Summary Catalyst Best Audiobook Summary by Jonah Berger - YouTube (Youtube) www.youtube.com
2,745 words - YouTube video - View YouTube video
n/a We all have things we want to change. People in sales and marketing wanna change their prospects minds. If you work for a company, you wanna change your boss's perspective, If you're a business leader, you want to change your organization. If you're a parent, you want to change the way your children behave in certain situations. I could go on.
n/a But as we all know, change is hard. 1 of the biggest things standing in our way is inertia. It's the reason that families go back to the same vacation spot every year and why companies are hesitant to start new initiatives and don't like killing off older ones. As Author Jonah Burger points out, our tenancy is to push to try to overcome the inertia. If a client isn't buying the pitch, you send them a slide deck full of reasons and facts.
n/a If your boss isn't buying the idea, give him more facts in a longer explanation. But as often is the case. The negotiators at the Fbi are 1 step ahead of us when it comes to changing the hearts and minds of people when change is hard. Negotiators like Greg V rely on a different method, 1 that removes barriers rather than fighting them. Join us for the next 10 minutes as we explore how you can create change by becoming a catalyst.
n/a A better way to change minds inspired by chemistry. In this science world, chemists use a special set of substances to facilitate change. These substances clean the exhaust in your car, and turn petroleum into your bicycle helmet. Most importantly, for our purposes, They speed changed by enabling molecules that I might take years to interact with to do so in mere seconds. In essence, they remove roadblocks and lower barriers to an interaction.
n/a And that's the metaphor burger uses for the entire book. That the best and easiest way to create change in any situation is to become a catalyst. When we remove roadblocks and lower barriers that keep people from taking action, change occurs? It begins with a simple question? Why hazards and the person changed already?
n/a What's blocking them? Why does this method work so well? Why does Greg V get criminals to walk out of houses and surrender on their own accord? Without any violence, 9 times at of 10, it works because change doesn't always require more horsepower. Sometimes you just need to find and unlock the parking brake.
n/a We'll explore 5 ways you can become a catalyst, and they form the handy acronym reduce. Reduce react, ease, endowment, shrink distance, alleviate uncertainty, and find core evidence. Principle number 1, reduce react. When people are pushed, their natural reaction is to push back. It's like they have built in missile defense systems and missile comes in, and missile goes out to destroying that vessel.
n/a People have a radar that goes off when it senses that somebody is trying to convince them of something. The scientific term for this is react tense. It's an uncomfortable state of mind that people feel when their freedom is lost or threatened. This is true not only when you're telling people what to do, but also when you tell them what not to do. At that time, Tide tried telling people not to eat their tide pods.
n/a The Internet has a tendency to create stupid behavior like eating laundry detergent pods because they look so pretty. That started what is now known as the tide pod challenge, which doesn't seem like much of a challenge to me, but that's beside the point. The goal was to film yourself eating a tide pod, which is obviously not what you're supposed to do with them and potentially dangerous. In response, Ty put out some messaging with the help of Rob G, the football star. Did that help?
n/a Of course, not, because react. It just spurred people on to more and more idiotic feeds of detergent, The same holds true when alcohol prevention messages caused college students to drink more. And when telling people that smoking is bad for their health, causes them to smoke more. The solution to this problem is to get people to persuade in themselves instead. You can do that by allowing for agency by finding the middle ground between being completely hands off and telling them exactly what to do.
n/a There are 4 ways you can do this. Number 1, provide a menu. And you give people a limited set of options, you give them both a sense of autonomy, and a direction in which to head. Number 2, ask don't tell. By asking questions that elicit what people want instead of telling them what they need they are more likely to take action.
n/a People have a tendency to behave consistently with whatever answer they give. Number 3, highlight a gap. By pointing out a disconnect between a person's thoughts and actions and what they might recommend for others, you can get people into action. And number 4, start with understanding. By putting yourself in the shoes of the other person, you build trust and understanding.
n/a Which eventually makes it easier for the other person to change. Principle number 2, ease and endowment, You've likely heard the saying if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's our natural wiring as human beings. Unless what we're currently doing is producing does disastrous results, we likely don't want to switch. This is the status quo bias.
n/a There are 2 main tactics you can use to battle this. Number 1, highlight the cost of an inaction. In order to get people out of this natural state, we need to highlight how the status quo, of not taking action isn't as cost as it may seem. Here's a simple example. Burger was surprised disease cousin manually type in best Charles as his sign off to every email he wrote.
n/a Berger asked him why he didn't just put that in his email signature to save time every email he wrote. His cousin response was that it only took him a couple of seconds to do it. And besides, he didn't know how to create an email signature and that would take time to figure out. So, Berger asked him how many emails he wrote every week and found out that the number was about 400. Then he asked him again, how much time he spent typing best.
n/a Charles, and the next thing you know, Charles is typing how to create an email signature into the Google machine. That's because he had done the math, And figured out that he was spending more than 11 hours per year typing a sign off. He had figured out in the true cost of an action. Number 2, burn the ships. Sometimes the resistance to taking action is so strong that asking people to consider the cost of inaction, just as effective.
n/a In these cases you need to get 1 step further and burn the ships. There are many examples of this in history such as when Muslim Commander Tar invaded the Ib Peninsula and Ad 07:11 and ordered the burning of his fleet of ships prevent coward among his troops. This tactic acts to take the choices off the table and gets them to consider which new course of action they should take. Principle number 3, shrink distance. As we've covered already, everybody has a built in anti persuasion system that can sometimes be short circuit by providing information.
n/a But sometimes the information can actually backfire on us? Why? Because the information that we provide needs to be within what burger calls the zone of acceptance. If the information is too far outside the zone, it is actually within the zone of rejection, and your information actually hurts rather than helps. Here's an example.
n/a Imagine we're arguing about whether or not there should be a prohibition on alcohol sales. Now imagine that we're on a football field and in each. End zone, there are people who are firmly in 1 camp or the other. Completely committed to prohibition or completely against it. End Now imagine that there's a bunch of people at different points at the field.
n/a People who are on the 25 yard line are mildly for or against prohibition. Now, finally, imagine that any argument you make that is more than 25 yards away from that person will be sum rejected. What this means is that you don't wanna try to move somebody from the 25 yard line on 1 side of the argument more than to midfield. Because if you do, you will begin the zone of rejection and you only make them turn around and entrenched their position even further. Practically speaking, this means that you should first figure out exactly where on the spectrum the person you are trying to persuade.
n/a Actually is, and shrink the amount of change you were trying to create in the moment. There are 3 ways to do this. Number 1, find the movable middle. When you're dealing with issues that people have strong feelings about, find the people that are already close to the position you want them to take. These are the people you'll likely have the most success with.
n/a These are the people who are small change creates the biggest impact. Number 2, you can ask for less. If you wanna change the minds of people who are further away, reduce the size of your first ask. Not only are you more likely to succeed, people who make small changes first are much more likely to make more change overall. And number 3, you can switch the field to find an un sticking point.
n/a When somebody's really dug into their position such as the case when we're dealing with prejudice. The goal is to find a place where there's already agreement and to use that as a pivot point. Principle number 4. Alleviate uncertainty. 1 of the reasons people resist change so much is that it often involves uncertainty.
n/a Better are the devil you know than the 1 you don't, the saying goes. Will this new product for service be as good as the old 1? It's often very hard to know for sure, which causes us to hit the pause button before we make our decision. The trick here is to hit the un pause button by making things ease year to try. Removing the uncertainty tax.
n/a Nick Swim, the former minor league baseball ticket salesman was looking for a pair of shoes at a mall in San Francisco 1 day. After hours of searching, he couldn't find what he wanted and so he had an idea. Killer What if there was a store on the internet that would sell every shoe imaginable so that you didn't have to waste time searching like Nick did that day. His first attempt, shoes site dot com struggled. He was running out of cash and his only saving grace it was that he had no competition because nobody believed that this was good business to be in.
n/a The problem they found out was that customers didn't know whether or not and the shoes they were buying online would fit, a So they made shipping free and basically told customers to buy as many shoes as they wanted, keep what they liked and return the rest for a full refund. All with no shipping fees. Maybe this is the first time you're hearing about shoes site dot com, but I bet it's not the first time you're hearing about the company it eventually turned into. Zappos dot com. Here's are some other ways you can reduce the uncertainty tax and make it more likely that people will take the action you want them to take.
n/a Number 1, trial ability. It it easy for people to trial your product or service before making a final decision. Number 2, harness freemium. Create a free version of your product or service that allows your customers to experience the value you produce, and only make them pay when they inevitably want to unlock more valuable features. Companies like dropbox have grown to multi billion dollar enterprise, and using this strategy.
n/a And 3, make it reversible. Making the decision reversible eliminates the certainty around the transaction and makes it much more likely, you'll get the commitment you're looking for. Like the pet shelter that gave Burger and his girlfriend the option to return the puppy they were adopting after 2 weeks. If you wanna catchy phrase to remember for the principles in this section, it's this easier to try, easier to buy. Principle number 5, find cooperating evidence, We've all heard that social proof is important in marketing.
n/a That's why celebrities are used to endorse almost every kind of product or service imaginable. However, there's some nuance that sometimes gets lost in this principle that you'll want to consider before slapping up any old testimonial on your website. When somebody something that sets off a number of questions in the heads of the people seeing it. For instance, 1 of your coworkers tells you a new show they're watching is really great. You might wonder whether or not they tend to like a lot of shows that they like that particular type of show.
n/a A And just because they liked it, and will I like it. When you're looking for cor evidence, it's important to focus on 3 things. Who, when and how? Who? It's important to have the right mix of sources when it comes to social proof.
n/a People are much more likely to be persuaded and by cor evidence when it comes from people who are like them. And while more is better, is generally true. If you have 100 testimonials from the same type of people, evidence it will likely be treated as 1 source of information. That's why it's important to have diversity in your cooperating evidence. Different types of people who endorse your product or service or the action you're trying to advocate for, will make it more likely they'll be persuaded.
n/a When. The next thing they consider is 1 exposure to these social proof messages will have the largest impact. The rule of thumb here is that concentration increases impact. All else being equal, hearing about something from multiple sources at the same time, will increase the persuasion factor over hearing about something from the same number of people spread out over time. And how.
n/a The last question to Ponder isn't how to deploy your scarce from resources. The decision here is to determine whether or not it's to use a sprinkler or a fire hose strategy. For instance, should you target all of your resources into a marketing campaign in a single location? Or should you spread it out over a large area, opting for coverage over concentration. If the resistance to your message is low, opting for the sprinkler strategy is the right decision, you don't need a large concentration of people in 1 area for a message to spread.
n/a If the resistance to your message is high, g Opting for the firehouse strategy is the right decision. In order to get any success at all, you need a concentration of people in 1 location in order for your message to spread. Using the sprinkler strategy in this situation might lead to too little or no results at all. So in conclusion, Creating changes hard, but as possible. The key Jonah teaches us is to become a catalyst and remove barriers to action rather than trying to create it by force.
n/a You can do that and by remembering and utilizing the 5 ways you can become a catalyst that form the handy acronym reduce reduce react, ease endowment, shrink distance, alleviate uncertainty, and find cooperating evidence.
Rhonda Hi, I'm Rhonda, and this is an exclusive audiobook video recorded for the audiobook master channel. Enjoy your audiobook and have fun learning. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification button so you'll get updated on our next upload. If you liked the video, give us a thumbs up and say your thoughts about the book we just covered. Do you want to listen to a summary?
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