Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Jonah Berger on How the Great Catalysts Remove the Barriers to Change EP 227

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

In today's episode, Dr. Jonah Berger, a bestselling author and University of Pennsylvania Wharton School marketing professor, shares how great catalysts remove the barriers to change. By understanding and tapping into these drivers of change, you can become more effective in your own life, career, and relationships. We discuss his latest book, The Catalyst. Purchase The Catalyst by Jonah Berger: https://amzn.to/3Y9Rh0q (Amazon Link) What I Discuss with Dr. Jonah Berger About How We Change Dr. Jonah Berger is a world-renowned expert on change, word-of-mouth influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. His work has been responsible for the transformation of countless businesses and organizations. By learning how catalysts work, we can better understand how to use them to achieve our goals and unleash the power of change in our life and business! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/jonah-berger-the-catalyst-remove-change-barriers/  Brought to you by MasterClass, Omaha Steaks, and POM Wonderful. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/5YUn8E_po4U  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Did you miss my interview with NYU Stern School marketing professor Scott Galloway? Listen to episode 218 on why America is adrift and how to fix it. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. That's exactly a great catalyst, dude. They don't push harder. They identify those roadblocks and they mitigate them. They figure out, well, why is that person unwilling to change? Or how can I rather than feel like pushing, help people see that they can actually choose the outcome that they want. Regardless of what you're doing, regardless of your big organization, a small one, a for-profit,

a nonprofit, these barriers come up again and again. And I think the more we understand them, the more we can be effective at changing minds and driving action. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people

and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 227 of PassionStruck, which has been ranked consistently in the top five alternative health podcasts. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly. And listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you would like to introduce this to a friend or family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We now have episode starter packs, both on Spotify and the PassionStruck website,

and these are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics. That give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs or Spotify to get started. In case you missed my episodes from last week, they featured Dr. Alisa Hallerman and we discuss her brand new book Sobriety. In it, she discusses, how do you break addiction, overcome trauma, and reconnect with your soul? I also had on Dr. Michael Pishfan, who is one of the leading pancreatic cancer doctors in the world, and we discuss why hope

is the most critical ingredient for battling pancreatic cancer. I also wanted to thank you for your continued support and all your ratings and reviews. They go such a long way in helping us increase the popularity of this podcast, but especially those who need daily inspiration in their lives. Thank you so much. Now let's talk about today's episode. Everyone has something that they want to change.

Employees want to change their boss's mind, and leaders want to change organizations. Marketers want to change customer minds. Parents want to change their children's behavior. Startups want to change industries, and nonprofits want to change the world. But let's face it, change is hard. We push, and we push, but often nothing happens. Could there possibly be a better way? In my interview with Dr. Jonah Berger, he proposes just that in his latest New York Times best-selling book, The Catalyst,

How to Change Anyone's Mind, which introduces a revolutionary, approached change. Dr. Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an international best-selling author of contagious and visible influence, and as I mentioned, The Catalyst. And he is a world-renowned expert on change.

Word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely honored and thrilled to have Dr. Jonah Berger, one of my favorite authors on the podcast today. Sounds great having me, great to be here. Jonah, I'd love to open these episodes out

by asking a question that allows the listeners to get to know the guest. And we all have moments that define who we become. What are some that led you to become this expert on change, consumer behavior, marketing, overall, and influence? It's a great question. It's hard to sort of pick out a couple key moments, but maybe I'll pick out one or two. I think one was, I was in college and my grandmother's often do, sent me a newspaper clipping saying, hey, maybe today it's an email,

rather a newspaper clipping, but at the time it was a newspaper clipping. Saying, hey, there's a book out there, I think you might find it interesting. And I was like, okay, grandma, thanks. And the book was actually a book called The Tipping Point, which was Malcolm Gladwell's first book and the many of your listeners

who are probably familiar with his work. But that book changed my life in a few ways. First, it highlighted to me that one could bring together different disciplines in an interesting way. So that book is all about things catching on and the notion that things become popular and go from sort of unpopular to popular very quickly. And why? And so it was a little bit of social psychology, it was a little bit of sociology, it was

a little bit of marketing, and I read it in college and I was like, this is what I want to study. So I put together an individually designed major that mixed a sociology and psychology and marketing together to begin to study why things catch on. And at the time, new professor had come to Stanford and his name was Chip Heath, who may also be familiar to some of your listeners

as part of the Heath brothers who's written books like Made to Stick and Desisive and so on. And so started working with Chip around why certain rumors or been legends, get diffused. And the rest is kind of history. I really had always been interested in behavioral science and had been doing psychology research. But I've been waiting to find that thing that I really found interesting.

And this question of why things catch on, why things become popular, how we as individuals can influence others, both to change their minds, and drive action is a question I find fascinating to this day. Well, for the listener who might not be familiar with you and who isn't watching this video, I would just highly encourage that they read all your books. I've such a huge fan. Invisible influence was great. Contagious is one of my favorite books of all time. And today we're gonna be discussing the catalyst.

How do you change anyone's mind, which I think for our audience is something everyone would love and know how to do. Most of us try to push people harder, whether at home or in our jobs, to get people to change. And what I've seen throughout my career is that approach, typically backfires.

If this doesn't work, how do you get people to overcome inertia to change their minds? Yeah, I think it's even worth taking a step back of why I wrote this book in the first place. As you noted, I have written a couple books before, and I'd been doing sort of speaking and consulting around contagious and around invisible influence. And I was using some tools with clients that found interesting and useful. And I started realizing that not all those tools were in the books that I had written so far.

And I started knowing some commonalities between different things. And I wondered similarly, do you could there be a better way to create change? Think about it. Everyone at the core has something they want to change. Boys want to change their boss's mind, the marketers or sales people want to change that. Consumers mind, leaders may want to transform organizations, nonprofits and the folks that work in them want to change the world. Startups want to change industries. Everyone, some people say I just want to change my spouse's mind. I just want to change my kids' behavior. Everyone at the core has something they want to change. But as you've noted, it often doesn't work. It often we push, we pressure, we cajole, and nothing happens. And so the question I started to ask myself

is, could there be a better way? Could there be a better way to change minds and drive action not by pushing, but by doing something else? And I found there's very much an interesting analogy to make in chemistry. So in chemistry, obviously, change is really hard. Think about diamond being squeezed together out of carbon over eons of time. Think about plant matter being turned into oil over millions and millions of years. Chemists obviously can't wait that long. So

in the lab, they often add temperature and pressure. They heat things up, they squeeze them together. And you can make an analogy to the social world, right? When we create change, we similarly, we put energy into the system, right? We think if we just push people a little harder, they'll change. That's clear why we think that. If there's a chair, for example, in the middle of a room and we want to get it to move, we're pushing is a great way to move that chair.

And so we apply the same intuition to people. We think if I give more facts, more figures, more reasons, more information, they'll change. But if we think about it last time, we try to change someone's mind or someone tried to change us, we're more than chairs. Force in a particular direction doesn't make us move, it often makes us resist. And so what does create that change? And so going back to chemistry in the lab, chemists often add a special set of substances

to make change happen faster and easier. These substances don't heat things up, they don't increase the pressure, they allow change to happen in less energy, not more. And these substances, as you can probably guess already, are called catalysts. And with most interesting about these, the way they create change. They don't squeeze things together, they don't heat them up, they don't add more energy to the system. They mitigate and remove the barriers to change. They identify ways to make change happen in less energy, not more. And I think the same analogy can be made to the social world. If you look at those great change agents, those catalysts and whatever organization or business you may work for or know of, they often they don't just say, well, what could

I do to get someone to change? Instead, they take a subtly, but importantly, different approach. They say, well, why hasn't that person changed already? What's stopping them? What are the barriers or obstacles that are getting in the way and how by removing those barriers can make change more likely? And it's a subtle shift, but a really important one. Often as change agents, we know a lot about the outcome we want to achieve, the thing we want to happen. We often know a lot less about the people organizations that we're trying to change, but the more we understand them, the more we understand the barriers that are preventing them from changing, the more effective we can be. Yeah, and I think a great example of this that the audience could probably relate to is this image of a hostage negotiator. And can you just describe in those terms, because I think it vividly represents some of the key concepts?

Yeah, I'm writing this book. I talked to an amazing set of change agents. So I talked to the usual top selling sales people and transformational leaders and startup founders that grew their businesses. But as you noted, I also talked to more unusual folks. I talked to hostage negotiators. I talked to substance abuse counselors. I talked to parenting experts with depending on whether you have a two or three year old at home, you probably think is the most difficult thing to change out there. And I learned a lot from these individuals

and I also noticed a lot of common patterns. And that's actually what built the framework that's in the book. Cause I noticed the same things were coming up again and again across different areas, right? Whether you talk to that top-selling sales people, or you talk to those hostage negotiators, they weren't saying exactly the same thing, but if you look underneath, very much the same principles we're going on.

And talking to hostage negotiators, that one's something quite fascinating. They said most people, when they become a hostage negotiator, those novices, those first-time negotiators, they want to jump to persuasion right away. They want to say, come out with your hands up, do XYZ or else this is going to happen. And they have this notion again that if they just tell people what they want, that thing will happen. They want to move as quickly as possible to the outcome. And I think that's true of most of us as change agents, right? If we're a boss and we want to get our employees to do something, we think if we just tell them what to do, that'll work. If we're a salesperson, we just think if we say this is a great product or a great service, people will get bored. But the challenge is if we don't understand them,

it's going to be really difficult to make change happen. And so what they find is those negotiators who've been around for a little while, those negotiators who are more seasoned, they don't start with influence, they start with understanding. They start with the person, group of people they're trying to change, they start by understanding them and why they're there in the first place, and then use that to help them figure out a way to show those individuals that the best way to get what they want is actually to do what the Hashnegotiator wanted in the first place, right? The best way to get someone to come out with their hands up is to say, come out with your hands up. It's figure out, well, why is this person robbing a bank, holding horses, do whatever in the first place? Figure out what that is, and you can

help them see that what you want them to do is a really good way to reach your outcome. Because the challenge is the more we push people, the more they push back, and the less interest they are in listening to us. And so really to create that change to get them to change, we have to start with them. Well, I think at such an important point, I have a 24-year-old son who right now is doing his GMats to go back to business school and we constantly have this conversation of he feels there's so much change going on now, especially in this digital world, where should he focus in the future? And I've talked to him a lot about emotional intelligence,

having adaptability quotient. He's in marketing, so he does a lot of digital media for big brands right now. But I think you bring up something that's gonna be so core, especially to these younger generations, which is all these jobs are going to change, but one thing fundamentally isn't, and that is our interaction with people, and knowing the science of how you can change minds, how you can influence people, is going

to be so vital, whether you're his age or my age or even older. So I think this is a huge area that people need to pay attention to. How you change is a topic that we've had a number of your peers come on the podcast to discuss. People you will know like Katie Milkman, Ilet Fishback, Max Bezerman, I have Scott Galloway on the show tomorrow, Ethan Cross, but having read all their books, the catalyst takes a completely different approach to removing the barriers to change. How is that? Yeah, again, if you look at whether it's that Hossam's negotiator, that transformational

leader, the folks that are really good at change, again, and you see the same five barriers come up. And so in the catalyst, I put them in a framework called the Reduce Framework, and that's an acronym that stands for Reactants, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence. And I'm cheating a little bit there. The corroborating evidence is two words, but I'm using them as one principle. It's a CE in reduce. But that's exactly a great catalyst. They don't push hard. They identify those roadblocks and they mitigate them, right? They figure out, well, why is that person unwilling to change? Or how can

I rather feel like pushing help people see that they can actually choose the outcome that they want using guided choice, for example, rather than pushing. So happy to dive into a few of the principles in the reduced framework, but again and again, regardless of what you're doing, regardless of your big organization, a small one, a for-profit, a nonprofit, these barriers come up again and again, and I think the more we understand them, the more we can be effective at changing minds and driving action. Yeah, and in addition to that framework, you talk about this concept of parking brakes and to give the listener some context, what is a parking brake and why are they important? Yeah, I think a good analogy to think about a different lens on change is imagine you're

parked in your car. So maybe you've come out of a kid soccer game or the movies or whatever it might be and you're parked on a hill, right? And so you get in your car, you stick your keyed me ignition and you step your foot on the gas. If the car doesn't go, what do we usually think? We think we need more gas, right? I need to need to step on the gas to get the car going up that hill. The same thing is true change, right? If we make our initial pitch, our NISO, whether it's a sales pitch, a phone call, an email, and it doesn't work, we think, well, let me just push a little harder. Let me step on the gas and we add more energy to the system.

But if we're going back to that car, if the parking brake is pulled up, we can step on the gas all we want. The car's not going to go on you because the parking brake is in the way. And so, a much more efficient, better, more effective way to create change is not by pushing, but by identifying those parking brakes and mitigating them, right? more efficient, better, more effective way to create change is not by pushing, but by identifying those parking breaks and mitigating them, right? Figure out, well, why is that person not yet ready to buy this service? Why are my employees not interested in what I'm suggesting? How can I get the rest of these people to see something differently, focusing less on

me and what I want, and more of the breaks for those individuals and the barriers that are getting in the way, and if we can do that, change the lot more likely. Yeah, well throughout today, we're going to be talking about different examples, some with individuals, but I wanted to turn to one dealing with a company. And chapter one, you talk about one of these parking brake situations through the lens of Proctor and Gamble. Company, I actually know a ton about, because when I was at Catalina Market and they were our biggest customer, but for those who don't, situations through the lens of Proctor and Gamble company. I actually know a ton about because when I was at Catalina market and they were our biggest customer. But for those who don't know all

the brands that they have, one of them is tied and they have a product, probably many of you use called their tied pods, but they were having a huge PR problem. And, Jonah, maybe you can talk to the audience about the issue that they were having. Yeah. PNG's response. And why did people not only ignore it, but actually work to combat it, which just shocks me. Yeah. As you mentioned, a number of years ago, I've tied, which is owned by Procter and Gamble, was trying to change the way that people do laundry. I've done laundry today, actually. And so we all agree, it's probably not that difficult. But there are some things that could be easier, right? You never know exactly how much

detergent to add. It's often quite sticky and either gets on your hands or the counter and it turns out to be better if some of the detergent went in the beginning of the cycle and some of the detergent went in later in the cycle, but with traditional sort of powder or liquid detergent, you can't make that work. And so Tide spent a bunch of money on R&D, and they ended up coming up with these colorful pods that they called Tidepods. Basically, set it and forget it. Like, one of these wonderful colorful squares, chuck them in the laundry,

and it solves all the problems we just talked about. So, they spent over $100 million on marketing, and they hope they could take a big chunk of the over billion dollar laundry industry. And so, Tidepods come come out and they're doing okay, but then they hit a snake, which is that people are eating them. And I like to pause here for just a second because some of your listeners might be going,

what do you mean people are eating them? Aren't they filled with chemicals? And yes, indeed, they are filled with chemicals. And yes, people were eating them. There was a video online that showed the melted on top of a pizza, there was a funny picture that showed what looked like to be people eating them. There was a video online that showed the melted on top of a pizza. There was a funny picture that showed what looked like to be people eating them. And suddenly, mostly young people were challenging one another to eat Thai pods. Okay, it was called the tide pod challenge. Now, imagine, as you suggested, you're a tied executive in this situation. You're sitting

there going, what do we do? People should know not to eat tide pods, but just in case, let's do what companies often do when they don't know what else to do, which is, we'll release a press release, because that'll solve everything. So they put out a press release saying, as you can guess already, don't eat tide pods. In case that's not enough, they say, okay, well, what else should we do? They do a company's often also do, and they don't know what to do, which is hire a celebrity. They hired Rob Grunk Grunkowski of used to be doing them. Patriots, more recently Tampa Bay, Buccaneers, Fame to shoot a public service announcement.

Again, telling people, don't eat tide pods. Right, and so they told people not to do it. Grunk told people not to do it. They thought that would be enough. Lunch dangly enough, if you look at the data, look at searches for the Tide Pod Challenge over time, or Tide Pods in general, and you notice an interesting pattern. It's time they're going up a little bit up until the moment,

which Tide releases their announcement. And Tide is hoping that their announcement will stem the tide of the interest in the Tide Pod Challenge. But that's not actually what happens. In fact, just the opposite, right? Interest in the Tide Pod Challenge shoots up over 400 percent visits to poison control go up as well. Next two weeks, more people come into poison control than had in the two years prior. Very simply, a warning becomes a recommendation, telling people not to do something actually

makes them more likely to do it. And I love the story through the interesting story, but I also love it because people often say, well, what does this have to do with me, though, right? I'm trying to get people probably to do something, not to do something. And by the way, I don't work for Tide. I don't care about Tide pods. So what does this have to do with me? But the underlying insight behind this story, the underlying driver behind behavior is much broader than Tide and the Tide pods. The idea here, this is just one example of a phenomenon on psychologists we call reactants. When pushed, whether to do something or not to do something, people often push back, they often do the exact opposite of what we want them to do. And so

the challenge is both to understand the science of reactants, why people react against others, and more importantly, what we can do about it. Yes, well, that's not the only topic that you talk about that comes out of behavioral science. Another one is the endowment effect and in that people tend to overvalue what they already have. Why does that tend to happen to us all the time? Yeah, what we have to begin with is easier for us. In every story, there's a hero in a villain. I like to think of in these changed journeys that we are the hero, right?

You are a parent trying to change your kids behavior. You are a boss trying to change an organization. You're a nonprofit trying to change societies approach something. You're that hero. You've got your goal at the end, but there's a villain. And the villain in this journey is called the status quo bias. And this may be something that some of your listeners are familiar with, but basically anytime,

we're asking people to do something, we're asking to give up something old and switch to something new. Right? Anytime someone's making a choice, whether it's a choice of a product or service, well, you might be using a certain product or service and you're being asked to switch to a new one, it might be an idea. There's an old idea and people ask me to think about a new idea, an old program or initiative and switching to a new one. And anytime there's choice between an old thing and a new thing, people have a tendency to stick with the old one. And this is what's called the status quo bias. And if it was just a tendency, it wouldn't be a bias. The reason it's a bias is that even when the new thing is better, by some estimates, even when the new thing is 2.6 times better, people still tend to stick with the old one. And that's why it's a bias, right?

Even when the new thing is better, people stick with the old one. And there are kind of key reasons that underlie this status quo bias. And this is what gets us to the endowment effect, right? The first is ease. It's just easier to stick with things that we've done before. I've never gone to shopping with you before,

but I bet whenever you're in the grocery store, you tend to buy the same things. I do not exactly the same things every week, but if you buy eggs, you probably buy a certain size, certain number of eggs from a certain branch, buy milk, you buy a certain size milk from a certain brand, because it's just easier. It requires less work.

You don't have to figure out whether another one is good or not, or whether the size is too big or too small. You know it's going to figure needs. And so that's one reason behind the status quo bias. The second though that gets into the endowment effect is that old things, product services ideas, aren't just old products, service ideas. There's someone's product service for idea, right?

I'm have a relationship with somebody who works their particular organization, a particular idea or initiative or program, isn. A particular idea or initiative or program is just some idea initiative or program. It's someone's idea initiative or program and they're probably unwilling to let it go. There's some great research on home selling. It finds that the longer that someone's lived in a home, the more they value that home, above and beyond market price. It's a sure homes go up over time But even controlling for that people value it more white because if you live there

It becomes your home. It's not just a home. It's your home and you can't imagine letting it go Same thing in startup valuation right often founders have a lot more valuation for their business Then maybe some other people do because it's their business They can't imagine letting it go and then last bit is just that old things feel safe and new ones feel risky, right? Old things aren't perfect, but at least we know why they're not perfect. We know what the problems are and the benefits new things

are risky, sure it might be better, but it might also be worse and is it worth taking the risk? Huh, if people aren't sure they stick with what they're doing already. And so those are the three kind of pieces behind that status quo bias that cause people not to do things and not to move forward. And so we have to ease endowment as change aids and we have to encourage people to let go of the past. And in the book, I talk about a number of strategies to help them do that. This is the PassionStark podcast with our guest, Dr. Jonah Berger.

We'll be right back. This episode is also brought to you by Masterclass. With Masterclass, you can learn from the world's best minds. Anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace, you can learn how to become a better writer from legendary authors like Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, Dan Brown, Amy Tan, and Amanda Gorman or improve your business skills from Daniel Pink,

Sarah Blakely, Bob Woodard, or Richard Branson. With over 150 classes from a range of world-class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think. I recently took Matthew Walker's The Science of Sleep, and I was blown away by the death of knowledge and how in 24 lessons he teaches you how to research and write stories that capture big ideas. This is so useful for me as I capture ideas from my next book and weekly podcasts on all the episodes.

I highly recommend you check out Masterclass. This holiday, give the perfect gift of an annual Masterclass membership and get one free. Go to masterclass.com-pashinstruct.a That's M-A-S-T-E-R-C-L-A-S-S.com-slash-pashinstruct. Terms apply. Thank you so much for listening to the show. I love hearing from all of you, and I love the fact that you all have been great to our sponsors because they're the ones that keep the show going as well.

You can check out all the sponsors at www.pashinstruct.com-slashdeals. You'll find all the codes in URLs. All those things are there. So please consider supporting those who support the show. Now back to my interview with Dr. Jonah Berger. Yeah, and this is a great lead in to this past week. I interviewed another author who you may know, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who wrote a book with Dan Sullivan

called The Gap and The Gain. And I love this book because in it they describe how we tend to measure ourselves against what we see others achieving instead of the gains that we make in our own lives. And this kind of goes into what you're talking here because we see our presence self. We have this image of what the future self could look like, but I think the status quo impact has an overall negative consequence to our ability to change, and that's why people get so stuck, or why, as you put it, why good is the enemy of great when it comes to making change.

There's a great book by Jim Collins that some of your listeners are probably familiar with good to great and he has a very nice quote in there that says, why don't we have great schools because we have good schools? Why don't we have great this because we have pretty good this? And you can make the same analogy to change more broadly, right? If you have a couple of flies in your house, you know, call an exterminator. You just hope the problem goes away. But if you're house infested with cockroaches, it's terrible. And you call the exterminator right away. And so this is a little bit the challenge or change. If something was terrible, people would have

changed already. The challenge is when something is okay, but not great, they're sitting there going, well, is it worth all the cost? We may get into uncertainty in a couple of minutes. But all the switching costs to do something new, when the thing I'm doing already is pretty good. There's a great old study It looks at the context of injuries and they ask people which do you think hurts more a major injury or a minor one a major injury being like a Heart attack or a shattered kneecap or really big major injury and a minor injury being a twist and ankle Or you have a lower back pain. They won't go away or sort of once in a while, you want to range your shoulder hurts.

And that everyone says, well, of course, major injuries hurt a lot more. And that intuition makes a lot of sense, but it's actually wrong. And the reason is that yes, when they happen, major injuries hurt a lot more than minor ones do. But when you have a major injury, you get fixed, right? You go to the doctor, you go to rehab,

you go to physical therapy, you get the bones set, you do all the work to fix the problem. When you have a minor injury, you often say, well, it's just fine, it's not over the hump to make me go out and create that change. And so you never get it fixed. And so over time, that minor injury actually ends up causing a lot more pain

than a major one. And so one thing you need to do is, I talk about in the book, is a strategy I call highlighting the cost of an action, right? Inaction always feels safe, it always feels easy, but it often isn't as safe as we might think. I tell the story of a cousin who every time he wrote his email would write in his sort of name at the bottom

as signature, so it's a best Charles at the end of his email. And I was sitting there going, why do you write this every time you write an email? You should just automate this as part of your email signature. She said, I don't know really how to create an email signature. It doesn't take me that long to write it each time. It only takes a couple seconds. At each moment, it would always take longer to figure out how to do it than to just do the old way. And so at each moment in time, it's easier to stick with the old way. And this is a challenge, obviously, many of us are facing with others. And so I thought about it

for a while, and I was writing this book. And so I ended up coming up with a strategy that worked. I asked him, how long does it take you to write your little email signatures? I don't know, five seconds. And I said, how many emails do you write a week? And he said, I don't know, 200, 300. And I said, okay, how much time do you spend every week writing your email signature? And he thought about it for a minute, then he did some calculations, then he typed into Google and how to automate an email signature because at each moment in time, it's cheaper to stick with the status quo than it is to change. Almost always it is, because there's always an upfront cost to that change and we're wary of the upfront cost. And so in action is often cheaper than

action at each moment, but over time, just like that minor injury or just like that case with the email, over time, the minor injury is the small things end up costing us a lot more. And so we have to get people over the hump. We have to highlight that cost of the action and show them that actually it's going to take you a lot more time if you don't take the effort and make the switching. it's going to take you a lot more time if you don't take the effort and make the switch in. I think a perfect example of this as well is when I was talking to Katie Milkman. She said that one of the things that got her

into the career that she's in as a behavioral scientist is seeing a statistic that 40% of premature deaths are the cause of people's inaction or the lack of taking choices to do the healthy things that would allow you to extend your life. So I think that's another great example of what you just brought up. Yeah, inaction is certainly easier and easy is very attractive often. So we have to help people see that while in the short term inaction feels easier and the

long term action is often the better thing to do. Well, I'm going to jump to a different story that you have in the book. And this one was fascinating to me because I studied the 15th century Explorer, her name Cortez, when I was at the Naval Academy. And he did something extremely unorthodox that I, and probably most people would see as extreme and selfish. Could you explain what that is and the motivation that led him there? Yeah, and I want to be careful. I'm going to tell this story.

And then at the end of it, I'm going to make it clear that I don't think most of us want to do this most of the time. But I think a version of this can be really clever. And so the story is basically he's traveling to the parts of the Central America. He's got a crew with them. They land somewhere. He wants to encourage him to them. They land somewhere. He wants to encourage them to go inland to find gold. And many of them are like, I want to go home. We got here. We did your thing. We haven't found what you said. We were going to find. We want to go home. And so he's facing a sort of mutiny. No one wants to end up continuing the expedition inland. They all

want to go home. And if they go home, he's in trouble. So what does he do? Well, he can't just tell them that they have to stay because they don't have to listen to in trouble. So what does he do? Well, he can't just tell them that they have to stay because they don't have to listen to him. And so what can he do to get them to stay? And so what he does, as you said, on orthodox, hands up burning the ships. What do I mean by that? Well, he literally sets fire to the boats. And now there's no way to go home. And he says, well, look guys, there's no way to go home. We don't have boats. So we got to figure out some long-term strategy to say here. And now we don't really have any choice, there's nobody to go home. We don't have boats. So we got to figure out some long-term strategy to say here. And now we don't really have any choice. It's up to explore and go inland

and see if we can make a go of it. And so essentially what he did is he took the status call off the table. He said, the thing you're doing before is no longer an option, because the boats aren't there anymore. Now, I agree that seems draconian and crazy. And we don't often want to do that. But there are versions of this that happen on a daily basis.

So as I'm writing the book and working on the thinking about whether burning the shifts is a good strategy, I get this email from my IT folks at Wharton basically saying, Hey, Jonah, your desktop is so old that we're no longer supported anymore. You can get a new desktop or happy to encourage you to get a new desktop and you can buy one with your funds or whatever it is, but we're not going to support the old. And they're not completely burning the shifts, right? They're not literally coming to my house and throwing throwing my desktop out the window, but they're basically

saying, we're not going to subsidize the status quo anymore. It's costly. It's costly both to you and us. And we're not going to subsidize anymore. You don't have to change, but we're not going to make it easier for you to do nothing than we have to. And so I like this version of sort of thing about, well, what is the status coefficient? How can we take that off the table? And by taking it off the table, or at least not subsidizing it

if it's not worth it, make people more likely to change, right? Not by telling them they have to, but saying, well, I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to make it easier for you to do the thing that's not as good for you. I'm going to encourage make it easier for you to do the thing that's not as good for you. I'm going to encourage you to do something new because I think that's the best course of action. Okay, and then later on,

you introduce two other concepts. One of those is the zone of acceptance and the other one is the region of rejection. And how do both of those impact people's perceptions? Yeah, so I think there it's worth taking a little bit of a step back. So we talked a little about reactants and the idea when pushed people push back and the fact that people when they feel like other people are telling them what to do, they stop listening. And so there's a bunch of strategies in the book there around allowing for agency giving people back some sense of freedom

and control, whether it's suit choices, whether it's asking questions or other means. And the E is endowment and so we talked a little about bridging people to rise that doing nothing is in costless, but we've gotten to D, the D which is distance. And the basic idea here is when we ask people for too much, they ignore us. They stop even listening to the possibility of changing. And so a nice way to think about this is take political beliefs at least in the United States, right? There are some people that are on the far right and there are some people on the far left. And you can imagine that almost like a football field, right? So the far right would be one end zone, the far left would be another end zone.

And most people, I don't know exactly where you are as a listener, but you're probably a raid somewhere on that field, right? If you're very conservative, you'd be on the zero yard line or the one yard line and one end, very liberal, one yard line of the other. If you're exactly in the middle, you'd be on the zero yard line or the one yard line at one end, very liberal, one yard line of the other. If you're exactly in the middle, you'd be on the 50 yard line. But most of us might be on the 30, the 40, the 45 yard line of one side or the other. And the challenge is when we come in and we ask people to change whether on politics or anything else, we often ask for too much. We often ask for something that's so far outside of where they are at the moment

that they're unwilling to listen. And so there's a zone right around people's current beliefs, current attitudes, call the zone of acceptance, right? Move five yards, one direction, five yards, another. It's close enough. It's not exactly where I am, but I'm willing to listen. But if it's 15, 20, 30 yards in one direction, even if it's in the direction that I like, I'm probably not going to listen to you because it's too far away. It's that region of rejection.

And so we have to do in some sense, and we have to ask for less and ask for more. Rather than trying to move people right away, so far on the field, we have to move them a little bit and then move them a little bit again. I was talking to a doctor that was trying to get an obese trucker to lose weight. And so as this guy, he was in his truck all day, was drinking basically three liters of Mountain Dew a day, which has a huge amount of sugar. Has I don't remember how many, but a large number of Snickers bars worth of sugar.

And it was just convenient and easy. And he comes in and he says, look, whatever. And she says, you need to lose weight. And but here's the challenge. If she says, stop drinking Mountain Dew, he's going to say, thank you for advice, doctor. And then she's probably never going to see him again. That's so far from where he is now,

that he's not going to listen to that suggestion. And so instead, she does something really clever. She says, look, I know you love Mountain Dew, and I know you like drinking. I'm not going to tell you to stop. But try to go from three liters to two. It's going to make much healthier. And he grumbles, and he doesn't want to do it.

And she says, look, you can fill up on your old bottles with water. That'll make it easy in the cab of your truck. Gr he doesn't want to do it. And she says, look, you can fill up any rolled bottles with water. That'll make it easy in the cab of your truck. Grumbles doesn't want to do it. But he comes back a few months later and he's been able to do it. It's been able to go from three to two, which doesn't stop there. She says fantastic, really good job. Now try to go to one. Again, he grumbles. He doesn't want to do it. But he eventually moves from two to one. And then she says fantastic. And now that you move from two to one, see if eventually moves from two to one. And then she's fantastic. And now that you move from to one from two to one, see if you can go down to zero. And the guy still drinks Mountain Dew once in a while.

She hasn't quit cold turkey, but he lost over 30 pounds, right? Because she didn't tell him, don't do it. That's a great way to get him to stop listening to whatever she has to say. And said she moves in a little bit and then a little bit. She asks for less and then she asks for more. She doesn't stop with the less. She asks for less and asks and then a little bit. She asks for less and then she asks for more. She doesn't stop with the less. She asks for less and asks and then asks for more. It's almost a little bit like what engineers or product designers called stepping stones. So think if you've got a big river that you're trying

to get users to cross. You've got one version of a product or service and you want to move them to a completely new one. If you ask them to move right away, they'll say, oh, it's too far away from what I'm doing. I can't do it. But if you move them one step and then move them another step and then move them another step, eventually, you get them across. And so by breaking big change down into smaller chunks, it makes it easier to move and more likely that people eventually get where we want them to go.

Yeah, just to follow on since you started talking about politics, do you have any thoughts on as we observe this most recent midterm election, which I think for many people turned out far different than many expected? How did the Democrats in this case find that movable middle and we're able to bring more people over? Because I think it's a good example of this concept. Yeah, and so the movable middle is certainly related, right? So take again that football field, right? Wherever we are, there are some people that are

on our side, there are some other people that are far away, and then there's a chunk of folks that are in between, and particularly in politics, you know, people talk about, look, if we're trying to change the folks that are very far away, that's possible, but that's going to take a lot of time, and a lot of effort, and there are strategies to do that and talk about something in the book But an easier approach is to go after the folks that are already open to changing right this sort of movable middle the set of individuals that Maybe aren't always aligned with us, but on this particular issue or on this particular idea They're more likely to see things along along our line And so because they're open to change, because they're closer

to where we're asking them to go, right? We're not starting with people that are 40 yards away. We're starting people that are five or 10 yards away. And so it's easier to move them. And so at least whether you're a politician or a political campaign or a startup trying to find those new customers, starting with the movable middle, starting with individuals that are open to change, or close enough to the position you're asking them to get to, is often a more effective way than trying to get that big change right away. Yeah, and I think a related topic to this is deep canvassing.

And I was recently talking with Professor Dolly Chug about her new book, A More Just Future. And she talks to it about the science of good people and how our prejudices and biases get in the way of the way that we see the world. And I remember as I was growing up, there was a huge bias to the LGBTQ phenomenon in general and getting people to even consider putting that on ballots to change the laws. There was a point in time I never thought it would happen, but through deep canvassing, they were able to do it. I think it was the most rapid change in political orientation that we've ever seen. I don't know if you can talk about that example, but why is deep canvassing we've ever seen. I don't know if you can talk about that example, but why is Deep Canvassing work so well to help people overcome long-standing prejudices?

Yeah, so sticking with that football field analogy, one thing I talk about in this area, the book is the idea of switching the field. If you think about that football field, if you're in one place and someone you're trying to change it far away, you're asking them to move a large distance, it's not necessarily going to work. But what's interesting is if you see things from a different angle, what you guys are on the same part of the field, different field, think about it, take that, take the imagine a horizontal axis in the vertical axis. Well, yeah, you may be on the negative 30 yard line and then in the positive 30 yard, links your 60 yards apart, but you're both at the same point on that y-axis if you look on a

different dimension. And so what deep canvassing is really about is the same idea. It's rather than saying, well, let's start with a place of disagreement, or 60 yards apart on that field. Let's start on a place of agreement. Let's find an area where we see eye to eye and use that to build around to something else. And so it's a great approach that's been used both in academia, in academic researchers, as well as in practice, but essentially traditional canvassing is basically like dropping off leaflets. You're not going to door, you deliver the pitch, you hope it works, regardless of whether it does

you move on to the next door. And deep canvassing recognized that particularly for these difficult complicated issues, you've got to have more of a conversation. But if you start that conversation on the issue, which they may disagree with, and they're going to not listen to you. And so instead, it's about figuring out a way to help them understand why this issue is relevant to them. In one example, they knock on a gentleman's door who's not really for LGBT rights, but they don't start by saying, would you support this cause? Instead, they say, tell us how you feel about someone in your life that you love and care about. Who is someone you care about? And why are they important to you?

Don't start with the issue. They start with a point. What's easy for everybody to say, well, here's someone that I love and care about. And then they use that conversation to bend around to the point of, well, wouldn't you feel badly if you weren't allowed to care about that person, or the law made it difficult for you

to be able to support that person if they got ill in the way that is needed. And so rather than starting abstractly about LGBT rights, which someone who agrees with is gonna say yes, and someone who disagrees with is gonna say no, instead they made it about, well, people you care about, who is this person that you care about, and use that to help them see that, wow, other people have these individuals, and

they're being prevented from being having the rights that they deserve. And so not starting with a point of disagreement, starting with a point of agreement, switching that field to find that point of agreement, and then using that to help people see that something that seemed different from where they are in one way, maybe, but another way, maybe more similar. I was fortunate to interview Tony Xu, the former head of Zappos about a month before is untimely passing. What a wonderful interview and human being he was, but Zappos has this strategy of free shipping and free returns, which was revolutionary at the time. How for them did that help them to reduce inertia and lower uncertainty for their consumers?

Yeah, so we're switching principles a little bit to this idea of uncertainty. And the key barrier there is, as we've talked a little bit about already, that any change often involves switching costs. Right? So if you think about buying a new phone, for example, sure you have to pay for that new phone. Maybe you've got an Apple phone or switching to a Google phone or Google phone switching to an Apple phone. Not only do you have to pay for that new phone, but it also takes time and you have to learn about it. You have to put all your material over. It requires a bit work. Same thing going from a regular gas car to an electric car.

Same thing changing software systems at the office. Any of these things require a bit of switching costs. And not surprisingly, people say, well, I'd prefer to skip the cost. As we talked about before, right, old things feel safe, new things feel a little bit risky. And so I can stick with the old thing without paying these cost. I just won't change. Let me tell you, it gets worse. Because when you think about the costs of change and the benefits of change, which happens first costs of change and the benefits of change, which happens first? Well, usually it's the cost of change, right? You pay the money now, you do the work now and only later do you get to find out if the phone is better. You

pay the money for the new car and maybe install the system in your house for electric cars and only then do you get the benefit. And so costs are now benefits are later, but also costs are certain and benefits are uncertain. And so, cost are now benefits or later, but also costs are certain and benefits are uncertain. And so, this is what people call the cost benefit timing gap, right? Cost are now benefits or later, costs are certain, benefits are uncertain. You're asking people to take definite costs now for some uncertain benefit later. And so most of the time people say, no, no thanks. And so, you have to figure out a way to lower the barrier trial. I'd have figured out a way to make it easier for them to experience the value of what you're offering free shipping is a great example of this. It's hard to remember today where we do everything online.

But we buy cars online and close online. We find spouses online. Some people listening to this episode, maybe even bought something online. Wow, we've been, how we've been chatting. some people listening to this episode, maybe even bought something online while we've been chatting. But when Zappos and other companies started in the early 2000s, online wasn't happening, right? People weren't used to buying things online. And so there was a lot of reticence to order something because you didn't know who you're paying, whether you'd like the thing or not. And so Zappos were trying to figure out how to solve this problem. Today, there were a billion out of business, but they weren't then. And they were trying to figure out how to get users in. And they were thinking about dropping the price of their products or advertising, but they realized it wouldn't

solve the fundamental issue, which is people were uncertain. Sure, Zappo said, you're going to love these shoes. But do I want to pay money only to get them and figure out I'm not going to like them? And so they realized the way to solve that was free shipping and free returns, right? Reducing the cost that it required to get something. Then you could say, well, isn't that the same as giving them a discount, but it's different, right? A discount you'd stuff to pay for the

shipping only then to figure out whether you like it. Whereas what lowering the barrier to trial, such as free shipping or think about ideas like premium or free trials, if they make it easier for people to experience the value of the offering, rather than having to pay for shipping only then to figure out whether you like it. How can you lower the barrier to trial? How can you be able people to experience something without having to pay all those upfront costs? Think about free sampling at the grocery store. Think about renting rather than buying. Think about what car dealerships do with test drives, right? Test drives don't solve all the problems, but they give you a sense of whether you're going

to let that car or not without having to pay all the upfront costs. And so the more we can lower the barrier to trial, the more we can make it easier for people to experience the value of what we're offering, we can make them more likely to buy it or take action, right? Because in some sense, the barrier is not just the cost, the barrier is uncertainty. People don't know whether they can trust us or not. But if we say, well don't trust us, try it yourself. If people see it and they like it, they're much more willing to move forward. So we've talked a lot about the catalyst. And I just have to say, like I often do in this podcast, we just touched the absolute surface of this book. And there's so many great examples in here.

One about President Clinton, another one about Acura, another one about PG&E. I highly recommend you pick this up because we really only touched on the surface level, and this is such a profound book that can help you in so many ways. Joe, I understand you have another book coming out in March, that's called Magic Words, where you reveal how different words can help you increase the impact in every area of life.

Can you give the audience just a teaser for it? Yeah, the quick idea of this book is everything we do almost I should say almost everything we do but very close to everything involves language. You and I are talking right now, involving language, advertisers and marketers, use language, try to convince people, bosses use language to try to drive action, teachers teach the language leaders, lead their language. We all use language to communicate and encourage people to do things, to motivate them, to be more creative,

all the things we do happen through language. And we don't often pay attention to the exact words that we use. We know that language matters, but we don't know how to use it most effectively. And so in magic words, building on all the recent great work that's been done in natural language processing and computational social science and automated text analysis, which has basically been most of my research for the last 10 years. I showcase how we can use language more effectively. How specific words have great power, whether it's to persuade others to people to take action, to make people more creative, to get people to help,

all those things are things we can do more effectively through the words we use. And by understanding the science of language, by understanding what we can take away from others language, we can figure out whether someone is lying, we can figure out how to reduce social problems, all through the insights that language contains. And coming out of March, called magic words,

what to say to get your way, all about the science of language and how we can use words more effectively. Well, and over the weekend, I was talking to a great author, Daniel Pink, who has viewed this book already and told me it's a masterpiece. So I hope I can bring you back on and march when it comes out, because I'm sure the audience would love to hear us continue our discussion.

I'd love to do that. We'll be happy to. Well, Jonah, thank you so much for coming on today. It was such an honor and I truly appreciate and I know the audience does as well. Thanks so much for having me and I truly appreciate it and I know the audience does as well. Thanks so much for having me, I really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Jonah Berger and I wanted to thank Jonah for giving us the honor and opportunity of appearing on the podcast. Links to all things Jonah will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you buy any of the books from the authors that we feature on the podcast. It all goes to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at JohnRMiles and we have a brand new blips channel at PassionStruct

blips. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruct.com slash deals. I'm at JohnRMiles, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you want to know how I book amazing guests, like Dr. Berger, it's because of my network. Go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Start Podcast interview I did with Dr. Cynthia Lee, who is a medical doctor and author

whose personal journey through a complex autoimmune condition took her from public health and underserved communities to integrative and functional medicine. And she'll discuss in her interview how she studied with functional medical experts, environmental health scientists, alternative healers, and she young masters. When I hit my dad in, it took me about two years of pretty intense suffering to actually try something new. It wasn't even in my awareness that there was another way. Desperation can really not just open doors that open your mind to try differently, because after a while, I was like, oh, trying harder, trying harder, trying harder.

I'm trying, gosh, I'm trying as hard as I can and I have no energy. And then at some point, I was like, oh, wait a minute. Not trying harder. I gotta try it differently. The fee for this show is that you share it with family friends when you find something that interests you or you care about. If you know someone who's dealing with how do you change people's minds, then definitely share today's episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give this show is to share it with those that you

care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life passion struck. you