All right, Mike, welcome back. How was your conference? It was great. I was at the Newsletter Marketing Summit in Austin. Pro show listeners just heard me talk about my trip to the Painted Porch bookstore, which is Ryan Holiday's bookstore. Bastrip, Texas. I think that's the name of the town. It's not actually in Austin proper. It's a bit of a drive to get there, but very cool bookstore. And, uh, yeah, it was, uh, it was a lot of fun. It was a kind of a whirlwind 48 hours.
but I learned lots more than I ever could have imagined about newsletters and changes coming to mind shortly. I'll mention that my newsletter, I sent it today as we record this and I shared. A couple of the lessons that I learned from that conference and that I think are generally applicable to anybody who's interested in PKM and wants to use it to be more productive or creative.
There was some really cool people, really cool sessions. And in that newsletter, I also included my sketch notes from the conference. So I published those. I mean, I send out the newsletter, obviously, but also publish them publicly. So I'll include the link to the newsletter if people are interested in taking a look at that. Yeah, Mike.
As you're thinking about which of these conferences you go to and what you engage in, how do you make your decisions? What makes a conference rise to the level of committing your time to it? The travel, the cost, all of that stuff. Good question. I do not know other than like I see something and I'm like that looks interesting.
The newsletter marketing summit, I didn't actually go there because, you know, I want to learn a bunch about newsletters. It was more so I saw some of the people that were going to be there and they were my people. So. I don't know how to say this without sounding a little bit precious, but it's a little bit lonely being an internet creator in Wisconsin.
Yeah, that doesn't sound precious at all. That seems very, very understandable. Okay. So yeah, every once in a while, I just got to get out of here and get around some people who are doing the same sort of thing that I do. And yeah, I saw Jay Klaus, saw Nathan Berry, saw Chanel Basilio, who are all some of my favorite creator people on the internet. I'm in all of their communities and courses.
yeah it was it was really cool actually got to get coffee with uh with j klaus one morning picked his brain about community platforms um so yeah i met uh stacy harman for the first time she's kind of the evernote expert
and evernote by the way she's kind of filling me in because i was familiar with the the path and being acquired by bending spoons and didn't sound like it was going real great but kind of i've been noticing from the outside lately it seems like they're doing the right things and they're making a lot of improvements
She's like, oh yeah, I'm part of the partner program and they've been including me on all of their roadmaps and stuff. And she's like, they're really listening. They're implementing a lot of this stuff. She's like, Evernote's got a bright future. I'm like. Cool. Never would have guessed it would have turned out that way. But yeah, I had no idea it even existed anymore. Like I did not know that it was even a thing anymore. Yeah. So yeah, I got to got to meet Stacy and a bunch of other people.
I actually met Stacy at like impromptu dinner thing after the conference at Terry Black's, which is like one of the famous barbecue places in Texas. where you have to like get there and stand in line and the line wraps you know all the way outside the restaurant around the restaurant around the parking lot Just to get some meat. And you just hope they still have what you want when you walk up to the door because they're probably one of those places where it's like, oh, we sold out of that.
15 minutes ago and yeah we only make as much as we need well they i mean i was there at seven o'clock they just keep making it i mean they've got you know a whole bunch of these smokers that are running all the time so yeah it was delicious yeah awesome Alrighty, before we get into our book, let's do some follow-up. I will start. I was supposed to think about the things I want to learn and how do I apply the concepts from the last.
book into that. So that would be spaced repetition, interleaving, varying what's in there. I focused in on this one for this week in terms of... It actually ties into some things I'm doing in class and with my students. But I think I'm going to think about scripture and how do I develop my own app. to do spaced repetition, to interleave different types of scripture, and then to vary the scripture that I'm trying to memorize. So I'm going to hold it off for there because I don't want to like...
You know, it's still in the development, but like I'm thinking about how do I develop an app that allows me to to do that stuff. So I'm going to say green checkmark on this one. Like, I think I've achieved a green checkmark because while I didn't think about. all the things I want to learn. I read to think about one and I, and I thought pretty hard about it. So how about you? Kudos to you. Um, so
Mine, I guess technically it's done because I did explore it. It's actually in the thing. Exploration is the goal. And that's the space repetition via Readwise. So I think I've come to the conclusion that... I'm going to use Readwise, but I am not going to use it for book notes at all. I'm going to use it as a place where I collect different feeds and things.
as a like research type of thing. That was one of the things that stood out to me from the newsletter marketing summit was like people are doing all this research and they're kind of aggregating the things that are important. and into a single place and it just makes sense that rss would be a part of that for me and then from there using the the highlights piping those over to obsidian using something like the obsidian web clipper
I think is going to be the workflow there. I don't want everything, you know, in Obsidian. I just want like the bits and pieces that are really important from the stuff that I'm. i'm reading that i want to like take action on and this is the type of stuff where it's like uh for example every time i send a newsletter i've got a something cool section and one of the things in addition to this sketch notes this time
was the announcement about Obsidian being free for commercial use. That's cool. So I might highlight a section out of that, clip it to Obsidian, so that when I sit down to write my newsletter, I've got that piece of text that's available. um none of that is implemented yet so uh okay there's still some work to be done there but i do think that readwise is going to to stick we'll see though nice
Awesome. Are you ready to bounce into today's book? I am. Let's do it. All right. So today's book is called The Catalyst, How to Change Anyone's Mind. It's by... Jonah Berger Jonah is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania he's written multiple different books. So one's called Contagious, one's called An Invisible Influence, and then there's The Catalyst. He does research and work on word of mouth, social influence, customer behavior, consumer behavior.
The Catalyst is all about changing people's minds and thinking about changing people's minds. We thought this one would be a good one. This is actually a recommendation from one of the Bookworm listeners. We took this as a recommendation. And just to kind of throw a plug out here, we actually have a link in the show notes that if you'd like to recommend a book for us to read on Bookworm, you can feel free to go hit that link, fill out the little form. It'll recommend the book for us.
Throw an Amazon link in there. That way we know what version of the book that you're wanting us to read. And then we'll take a look at it. We can't promise that we're going to read them all, but we'll take a look at it and we'll evaluate whether or not we think it makes sense for the Bookworm audience. We did get a couple of those, and I think your next book actually is going to be a listener recommendation.
It is. It is both a listener and a mic recommendation. And my favorite books are the ones I don't pick, if I'm being very, very honest with you. I don't know why. I just like reading books that other people suggest.
makes it fun for me all right so uh back to the catalyst so we're going to think about um basically changing people's minds so if we roll into um well first off mike do you have any thoughts on the catalyst going into it were you interested was it like this is gonna be okay like what was your thought going into it um i was a little bit apprehensive to tell you the truth because the the subtitle how to change anyone's mind this
has shades of robert green to me okay okay um the the image is like a butterfly but the wings are like a brain so I mean, it's kind of cool artistic style, but just the whole communicated message there is sort of free your mind. I don't know. It just kind of rubbed me the wrong way going into it. I will say, though, that that's not accurate for the rest of the book. So I don't want to, you know, set a picture here, which is going to.
paint a negative impression of my of for me of the rest of the book because i think there's a lot of really great stuff in here so maybe you know if it was up to me i would redo the the title subtitle and the cover but Yeah. So I went into it going, oh, this book sounds great. This sounds really interesting because I like the idea of how to interact with people, how to change their mind, not in a manipulative way, but in a convince them, arguments, sell them type of a thing.
The thing that made me a little bit nervous about it is the reviews. I always like to look at the reviews, and the reviews are really mixed on this book. So the Amazon reviews got it at a 4.6 with a fairly high number of ratings, but the Goodreads review drops it below.
a four. Anytime a book drops below a four, if it's not really niche, I start to get worried because I'm like, well, hold on. Below a four, you've got as many... more threes as you have fives you know and then and then you've got your other uh other situations or you have more threes you know if you think on average right so um so i'm like i'm not sure how i'm gonna feel about this one um and
Overall, I have a similar sentiment to you. I got a good bit of good stuff out of this one. So I'm excited to talk to you about it and see what else we can dig out of it. All right, let's do it. All right. So the introduction. So he starts off pretty dramatic. And what I'll say is I think the examples he uses throughout the book are dramatic, but not in a bad way. Like they're meant to be.
They're meant to have a purpose. They're meant to have an impact. He doesn't pick these real fluffy examples of how we're trying to change somebody's mind. He goes into this first example when he's talking about a criminal negotiator and how that negotiator...
kind of approaches the situation. Well, there's a bunch of these different examples that he's going to work through when he's working through his different points. So that was an interesting idea from number one that started off right from the beginning of the book.
The important thing that we need to get out of the introduction is his framework. So this book, for those of you who are thinking about picking it up, this book is 100% driven by a framework. And the framework is reduce. So he's saying, okay, well, we need to reduce. essentially the negative aversion, whatever it might be, to people actually changing their mind, to people doing what we want them to do or thinking the way we want them to think.
So reduce the one, two, three, four, five, six letters. The six letters of reduce are reactance, endowment. distance, uncertainty, and then corroborating evidence. And that's how he spells the word reduce. So the reason I got mixed up between five and six there is because it's only five ideas, but the last idea has two.
two words in it. So it's corroborating evidence. So I'm going to stop here. Mike, what was your thought on the introduction? The introduction's fine, but that whole model slash framework is ridiculous. Okay. Can we just agree a six letter acronym for five points is just confusing. It is. And I got to the end of the book and I was like, there's one more. There's one more point that he needs to make. Me too. Oh, no, there's not because the last point has two letters.
Yeah, and some of these are forced. So I actually don't like the framework. Like I get why people do this sort of thing, but I wish we would just discuss the ideas. for what they are as opposed to trying to crowbar them into an acrostic, which I don't think is actually going to help me remember this any better. because it doesn't it doesn't fit my my initial thought if i were to recall that reduce acronym is no that can't be right because there are only five points
Yeah. So the point of the reduce, right? So you might be wondering like, well, how does reduce get into here? So he starts it off and says, okay, inertia.
drives everything so people want to keep doing what they're what they're doing you're trying to change their mind so what you're trying to do is you're trying to reduce their inertia you're trying to reduce their resistance to change so how do we approach this entire problem this universal problem of people having this resistance to change oh well let's go through the go through the acronym reduce so that's essentially what he's trying to do i agree with mike here i don't think
that my takeaway from this book is going to be reduced. I don't really think that I'm going to, you know, in six months from now, if you're going to ask me, hey, you read The Catalyst, like what's your main takeaway from The Catalyst? It's not going to be like, oh, he had this. you know across like this reduced thing and nope that's not going to be it it's going to be some other other points of it so if you're good with it we can move on to chapter one yeah let's do it
Okay, so chapter one is reactance. So in reactance, he defines it as the unpleasant state that occurs when people feel their freedom is lost or threatened. So you're coming in, you're telling people.
to do or to not do something to change or to not change right like you're you're giving them this idea you're trying to be a catalyst and they feel as though they've lost their freedom they've lost their agency in order to you know be part of this this process so he's going to say a catalyst in in in this situation a catalyst essentially
incorporates agency into this process. He gives four different ways to do that. So provide a menu, ask, don't tell, highlight a gap, and then start with understanding. And then he's got this other stair step thing, which I'm sure.
we're probably going to talk about before we leave the reactants chapter. So he's basically saying, okay, the first thing we need to do is we need to think about the fact that people are going to have some essentially negative reaction to what you want them to do. And then you have to figure out a way around that.
yeah essentially if you ask if you tell somebody to do something they're more likely not to do it and they use the story of the tide pods at the beginning here which is just ridiculous but uh illustrates the point clearly i guess you know where basically tide pods are these laundry detergent pods you throw them in the washing machine and you don't have to measure things out well apparently there was like a thing where people were eating these and
obviously they don't want to get in trouble. So they're telling people don't eat these. You will get sick. You could die, whatever, you know, it's kind of like, uh, Whenever you see something like on the McDonald's coffee cups, it's like, caution, hot. You know that's there for a reason. Because they got sued because someone spilled coffee all over themselves or something. The chainsaw blade is sharp. Don't touch. Okay, great. Yes, that would make sense.
Yeah. So you get Tide's response where it's like, we need to formally say, don't eat these. So if anybody does and they sue us, we've got it. covered but what happened after they told people not to eat them is that people kept eating them and actually they ate them a lot more and they paid a whole bunch of money they had rob gronkowski the titan from the patriots do this advertising campaign. He's like, do not eat these. And people just kept eating them, which is ridiculous.
But also the point that they're hitting on here is that people have a need for freedom and autonomy. And essentially, if you tell someone, hey, don't do this or you can't do this, that's then they're kind of like, oh, yeah, well, watch me. And it seems weird to think that people would do that. when they could have such negative health consequences from that that's the part that's a little hard to to grok i guess but
Yeah, the point is that people have this built-in anti-persuasion radar, which I think is a really effective visual. Yep. I think the principle here is spot on. Right. Like if you're going to come at me and you're going to tell me, don't push the red button. The first thing I'm going to think is, well. Why? What happens when I push the red button? I want to push the red button. Don't tell me not to push the red button. It's very natural to have this reaction. I'm going to move us to these...
four key ways to overcome this. What he would say is reduce reactants. What are the four ways to reduce reactants? Provide menus, ask, don't tell, highlight the gap, and then start with understanding. The one that... I think resonates the most with me is the ask, don't tell. That like, if you get in there and you start talking to people about, you know, well, hold on. Like, why do you eat Tide Pods?
Like, what benefit are you getting from Tide Pods instead of me telling them? And I think why this one resonates with me so much right now is because I have young children. And if I go to the young children and I say, child. Don't jump off that 10-foot bridge into the river. They're going to be like, well, Dad, I want to jump off the 10-foot bridge to the river. But if I go, son, what do you think is going to happen?
if you jump off the 10-foot bridge? And he's like, oh, well, I'm going to land on the water. And I say, how deep do you think the water is under the bridge? And if I ask these questions, you can almost see the light click in his eyes. And he's like, oh.
the water's probably not deep enough and I'm probably going to like hurt my legs or break my ankles or something. And it's like, yes, son. Yes. But if you come at it the other way, like it doesn't work. Right. I mean, yeah. So that's, that's the one that resonates with me the most. I don't know that I have a particular one that resonates with me. I kind of feel like these are different tactics that you could employ strategically.
But yeah, I think the big takeaway for me from this is highlighted. And the thing I have before this in my notes is the truth campaign, which it was a campaign to get kids to stop smoking. And they.
mentioned that the reason that it was successful was because it didn't tell them to stop smoking the way that you would tell, you know, people not to, or not tell them, you know, specifically to stop smoking would be, you know, you could do it four different ways with those, those different methods that you, you highlighted there, but.
I guess if I had to pick one, it would be start with understanding and just kind of highlighting why someone wants to do something or doesn't want to do something. Kind of being naturally curious. That's a kind of carryover from liminal thinking by Dave Gray, which I guess ding the bell. I mentioned that one again.
Yeah, but my big takeaway from that was that we have these preconceived notions, this bubble of belief that we assemble based on our limited experience. And I remember walking out of that book thinking, I need to not resist.
uh viewpoints that are contrary to mine but actually be better if i was able to just seek them out more more often and i try to do that you know if you were to follow me around and chronicle how i spend my day you could probably point out all the places where i i fail with that but um that reading that book definitely did uh adjust my mindset to that so i'd like to at least tell myself a little bit more yeah
open-minded and i feel like this is probably my default now when i'm talking to somebody is i want to understand where they're coming from before i just say well no you gotta change your mind about things again you could probably point out a whole bunch of times when i've Failed at that. But I think that's the one that seems to me to really fit most, at least initially. Yeah. So based building off of that understanding, he puts a diagram in here that.
basically says understanding trust and change that there are these staircases it's the staircase and the steps are understanding and once we understand each other we can build trust with each other and then once we build trust with each other then i can listen to you more um and i'm more
I guess I'm less reactive to a negative feeling towards towards changing for you. Now, one of the things he slides in here is this idea of active listening. And I thought I'm interested to hear what your perspective is on this, because. he really doesn't talk about active listening at all in the chapter but he throws it to an appendix at the end and says like oh yeah and if you want to learn more about active listening go see appendix a um and
So that's okay, but it feels very disjointed or disconnected. It's like, oh, and by the way, active listening, just see that at the end. It's not part of my story right now. Yeah, it's a good point. So I don't know. I'm familiar with active listening and there've been books that have kind of hit on that super hard, I guess, just for quick review for people. That's kind of where you're, if I'm hearing you right, this is what you're.
saying you know yes okay well then at least the person that you're talking to feels heard this is one of my pet peeves by the way is not feeling like i've been heard and and i could totally identify a whole bunch of situations where I'll say something and then the person just responds with like, well, and I'm just like, no, you don't get it. So I think that's a really valuable technique. I don't know that it's...
I guess a case could be made that it should belong as material that's actually in this chapter. I didn't really think about it until you brought it up, though, that why doesn't he go into more detail about that here? I guess... Maybe he feels like when you start with understanding, that's essentially encapsulates the big takeaway from the active listening process. I mean, obviously he's not talking about the specifics of it, but.
There's a lot of stuff in this book where he talks about some stories at the beginning and some principles and then what you can actually do about it. It's kind of the formula, I guess, for these types of self-help nonfiction books.
But when he gets to the, you know, what you can do about it, there's always a couple of, there's always like a list or something like that. It's a, he's a big fan of lists. You know, it's not just the reduced framework at the beginning where he's talking about the different chapters.
So maybe it just didn't really fit very cleanly with that, which, I mean, I guess I could see that. I don't think you should determine the content of the book that way, but I don't know, maybe you did. Well, it got... I actually noticed it more at the very end of the book because I felt like the book ended quickly. And then there were these like additional 20.
plus pages of like you know this appendix appendix appendix but okay so let's go on to how he ends every chapter so he ends every chapter with a case study and i'm not going to give my opinion yet i'm going to ask mike for his opinion first mike what do you think of the case study in general? Did you think they were valuable? Did you like them? For the most part, I like them. I like the approach of the case studies at the end. And the case studies are different.
Then the stories he shares at the beginning, because those are kind of like teeing up the issue or the problem. And the case study is really highlighting the solution. So I think. The case study at the end of the chapter is actually an effective way to close out the chapter. You could argue about the effectiveness of the specific case studies.
that he chose but for the most part i thought those were really good too and to be honest you know there's nothing that was really new in those case studies by the time you got to them agreed so i don't think i have any notes on the case studies themselves but I did think they were really cool. So there was one in particular, and I forget even what chapter it's in where he's talking about moving people in terms of their opinion on the political spectrum.
And he uses two examples of someone who grew up very liberal and became conservative. And then someone who grew up very conservative and became liberal. And they came from the places that you think conservatives and liberals come from. And just kind of like. doesn't have a dog in this fight or a horse in this race if you want a different metaphor i guess maybe that's a better one uh
And I thought that was pretty cool. Like there's no agenda here. I feel like most of the books that we read, there is, if you really want to look for it, you can find the agenda in some of the things that people are. So I appreciated that. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more that I think by the time you hit the case studies, the way he's constructed the book, the case study is really doubling down on the points he was trying to make.
for the most part, they're good. They're good examples of the points he was trying to make. All right, let's move on to the chapter two, endowment. So endowment was the hardest, I think, chapter for me to like... wrap my head around like what we were trying to do but the idea is basically like oh the thing that we have right now
has higher value than whatever you want me to pay attention to, right? So if you want me to buy a new car, the car that I have right now is... above and beyond and you're gonna have to show me how the thing you want me to get is clearly above and beyond better than than what I currently have so it's like this idea of endowment is like you know just what I'm already doing or what I already own.
It's almost like you're trying to climb uphill. You're trying to push the boulder uphill because I'm already okay with what I'm doing. He brings up a couple different ideas. You talked about him in lists. He's got them in almost every chapter. surface the cost of inaction and then burn the ships, which I'm a big fan of burn the ships, but we'll get there in a little bit. So he's got these two different ideas that he uses to...
drive home his key points for kind of this endowment idea. Yeah, I don't like the term endowment here. That feels like a word chosen so that it fit the framework that he's trying to.
to use yeah i i mean really what he's talking about here is the status quo so i feel like status quo would have been a much better chapter title if you're just going to take that chapter in isolation and really try to communicate a single specific idea which i would argue he's that's what he's doing is it with his approach to this book there are no sections there's just
five chapters uh introduction and an epilogue so the content and the structure of the book i actually really liked don't really like the the term here but in terms of the big ideas
I think that status quo can be a very powerful influence on our decisions. And that's really what he's talking about. Shares lots of... studies where you know if you already have something you value it at this if you're going to buy it new you would value it at like one third of that actually it's 2.6 times that's the the multiplier for the value for something that we already own versus something that we are looking to acquire. And I think that that is a really powerful idea.
It's very easy to just stick with something because it's familiar and mentions that at the end that terrible things tend to get replaced, but the mediocre things tend to stick around. Yep. When things are good, it's easy to just stick with the status quo and not consider any of the other options, which I think is a fairly sad way to live your life. So you could.
characterize this as something we should be pushing back against and trying to overcome. I don't think that's the... framing the or the angle that he's coming at this with because literally in the subtitle it's how to change anyone's mind so this is really i feel like when you're talking to other people how to get them to change from the status quo but i don't know i mean
My brain just naturally goes to how would I apply this stuff? Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. He references, you know, good to great. So Jim Collins is good to great in here. And the fact that good is the enemy to great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. And I think this might be...
um well so this is definitely one of my action items i don't know if it's the only action item yet i'll figure that out uh later but this is definitely one of mine is like i need to look at essentially do a scan of life and say what is a situation where i'm settling for good That I could be driving more towards great, but instead I'm settling for good because...
you know, it's good enough, right? And I think there are going to be areas where good enough is good enough, and I'm okay with that, and I don't need to push for great in that situation. But I think there are areas where I'm going to say, you know what? I'm not happy with the fact that this area is just good. I want this area to be great, and I want it to be better than that.
We'll get to the last section that I really liked. And this was, it's the burn the ships idea. So I had actually never heard of where burn the ships came from. So I really liked. that he went into the background um cortez basically he's coming over and and there there's going to be a potential mutiny and he's like hold up
We're just going to take those 12 ships that are out there that people want to get back on and run away from, and we're just burning those things down. We're absolutely going to give people no way out. There's no exit door. And I was like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that that was the...
where the phrase came from but i really do like the idea of burning the ships basically making going back no longer an option so like what obstacles do you have to set up that way forward is the only direction and we can't you know, crutch on the things that we've been doing that are good enough. So I really, I liked that, that idea a lot. Yeah. I love that, that visual and that story, but this is actually something that I've been fascinated.
by for quite a while so i've uh it was interesting to me to see how he talked about this because that's the popular story so that's the one that he tells at the beginning And then you can get into, if you find, if you want to find someone to argue with you online, just go say something about burn. The boats came from this story and they'll be like, actually.
Because there's three or four other examples and he hits on all of them. He tells the story behind that one because I think it's the most emotionally appealing. But then he covers his historical basis and mentions there are other versions of this story other places. That's funny. Yeah, but the principle is the same. If you give yourself a way back, you're not going to go all in.
All right, you ready to move to three? Distance? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so distance, basically what he's saying is that if the change you're trying to make is too far away from where the person currently... is or what they're currently thinking, then...
that you're basically doomed for failure. Like you're never going to get that change because you're in what he would call the zone of rejection or the region of rejection that like you're just too far away. So he's got a whole football field analogy where he brings up these football fields in the book and then he shows you.
you know where people would be in the 20 yard line and the other side of the field and all that stuff but there's really there's two zones there's the zone of rejection then there's the zone of acceptance and essentially what you could think about is like the further I am away from this idea the more strong
I'm in the region of rejection or the zone of rejection. As we get closer to my ability to accept the thing, then I would be in the middle. What's the phrase, Mike? There's the something middle. I don't remember the term for it and I don't have the book in front of me, but I do know what you're talking about. There's like the... The movable middle is what he calls it.
Yes. So it's like there's this section of the field where there's the movable middle middle where I can convince you it's going to take some work, but I actually have a chance of convincing you. And then there's the whole like zone of acceptance where it's like, yeah, I'm already on board. Like you didn't have to change.
i'm with you and what he's basically saying is let's reduce the distance and if i can reduce the distance then i can um I can bring you closer to changing your mind or I can bring you closer to coming over to the thing that I want you to do or the way that I want you to think.
calls out again this list of three you know find the movable middle ask for less and then switch the field which i'm i'm guessing will unpack something uh in this list at some point but i've i've droned on for a little while so mike hit me with your thoughts on chapter three
Well, chapter three is interesting because he's talking about this in terms of convincing somebody politically. This is probably the chapter which has that case study that I was mentioning earlier. But when he's talking about... how you're not going to get somebody to convert to your way of thinking simply by sharing a whole bunch of... facts or a whole bunch of evidence in fact he specifically says that sharing evidence often blows up in our faces
He also mentions in here that people search for, interpret, and favor information in a way that confirms or supports their existing beliefs. I mean, this is liminal thinking in a nutshell, this chapter. But the thing that... really stood out to me as I was reflecting on what I read here is that if you want to change somebody's mind so that's the framing and that's the one that I think I have a little bit of issue with not that it's wrong but just kind of rubs me the wrong way
So if you want to change somebody's mind, the way to do it is to make a whole bunch of small asks and get them to say yes a bunch of times. And each time they say yes, they're more likely to say yes again. And that rubbed me the wrong way because that's exactly the yes ladder from marketing, which there's truth to that. I mean, if you want to sell something, you want... I don't know. I don't know exactly where I land on this because I think...
that there are elements of that that I incorporate into my stuff. But I'm not just trying to get a sale. I'm trying to offer a solution to a problem that people are experiencing. Going back to like the simple marketing for smart people that we read.
I feel like that's a much better approach than following this mechanical script. And if I could just get somebody to say yes this many times, then regardless of who they are and regardless of how much money they have and regardless of whether I'm the right person to solve their problem, they're more... likely to buy my thing you know i actually sent an email when i launched life hq said why i don't want everybody to buy life hq
So I could see that, that the seeds of that, and you know, that's the, the implementation of that yes ladder that I've had experience with other places that I've, I've worked. And, um, yeah i was like this doesn't feel great so let me tell you the reason why this frustrates me is because
In my idealistic mind, and I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying in my idealistic mind, we're settling for less of a good solution. So it's like when I ask for less, we're like... making the joint agreement that like okay there is a better solution out there but what what am i have to do i'm gonna have to do a part of that and then two years from now i'm gonna have to do the next part of that and then and like in all i think about in my mind is this is the most efficient or inefficient way
to get to the change that we both know we need to do. But you're telling me that we can't do it right now, and it drives me crazy. But I don't disagree that human psychology says that. that makes total sense like i can get you to agree to a smaller change and then another smaller change and another smaller change i just don't understand why you like if we can agree that this is the way it needs to be why
Why does it need to be that way three years from now? Why not now? We should just make that change now. I don't know. I mean, the whole thing here is getting somebody to change their mind. you get them to do or say or vote, you know, the way that you want them to, it just feels a little bit manipulative and I'm not.
saying that there's never a place to use this kind of stuff. But I feel like if I were to summarize this, my takeaways would be... the to try to find the the middle ground figure out what we can agree on but then kind of disconnect from i gotta convince this person to do things my way like If I think there's an element of this, at least for me, where you have to be OK with I may never actually change their mind. That's OK. But that's like kind of contrary to the whole messaging of the book. So.
I don't know. At least I think it is. Do you think that's accurate? Is that the message that comes across in the book? Well, I think he's presenting the, if you do these things. you will be effective at changing anybody's mind, which I, so it's like, I think, I think my answer to you is yes. I think there's two.
different ideas here that are that are working you're you're saying like that that shouldn't be my goal my shouldn't my goal shouldn't be necessarily to 100 change your mind but he's saying if you do these things you'll be closer to changing someone's mind and i think he goes
strong on it in the subtitle of the book how to change anyone's mind so it leads us to believe that yeah so i get it you know if you're a political activist and you're canvassing for votes and you're trying to get people to vote a certain way I think in that scenario, and he uses that example in this chapter, I can't fault you for this, but I really struggle with finding a scenario in my everyday regular life.
where i would feel okay doing this you know just taking that approach i mean even if i was a leader in an organization or preaching at my church or whatever I feel like you extend the invitation, and even as a leader, you say, this is where we're going, and this is why, and... would love to have you on board, but you're not trying to convince somebody to say, okay, yeah, I'm going to do it your way. It's like, if this isn't for you, that's fine.
You can go somewhere else. You can do something else. No hard feelings. You don't have to be here. I see your perspective more now. As you talk about it, I understand your perspective more now. Okay. So, yeah, it just feels a little bit weird to me. Again, I probably do like elements of this, but getting to the point where he's describing, you know, where you actually have changed the way that somebody thinks.
I don't know. And I don't have anybody in my life where this is really the thing that I'm trying to do. Like he's talking about interventions for people who are drug addicts. You know, you have a loved one who doesn't understand the problems that they're.
that they're facing like they think they're in control but they're really not so privileged situation i guess where i don't have to deal with that sort of thing but i just don't have a situation like that where i feel like yeah that's a lever i gotta pull Okay. Can I give you, can I give you an example of one where I do? Sure. So I'll get certain students in class and they just have this mindset of, oh, I can't do X. Right. And it's like, and I have to.
be in a situation because like giving them the like well you don't have to be here that's not a good option right like i mean they they want to be here they want to get to the degree they want to then eventually go and do the type of work that we're training them to do so it's like i don't want to pull
that card because that's that defeats the purpose of everybody involved but i need to convince them and i need to try to get them to understand you can do this you may not be able to do it the same way that your peer sitting across the table from you does it but that doesn't mean you you can't do this so it's like i do have to push a little harder in helping them get out of that situation where they're just so you know focused on the fact 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 the natural extension of that and one of the things that I've been wrestling through is like parenting because you can't just be like, OK, well, you don't like it. You don't have to be a part of the family anymore. Agreed. That's not a thing either. But also. just the whole approach of, I'm not trying to convince my two-year-old that it's time to go to bed. Yep, yep, yep.
It is time to go to bed. We're not having a conversation about this. So I'm trying to resolve this in my mind still. And maybe that's a terrible example of like the two year old, because there is a point, especially with real little kids where.
You're the caregiver and you understand things better than they do. So you're not going to let them choose what the menu is because you're going to have pizza and ice cream for dinner every single night. And that's not healthy. You know, it's going to have long term. damage and stuff like that so i don't know but i feel like the approach that we try to take with with our kids is you know this is the way that we do things as a family unit this is
The family is led by my wife and I. You have input. Now, I remember specifically, we had a conversation with our kids a while back about managing screen time. And this was several years ago at the time. I think our oldest is probably 13, 14. And they each had like a half hour video game time a day. And we talked about how we can't keep managing this, telling you it's time to wrap up because repeat that four times, five times. It's a lot.
So, you know, we want to what do you guys think we should do? And what do you think is we actually asked the question, what do you think is fair? And they threw out an hour. So double the screen time that they were getting like, okay, well we can try that, but we're not going to have to manage it then. So we're going to get this time timer and you're going to be done by the time that time timer goes out. And if you aren't.
You know, you're going to lose it the next day because again, the goal here is that we don't have to micromanage this. It's frustrating for you. It's frustrating for us. So we, you know, arrived at this mutual outcome. Again, like I don't see where I would be trying to convince them that this is the right thing to do. It's either, you know, as the leader, this is the decision that has been made and I will help you work through it. Yeah.
Or the other one, you know, kind of what you're talking about at the beginning is I'm going to go into it curious and figure out where you stand and we'll try to meet in the middle, but I'm not going to try to bring you back over to my side necessarily. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. I think there are a bunch of different contexts and some work better than others for especially this one, the idea of distance and, you know, kind of getting people to...
Come on board. All right. You ready for the next one? Uncertainty? Yep. All right. So chapter four is uncertainty. I thought this chapter made a lot of sense in terms of, yeah, we do need to reduce uncertainty because if we're trying to get somebody to change something, if there is... A moderate level of uncertainty on the other side of that. We're just putting up a big wall. Part of the reason why maybe...
this resonated so well with me is because I feel like this, you know, like I basically thought he was describing me in this book. I was like, or in this chapter, I was like, oh man, yes. Like if there is uncertainty, my uncertainty tax is huge. I'm like, I know what I'm getting right now. I don't know what I'm going to get with you. So I'm a little bit nervous for that. So he talks about uncertainty tax, which is basically the mental and or.
emotional or whatever it might be like challenge that we would have to over to overcome this this change and accept it but then he goes quickly into this idea of triability Sorry, trial ability, trial ability, like how, how able am I to try something and then decide whether I like it or not. And what I really liked about this trial ability section is.
The four examples that he gives, basically the freemium model, the reduce upfront cost, the drive discovery, and then to make it reversible. I thought these were spot on in terms of like, oh yeah, if you give me any of the four of those. That makes total sense that it's going to reduce my uncertainty for a thing, and it's going to make me more likely to consider yours. Now, one of the areas where I don't think he stressed it enough is it's also going to give me the ability to...
to throw yours away faster. So it's like if I try yours and it doesn't resonate with me or it doesn't do the thing you said it was going to do, I'm done. I made my decision and I'm not changing in your direction. So I think there's a whole side of this that is... possibly negative but at the same time it's these these four things also do apply to reducing uncertainty so i can't fold him on that yeah so i liked this chapter
the best and the reason is that it really got me thinking about how I can reduce uncertainty for the products that I sell understood yep so that's my action item is how do I make it easier for people to try my products and services and case in point is lifehq where i did a whole bunch of research and i saw what other people were doing with this sort of thing because it's really a done for you obsidian vault you download it
you open it in obsidian all the plugins are pre-configured all the settings are you know are are set up for you and you can just start using it and once you have that file and you've opened it on your computer that's basically it There's no way to make sure that someone deletes that from their system so you can't turn off access to it, which means that the best practice from all the other people I've seen who have done this sort of thing...
is like there is no 30 day money back guarantee for this sort of thing that's always kind of bugged me you know that i haven't been able to to offer that and i'm not really to ready to you know make a commitment that that's something i'm gonna
going to add but it's got me thinking like how would i add that to lifehq but then i'm also in the middle of redoing all the other stuff on my website and the one that i'm really thinking about now is the library my private community because i really want to include with that the cohort stuff and the workshops and if you want to follow along with your personal retreat and join an accountability group so you actually follow through and take action on your goals like all of that is there
I'm getting ready to relaunch that. You can't join it right now, but I'm working on the page and I'm thinking through the offer. And I think what I want to figure out a way to do is to incorporate some of this stuff where people can kind of try it out. And I don't know exactly what that means. I don't know if it's like a free trial for two weeks or if it's a light version that has some of the stuff, but not all of the stuff.
you know where like you could show up and talk about pkm and maybe join a live call but then like the the bigger one is the the one where you are You're actually doing the stuff. So you're joining the groups and you've got the accountability built in there. I don't know, but it's got my wheels turning. And I think this is something that is kind of.
piggybacks off of everything that i was learning at the newsletter marketing summit too like this is something that's missing for me right now it's really like if you have listened to every episode of bookworm and you've gone through one of my cohorts before. Yeah. You're a raving fan. Like you speak highly, you leave the testimonials, but everybody else who has no idea who I am, that's a big ask to drop.
that much money on a product or on a subscription. And I get that and I want to figure out a way to reduce that. but i have no idea what it looks like it's probably a combination of some of those things that you were talking about you know the freemium free trial all that kind of stuff yeah Not to take us too far into this topic, but as you're talking about it, a couple things that popped into my head. Sean Blanc did the iPad journaling, right? If you remember, he created the iPad journal.
um, that, uh, worked with which one good notes. I think it worked with good notes. One planner thing that he was talking about. Yep. Yep. So, so he would do a free trial on that. Well, I bought it. And it did not fit with me. Like it just did 100% did not resonate with me. But he gave you a money back guarantee. Like if you tried it and didn't like it. And what I'll say is I realized I didn't like it.
right i submitted for the refund on it because it wasn't it wasn't a zero you know it was a decent amount of money on it but i never looked at it again you know like so so if you think about like life hq for like that product if it doesn't resonate with people they're like the bigger worry that you have going into that is that they somehow post it somewhere and then other people can download it for free like that is the problem um
it's i don't think it's people trying to like scam you on like oh i'm just gonna tell you i didn't like it and then i got a free copy of this because i really think people either they either like it or they don't i think it's more the did they post it somewhere else for the for the Community membership, man, that one's a harder one. How do you give them a seven-day thing into the community? That's a lot to manage.
you know like then you got to kick them out when they're seven days doesn't come up so yeah that's the that's the hard thing so like what but i i get that it's a it's a big ask to just join a community that costs multiple hundreds of dollars per year you've got to be able to at least putting myself in the the shoes of someone who's joined multiple communities like that it would be cool to have like a light version of that where
I can spend, you know, 50 bucks a year or something and I can join an occasional live call and I can just talk with other people who are interested in the thing. You know, kind of getting back to the newsletter marketing summit, one of the things that they were talking about was building communities. And they aren't talking about circle communities necessarily.
A lot of their communities are, you know, discord servers or whatever. And there are lots of people who have free communities and there are lots of people who have paid communities and there are values for both. And as I was thinking through, like, what do I want practical PKM in the library to become? You know, I really want it to be the place to hang out and talk about PKM for serious sense makers who want to learn, share, grow together. So I feel like.
There's probably multiple tiers here for people who want different levels of support on their PKM and creative, productive journeys. And I don't know exactly what the product offering looks like there. I just know that I've got to diversify that a little bit, I think. Yeah. But I think this whole idea of uncertainty, you know, thinking through.
why do I do what I do as an internet creator? You know, going all the way back to my life theme, I want to help people multiply their time and talents, leave a bigger dent in the universe. There's no single way that... do that there's multiple ways and and really there's unlimited ways and I got to figure out which ones are the ones that really are a fit for me but then
i don't think it's as simple as well i'm just going to do this one thing and that's going to be you know the way that i help people do the thing maybe if i do this long enough and i build a big enough audience i do get to that point But I'm certainly not there, not there yet. And I know that there are a whole bunch of people, even in the less than 8,000 people that are on my newsletter list right now, that I could better serve them.
in in ways that are currently not being offered and so i'm just trying to consider all of the options right now yeah well in in i mean direct application of this book to you is So you're thinking about all that stuff. Uncertainty is only one of the things because it's like.
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 tool when your tool is significantly better than what I'm doing right now. It's just like, I just have that quote unquote endowed idea that I'm like. Oh, I don't, I don't need your thing. Or like, I'm, I've got a negative reaction. Why would I do it your way? Like I can do it my own, you know? So the funny thing about this book is for as much as I don't like reduce.
It actually applies, right? The reactance, endowment, distance, it applies really, really well and really valuably, I think, when you look through this. Before we move to the next chapter, I have a question for you. Have you read Diffusion of Innovations? by everett m rogers i've never even heard never even heard of it no okay so this this book is anybody who's in the like wanting to make change um transformation innovation like those kind of things
Diffusion of Innovations is a really interesting book. I've not read all of it in its entirety, but I've picked out different sections of it and have read different sections of it for different things I've done in my engineering ed research work. But it gets put on... the level of like crossing the chasm and the innovators dilemma and like anybody who's thinking about this idea of like creating things and and making transforming innovating like those kind of things it's at the same level
I just didn't know where it came from. So it was cool to hear the story about like, oh, he was trying to figure out how to get people to use different farming techniques. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty neat background story to that book. So I just thought that was interesting. nice um are you ready to go to corroborating evidence our only one with two words yeah let's go to the last two chapters i mean chapter i get mixed up on this one because
The way my brain works is we're going to reduce reactance. We're going to reduce endowment. We're going to reduce distance. We're going to reduce uncertainty. We're going to reduce... corroborating so so it's like this one kind of breaks breaks my brain a little bit now he says in here that a lot of times we just try to throw more evidence at people
It's almost like we don't listen to what they're saying. We just keep throwing evidence at them and expecting it to, at some point, turn it over. I get that aspect of it, but I don't think that was the driver of his... of his chapter i actually think the driver of the chapter was reduce translation problems like reduce these ideas to where it's like you and i aren't talking the same level here you're like i have one idea you have another idea i want you to come over to my idea
We aren't translating that well and we need to reduce the friction between our translation. But I'm going to do that with evidence, but I don't want to reduce the evidence. I want to use the right evidence in order to do that. So the whole like structure of the framework. My brain went, what do I do? What do I do with the structure of the framework? That said, as we've said many times, I think this is a good...
Like the good idea, if I look at it from the translation side, I've got weak attitudes. I've got strong attitudes. So he calls out these different types of attitudes. Weak are the ones where essentially it's easy to change. Like I'm not super strong on the way I feel about this thing.
You know, like if you asked me, let's see, what's one? If you asked me Domino's pizza versus Little Caesars, right? Like I don't have a strong attitude about either of those. It's like, oh, it's pizza. And it's like.
cheap pizza so cool like i'm in right like whatever you want you know if you asked you about one type of coffee versus starbucks coffee you know like one of your frou-frou coffees versus starbucks coffee you're probably gonna have a strong attitude about that so getting you to change uh over to over to starbucks is probably not going to go that well. So it's those ones where you need more evidence in order to change.
He does the same thing with the lists here. He says consider who you're asking to change, consider when you're asking them to change, consider when you're giving them the evidence, and then consider how you're deploying those pieces of evidence because you only have scarcity.
resources to do it so that's essentially the essence of the chapter um mike what do you think i hate this title corroborating evidence makes no sense yep you know what this really is this is social proof yeah and there really isn't another term for that the other term i guess which is negative so i don't think i would use this one would be like herd mentality oh yeah okay i can see that yeah but corroborating evidence makes zero sense at least from a label perspective now he does a great job of
explaining it in the chapter, but I feel like if you really want this point to stick, social proof is the term that should be used here.
these notes that I have where you're trying to overcome the translation problem that you were talking about and just you know I've got a couple other things jotted down here I want you to just kind of picture the term social proof instead of corroborating evidence as i read through these okay multiple sources saying you're doing something solves the translation problem the sources contribute more when they're varied
the closer information is received together the more valuable it becomes and instigating change concentrating resources becomes important when when is required you know fill in the blank there okay as you think about that through terms of social proof Does that not paint a more specific, vivid picture that you can do more with than corroborating evidence?
So in, in my, in my note system, I just changed the title and in the print in parentheses I put should be social proof because like everything you said there makes so much more sense if we think social proof, everything you said. Yeah, exactly. So. missed opportunity i guess but i get why he's corroborating evidence because it fits with the the acrostic i just think it's the wrong choice i think this is the right concept like the last
part of the five-step framework this is definitely it like that fits all of the material in the chapter fits but this is social proof and as i was thinking about that once i got that revelation basically oh this is social proof that's where this gets a lot more applicable to me and this is where you know for and i'm approaching this from the products and services, as I talked about in the last chapter, and how do I better meet the needs of the people that I serve?
I realize I've got to have way more conversations. I've got to ask for feedback. Again, all this stuff is like kind of highlighted to me from my takeaways from the newsletter marketing summit that I just got back from too. So you can actually see like there were six lessons that I... i kind of solidified on for the the newsletter then there were a couple things in there that were uncomfortable for me you know i want to solicit feedback from people i want to hear from people you know this is the
The specific question I have, this is the problem that I'm facing. This is the point where I'm getting stuck. Now, if I'm going to do that, obviously it's on me to develop the.
the solutions to those problems but as i do that that's where social proof really comes in so as i'm thinking through this like social proof the most effective way to sell my product whatever that product is library life hq whatever is to have a whole bunch of testimonials but not just a whole bunch of testimonials from a whole bunch of white dudes who
have used a Mac for 30 years, right? It's different people in different scenarios, different backgrounds who I was able to help. And if you see on those testimonial walls,
People who aren't just, you know, they're not saying the same thing. They're not coming from the same perspective. The most effective testimonials i think are the ones from that kind of created a tapestry of the types of people and problems that can be solved by using the the product that's really what he's he's talking about here where um
If the sources are more varied, then they're more valuable. That's something I'm kind of aspiring to. I don't think I have that. I've got a whole bunch of testimonials for my products, but I haven't been real intentional about... the way that i've gone about collecting these things so i don't have a specific action item with this chapter in particular other than you know if i really want to convince somebody that i have a solution to their problem and again i don't want
everybody to buy LifeHQ. If you are not that interested in Obsidian, this is not the thing for you. But I do want to figure out a way that I can solve the right problem for the right people more often if that makes sense and i feel like i got to pay a little bit more attention to this and not just you know well i got another testimonial that's great but really you know where are the holes
in my marketing messaging. But again, marketing, not in the terms of how do I get you to pull the slot machine lever and make the transaction, but enter into a relationship where I can actually... help you take obsidian to the next level like that's exciting to me when i think about that so maybe that's the wrong way to think about you know the catalyst we're getting into the the epilogue next and so we're kind of rounding the corner here but
I'm not thinking through, my perspective as reading this book is not how do I convince somebody in an argument or conversation to adopt my point of view, but how do I communicate my message so that... educated people can make the right decision for them more effectively yeah yeah you're you're much more on the side of um billy bro as
than you are i guess yeah that book really uh really is coming coming through i guess in my my uh reaction to this one yeah okay so uh let's roll to the epilogue um so the epilogue basically is a gigantic this is all the stuff i just told you and here's some really concise tables and some really you know bullet point items for for each one of them
I don't believe, Mike, you can correct me where I'm wrong. I don't believe there was anything new in the epilogue. I think it's all a regurgitation of what was talked about before.
In terms of general ideas, yes. I think there are a couple of things that kind of stand out to me from this epilogue, though. One is that the media often uses a broad brush to depict each side in a conflict. And then the story... they really talk about at the beginning of the epilogue is this organization seeds of change do you remember this story yeah i do yeah
Yeah, which is fascinating to me and probably is even more relevant now than when this book was written. But it's essentially like a summer camp for Israeli and Palestinian. Kids actually Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian. Okay. And Egyptian. Yeah. But basically they're, they're getting people who typically do not see eye to eye on things and they put them in a place.
where they have to learn to coexist and then they do things like ropes courses and trust falls and it's like this person that i hate i have to trust now and little by little they kind of chip away at these stereotypes and prejudices that people typically have. And it changes their perspective for their entire lives. So I think that's pretty cool, first of all. It's a cool...
story. He's got specific reasons why this organization is successful that back up what he just told us in the rest of the book. But I think that's a really powerful way to tie it all together. And then, yeah, there are the tables and all that kind of stuff. I didn't get much out of the tables, but I guess, you know, often we're blindly.
uh we are so blinded by the belief that we're right that we tend to believe more evidence is enough to convince and change people and it's not and then there's a quote that i really liked by kurt Lewin who said that if you want to truly understand something try to change it so I was thinking about that
you know there are a lot of things where i can understand my tendency and i feel like i don't often just launch into verbally well i'm just going to convince people any anymore like i understand that that's not going to work and i've just kind of Ain't nobody got time for that, you know, so, but I want to.
I want to consider that quote in terms of like the things that I see. I guess the place where this is probably most applicable is at home because my wife would probably say that I launch into problem solving mode a little too quickly. where it's just like oh well we got to do this we got to do that and you got to do this and you got to do that and she's like no you just need to listen yeah so um
I think maybe my default can be, well, I understand this stuff, but I jumped to that conclusion a little bit too quickly. And so I want to... There's no action items specifically associated with this other than try to really understand what is going on here. And if you haven't dug into it and gotten your hands dirty, you probably don't understand it yet. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. So before we go into action items, there are there's an appendix or there are three appendices. Right. So one appendix with three sections. I don't know if it's three appendices or whatever it is. But like one is for active listening, which we talked about already. One is for applying freemium.
And then one is for force field analysis. And the only reason I'm bringing these three up isn't because of like how amazing they were or anything like that. It's because one of my action items comes from this. So force field analysis, we would call this in my engineering world, we would call this root cause.
analysis except for this is more specific to change right so when you're doing your your force field analysis you're trying to figure out what are the drivers for change and then what are the the he calls them restrainers or what are the resistance mechanisms for change and then can you figure out what the change is identify the drivers identify the strainers and then develop an action plan along those lines so how do we you know accentuate the the drivers and overcome the the restrainers
So I have an action item related to this. So now we can move into action items. So I'll start because it's my book. So what are my action items? One is where am I settling for good instead of great? So I want to think about just kind of a broad landscape of my life and saying, hey, am I settling for good instead of great in any areas? And am I okay with that?
The key aspect of that is, am I okay with it? Because I think there's going to be areas where I settle for good, and I'm totally fine. I am not upset about that at all. I think there's going to be some areas where I don't as well. Yeah, that's an important difference there. It's not, you know, is change or improvement.
possible but given my limited resources where do i want to focus my efforts exactly exactly okay so then my second one is i want to do a force field analysis on something i don't really care what it is and i'm also if this one doesn't get a green check mark i will be totally fine but it's like i want to figure out like oh here's something
Let's just do a force field analysis just because I think it'd be fun to do. I think it'd be an interesting thing, thought exercise for me. So Mike, what are your action items? Cool. Well, I just have the one official one, which is how can I make it easier for people to... to trial my products and services and trial being the trial ability reducing the uncertainty reducing the the risk associated with something
I recognize that LifeHQ is almost $300. The library is a premium membership, so it's going to be expensive. I totally get why people would be reluctant to just drop that much money. The tricky part for me is I think just lowering the cost is not the appropriate.
solution either because the thing is that valuable especially with the feedback that I've got with life HQ it's kind of like the majority of it is I can't believe everything that's in here Um, so how do I, you know, find the balance between charging what something is, is actually worth to the marketplace and then making things more approachable. for people. Essentially, finding the right mix, which allows me to help as many people as I can in the most effective way as I can.
really the encapsulation of what all my business stuff is. And I don't think I've really got clarity on that yet. Okay. All right, we'll move to style and rating. I'll start us off. I am torn on this one. So normally I just come out and I'm like, I know what my rating is right away. And I'm torn on this one because... I can't tell you that I love the style. Like, I didn't mind the...
The stories that were told in between, I didn't mind the case studies that were done afterwards. I thought the content was valuable and it was an easy read. It wasn't a difficult read. But there is just something about the book that I'm just left going. Like, you know, like, okay. Like it was, it was an okay book. I actually think I'll remember some of the stuff that came out of the book. Like, oh, reduce the following things.
uh to help you know if you want to get change but i also i again i just wasn't wowed by anything about the book like so and then i go with the would i recommend this to other people
I don't know. Like, I don't know if I would recommend this to other people. If somebody tells me like, oh, there's this thing happening in my organization or... you know my work or whatever it is and it's like and i really need this change i really think we would be better if this change thing could happen then i might say like hey i read this book once it's called the catalyst you might want to like look through it
But I don't think I'm just going to randomly go around and be like, hey, I read this book called The Catalyst and it's amazing. And you should definitely go look at it. So I'm torn on this one because I think the rating I want to give it... for some reason just feels too low, but I don't think it's the wrong rating. So all of that being said, I know this doesn't make sense, or I guess I'm kind of waffling back and forth as I'm trying to make my final decision.
I'm going to give it three stars. And like the three stars are completely like, I think the information in the book is fairly good. It's high quality. The packaging of it. was give or take and I probably wouldn't recommend it to too many people um after having read it uh to it that being said last thing I'll say and I'll turn it to you Mike
It's a short book. Like, I mean, you can read this in a weekend. Like, I mean, it's not a long book. And especially if you like are willing to like not go into as much detail on some of the stories that he tells. and just kind of skim through those and get the gist of them, it is not a very challenging or long book to read. So three stars is my rating. Mike, we'll move to you. All right. Well...
I think this is more than a three-star book, so I'll tell you right now. I'm going to give it four. I don't think it's the best book I ever read. It could be the best book on changing someone's mind. I've ever read. I think reading, thinking back to Influence by Robert Cialdini. So that's kind of how we landed here. So this was recommended by Mark. And Mark mentioned this is the best book on, I forget the term he used.
But basically, like if you don't want to read Influence because it's 600 pages, you should read this one because it's better anyways. And I do think it's better than what I remember of Influence by Robert Cialdini, even though that's kind of the industry standard. the gold standard the one that everybody holds up as uh the the definitive work on the the subject now this isn't a strictly marketing book like
That's the vibe I remember getting from Influenced by Robert Cialdini. And I don't think that that book and the 48 Laws of Power. for example, Robert Greene, I think they get a little bit of a bad rap because it's really just talking about principles of human behavior. And yeah, you can use them for...
For nefarious purposes. But it's really not, you know, a manipulation manual per se. That's just the vibe I remember getting from reading those. And that's totally absent from this particular book. So I think there are instances where I would probably recommend this. I don't think they're going to be all that often.
I don't know, maybe in some of the, some of the creator circles that I, I run in, I shared, you know, that what got my wheels turning was how do I use this in my creator business from a marketing perspective?
not sleazy marketing but just you know effective marketing and it could be the fact that we simply read or we read uh simple marketing for smart people not not too long ago and that sort of primed the pump here i definitely had takeaways from this book in areas that it didn't speak to necessarily at least not directly so as we talk through this you know maybe my
interpretation of this book and the concepts in it is going to be unique and different from just about anybody else who who picks this up i think there's a non-zero chance that that is actually the case That being said, I thought this was a really good book. I really liked the stories at the beginning of the chapters. I liked the presentation of the information and the concepts.
I could give or take the listicles and the framework I thought was ineffective for me, but I get why somebody would do that. And I don't think that necessarily downgrades. I'm not knocking down the... rating for the book because of that i like the case studies a lot at the the end you know most of the time when people tack stuff on at the end of a chapter like that i get to it and i'm like i have to fight real hard not to skim it
That didn't happen this time. Like I read all those case studies. They were good. See, I skimmed. multiple of them right i just didn't think they were that i didn't think they were that interesting so yeah well i didn't think the appendices were all that interesting i didn't even really look at those to tell you and i did i thought the appendices were interesting okay okay
So yeah, I'm really glad that we read this one. Thank you to Mark for recommending it. But I don't think it's a wholly life-changing book for me either at this point. so that's why i'm gonna give it four stars and instead of five i think if you and i say all this because i think there are situations where this absolutely would be a five-star life-changing book They just aren't for me, at least not right now.
I agree. I can see a scenario where I read this book at the right time and it's a five star book for me. Yes, exactly. Right now it's a three star book for me. Sure. Can I make a disclaimer here? I hope Mark doesn't think that it's like, oh, that was a bad suggestion. No, no, no, no, no. I love reading books. I love being exposed to new knowledge. So it's like, Mark, I'm totally happy that they read it. It just doesn't get a good rating for me.
well i think you know i would consider four stars a good rating and i feel like that's you know a general encapsulation of uh of the value of the book for for most people in most situations but yeah i think four but it could definitely uh skew higher for me um i think i have trouble thinking how it could possibly be lower for me because i feel like
this is the sort of information where even if you don't have use for it right now this specific moment you will at some point in your life so if you were to If I were to make a list of these are the 100 books that you should read before you die, because people have done stuff like that. I think this is probably on it.
to be honest like or something like this that this topic is important to understand i feel and i don't confess to have a comprehensive knowledge of it just because i read this this one book but Why do we read books? I think part of it is, sometimes I'll tell people,
If you are looking for a book to read, just consider whatever problem you're wrestling with and find a book that you think could solve that problem. And chances are you'll get a lot out of it. And that, you know, I wouldn't say that that was the case.
for me with uh with this one but but even you know taking that aside i feel like there's stuff here that i'm going to continue to use for years i may not recall you know it was the catalyst that i read that triggered this thing yeah in me but my gut feel from having read this, is that there's some stuff in this book where even though it's short, even though my mind map isn't crazy huge like some of the other ones that I've made,
There's going to be some stuff here that's going to stick for a while. I think you and I have different levels on... Because everything you're describing, I'm like, yeah, I agree. But I'm like, it's still a three. Maybe it's a three and a half. Maybe your four is my three and a half. I think that's kind of where we're... So that's the other thing here is calibrating the scales.
Because people will look at my daily question stuff that I do and they're like, this is completely useless. You rate everything like six and above. And that's because... You know, I've been doing this stuff long enough and it's based on my intention. I have a picture in my mind of what a zero or a one looks like. And every day I do something that, you know, means it's not that.
So most of my ratings do tend to be three and above. Does that mean that I love every book that we've covered? No, but I don't think I've ever given a bookworm book. a single star. I've been able to find something in there that's valuable. And just my personal interpretation means that that's at least a two-star book.
Maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the exception. That was the book I viscerally hated. Yeah, I was going to say, you loved that book, didn't you? You just absolutely loved it. I think even that one, I tend to... think more positively when i'm when i'm assigning these ratings and i don't i think that's just personality i don't think there's anything wrong with saying you know what was it that you gave one star to was it radical candor
I don't remember, but it was recent. All I remember is there was a book we read recently that I just did not like. But that's cool. I don't fault you for that. I don't think you're wrong for that. I recognize that my internal scale... you know is kind of calibrated to be a little bit nicer maybe so it was it was 101 essays that'll change the way you think oh yeah that's right that's right yeah i just nope
I had nothing for that one. Okay, so let's move on. So we're going to go ahead and put the catalyst on the shelf. Mike, tell us about our next book that we're reading. The next book is Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure LeCunf. And I just now discovered, since I am back from Austin, that she was actually in austin while i was there i believe she's got like a a book signing thing that she's she's doing which uh you know this is a
The magic of podcasting, we're recording this, you know, roughly two weeks before it comes out. So, you know, by the time you have heard this, you know, it's already happened, but kind of bummed that I couldn't hang out in Austin another couple of days and actually go meet her. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. But this is a good book. I got a pre-release copy of this. By the time that this comes out, my interview with her for the Focus podcast will be available. So I'll put a link to that.
in the show notes. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this. Have you started reading this yet? I haven't started reading it yet, but I will tonight. I'll start reading it today. Okay, cool. What's after that? So after that, we are going to do a listener recommendation.
Okay, this book is called Inner Excellence, Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance in the Best Possible Life, and it's by Jim Murphy. I can tell you right now that I'm excited to read this book, and it's mainly for, in the subtitle, and the best possible life, right? Like we have set the bar really high on this book because I'm just really intrigued if this book can help me get to my best.
not possible life but uh we're gonna we're gonna take a look at this one this one got popular uh mike reminded me of this i didn't remember it when we were first talking about it mike reminded me that this got popular because one of the eagles receivers was it a receiver He would read this on the sideline. Yeah, so the story here is it was a playoff game. I think it might have been the NFC Championship game. Okay.
I believe the receiver's name is AJ Brown. I'm terrible with NFL names, but he's like an all pro receiver. And, you know, he had just. come off the field i don't know remember if it was like a touchdown that he had scored or um They, you know, they punted or whatever, but he apparently does this all the time. He reads on the sideline. So he comes off the field and because it was a high profile game, he's a high profile player. The camera happens to.
capture him reading a book on the sideline which in and of itself you know the announcers are having a heyday with that and like oh my gosh look at aj brown he's not invested in the game he's reading a book on the sideline And then afterwards, he's like, no, I do that all the time. And the book that he happened to be reading was this book, Inner Excellence. And so immediately, once that book was identified, it jumps to the top of the Amazon bestsellers list.
And apparently, you know, it's been around for a while. A lot of the blurbs that are associated with this book are from like PGA Tour pros, where something where, you know, engulf the distance between the very best in the world and... people who barely make the cut is not the physical tools. It's the mental toughness. And so I feel like that's a pretty cool topic. But by the way, this was a...
recommendation. So thank you to Carol for recommending this one via the form, which will be in the show notes if you want to recommend a book for Bookworm. Please go do that. By the way, regarding blurbs, I forgot to mention this when we were in the actual episode. You were talking about Good to Great by Jim Collins. Jim Collins actually blurbed this book. Did you notice that? Which one? The Catalyst? The Catalyst, yeah. Yeah, I remember reading that, yeah.
Yeah, so the blurbs for this book are crazy. There's Jim Collins, there's Robert Cialdini, Daniel Pink, Charles Duhigg, you know, so kind of interesting. Who has recommended the catalyst? I have to admit, most of the time, the blurbs do nothing for me because I know how the system works. You get your buddies to blurb your book and then they blurb and then you blurb their book.
It's kind of a virtuous cycle of social proof. But this one, I'm looking at the list. I'm like, okay, that's actually impressive. Awesome. All right, let's move on to Gap Books. Mike, do you have any Gap Books right now? uh not officially um well i'll share this one because this might have been a gap book previously um but i i just picked it up as i was looking for something in in between
I don't know that I'm actually going to finish this, but I am currently reading Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan. Okay. Noah Kagan is the guy behind AppSumo, and he was like employee number six, I think, at Facebook. This is a book not about starting a business that is going to make a million dollars in a weekend, but...
Really how to create a solid business plan for a business that will grow to be a million dollar business in a weekend. So really it's like putting a... timeframe around just getting started with something. but not promising that you're going to get this incredible result. It sounds kind of clickbaity, basically. It's clickbaity. Listen, if it's clickbaity, I was going to call you out on it, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So I tend to just kind of...
push back on that kind of stuff but i've had enough people tell me that this is actually a a good book that i'm i want to poke around in it at least and see what it's all about had it for a while just haven't really picked it up and read it yet so how about you uh no I am going another round with no gap book.
My challenge here, Mike, and I was going to bring this up to you. I actually sent you a picture of me reading the physical copy of The Catalyst, which, by the way, that lasted for about a chapter. And I then put down the physical copy and I picked back up the digital copy. and I read the digital version of it. I don't like physical books. Anyhow, moving forward. I may... Well, you'd be wrong, but that's okay. Right? Me and Ryan Holiday both disagree.
I love the idea of physical books. I like the feel of them. I just don't like to read them. They're not that interesting to me to read. But I will probably listen to a book while I'm running or at the gym or something. I don't... I don't count that as a gap book though. Like I, I mean, that's information being forced into my ear canal. Like I don't really think of that as reading a book. So I don't count those as my gap books, but I will probably do something like that between now and.
the next episode yeah you are spot on with that by the way um a while back i did a three hour workshop that i called the reading master class uh-huh i remember this and i get into the science behind how you read different with a physical medium as opposed to a screen even something like an amazon kindle coming from a conversation that i had with marianne wolf who's like literally a scientist who studies this sort of stuff so um
I'm guessing that most people listening to this and have listened to this point in the episode don't really care. So if that's you, that's normal. No problem. If you are one of the weird ones like me who wants to understand this stuff in greater detail, I do have a replay of that workshop available. I will put that in the...
show notes for people who are interested. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. All right. So let's close this thing down. Let's pick up Tiny Experiments by Anne-Larie LeCoumpf. Did I say that right? Anne Lorlecouf. Anne Lorlecouf, okay. So Anne Lorlecouf. We'll pick up Tiny Experiments. If you are interested in a little bit more of what we do, we record a pro show. So the pro show for this episode.
was about Mike's trip to the Painted Porch. Yep, Ryan Holiday's bookstore. So if you're interested in that, you can pick up the pro show. You can go to patreon.com slash bookwormfm. um you'll get access to the pro show you'll get access to um the bootleg version of the show which is basically the moment we turn um we start the zoom call microphones start and they run the whole way till the end till we till we end the zoom call uh there's a bookworm wallpaper there.
So just some perks. Really, it helps us kind of run the background of the show and run the hosting and things like that. So if you're interested in doing that, you can feel free to go to patreon.com slash bookwormfm and sign up there. So there's also a link in the show notes for if you want to support the show at seven bucks a month. And as Corey said, it really helps us keep the show going. So I appreciate you doing that. The other thing with the bootleg is that.
It normally gets uploaded the moment that we get done. So usually it's about two weeks ahead of time. So if you want the early access to the Bookworm episodes. That's what the bootleg gets you. Wonderful. The last thing I'll mention is if you're interested in recommending a book for us to read, don't forget to check out the link in the show notes, and we'll take a look at those as we're thinking about the next books we're going to pick up. So pick up Tiny Experiments, and thanks for listening.