.
377. 00:31:01 And he's like, hold up. We're just going to take those 12 ships that are out there that people want
378. 00:31:05 to like get back on and run away from. And where's burning those things down? Like, we're absolutely
379. 00:31:10 going to give people no way out there. There's no exit door. And I was like, Oh, wow, I didn't
380. 00:31:15 realize that that was the where the phrase came from. But I really do like the idea of burning the
381. 00:31:20 ships basically making going back no longer an option. So like, what obstacles do you have to set
382. 00:31:26 up that way forward is the only direction. And we can't, you know, crutch on the things that we've
383. 00:31:32 been doing that are good enough. So I really, I liked that, that idea a lot.
384. 00:31:38 Yeah, I love that visual and that story. But this is actually something that I've been fascinated
385. 00:31:44 by for quite a while. So I've, it was interesting to me to see how he talked about this, because
386. 00:31:52 that's the popular story. So that's the one that he tells at the beginning. And then you can get into,
387. 00:31:59 if you find, if you want to find someone to argue with you online, just go say something about,
388. 00:32:04 burn the boats came from this story. And they'll be like, actually,
389. 00:32:09 because there's three or four other examples. And he hits on all of them. He tells the story
390. 00:32:15 behind that one, because I think it's the most emotionally appealing. But then he covers his
391. 00:32:20 historical bases and mentions there are other versions of this story other places. Yeah, that's
392. 00:32:26 funny. Yeah, but the, the principle is the same. You know, if you give yourself a way back,
393. 00:32:31 you're not going to go all in. All right, you're ready to move to three distance. Yeah, let's do
394. 00:32:36 it. Okay, so distance. Basically what he's saying is that if the change you're trying to make
395. 00:32:44 is too far away from where the person currently is or what they're currently thinking, then
396. 00:32:52 that you're basically doomed for failure. Like you're never going to get that change because
397. 00:32:56 you're in what he would call the zone of rejection or the region of rejection that like you're just
398. 00:33:01 too far away. So he's, he's got a whole football field analogy where he brings up these football
399. 00:33:04 fields in the book and then he shows you, you know, where people would be in the 20 yard line and
400. 00:33:09 the other side of the field and all that stuff. But there's really there's two zones. There's the zone
401. 00:33:12 of rejection, then there's the zone of acceptance. And essentially what you could think about is like
402. 00:33:18 the further I am away from this idea, the more strongly I'm in the region of rejection or the
403. 00:33:22 zone of rejection, as we get closer to my ability to accept the thing, then I would be in like the
404. 00:33:28 middle, you know, what's the phrase? Like there's the something middle. I don't remember the term
405. 00:33:36 for it and I don't have the book in front of me, but I do know what you're you're talking about.
406. 00:33:41 There's like the the moveable middle is what he calls it. Yes, yes, that's it. So it's like there's
407. 00:33:48 this section of the field where there's the moveable middle where I can convince you it's going to
408. 00:33:52 take some work, but I actually have a chance of convincing you. And then there's the whole like zone
409. 00:33:56 of acceptance where it's like, yeah, I'm already on board, like you didn't have to change like I'm
410. 00:34:00 with you. And what he's basically saying is let's reduce the distance and if I can reduce the distance,
411. 00:34:07 then I can I can bring you closer to changing your mind or I can bring you closer to coming
412. 00:34:13 over to the thing that I that I want you to do or the thing the way that I want you to think.
413. 00:34:19 And he calls out again this list of three, you know, find the moveable middle, ask for less,
414. 00:34:25 and then switch the field, which I'm guessing will unpack something in this list at some point,
415. 00:34:30 but I've I've droned on for a little while. So Mike hit me with your thoughts on chapter three.
416. 00:34:34 Well, chapter three is interesting because he's talking about this in terms of convincing somebody
417. 00:34:42 politically, this is probably the chapter, which has that case study that I was mentioning earlier.
418. 00:34:47 But when he's talking about how you're not going to get somebody to convert to your way of thinking,
419. 00:34:56 simply by sharing a whole bunch of facts or a whole bunch of evidence, in fact, he specifically
420. 00:35:02 says that sharing evidence often blows up in our faces. He also mentions in here that people search
421. 00:35:08 for interpret and favor information in a way that confirms or supports their existing beliefs.
422. 00:35:12 I mean, this is liminal thinking in a nutshell, this chapter. But the thing that really stood
423. 00:35:18 out to me as I was reflecting on what I read here is that if you want to change somebody's mind,
424. 00:35:25 so that's the framing. And that's the one that I think I have a little bit of issue with,
425. 00:35:29 not that it's wrong, but just kind of rubs me the wrong way. So if you want to change somebody's
426. 00:35:33 mind, the way to do it is to make a whole bunch of small asks and get them to say, yes, a bunch
427. 00:35:39 of times. And each time they say, yes, they're more likely to say yes again. And that rubbed me
428. 00:35:44 the wrong way because that's exactly the yes ladder from marketing, which there's truth to that. I mean,
429. 00:35:51 if you want to sell something, you want, I don't know, I don't know where exactly where I land on
430. 00:35:57 this, because I think that there are elements of that that I incorporate into my stuff. But I'm not
431. 00:36:04 just trying to get a sale. I'm trying to offer a solution to a problem that people are experiencing.
432. 00:36:12 So going back to like the simple marketing for smart people that we read, I feel like that's a
433. 00:36:19 much better approach than following this mechanical script. And if I could just get somebody to say,
434. 00:36:24 yes, this many times, then regardless of who they are, and regardless of how much money they have,
435. 00:36:29 and regardless of whether I'm the right person to solve their problem, they're more likely to buy
436. 00:36:33 my thing. I actually sent an email when I launched Life HQ, said why I don't want everybody to buy
437. 00:36:39 Life HQ. So I could see that the seeds of that. And that's the implementation of that yes ladder
438. 00:36:49 that I've had experience with other places that I've worked. And yeah, I was like, this doesn't feel
439. 00:37:00 great. So let me tell you the reason why this frustrates me is because in my idealistic mind,
440. 00:37:07 what I'm not saying is right, I'm just saying my idealistic mind, we're settling for less of a
441. 00:37:14 good solution. So it's like, when I ask for less, we're like making the joint agreement that like,
442. 00:37:19 okay, there is a better solution out there. But what am I have to do? I'm going to have to do a
443. 00:37:24 part of that. And then two years from now, I'm going to have to do the next part of that. And
444. 00:37:27 like, in all I think about in my mind is this is the most efficient or inefficient way to get to
445. 00:37:32 the change that we both know we need to do. But you're telling me that like, we can't do it right
446. 00:37:37 now. And it makes me, it drives me crazy. But I don't disagree that human psychology says that,
447. 00:37:43 that makes total sense. Like, I can get you to agree to a smaller change and then another smaller
448. 00:37:47 change and another smaller change. I just don't understand why you like, if we can agree that this
449. 00:37:53 is the way it needs to be, why, why does it need to be the way three years from now, why not now,
450. 00:37:59 right? Like, we should just make that change now. I don't know. I mean, the whole, the whole thing
451. 00:38:05 here is getting somebody to change their mind. And you get them to do or say or vote, you know,
452. 00:38:14 the way that you want them to, it just feels a little bit manipulative. And I'm not saying that
453. 00:38:23 there's never a place to use this kind of stuff. But I feel like if I were to summarize this,
454. 00:38:32 my takeaways would be the, to try to find the middle ground, figure out what we can
455. 00:38:40 agree on, but then kind of disconnect from, I gotta convince this person to do things my way.
456. 00:38:48 Like, if it, I think there's an element of this, at least for me where you have to be okay with,
457. 00:38:54 I may never actually change their mind. That's okay. But that's like kind of contrary to the whole
458. 00:38:59 messaging of the book. So I don't know, at least I think it is. Do you think that's, that's accurate?
459. 00:39:09 Is that the message that comes across in the, in the book?
460. 00:39:12 Well, I think he's, he's presenting the, if you do these things, you will be effective at changing
461. 00:39:17 anybody's mind, which I, so it's like, I think, I think my answer to you is yes. I think there's two
462. 00:39:25 different ideas here that are, that are working. You're, you're saying like that, that shouldn't be
463. 00:39:29 my goal. My, my goal shouldn't be necessarily to 100% change your mind. But he's saying if you do
464. 00:39:34 these things, you'll be closer to changing someone's mind. And I think he goes strong on it in the
465. 00:39:40 subtitle of the book, how to change anyone's mind. So it leads us to believe that, yeah.
466. 00:39:44 So I get it, you know, if you're a political activist and you're canvassing for votes and you're
467. 00:39:50 trying to get people to vote a certain way, I think in that scenario, and he uses that example in
468. 00:39:55 this chapter, I can't fault you for this. But I, I really struggle with finding a scenario in
469. 00:40:04 my everyday regular life where I would feel okay doing this, you know, just taking that approach.
470. 00:40:14 I mean, even if I was a leader in an organization or preaching at my church or whatever, I feel like
471. 00:40:21 you extend the invitation. And you, even as a leader, you say, this is where we're going,
472. 00:40:28 and this is why, and would love to have you on board, but you're not trying to convince somebody
473. 00:40:34 to say, okay, yeah, I'm going to do it your way. It's like, if this isn't for you, that's fine.
474. 00:40:41 You can go somewhere else, you can do something else, no hard feelings. You don't have to be here.
475. 00:40:50 I see your perspective more now that as you, as you talk about it, I understand your perspective
476. 00:40:54 more now. Okay. So yeah, it just feels a little bit weird to me. And again, I probably do like
477. 00:41:00 elements of this, but getting to the point where he's describing, you know, where you actually have
478. 00:41:04 changed the way that somebody thinks, I don't know. And I don't have anybody in my life,
479. 00:41:09 or this is really the thing that I'm trying to do. Like he's talking about interventions for
480. 00:41:13 people who are drug addicts, you know, you have a loved one who doesn't understand the problems
481. 00:41:21 that they're, that they're facing, like they think they're in control, but they're really not. So
482. 00:41:26 privileged situation, I guess, where I don't have to deal with that sort of thing. But I just don't
483. 00:41:32 have a situation like that where I feel like, yeah, that's a lever I got to pull.
484. 00:41:37 Okay. Can I give you, can I give you an example of one where I do? Sure. So I'll get certain students
485. 00:41:43 in class, and they just have this mindset of, Oh, I can't do X, right? And it's like, and I have to
486. 00:41:52 be in a situation, because like giving them the like, well, you don't have to be here,
487. 00:41:55 that's not a good option, right? Like, I mean, they want to be here, they want to get to the
488. 00:41:58 degree, they want to then eventually go and do the type of work that we're training them to do.
489. 00:42:02 So it's like, I don't want to pull that card because that's that defeats the purpose of everybody
490. 00:42:07 involved. But I need to convince them, and I need to try to get them to understand you can do this,
491. 00:42:14 you may not be able to do it the same way that your peer sitting across the table from you does
492. 00:42:18 it. But that doesn't mean you can't do this. So it's like, I do have to push a little harder
493. 00:42:24 in helping them get out of that situation where they're just so, you know, focused on the fact
494. 00:42:30 that I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. That's fair. And I think I can get on board with that. But
495. 00:42:36 the natural extension of that, and one of the things that I've been wrestling through is like
496. 00:42:40 parenting, because you can't just be like, okay, well, you don't like it, you don't have to be a
497. 00:42:43 part of the family anymore. Yeah, I agree. So that's not a thing either. But also just the whole
498. 00:42:48 approach of, I'm not trying to convince my two year old that it's time to go to bed.
499. 00:42:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is time to go to bed. We're not having a conversation about this.
500. 00:43:04 So I'm trying to resolve this in my mind still. And maybe that's a terrible example of like the
501. 00:43:14 two year old, because there is a point, especially with real little kids where you're the caregiver
502. 00:43:19 and you understand things better than they do. So you're not going to let them, you know,
503. 00:43:23 choose what the menu is, because you're going to have pizza and ice cream for dinner every
504. 00:43:27 single night. And that's not healthy. You know, it's going to have long term damage and stuff
505. 00:43:32 like that. So I don't know. But I feel like the approach that we try to take with with our kids
506. 00:43:37 is, you know, this is the way that we do things as a family unit. This is the family is led by my
507. 00:43:44 wife and I, you have input. Now I remember specifically, we had a conversation with our kids a while
508. 00:43:48 back about managing screen time. And this was several years ago at the time, like our old was
509. 00:43:53 probably 13 14. And they each had like a half hour video game time a day. And we talked about how
510. 00:44:00 we can't, you know, keep managing this telling you it's time to wrap up because repeat that four
511. 00:44:05 times five times. It's a lot. So, you know, we want to what do you guys think we should do?
512. 00:44:11 And what do you think is we actually asked the question, what do you think is fair? And they threw
513. 00:44:15 out an hour. So double the screen time that they were getting like, okay, well, we can try that,
514. 00:44:21 but we're not going to have to manage it then. So we're going to get this time timer. And you're
515. 00:44:25 going to be done by the time the time timer goes out. And if you aren't, you know, you're going to
516. 00:44:30 lose it the next day. Because again, the goal here is that we don't have to micromanage this.
517. 00:44:34 It's frustrating for you. It's frustrating for us. So we, you know, arrived at this mutual,
518. 00:44:41 mutual outcome. But again, like I don't see where I would be trying to convince them
519. 00:44:49 that this is the right thing to do. It's either, you know, as the leader, this is the decision
520. 00:44:53 that has been made. And I will help you work through it. Yep. Yeah. Or the other one, you know,
521. 00:44:58 kind of what you're talking about the beginning is I'm going to go into it curious and figure out
522. 00:45:03 where you stand and we'll try to meet in the middle. But I'm not going to try to bring you back over
523. 00:45:07 to my side necessarily. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. I think there are a bunch
524. 00:45:14 of different contexts and some, some work better than others for, for especially this one, the idea
525. 00:45:20 of distance and, you know, kind of getting people to come on board. All right, you ready for the
526. 00:45:27 next one? Uncertainty? Yep. All right. So chapter four is uncertainty. I thought this book, or I
527. 00:45:34 thought, sorry, I thought this chapter made a lot of sense in terms of, yeah, we do need to reduce
528. 00:45:39 uncertainty because if we're trying to get somebody to change something, if there is a moderate level
529. 00:45:46 of uncertainty on the other side of that, we're just putting up a big, a big wall. Part of the
530. 00:45:51 reason why maybe this resonated so well with me is because I feel like this, you know, like, I
531. 00:45:57 basically thought he was describing me in this book. I was like, or in this chapter, I was like,
532. 00:46:00 Oh man, yes, like if there is uncertainty, my uncertainty tax is huge. I'm like, I know what I'm
533. 00:46:06 getting right now. I don't know what I'm going to get with you. So I'm a little bit nervous for that.
534. 00:46:13 So he talks about uncertainty tax, which is basically the mental and or emotional or whatever it might
535. 00:46:20 be like challenge that we would have to overcome this change and accept it. But then he goes quickly
536. 00:46:28 into this idea of triability. Sorry, trial ability. Yeah, trial ability like how, how able am I to
537. 00:46:35 try something and then decide whether I like it or not. And what I really liked about this
538. 00:46:41 trial ability section is the four examples that he gives, basically the freemium model,
539. 00:46:46 the reduce upfront cost, the drive discovery, and then to make it reversible. I thought these were
540. 00:46:52 spot on in terms of like, Oh yeah, if you give me any of the four of those, that makes total sense
541. 00:46:58 that it's going to reduce my uncertainty for a thing. And it's going to make me more likely to
542. 00:47:04 consider yours. Now, one of the areas where I don't think he stressed it enough is it's also
543. 00:47:09 going to give me the ability to throw yours away faster. So it's like, if I try yours and it doesn't
544. 00:47:15 resonate with me or it doesn't do the thing you said it was going to do, I'm, I'm done. Like, I
545. 00:47:19 made my decision and I'm not changing in your direction. So I think there's a whole side of this
546. 00:47:24 that is possibly negative. But at the same time, it's these these four things also do apply to
547. 00:47:31 reducing uncertainty. So I can't fold him on that. Yeah, so I liked this chapter the best.
548. 00:47:39 And the reason is that it really got me thinking about how I can reduce uncertainty for the products
549. 00:47:47 that I sell. Understood. Yep. So that's my action item. How do I make it easier for people to try
550. 00:47:51 my products and services? And case and point is life HQ, where I did a whole bunch of research and
551. 00:47:59 I saw what other people were doing with this sort of thing, because it's really a done for you obsidian
552. 00:48:03 vault, you download it, you open it in obsidian, all the plugins are preconfigured, all the settings
553. 00:48:10 are, you know, are, are set up for you. And you can just start using it. And once you have that file
554. 00:48:15 and you've opened it on your computer, that's basically it. There's, there's no way to make sure
555. 00:48:20 that someone deletes that from your, their system. So you can't turn off access to it. Which means
556. 00:48:26 that the best practice from all the different other, all the other people I've seen who've done
557. 00:48:30 this sort of thing is like, there is no 30 day money back guarantee for this sort of thing.
558. 00:48:36 That's always kind of bugged me, you know, that I haven't been able to, to offer that. And I'm not
559. 00:48:40 really to ready to, you know, make a commitment that that's something I'm gonna, gonna add. But
560. 00:48:44 it's got me thinking like, how would I add that to life HQ? But then I'm also in the middle of
561. 00:48:48 redoing all the other stuff on my website. And the one that I'm really thinking about now is the
562. 00:48:53 library, my private community. Because I really want to include with that the cohort stuff and
563. 00:48:59 the workshops. And if you want to follow along with your personal retreat and join an accountability
564. 00:49:03 group, so you actually follow through and take action on your goals. Like all of that is there,
565. 00:49:09 I'm getting ready to relaunch that you can't join it right now. But I'm working on the page and
566. 00:49:13 I'm thinking, thinking through the, the offer. And I think what I want to figure out a way to do is
567. 00:49:19 to incorporate some of this stuff where people can kind of try it out. And I don't know exactly
568. 00:49:24 what that means. I don't know if it's like a free trial for two weeks. Or if it's a light version
569. 00:49:30 that has some of this stuff, but not all of this stuff, you know, where like you could show up and
570. 00:49:35 talk about PKM and maybe join a live call. But then like the bigger one is the, the one where you are,
571. 00:49:44 you're, you're actually doing the stuff. So you're joining the groups and you've got the
572. 00:49:48 accountability built in there. I don't know. But it's got my wheels turning. And I think this is
573. 00:49:54 something that is kind of piggybacks off of everything that I was learning at the newsletter
574. 00:49:58 marketing summit too. Like this is something that's missing for me right now. It's really like if
575. 00:50:03 you have listened to every episode of bookworm and you've gone through one of my cohorts before,
576. 00:50:08 yeah, you're a raving fan. Like you speak highly, you leave the testimonials, but everybody else
577. 00:50:14 who has no idea who I am, that's a big ask to drop that much money on a product or
578. 00:50:22 on a subscription. And I get that and I want to figure out a way to to reduce that. But I have no
579. 00:50:29 idea what it looks like. It's probably a combination of some of those things that you were talking
580. 00:50:33 about, you know, the freemium, free trial, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, not to take us too far
581. 00:50:40 into this topic, but like as you're talking about it, a couple of things that popped into my head
582. 00:50:44 and Sean Blanc did the iPad journaling, right? If you're if you remember, he created the iPad
583. 00:50:52 journal that worked with which one? Good notes. I think it worked with good notes. One good planner
584. 00:51:00 thing that he was talking about. Yep. Yep. Yep. So so he would do a free trial on that. Well,
585. 00:51:04 I bought it and it did not fit with me. Like it just did 100% did not resonate with me.
586. 00:51:10 But he he gave you a money back guarantee. Like if you if you tried it and didn't like it and
587. 00:51:16 what I'll say is I realized I didn't like it, right? I submitted for the refund on it because it wasn't
588. 00:51:22 it wasn't a zero, you know, it was a decent amount of money on it. But I never looked at it again.
589. 00:51:28 You know, like, so so if you think about like life HQ for like that product, if it doesn't
590. 00:51:32 resonate with people, they're like the bigger worry that you have going into that is that they
591. 00:51:37 somehow post it somewhere. And then other people can download it for free. Like that is the problem.
592. 00:51:43 It's I don't think it's people trying to like scam you on like, Oh, I'm just going to tell
593. 00:51:48 you I didn't like it. And then I got a free copy of this. Because I really think that people either
594. 00:51:52 they either like it or they don't. I think it's more that they posted somewhere else for the for
595. 00:51:56 the community membership. Man, that one's that was a harder one. Like, how do you give them a,
596. 00:52:01 you know, a seven day thing into the community? Because that's a lot of that's a lot to manage,
597. 00:52:05 you know, like, then you got to kick them out when they're seven days doesn't come up. So
598. 00:52:09 yeah, that's that's the hard thing. So like what up, but I get that it's a it's a big
599. 00:52:17 ask to just join a community that costs multiple hundreds of dollars per year. You've got to be
600. 00:52:25 able to putting myself in the issues of someone who's joined multiple communities like that. It would
601. 00:52:30 be cool to have like a light version of that where I can spend, you know, 50 bucks a year or something.
602. 00:52:39 And I can join an occasional live call and I can just talk with other people who are interested in
603. 00:52:45 the thing, you know, kind of getting back to the newsletter marketing summit. One of the things
604. 00:52:50 that they were talking about was building communities. And they aren't talking about circle communities
605. 00:52:54 necessarily. A lot of their communities are, you know, discord servers or whatever. And there are
606. 00:53:00 lots of people who have free communities and there are lots of people who have paid communities.
607. 00:53:04 And there are values for both. And as I was thinking through like, what do I want practical
608. 00:53:08 PKM in the library to become, you know, I really want it to be the place to hang out and talk about
609. 00:53:12 PKM for serious sense makers who want to learn, share, grow together. So I feel like there's probably
610. 00:53:20 multiple tiers here for people who want different levels of support on there, their PKM and creative
611. 00:53:28 productive journeys. And I don't know exactly what the product offering looks like there. I just
612. 00:53:33 know that I've got to diversify that a little bit, I think. Yeah, but I think this whole idea of
613. 00:53:41 uncertainty, you know, thinking through, why do I do what I do as an internet creator, you know,
614. 00:53:48 going all the way back to my life theme, I want to help people multiply their time in town,
615. 00:53:52 save a bigger dent in the universe. There's no single way that I do that. There's multiple ways
616. 00:54:01 and really there's unlimited ways. And I got to figure out which ones are the ones that really
617. 00:54:06 are fit for me. But then I don't think it's as simple as, well, I'm just going to do this one
618. 00:54:13 thing and that's going to be, you know, the way that I help people do the thing. Maybe if I do this
619. 00:54:19 long enough and I build a big enough audience, I do get to that point. But I'm certainly not there,
620. 00:54:25 not there yet. And I know that there are a whole bunch of people, even in, you know,
621. 00:54:29 the less than 8,000 people that are on my newsletter list right now, that I could better serve them
622. 00:54:37 in ways that are currently not being offered. And so I'm just trying to consider all of the
623. 00:54:44 options right now. Yeah. Well, in, in, I mean, direct application of this book to you is,
624. 00:54:50 so you're thinking about all that stuff, uncertainty is only one of the things because it's like,
625. 00:54:53 I may have the way that I think I, oh, I'm really good at this. I don't need your, I don't need your
626. 00:54:58 tool. When your tool's significantly better than what I'm doing right now. It's just like, I just
627. 00:55:02 have that quote, unquote, endowed idea that I'm like, I don't, I don't need your thing. Or like,
628. 00:55:08 I'm, I've got a negative reaction. Why would I do it your way? Like, I can do it my own, you know,
629. 00:55:11 so the funny thing about this book is for as much as I don't like, reduce it, like, it actually
630. 00:55:19 applies, right? Like the, the reactants endowment distance. I'm sorry, like, it applies really,
631. 00:55:23 really well and really, really, valuably, I think, when you, when you look through this.
632. 00:55:29 Before we move to the next chapter, I have a question for you. Have you read "Defusion of Innovations"
633. 00:55:34 by Everett M. Rogers? I've never even heard of it. No. Okay. So this, this book is anybody who's in
634. 00:55:41 the like, wanting to make change, transformation, innovation, like those kind of things. Defusion
635. 00:55:48 of innovations is a really interesting book. I've not read all of it in its entirety, but I've like,
636. 00:55:55 picked out different sections of it and have read different sections of it for different things
637. 00:55:59 I've done in my, kind of my engineering ed research work. But it gets put on the level of like,
638. 00:56:07 crossing the chasm and the innovators, the lemma and like anybody who's thinking about this idea of
639. 00:56:12 like, creating things and making, transforming, innovating, like those kinds of things. It's at
640. 00:56:18 the same level. I just didn't know where it came from. So it was cool to hear, it was cool to hear
641. 00:56:23 the story about like, oh, you know, he was trying to figure out how to get people to use different
642. 00:56:26 farming techniques. And I was like, oh, that's a, that's a pretty neat, you know, background story
643. 00:56:31 to, to that book. So I just thought that was interesting. Nice. Are you ready to go to corroborating
644. 00:56:37 evidence? Our only one with two words. Yeah, let's go to the last two chapters. I mean chapter.
645. 00:56:42 I get mixed up on this one because I, the way my brain works is we're going to reduce reactants.
646. 00:56:49 We're going to reduce endowment. We're going to reduce distance. We're going to reduce uncertainty.
647. 00:56:54 We're going to reduce corroborating. So, so it's like, this one kind of breaks,
648. 00:57:01 breaks my brain a little bit. Now he says in here that a lot of times we just try to throw
649. 00:57:06 more evidence at people. And it's almost like we don't listen to what they're saying. We just
650. 00:57:11 keep throwing evidence at them and expecting it to at some point, you know, turn it over. So I get,
651. 00:57:16 what he, I get that aspect of it. But I don't think that was the driver of, of his, of his chapter.
652. 00:57:22 I actually think the driver of the chapter was reduce translation problems, like reduce these
653. 00:57:29 ideas to where it's like you and I aren't talking the same level here. You're like,
654. 00:57:32 I have one idea. You have another idea. I want you to come over to my idea. We aren't translating
655. 00:57:37 that well. And we need to reduce the friction between our translation. But I'm going to do that
656. 00:57:43 with evidence. But I don't want to reduce the evidence. I want to use the right evidence in order
657. 00:57:47 to do that. So the whole like structure of the framework, like I would, my brain went,
658. 00:57:53 what do I do? Like what do I do with the structure of the framework? That said, as we've said many
659. 00:57:58 times, I think this is a good, like the good idea. If I look at it from the translation side,
660. 00:58:03 I've got weak attitudes. I've got strong attitudes. So he calls out these different types of attitudes.
661. 00:58:07 Weak are the ones where essentially it's easy to change. Like I'm not super strong on the way I
662. 00:58:13 feel about this thing. You know, like if you asked me, let's see what's one. If you asked me,
663. 00:58:19 Domino's pizza versus Little Caesars, right? Like I don't have a strong attitude about either of
664. 00:58:25 those. It's like, it's pizza and it's like cheap pizza. So cool. Like I'm in, right? Like whatever
665. 00:58:29 you want. You know, if you asked you about one type of coffee versus Starbucks coffee, you know,
666. 00:58:34 like one of your fruit fruit coffees versus Starbucks coffee, you're probably going to have a strong
667. 00:58:38 attitude about that. So getting you to change over to Starbucks is probably not going to go that
668. 00:58:42 well. So it's those ones where you need more evidence in order to change. He does the same thing
669. 00:58:47 with the lists here. He says, consider who you're asking to change, consider when you're asking
670. 00:58:52 them to change, consider when you're giving them the evidence and then consider how you're deploying
671. 00:58:57 those evidence, those pieces of evidence, because you only have scarce resources to do it. So that's
672. 00:59:02 essentially the essence of the chapter. Mike, what do you think?
673. 00:59:08 I hate this title corroborating evidence makes no sense. You know what this really is? This is
674. 00:59:17 social proof. Yeah. And there really isn't another term for that. The other term, I guess, which is
675. 00:59:24 negative. So I don't think I would use this one would be like herd mentality. Oh, yeah. Okay,
676. 00:59:29 I can see that. But corroborating evidence makes zero sense, at least from a label perspective.
677. 00:59:35 Now he does a great job of explaining it in the chapter. But I feel like if you really want this
678. 00:59:41 point to stick, social proof is the term that should be used here. So these notes that I have,
679. 00:59:49 where you're trying to overcome the translation problem that you were talking about. And just,
680. 00:59:54 you know, I've got a couple other things jotted down here. I want you to just kind of picture the
681. 00:59:59 term social proof instead of corroborating evidence as I read through these. Okay, multiple sources
682. 01:00:04 saying you're doing doing something solves the translation problem. The sources contribute more
683. 01:00:09 when they're varied. The closer information is received together, the more valuable it becomes
684. 01:00:13 an instigating change. Concentrating resources becomes important when when is required, you know,
685. 01:00:19 fill in the blank there. Okay, as you think about that, to terms of social proof, does that not paint
686. 01:00:25 a more specific vivid picture that you can do more with than corroborating evidence?
687. 01:00:33 So in my, in my note system, I just changed the title. And in the print in parentheses,
688. 01:00:38 I put should be social proof, because like everything you said there makes so much more
689. 01:00:43 sense if we think social proof, everything you said. Yeah, exactly. So missed opportunity, I guess.
690. 01:00:49 But I get why he's corroborating evidence because it fits with the the acrostic. I just think it's
691. 01:00:55 the wrong choice. I think this is the right concept, like the last part of the five step framework.
692. 01:01:00 This is definitely it like that fits all of the material in the chapter fits. But this is social
693. 01:01:09 proof. And as I was thinking about that, once I got that revelation, basically, oh, this is social
694. 01:01:14 proof. That's where this gets a lot more applicable to me. And this is where, you know, for
695. 01:01:21 and I'm approaching this from the products and services, as I talked about in the last
696. 01:01:26 chapter. And how do I better meet the needs of the people that I serve? I realize I've got to have
697. 01:01:35 way more conversations. I've got to ask for feedback. Again, all this stuff is like kind of
698. 01:01:40 highlighted to me from my takeaways from the newsletter marketing summit that I just got back
699. 01:01:43 from too. So you can actually see like there were six lessons that I kind of solidified on for the
700. 01:01:50 the newsletter. Then there were a couple of things in there that were uncomfortable for me. You know,
701. 01:01:54 I want to solicit feedback from people. I want to hear from people. You know, this is the specific
702. 01:02:01 question I have. This is the problem that I'm facing. This is the point where I'm getting stuck.
703. 01:02:06 Now, if I'm going to do that, obviously, it's on me to develop the the solutions to those problems.
704. 01:02:12 But as I do that, that's where social proof really comes in. So as I'm thinking through this,
705. 01:02:17 like social proof, the most effective way to sell my product, whatever that product is,
706. 01:02:23 library life, HQ, whatever, is to have a whole bunch of testimonials, but not just a whole bunch
707. 01:02:28 of testimonials from a whole bunch of white dudes who have used a Mac for 30 years, right? It's
708. 01:02:36 different people in different scenarios, different backgrounds who I was able to help. And if you
709. 01:02:43 see on those testimonial walls, people who aren't just, you know, they're not saying the same
710. 01:02:53 thing. They're not coming from the same perspective. The most effective testimonials, I think, are the
711. 01:02:58 ones from that kind of created a tapestry of the types of people and problems that can be solved
712. 01:03:06 by using the product. That's really what he's talking about here, where if the sources are more
713. 01:03:14 varied, then they're more valuable. That's something I'm kind of aspiring to. I don't think I have
714. 01:03:20 that. I've got a whole bunch of testimonials for my products, but I haven't been real intentional
715. 01:03:25 about the way that I've gone about collecting these things. So I don't have a specific action
716. 01:03:29 item with this chapter in particular, other than, you know, if I really want to convince somebody
717. 01:03:36 that I have a solution to their problem. And again, I don't want everybody to buy a life HQ. If you
718. 01:03:42 are not that interested in obsidian, this is not the thing for you. But I do want to figure out a way
719. 01:03:49 that I can solve the right problem for the right people more often, if that makes sense.
720. 01:03:56 And I feel like I got to pay a little bit more attention to this and not just, you know,
721. 01:03:59 well, I got another testimonial that's great, but really, you know, where are the holes
722. 01:04:05 in my marketing messaging? But again, marketing, not in terms of how do I get you to
723. 01:04:11 pull the slot machine lever and make the transaction, but enter into a relationship where I can actually
724. 01:04:18 help you take obsidian to the next level. Like that's exciting to me when I think about that.
725. 01:04:23 So maybe that's the wrong way to think about, you know, the catalyst. We're getting into the
726. 01:04:28 the epilogue next. And so we're kind of rounding the corner here. But I'm not thinking through my
727. 01:04:35 perspective as a reading this book is not how do I convince somebody in an argument or conversation
728. 01:04:40 to adopt my point of view. But how do I communicate my message so that educated people can make the
729. 01:04:47 right decision for them more effectively? Yeah. Yeah. You're you're much more on the side of
730. 01:04:54 Billy Broaz than you are. I guess. Yeah. That book really really is coming coming through, I guess,
731. 01:05:01 in my my reaction to this one. Yeah. Okay. So let's roll to the epilogue. So the epilogue
732. 01:05:10 basically is a gigantic. This is all the stuff I just told you. And here's some really
733. 01:05:17 concise tables and some really, you know, bullet point items for for each one of them.
734. 01:05:23 I don't believe, Mike, you can correct me where I'm wrong. I don't believe there was anything new
735. 01:05:29 in the epilogue. I think it's all a regurgitation of what was talked about before.
736. 01:05:35 In terms of general ideas, yes. I think there are a couple of things that kind of stand out to me
737. 01:05:40 from this epilogue though. One is that the media often uses a broad brush to pick to each side
738. 01:05:45 in a conflict. And then the story that they really talk about at the beginning of the epilogue
739. 01:05:49 is this organization, Seeds of Change. Do you remember this story? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah,
740. 01:05:55 which is fascinating to me and probably is even more relevant now than when this book was written.
741. 01:06:01 But it's essentially like a summer camp for Israeli and Palestinian kids. Actually,
742. 01:06:12 Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian. Okay, any Egyptian. Yeah, but basically they're getting
743. 01:06:17 people who typically do not see eye to eye on things. And they put them in a place where they
744. 01:06:24 have to learn to coexist. And then they do things like ropes courses and trust falls. And it's like
745. 01:06:30 this person that I hate, I have to trust now. And little by little, they kind of chip away at these
746. 01:06:36 stereotypes and prejudices that people typically have. And it changes their perspective for their
747. 01:06:44 entire lives. So I think that's pretty cool. First of all, it's a, it's a cool story. He's got,
748. 01:06:54 you know, specific reasons why this organization is successful that back up what he just told us
749. 01:07:00 in the rest of the book. But I think that's a really powerful way to tie it all together.
750. 01:07:08 And then yeah, there are the tables and all that kind of stuff. I didn't get much out of the
751. 01:07:14 tables. But I guess, you know, often we're, we're blindly, we are so blinded by the belief that
752. 01:07:23 we're right, that we tend to believe more evidence is enough to convince and change people. And it's
753. 01:07:29 not. And then there's a quote that I really liked by Kurt Lewin, who said that if you want to truly
754. 01:07:35 understand something, try to change it. So I was thinking about that, you know, there are a lot of
755. 01:07:41 things where I can understand my tendency. And I feel like I don't often just launch into verbally,
756. 01:07:47 well, I'm just going to convince people any anymore. Like I understand that that's not going to work.
757. 01:07:51 And I've just kind of ain't nobody got time for that, you know. But I want to consider that quote
758. 01:08:01 in terms of like the the things that I see, I guess the place where this is probably most
759. 01:08:06 applicable is at home, because my wife would probably say that I launched into problem solving
760. 01:08:11 mode a little too quickly, where it's just like, Oh, well, we got to do this, we got to do that.
761. 01:08:15 And you got to do this, and you got to do that. And she's like, No, you just need to listen.
762. 01:08:22 So I think maybe my default can be, well, I understand this stuff. But I jump to that
763. 01:08:31 conclusion a little bit too quickly. And so I want to, there's no action items specifically
764. 01:08:38 associated with this other than try to really understand what is going on here. And if you
765. 01:08:44 haven't, you know, dug into it and gotten your hands dirty, you probably don't understand it yet.
766. 01:08:48 Yeah. Yeah. All right. So before we go into action items, there are, there's an appendix,
767. 01:08:55 or there are three appendices, right? So one appendix with three sections, I don't know if
768. 01:08:58 it's three appendices or whatever it is. But like one is for active listening, which we talked about
769. 01:09:02 already, one is for applying freemium. And then one is for force field analysis. And the only
770. 01:09:07 reason I'm bringing these three up isn't because of like how amazing they were or anything like that.
771. 01:09:12 It's because one of my action items comes from this. So force field analysis, right, we would call
772. 01:09:16 this in my engineering world, we would call this root cause analysis, except for this is more specific
773. 01:09:21 to change, right? So when you're doing your, your force field analysis, you're trying to figure out
774. 01:09:26 what are the drivers for change? And then what are the, the he calls them restrainers, or what are
775. 01:09:30 the resistance mechanisms for change? And then can you figure out what the change is, identify the
776. 01:09:36 drivers, identify the strainers, and then develop an action plan along those lines? So how do we,
777. 01:09:42 you know, accentuate the drivers and overcome the restrainers? So I have an action item related
778. 01:09:48 to this. So now we can move into into action items. So I'll start because it's my book. So what are my
779. 01:09:55 action items? One is where am I settling for good instead of great? So I want to think about just
780. 01:10:00 kind of a broad landscape of my life and saying, Hey, am I settling for good instead of great in any
781. 01:10:06 areas? And am I okay with that? The key aspect of that is, am I okay with it? Because I think there's
782. 01:10:11 going to be areas where I settle for good. And I'm totally fine. Like I am not upset about that at
783. 01:10:17 all. I think there's going to be some areas where I don't as well. Yeah, that's an important
784. 01:10:22 difference there. It's, it's not, you know, is, is changer improvement possible, but given my limited
785. 01:10:29 resources, where do I want to focus my efforts? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So the my second one is I
786. 01:10:35 want to do a force field analysis on something. I don't really care what it is. And I'm also,
787. 01:10:40 if this one doesn't get a green check mark, I will be totally fine. But it's like, I want to
788. 01:10:44 figure out like, Oh, here's something. Let's just do a force field analysis, just because I think
789. 01:10:48 it'd be fun to do. I think it'd be an interesting thing, thought exercise for me. So Mike, what are
790. 01:10:53 your action items? Cool. Well, I just have the, the one official one, which is how can I make
791. 01:10:59 it easier for people to, to trial my products and services and trial being the trial ability,
792. 01:11:05 reducing the uncertainty, reducing the, the risk associated with something. I recognize that, you know,
793. 01:11:14 life HQ is almost $300. The library is a premium membership. So it's going to be expensive. And
794. 01:11:26 I totally get why people would be reluctant to just drop that much money. The tricky part for me is,
795. 01:11:34 you know, I think just lowering the cost is not the appropriate solution either, because the thing
796. 01:11:41 is that valuable, especially with the feedback that I've got with life HQ, it's kind of like the
797. 01:11:49 majority of it is I can't believe everything that's in here. So how do I, you know, find the balance
798. 01:11:56 between charging what something is, is actually worth to the marketplace, and then making things
799. 01:12:05 more approachable for, for people, essentially, you know, finding the right mix, which allows me to
800. 01:12:13 help as many people as I can in the most effective way as I can. That's really the encapsulation of
801. 01:12:22 what all my business stuff is. And I don't think I've really got clarity on that yet.
802. 01:12:29 Okay. All right. We'll move to style and rating. I'll start us off. I am torn on this one. So
803. 01:12:36 normally I just come out and I'm like, I know what my rating is right away. And I'm torn on this one
804. 01:12:41 because I can't tell you that I love the style. Like I didn't mind the, the stories that were told
805. 01:12:50 in between. I didn't mind the case studies that were done afterwards. I thought the content was
806. 01:12:55 valuable. And it was, it was an easy read. It wasn't a difficult read. But there is just something
807. 01:13:02 about the book that I'm just left going like, you know, like, okay, like it was, it was an okay book.
808. 01:13:10 I actually think I'll remember some of the stuff that came out of the book like, oh, reduce the
809. 01:13:15 following things to help, you know, if you want to get changed. But I also, again, I just wasn't
810. 01:13:21 wowed by anything about the book. Like, so then then I go with the, what I recommend this to other
811. 01:13:27 people. I don't know, like, I don't know if I would recommend this to other people. If somebody
812. 01:13:32 tells me like, Oh, there's this thing happening in my organization or, you know, my work or whatever
813. 01:13:39 it is. And it's like, and I really need this change. I really think we would be better if this change
814. 01:13:43 thing could happen. Then I might say like, Hey, I read this book once called the catalyst. You
815. 01:13:48 might want to like look through it. But I don't think I'm just going to randomly go around and be
816. 01:13:52 like, Hey, I read this book called called the catalyst. And it's amazing. And like, you should
817. 01:13:55 definitely go go look at it. So so like, I'm torn on this one. Because I think the rating I want to
818. 01:14:03 give it for some reason just feels too low. But I don't think it's the wrong rating. So all of
819. 01:14:09 that being said, I know this doesn't make sense. Or I guess I'm kind of waffling back and forth as
820. 01:14:14 I'm trying to make my final decision. I'm going to give it three stars. And like, the three stars
821. 01:14:20 are completely like, I think the information in the book is fairly good. It's high quality. The
822. 01:14:28 packaging of it was give or take. And I probably wouldn't recommend it to too many people. After
823. 01:14:35 having read it to it, that being said, last thing I'll say, and I'll turn it to you, Mike. It's a
824. 01:14:40 short book. Like, I mean, you can read this in a weekend. Like, I mean, it's not a long book. And
825. 01:14:45 especially if you like are willing to like not go into as much detail on some of the stories that
826. 01:14:50 he tells, and just kind of skim through those and get the gist of them. It is not a very challenging
827. 01:14:55 or long book to read. So three stars is my rating. Mike will move to you.
828. 01:15:02 All right. Well, I think this is more than a three star book. So I'll tell you right now.
829. 01:15:09 It's a, I'm going to give it four. I don't think it's, you know, the best book I ever read. It could
830. 01:15:15 be the best book on changing someone's mind that I've ever read. I think reading, thinking back to
831. 01:15:22 influence by Robert Chialdini. So that's kind of how we landed here. So this was recommended
832. 01:15:26 by Mark. And Mark mentioned this is the best book on, I forget the term he used, but basically,
833. 01:15:34 like if you don't want to read influence because it's 600 pages, you should read this one because
834. 01:15:37 it's better anyways. And I do think it's better than what I, what I remember of influence by Robert
835. 01:15:43 Chialdini, even though that's kind of the industry standard, like the gold standard, the one that
836. 01:15:49 everybody holds up as the, the definitive work on the subject. Now this isn't a strictly marketing
837. 01:15:59 book. Like, that's the vibe I remember getting from influence by Robert Chialdini. And I don't
838. 01:16:07 think that that book and the 48 Laws of Power, for example, Robert Greene, I think they get a little
839. 01:16:15 bit of a bad rap, because it's really just talking about principles of human behavior. And yeah,
840. 01:16:25 you can use them for, for nefarious purposes. But it's really not, you know, a manipulation manual
841. 01:16:32 per se. That's just the vibe I remember getting from, from reading those. And that's totally absent
842. 01:16:40 from this particular book. So I think there are instances where I would probably recommend
843. 01:16:48 this. I don't think they're going to be all that often. I don't know, maybe in some of the,
844. 01:16:57 some of the creator circles that I, I run in, I shared, you know, that what got my wheels turning
845. 01:17:03 was how do I use this in my creator business from a marketing perspective, not sleazy marketing,
846. 01:17:08 but just, you know, effective marketing. And it could be the fact that we simply read, or we read
847. 01:17:13 simple marketing for smart people, not not too long ago. And that sort of primed the pump here.
848. 01:17:19 I definitely had takeaways from this book in areas that it didn't speak to necessarily,
849. 01:17:26 at least not directly. So as we talked through this, you know, maybe my interpretation of this
850. 01:17:34 book and the concepts in it is going to be unique and different from just about anybody else who,
851. 01:17:41 who picks this up. I think there's a non zero chance that that is actually the case.
852. 01:17:46 That being said, I thought this was a really good book. I really liked the stories at the
853. 01:17:52 beginning of the chapters. I liked the presentation of the information and the concepts. I could give
854. 01:17:59 or take the the listicles and the framework, I thought was ineffective for me, but I get why
855. 01:18:06 somebody would do that. And I don't think that necessarily like downgrades. I'm not knocking down
856. 01:18:11 the, you know, the rating for the book because of that. I like the case studies a lot at the end.
857. 01:18:18 You know, most of the time when people text stuff on at the end of a chapter like that,
858. 01:18:22 I get to it and I'm like, I have to fight real hard not to skim it. That didn't happen this time.
859. 01:18:27 Like I read all those case studies. See, I skimmed multiple of them. I didn't think they were
860. 01:18:34 that interesting. Yeah. Well, I didn't think the appendices were all that interesting. I didn't
861. 01:18:38 even really look at those to tell you what I did. I thought the appendices are interesting.
862. 01:18:43 So yeah, I'm really glad that we read this one. Thank you to Mark for recommending it.
863. 01:18:49 But I don't think it's a holy life changing book for me either at this point. So that's why I'm
864. 01:18:55 going to give it four stars and instead of five. I think if you and I say all this because I think
865. 01:19:01 there are situations where this absolutely would be a five star life changing book.
866. 01:19:10 They just aren't for me, at least not right now.
867. 01:19:14 I agree. I can see a scenario where I read this book at the right time and it's a five star book
868. 01:19:19 for me. Yes. Exactly. Now it's a three star book for me. Sure. Can I make a disclaimer here?
869. 01:19:27 I hope Mark doesn't think that it's like, oh, that was a bad suggestion. No, no, no, no.
870. 01:19:31 I love reading books. I love being exposed to new knowledge. So it's like, Mark,
871. 01:19:34 I'm totally happy that they read it. It just doesn't get a good rating for me.
872. 01:19:39 Well, I think I would consider four stars a good rating. And I feel like that's a general
873. 01:19:44 encapsulation of the value of the book for most people in most situations. But yeah,
874. 01:19:49 I think four, but it could definitely skew higher for me. I think I have trouble thinking
875. 01:19:55 how it could possibly be lower for me because I feel like this is the sort of information where
876. 01:20:02 even if you don't have use for it right now, this specific moment, you will at some point in your
877. 01:20:09 life. So if you were to, if I were to make a list of these are the 100 books that you should read
878. 01:20:17 before you die because people have done stuff like that. I think this is probably on it,
879. 01:20:22 to be honest, like, or something like this, that this topic is important to understand, I feel.
880. 01:20:29 And I don't confess to have a comprehensive knowledge of it just because I read this,
881. 01:20:35 this one book. But, you know, why do we read books? I think part of it is, you know,
882. 01:20:43 sometimes I'll tell people if you are looking for a book to read, just consider whatever problem
883. 01:20:48 you're wrestling with and find a book that you think could solve that problem and chances are
884. 01:20:53 you'll get a lot out of it. And that, you know, I wouldn't say that that was the, the case for me
885. 01:20:58 with, with this one, but, but even, you know, taking that aside, I feel like there's stuff here that
886. 01:21:03 I'm going to continue to use for years. I may not recall, you know, it was the catalyst that
887. 01:21:10 I read that triggered this thing in me. But my gut feel from having read this is that
888. 01:21:20 there's some stuff in this, this book where even though it's short, even though my mind map isn't
889. 01:21:25 crazy huge, like some of the other ones that I've, I've made, there's, there's going to be some
890. 01:21:31 stuff here that's going to stick for a while. I think you and I have different levels on
891. 01:21:37 because like, what, everything you're describing, I'm like, yeah, I agree. Like, I'm, I'm like,
892. 01:21:41 and it, but I'm like, it's still a three. Like, I, I, maybe it's a three and a half. Maybe your
893. 01:21:46 four is my three and a half. Like, I think that's kind of where we're. So that's the other thing
894. 01:21:50 here is like calibrating the scales, because I, people will look at my daily question stuff that
895. 01:21:56 I do. And they're like, this is completely useless. You rate everything like six and above. And that's
896. 01:22:01 because, you know, I've been doing this stuff long enough. And it's based on my intention. I have a
897. 01:22:05 picture in my mind of what a zero or a one looks like. And every day I do something that, you know,
898. 01:22:11 means it's, it's not that. So most of my ratings do tend to be three and above. Does that mean
899. 01:22:20 that I love every book that we've, we've covered? No, but I don't think I've ever given a bookworm
900. 01:22:26 book, a single star, I've been able to find something in there that's valuable. And just my
901. 01:22:32 personal interpretation means that that's at least a two star, two star book. Maybe Zen in the art
902. 01:22:38 of more, more cycle maintenance was the exception. That was the book I like viscerally hated.
903. 01:22:44 I was going to say, you love that book, didn't you? You just, but I think, I think even that one,
904. 01:22:47 you know, I tend to, I tend to think more positively when I'm, when I'm assigning these ratings. And
905. 01:22:52 I don't, I think that's just personality. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, you know,
906. 01:22:57 what was it that you gave one star to? Was it radical candor?
907. 01:23:00 I don't remember, but it was recent. I, I all I remember is there was a book we read recently
908. 01:23:04 that I just did not. Yeah. But that's, that's cool. Like, I don't fault you for that. I don't
909. 01:23:08 think you're wrong for that. I just, yeah, I, I recognize that my internal, my internal scale,
910. 01:23:14 you know, is, is kind of calibrated to be a little bit nicer. Maybe.
911. 01:23:18 So it was, it was 101 essays that will change the way you think.
912. 01:23:21 Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. I just, no, I had nothing for that one.
913. 01:23:26 Okay. So let's, let's move on. Um, so we're going to go ahead and put cat, the catalyst,
914. 01:23:32 on the shelf. Mike, tell us about our next book that we're reading.
915. 01:23:36 The next book is Tiny Experiments by Ann Lore LeCouff. And, uh, I just now discovered,
916. 01:23:44 since I am back from Austin, that she was actually in Austin while I was there.
917. 01:23:51 I believe she's got like a, a book signing thing that she's, she's doing, which, uh, you know,
918. 01:23:58 this is a, the magic of podcasting. We're recording this, you know, roughly two weeks before it,
919. 01:24:04 it comes out. So, uh, you know, by time you have heard this, you know, it's already happened, but,
920. 01:24:10 uh, kind of bummed that I couldn't hang out in Austin another couple days and actually go meet her.
921. 01:24:15 I could see that. I could see that. But this is, this is a good book. Uh, I got a pretty
922. 01:24:19 released copy of this. Um, by the time that this comes out, my interview with her for the focus
923. 01:24:24 podcast will be, uh, be available. So I'll put a link to that in, uh, in the show notes. And, uh,
924. 01:24:30 yeah, I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this. Have you started reading this yet?
925. 01:24:35 I haven't started, I haven't started reading yet, but I'm, I will tonight. I'll start reading it
926. 01:24:38 today. Okay. Cool. What's after that? Uh, so after that, we are going to do a listener recommendation.
927. 01:24:46 Okay. Uh, this, this book is called Inner Excellence. Train your mind for extraordinary
928. 01:24:50 performance and the best possible life. And it's by Jim Murphy. I can tell you right now that I'm
929. 01:24:55 excited to read this book and it's mainly for in the subtitle and the best possible life, right?
930. 01:25:03 Like we have set the bar really high on this book because I'm just really intrigued if this, uh,
931. 01:25:10 if this book can help me get to my best possible life. But, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna take a
932. 01:25:15 look at this one. This one got popular. Uh, Mike reminded me of this. I didn't remember it when,
933. 01:25:19 when we were first talking about it, Mike reminded me that this got popular because one of the Eagles
934. 01:25:24 receivers, was it a receiver? Yeah. He would, he would read this on the sideline.
935. 01:25:28 Yeah. So the, the story here is, uh, it was a playoff game. Uh, I think it might have been the NFC
936. 01:25:35 championship game. Okay. And I believe the receiver's name is A.J. Brown. I'm terrible with NFL names,
937. 01:25:41 but he's like an all pro receiver. And, uh, you know, he had just come off the field. I don't know,
938. 01:25:48 remember if it was like a touchdown that he had scored or, um, they, you know, they punted or
939. 01:25:54 whatever, but he, uh, apparently does this all the time. He reads on the sideline. So he comes off
940. 01:26:00 the field and because it was a high profile game, he's a high profile player. The camera
941. 01:26:05 happens to, to capture him reading a book on the sideline, which in and of itself, you know, the
942. 01:26:11 announcers are having a heyday with that. And like, oh my gosh, look at A.J. Brown. He's
943. 01:26:15 not invested in the game. He's reading, uh, a book on the sideline. And then afterwards,
944. 01:26:20 he's like, no, I do that all the time. And the book that he happened to be reading was this book
945. 01:26:24 Inter excellence. And so immediately once that book was identified, it jumps to the top of the
946. 01:26:30 Amazon bestsellers list. And apparently, you know, it's been around for a, for a while, a lot of the
947. 01:26:35 blurbs that are associated with this book are from like PGA tour pros where something, something
948. 01:26:42 where, you know, engulf the distance between the very best in the world and people who barely make
949. 01:26:48 the cut is not the, the physical tools. It's the, the mental toughness. And so, um, I feel like
950. 01:26:56 that's a pretty cool topic. But by the way, this was a recommendation. So thank you to,
951. 01:27:02 to Carol for recommending this one via the, the form, which will be in the, the show notes. If
952. 01:27:06 you want to recommend a book for a bookworm, please go do that. By the way, regarding blurbs,
953. 01:27:10 I forgot to mention this when we were in the actual episode, you were talking about Good to
954. 01:27:15 Great by Jim Collins. Um, Jim Collins actually blurb this book. Did you notice that on which one,
955. 01:27:22 the catalyst? The catalyst. Yeah. Yeah. I remember reading that. Yeah. Yeah. So the blurbs for this
956. 01:27:27 book are crazy. There's, uh, Jim Collins, there's Robert Childini, uh, Daniel Pink, Charles Doohig,
957. 01:27:35 you know, so, uh, kind of interesting who has recommended that the catalyst, I have to admit,
958. 01:27:43 most of the time the blurbs do nothing for me, uh, because I know how the system works. You get
959. 01:27:48 your buddies to, to blurb your book and then they blurb and then you blurb their book and
960. 01:27:53 it's kind of a virtuous cycle of social proof. But, uh, this one, I'm looking at the list. I'm like,
961. 01:27:59 okay, that's actually impressive. Awesome. All right. Uh, let's move on to gap books. Mike,
962. 01:28:05 do you have any gap books right now? Uh, not officially. Um, well, I'll share this one because
963. 01:28:14 this might have been a gap book previously. Um, but I, I just picked it up as I was looking for
964. 01:28:20 something in, in between. Uh, I don't know that I'm actually going to finish this, but I am currently
965. 01:28:26 reading Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan. Okay. Noah Kagan is the guy behind AppSumo and he
966. 01:28:33 was like employee number six, I think at Facebook. Um, this is a book not about starting a business
967. 01:28:40 that is going to make a million dollars in a weekend, but really how to, how to create a solid
968. 01:28:49 business plan for a business that will grow to be a million dollar business in a weekend. So really,
969. 01:28:57 it's like putting a timeframe around, you know, just getting started with something,
970. 01:29:04 but not promising that you're going to get this incredible result. You know, it sounds kind of
971. 01:29:08 clickbaity. It's clickbaity. Listen, it was clickbaity. I was going to call you out on it, but go ahead.
972. 01:29:13 Yeah. Yeah. So that I tend to, I tend to just kind of push back on that kind of stuff, but I've had
973. 01:29:19 enough people telling me that this is actually a good book that I'm, I want to poke around in it
974. 01:29:23 at least and see what it's all about. Had it for a while, just haven't really picked it up and read
975. 01:29:28 it yet. So how about you? Uh, no, I am going another round with no, uh, gap book. Uh, my,
976. 01:29:36 my challenge here, Mike, and I was going to bring this up to you. I actually sent you a picture of
977. 01:29:39 me reading the physical copy of the catalyst, which by the way, that lasted for about a chapter. And I
978. 01:29:46 then put down the physical copy and I picked back up the digital copy and I read the digital version
979. 01:29:51 of it. I don't like physical books. Anyhow, moving forward. Um, I may, you'd be wrong, but that's
980. 01:29:58 okay. Right. Uh, me and Ryan holiday, both disagree. I love the idea of physical books. I like the
981. 01:30:04 feel of them. I just don't like to read them. Like I, I, they're not that interesting to me to read.
982. 01:30:09 Um, but I will probably listen to a book, like while I'm like running or at the gym or something,
983. 01:30:16 I don't, I don't count that as a gap book though. Like I, I mean, that's information
984. 01:30:22 being forced into my ear canal. Like I don't really think of that as reading a book. So
985. 01:30:27 I don't count those as my gap books, but I will probably do something like that between now and
986. 01:30:31 the next episode. Yeah, you are spot on with that, by the way. Um, a while back, I did a, uh, three
987. 01:30:39 hour workshop that I called the reading masterclass. Uh-huh. I remember this.
988. 01:30:45 And I get into the science behind how you read different with a physical medium as opposed to
989. 01:30:52 a screen, even something like an Amazon Kindle coming from a conversation that I had with Marianne
990. 01:30:56 Wolf, who's like literally a scientist who studies this sort of stuff. So, um, I'm guessing that most
991. 01:31:04 people listening to this and have listened to this point in the episode don't really care. So
992. 01:31:11 if that's you, that's normal, no problem. If you are one of the weird ones like me who wants to
993. 01:31:19 understand this stuff in greater detail. Um, I do have a replay of that workshop available.
994. 01:31:26 I will put that in the show notes. So for people who are interested. Oh, that's awesome. That's
995. 01:31:31 awesome. All right. So let's, uh, let's close this thing down. Let's pick up, uh, tiny experiments by
996. 01:31:37 and, and Lori Lecunff. Did I say that right? And Lohr Lecunff. And Lohr Lecunff. Okay. So
997. 01:31:44 and Lohr Lecunff. Um, we'll pick up tiny experiments. Um, if you are interested in, um, a little bit
998. 01:31:50 more of what we do. Uh, we record a pro show. So the pro show, uh, for this episode was about Mike's
999. 01:31:56 trip to, uh, the painted painted porch. Yep. Ryan Holliday's bookstore. Uh, so if you're interested
1000. 01:32:03 in that, you can pick up the pro show. You can go to, uh, patreon.com/bookwormfm. Um, you'll get
1001. 01:32:09 access to the pro show. You'll get access to, um, the bootleg version of the show, which is basically
1002. 01:32:14 the moment we turn. Um, we start to zoom call microphones start and they run the whole way till
1003. 01:32:19 the end till we, till we end the zoom call. Uh, there's a bookworm wallpaper there. Um,
1004. 01:32:23 it just, just some perks. Really it helps us kind of run the, the background of the show, um,
1005. 01:32:27 and run the, um, the hosting and, and things like that. So, uh, if you're interested in doing that,
1006. 01:32:32 you can feel free to go to, uh, patreon.com/bookwormfm, uh, and, and sign up there for us. So
1007. 01:32:39 there's, there's also a link in the, the show notes for, uh, if you want to support the show,
1008. 01:32:43 it's seven bucks a month. And as Cory said, it really helps us keep the, the show going. So
1009. 01:32:47 appreciate you doing that. Um, the other thing with the bootleg is that it normally gets uploaded
1010. 01:32:55 the moment that we get done. So usually it's about, uh, two weeks ahead of time. Um, so if you want,
1011. 01:33:01 you know, the early access to the, the bookworm episodes, that, uh, that's what the, the bootleg gets
1012. 01:33:07 you. Wonderful. The last thing I'll mention is if you're interested in recommending a book for
1013. 01:33:12 us to read, don't forget to check out the link, uh, in the, in the show notes. And we'll take a look
1014. 01:33:16 at those. And as we're thinking about the next books, we're going to pick up. So, uh, pick up tiny
1015. 01:33:19 experiments. And thanks for listening.