An Army of Normal Folks - How Behavior Spreads — Why We Need 20% Of Public To Win 

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Real change doesn’t start with convincing a majority of the public — it starts with a visible minority. In this Shop Talk, we unpack why movements tip when just 20–25% of people act consistently & visibly, and what that means for transforming our communities.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney. Welcome to Shop Talk number 86. Heinz's Words number. Alex, what can I help you with in the shop? You're looking for some bacon soda or maybe some rice or flour? Say, I'm thinking old-school shop. Cigar is old-fashioned in women. That's pretty much it.

That's not a bad shop. Have you ever told you, my uncle would actually say the important bees in life? What? Books, babes, and bodybuilding. Oh. Or you could add bourbon in the Bible in there. But there's some good bees. Well, hold it.

One of my favorite restaurants in Vegas is called Oscars. And it's Oscar Goodman, who was the mayor of Vegas before his wife is now the mayor of Vegas. Oh, really? Yeah. And the name of his restaurant is Oscars. And the tagline is beef, booze and broads. Nice. Yeah.

And, I mean, that guy ran on that platform and was mayor of Vegas for about 20 years based on beef booze and broads, so apparently it works. At least in Vegas. It's good food, too. If you ever go to Vegas, go to Oscars. Nice. It's in the plaza. It's in a crappy old hotel, but the restaurant's awesome.

All right, everybody. Shop Talk number 86, how behavior really spreads. Why we need 20 to 25% of the population to win. We're going to unpack that right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for HelloFresh, and they take fresh start to a whole new level. Fresh high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30 trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely, not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas. Yeah, that happened a lot. Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more, waste less, and for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start

right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.c.c.c.c.com and use code Dinner 50. That's Hellofresh.c Code Dinner 50. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. The ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time, I was on 60 Minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story.

So join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy. To shine a light on what the ex-game movement does to people and the pain it continues to cause. I had lost 150 pounds because if I couldn't control my sexuality, I was going to control my weight. It sounded like, and this is the word I used, a cult. And as I look too at the harm I did from within it. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work.

This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, everybody, welcome back Shop Talk number 86. Beef, Booze, and Broads has nothing to do with Shop Talk, but I thought I'd say it again because I like Oscars. Okay, how behavior really spreads, why we need 20, 25% of the population, to win. I'll set the frame. I'm going to spend a few minutes today talking about something that's influencing our thinking with an army of normal folks, our local chapters, and honestly how change actually happens in the real world. This isn't theory for theory's sake. This is about why

some movements take off and why others don't, even when they have money, media or good intentions. The idea comes from a sociologist named Damon Sintola. You got it right. Good job. Hot dog. All right. Who's Damon? Damon Sintola is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

He studies how behavior spread through real social networks, not how ideas spread on Twitter, not how something goes viral online, but how some people actually change what they do in neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and communities. communities. He's worked in public health systems, civic institutions, and large organizations trying to answer one basic question. Why do some behaviors catch on and why do others not? His research shows something that's both surprising, daunting, and incredibly hopeful. Here's this big idea. Lasting social change does not require persuading a majority first. I already love that.

Instead, once about 20, 25% of a community consistently and publicly adopts a new behavior, change can tip, and spread rapidly to everyone else. That's it. Not 51%, not everybody, just about a quarter. But, and this is important, what kind of quarter matters. So let me explain why only 25% and the role of the contagion theory Centola makes a distinction between simple contagion and complex contagion. Contagian as in contagious.

Simple contagion is easy. You see it once and it spreads. Think a viral video, a viral disease like COVID-19. One exposure is enough. But the things we care about, service, civic responsibility, showing up for neighbors, changing community norms. Those are complex contagions. They don't spread after just one exposure.

They spread after multiple reinforcing signals from people you trust. In other words, people don't change because someone told them to. They change because they see people like them doing it over and over and over again consistently. Don't be a turkey person. What the 20, 25% action is,

actually means. And here's where people often misunderstand the 20 to 25% kind of bell cow to make complex contagion work. It's not people who privately agree. It's not passive supporters and it's not folks who say, that sounds great. Call me later. Checks on the mail. It is people who act, people who are visible, and people who are consistent. over time. Once about a quarter of a real social network is publicly modeling a behavior, everyone else starts running into it again and again. At work, at school, at church, at the grocery store, and at that point, resistant doesn't get debated away. It just collapses. That is really interesting and so true. It makes so much sense. Just wait until they get to the

examples. You'll see it. Here's some examples. Nice, nice transition. Workplace wellness. One of the clearest examples of this comes from the insurance company Humana. Their leadership rolled out wellness platforms, things like tracking steps, participating in health challenges, engaging in preventative care tools. What they found was fascinating. Employees didn't change their behavior just because the company told them to. And they didn't change because an executive sent an email to HR or made it policy. What actually drove adoption was when employees saw multiple coworkers, not just

leadership, consistently using the platform. Once a visible minority of peers were actively participating, engagement spread quickly, and the behavior became the norm. People logged in because people like them were logging in. The lesson is simple. People don't follow policies. They follow peers. That's a really good line. Community health. Example two. You see the same pattern in community health research, especially in places like Massachusetts, building on decades of work from communities such as Farmingham. Framingham? Framingham. Okay. Public health researchers weren't just looking at individual behavior. They were studying dense local social networks, things like walking regularly, smoking cessation, I'm not quitting cigars, preventative health

visits. I don't care how many of you 25% are doing that. But Okay. These behaviors didn't spread because someone saw a billboarder got a pamphlet. They spread when people saw several neighbors participating, not one person, multiple people. A neighbor walking every morning. A friend talking about quitting smoking. Someone down the street going to the clinic. It's really interesting. Example three, same-sex marriage. Wow. That's a great example. I haven't read it yet, but that makes so much sense. even Barack Obama spoke out against same-sex marriage and six years later supported it, and it's because he saw consistent support for it, guaranteed.

Support for same-sex marriage, whatever you personally think of it, didn't slowly grind its way to a majority. It tipped. Why? People came out publicly. Friends and families shared personal stories. I think that has a big one to do with it. And support became visible and unavoidable.

Visibility changed what felt normal, faster than, debate ever could. Yeah, that makes tons of sense. Civil rights movement. The civil rights movement didn't begin with a majority approval either. It began with a disciplined, visible minority consistently modeling courage, dignity, and nonviolence. Over time, repeated exposure made neutrality impossible. Consistency, visibility, moral character. Over time, repeated exposure made neutrality impossible. is exactly how that happened. What this means for our Army of Normal Folks, local chapters. First, we don't have to have everybody.

We need a committed Corps. Second, we're not chasing by him. We're not going to ask who is willing to do this publicly. Who will model this consistently? Third, depth beats reach. Small groups where people actually know each other are outperforming big audiences every time. And fourth, visibility beats persuasion.

People don't change because they're convinced. They change because they see people like them acting repeatedly. So here's the takeaway. Here's the sentence you have to hear. Social change doesn't start when everybody agrees, or even most people agree. It starts when a visible, committed minority, make a new behavior unavoidable.

That's how cultures shift. That's how movements grow. And that's exactly what we're trying to build one chapter, one neighborhood, one group of normal folks at a time. And each of you have an opportunity to be a part of that cultural shift that can change our country.

All you got to do is join an Army of Normal Folks chapter and be one of the loud, proud, visible few. Is that a fascinating idea? Well, the chapters are already a fascinating idea. What's fascinating... I'm talking about Damon Sintola's research. It's the science behind it and why these chapters are going to make an army of normal folks

the greatest social outreach program of this century, or maybe this... this generation. Let's go, baby. Well, why not? Yeah. And if we do have a committed view that stay consistent with it and other people start seeing it as the norm,

it becomes normal. So it's something that I've been studying in general for our chapter work, but I think it's also relevant to listeners for anything in your life, whether, you know, say you're running a church or you're running another social club or you have a restaurant in town or whatever it is, this idea of trying to get 20 to 20 to 25% of people, you know, on board and visibly showing it is the key to tipping over. I love it. How behavior really spreads while we need 20, 25% of population to win.

So that's fascinating data. It's a great entree into trying to explain to people the importance of our chapters and how they're going to work and how we're going to win with them and how we're going to change our culture in our country for the better, all from this little old podcast that we're doing hanging around. So it's pretty cool. Let's not screw it up. Yeah, don't screw it up. That's shop talk number 86.

If you like this episode, please rate it, review it, share it on social, subscribe to the podcast at normalfokes. You're subscribed to the podcast and whatever podcast app you listen to. Oh, yeah, do that. Yeah. You go to NormalFolkS. To sign up and join the Army. Yeah, you can do that too. Bill's not good with technology.

No, I know. You can have the first clue how it works. But I can tell you this. If you have ideas for shop talks or guests for an Army of Normal Folks, you can email me, good old-fashioned email at Bill at normalfolks. Dot us, and I will respond, and we will take up your ideas and take them very seriously. Alex will respond to sometimes, most times. All the time.

All the time. Perfect. That is Shop Talk number 86. how behavior really spreads and how we're going to spread behavior with our chapters and an army of normal folks. I hope you guys will seek it out and join. Until next week, do what you can. What if mind control is real?

If you can control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? They gave her some suggestions to be. sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple

podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.