Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jonah Berger: Magic Words, What to Say to Get Your Way | Human Behavior | E218

Starting point is 00:00:01 Whether you like Trump or you hate Trump, you can't deny that he's done an amazing job of selling his ideas. Even if he don't like his ideas, he got a whole bunch of people to support those ideas. Why? You'll notice he does the same thing that great salespeople do. He does the same thing that great entrepreneurs do. He does the same thing that gurus do, which is that he speaks with a great deal of certainty. We all hedge all the time. Might, could, possibly seems, all of these are words. that indicate some level of uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:00:47 And while it's good to use these words sometimes, they undermine our impact. And if our goal is for other people to listen to us, we gotta stop hedging so much. We hedge without even thinking about it. Those hedges are hurting our ability to persuade. What is up Young and Profiters? You're listening to Yap,

Starting point is 00:01:08 Young and Profiting podcast where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host Halitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast, Jonah. Thanks so much for having me back.

Starting point is 00:01:40 I am excited. Yap Bam. Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor. He's also the bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, The Catalyst, and his most recent release is called Magic Words. He's a world-renowned expert on natural language processing, change, word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and why things catch on. He's published articles in top-tier academic journals.

Starting point is 00:02:02 He's keynoted hundreds of major conferences. And he's also consulted for household name brands like Apple, Google, and Nike. We had Jonah on the show in episode number 158, Change Anyone's Mind. We discussed how to change anyone's behavior. And we learned about Jonah's come-up story. It was one of my favorite conversations of last year. So be sure to go back and check it out. In this episode, we're going to break down Jonah's newest book, magic words.

Starting point is 00:02:24 We're going to dive deep into how to persuade, communicate, and connect. And we'll cover the different types of words that can increase your impact in every area of life. So, Jonah, let's dive straight into it. Whether we're trying to persuade a client, motivated team, or even just talk to our peers, words are powerful. They're how leaders lead, salespeople sell, parents, parent. And in your latest book, Magic Words, you say, by some estimates, we use around 16,000 words a day. So tell us why are words so magical?

Starting point is 00:02:54 In anything we want to do, we use language. If we're a salesperson, we're trying to turn a prospect into a client. If we're a leader and we're trying to motivate or get a team to do something in our personal lives, if we're going on a date, if we're talking to a spouse or partner or child, we use language to convey whatever we want to communicate. We spend a lot of time thinking about the big stuff we want to talk about, the topics or ideas. If I'm getting up in front of a company, for example, I might say this is what I want to get across, or if I'm on a date, I might want to make myself seem a certain way. But while we seem and think a lot about the topics we want to communicate. We think a lot less about the

Starting point is 00:03:31 individual words we use to communicate them. And that's actually a mistake, because subtle shifts in the language we use can have a huge impact. As I talk about in the book, research shows that adding just a certain particular word to request can make people 50% more likely to say yes. Research I and my own colleagues have done that found that rather than saying you like something, saying you recommend it, makes people around a third more likely to take your suggestion. And a variety variety of other research shows that the language you use in email predicts whether we're going to get promoted or fired. The language we use when applying for a loan predicts whether we're going to default on that loan or pay the money back. And the language other people use can give us insight

Starting point is 00:04:09 into whether they're telling the truth or what type of person they are. And so across every domain of our lives, language is a powerful tool. We can use both to influence others, impact others, as well as make ourselves better off. And so if we understand the power of magic words, we can use them more effectively. Yeah, I'm super excited for this topic because I feel like it's relatable for everyone. Like, everybody can use this skill. And there's so much to learn. Everybody uses words.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Yeah, everybody uses words. And then also just the fact that it's just these little tweaks. And some of them are obvious and some of them are really not obvious. And so I'm so excited to get like through some of these gems and really dig deeper. But let's start with how you were inspired to write this book. So I was reading your book, right? and you mentioned your son Jasper's first magical words was peas. And that really sparked your interest in terms of the power of words.

Starting point is 00:05:02 Tell us about this story. And if that inspired to write your book or what inspired you? Yeah. So I've been working in this space for the last 10 years or so. And we now are able to study language in ways we couldn't before. So we've always used language. Language isn't new. But now everything is transcribed and recorded.

Starting point is 00:05:20 We share opinions online on social media. We talk like we're talking now and these conversations can be transcribed. Whatever language we use is now available to researchers to analyze, and there are all sorts of computational tools, machine learning, and otherwise that allow us to analyze these things. And so the past 10 or 15 years, I in my academic work have been studying language. We've looked at hundreds of conversations, thousands of sales pitches and startup pitches and tens of thousands of piece of content to understand what makes language more effective. But I really saw. at a personal level with my sons. As I was mentioning a few years ago, our first child, Jasper, was born. And around a year so old, he started saying the word peas. And what he really meant was the word please, but he didn't have his L's yet. So it came out sounding like peas. And the fact he was using peas by itself is not that surprising. By his age, kids often have a number of different words that they use. But what was super neat to me is the way he would use this word. So he had a variety of things he might want yo for yogurt, brow bear, for brown bear,

Starting point is 00:06:26 up for when he wanted to be picked up. And he would use one of these words to alert you that he wanted that thing. So if he wanted yogurt, he might say yo or if he wanted brown bear. He might say browbear. But what he noticed is if you didn't jump up right away to do what he wanted, he would add the word peas at the end. So he would look, you sort of dead in the eye and say, yo, peas, and shake his head, yes. And what was so neat to me about this, he learned more words, right? So even last week, he was like, dad, you asked me to do this, but you weren't specific enough. I was like, where did you learn the word? Specific. You're five, almost six years old. How do you know that word? So he obviously now at this point knows a lot more language. But I loved peas because it was really the first time

Starting point is 00:07:05 he realized that language had power. That yeah, if he didn't get what he wanted, he could use this word, this particular magic word, peas, and he'd be more likely to get it. And so that's just one example, but these magic words are around us in all aspects of our lives. And so it was really great example to me of, wow, if we pay attention to these words, if we use them a little bit differently, we can increase our own impact. Yeah. And I love what you were saying before you were sharing the story. You were mentioning that, you know, you guys have studied so many conversations, so many things online content pieces. Can you talk to us about how technology has enabled us to really analyze language nowadays? Yeah. So let me give you an example. So we did an analysis

Starting point is 00:07:43 recently looking at tens of thousands of pieces of online content. So imagine news articles, imagine blog posts, whatever it is. And we don't just have what was written. We have how far down that content consumers, readers actually read. And this is amazing. We've always read newspapers and magazines, but there's no data looking at, well, how far down people read. But as content creators, we all want to know, first, how do we get attention? Second of all, how do we hold it? If we're going to post something on social media, how do we get people to pay attention to it? If we're going to send out emails, how do we get people to open them? But then second, once they've taken a look at our social post or opened our email, are they actually going to read it or not?

Starting point is 00:08:20 For most of us, we don't just want them to open the email or just click on our social post. We want them to actually pay attention to the content for that content to have impact. And so we got access to over a million read events of these tens of thousands of pieces of content and how far down people read. And we use natural language processing to look at styles of language that shaped that outcome. And so I talked some of the, this in the emotions chapter and the certainty chapter, but they're now all these tools, what are called natural language processing tools or automated textual analysis that allows us to parse language data for insight. Rather than having to read each of those articles, which would

Starting point is 00:08:55 take me a lot of time, the computer can essentially sift through that mass of data and look for statistical patterns, not only using dictionaries or topic modeling, but also word embeddings and other techniques, some using machine learning, some not, to leverage that. data and look for insight. And so it's a powerful way to allow us to uncover things that have always been there, but we've never been able to see it. That's so exciting. So you have a new book called Magic Words and you uncover six different types of words that can make us more impactful, more persuasive. We're obviously not going to get through them all. We just have an hour together. But I thought a good warm up question would be to talk about the word because. So for my

Starting point is 00:09:36 understanding, there was a study from the 1970s using a copy machine in the library at the City University of New York. And the scientists who were conducting this study, they were trying to figure out what drives persuasion and actions. And they found out that using the word because can really influence behavior. So I thought this could be a good warm up question so people can start to understand the power of subtle changes in your words. Yeah. Yeah. And so because it's just one simple word. But this speaks to a broader question, which is often we're hoping that someone else will do something that we'd like them to do. As an entrepreneur or salespeople, salesperson, we're trying to convince someone to buy something or use something. As a startup founder, we might be trying

Starting point is 00:10:15 to convince people to fund us or work for us. As a boss, we're trying to motivate employees. As a colleague, we're trying to get support for our initiative. In our personal lives, we're trying to convince people all the time. How can we be better at it? And so there was a study that was done, as you nicely mentioned, in the sort of 70s, where they went up to people at a copy machine. And I know, no one uses copy machine. anymore, but they went up to someone at a copy machine, and they basically interrupted them and asked to make copies. And not surprisingly, most people said no. If you're in the middle of doing something, someone walks up, you say, hey, can I use the copy machine? Most people would say no.

Starting point is 00:10:48 And so they wondered, well, could we use language to make people more likely to say yes. And so for some set of people, they just went up and said, hey, can I interrupt you and make copies? For another set of people, they came in and said, hey, can interrupt you make copies because, and then they gave a reason. And what they found is, you know, they said, and they said, hey, they came in, is the people use the word because. Other people were 50% more likely to say yes, to agree to let them interrupt what they were doing and have someone else do something.

Starting point is 00:11:15 And you could say, well, hold on. That's not just about the word, because. There's more there. There's the because, and then there's the reason. I'm actually working on a piece right now for the Wall Street Journal where the editor came back and said, well, it's not the word because. It's the reason, right?

Starting point is 00:11:28 But here's what's interesting. For a third set of people, they used because and they used a terrible reason. So I said, hey, I'd like to interrupt you. making copies because I'd like to make some copies. The thing after the because was empty. I want to interrupt you because of course you need to make copies. That's why you're asking the first place. And yet because still had that impact, still increased the percentage of people who said yes by about 50%. And so it's not just the reason. I'm not saying the reason never matters. Obviously it matters

Starting point is 00:11:55 sometimes. But just using that word because makes it seem like there is a reason. And even if that reason isn't great, people are more likely to go along. And so that's just one example. of the power of words. If we get to it, I could even talk about some examples, or even just shifting a couple letters can increase our impact. But that's a simple thing we can do to increase our influence. Yeah. Well, let's get into that. Let's talk about the importance of changing things to verbs, noun to verbs. I know that's really important. And that's, that's your first bucket of words. It's called Activate Identity and Agencies, your first category of words out of the six types of words that you call magical words.

Starting point is 00:12:33 And so you mentioned a study where scientists ask a group of four and five-year-old kids to tidy up a room. And some of them just asked them to help. And some of them referred to these kids as helpers. And apparently changing a noun to a verb can have really big impact. So talk to us about that. Yeah. So backing up for just a second, as you talked about, there's kind of six key buckets or words that I talk about in the book. And to help us remember what those buckets are, I put them in an acronym.

Starting point is 00:12:59 And that's speak. and S-P-E-A-C wasn't clever enough to come up with a K, though, as somebody pointed out, K is always the tough letter in Scrabble, so I don't feel so bad. But the S stands for the language of similarity and difference. The P is the language of posing questions. The E is the language of emotion. The A, as you just mentioned, is words that evoke identity and agency is the A. And then the C's are the language of confidence and the language of concreteness.

Starting point is 00:13:28 And so let's dive in, as you said, to kind of the language of agency. And as you mentioned, there's this great study that asks people for help. And in some ways, it's like the copier study and that we're trying to get people to do something. Right. In that case, they're trying to get, you know, four and five years old to clean up a room. And so a bunch of stuff on the floor, books, crayons, all sorts of different things. They're trying to get the kids to clean up. Some kids, they ask them to help. Can you help clean up, as we often would do? And other kids, they say, hey, can you be a helper? Now, to put a pin in it, the difference between help and helpers is really small, right? It's not a completely different word. It's only adding two letters on the end

Starting point is 00:14:02 of the same word, right? Help or is help inside it with the words letters ER at the end. But that led to a 30% increase in students' likelihood of helping. And it wasn't just kids in a classroom. Similar things have been found with adults. So a few years ago, there was a study published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where they tried to get more people to vote. And obviously we all know that we should vote, yet we don't always. And so they sent notes out to people. saying, hey, please go vote, for some people, go vote, the verb vote. And for other people, they said be a voter. And again, the difference between vote and voter is infatimally small. There, it's only one letter, adding an R to the end of the word vote. Yet it led to about a 15%

Starting point is 00:14:44 increase in people's likelihood of turning out. And so you might say, well, why? Why did this subtle difference matter so much? And the key insight here is about turning actions into identities. And what do I mean by that? Well, voting is an action. Helping is an action. There are many actions that people ask us to do or take all the time. And we know we should vote and we know we should help, but we're pretty busy, so we don't always take those actions. But what we care about more than actions are identities.

Starting point is 00:15:12 We care a lot about how we see ourselves and how other people see us. We want to be seen as attractive and smart and athletic and knowledgeable and all these different things. And so if actions are an opportunity to claim desired identities, to show ourselves and others that we hold those identities, well, now we're much more likely to take that action. Helping, yeah, sure, it's a good thing. But if helping is an opportunity to be a helper, now I'm much more likely to help out. Similarly, voting, I know I'm supposed to vote, but I'm so busy. Well, hold on, if voting is an opportunity to be a voter, I'm much more likely

Starting point is 00:15:44 to do it. And so one way to motivate people to actions to turn those actions into identities, rather than asking people to lead, ask them to be a leader. They're much more likely to do those things because it seems more permanent. Same thing is true on the negative side. Losing is bad. Being a loser is much worse. Cheating on a test, cheating on a test is bad, but being a cheater is much worse. And so when we want people not to do something, framing those negative things as identities makes people less likely to do them. You guys remember the campaign, don't be a litter bug. We all know we shouldn't litter, but being a litter bug, well, that's a really negative thing. I'm less likely to do it. And so this can even impact how we see ourselves. If I told you about two

Starting point is 00:16:25 people. I have one friend who runs and another friend who is a runner. Who would you say runs more often? The runner. The runner, right? Yeah. It's a stable part of who there. It's an identity. If someone says they drink coffee, yeah, once in a while they have a cup of coffee. They're a coffee drinker. It must be who they are. And so we want to motivate ourselves. Well, let's use those identity labels, right? I'm a runner's going to make me run more often. Rather than talking about oneself as creating things, I think YouTube and other platforms have done a good job of turning into a name. creator. That sounds like a stable job. You're not just innovative. You're an innovator. When we're describing ourselves on a resume, don't just say we're hardworking. We're a hard worker. It seems much

Starting point is 00:17:05 more permanent, just like a runner's more permanent than running. And so people think we're much like to follow through on what we've suggested. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky. when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out

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Starting point is 00:19:54 Marketing materials to motivate your team, like as you're talking to customers, like you said, to motivate yourself. There's so many ways that we can apply this and it's such like adding two letters to a word can like make all the difference. It's just so surprising. It is. And I think it relies on the behavioral science of identity, right? And you started by talking about nouns and verbs. And I know that's how I talk about in the book, but I try not to say nouns of verb because let me tell you, I don't even always remember exactly what a noun is and what a verb is. But they see you have actions and identities. I think it's clear to us. We all have desired identities and undesired identities. But by framing things as identity,

Starting point is 00:20:29 rather than actions, we can be helpful. Even I was just talking to someone that said, oh, you know, I use this all the time when I talk to people who are disappointed. So if somebody loses, they might think they're a loser. Somebody fails, they might think they're a failure as who they are. And it's I say, look, you're not a failure. You just failed this one time. You got to get up and try again. You're not a loser. You just lost this particular game. I coach kids soccer on the side. And so when talking to kids or talking to members of your team, if it's a negative thing, don't frame it as that identity. They frame it as more as an action, a thing that happened, as less persistent will make them more motivated. Yeah, I love that. So like positive things, you want it to be part of an identity so that people can align to it and do more of the positive actions.

Starting point is 00:21:08 Negative things you want to make it seem like it's a point in time. It's not who you are. It's just happened. Yeah. I love that. States and traits. Positive things are traits. They're persistent. Negative things are states. They happen, but it's not who you are. Love that. Okay, so let's talk about the words I don't versus I can't. What do we need to know about that? Yeah. So often when we're trying to stick to our goals, whether it's a goal to lose weight, whether it's a goal to exercise more, whether it's a goal to spend less time on a particular app or doing a particular thing, often there's temptation. We're on a diet and someone will say, do you want some chocolate cake or you want to go out and grab some pizza? And often we want to say no, but how should we say no? And there's a great professor named is Vanessa Patrick. And she has a book coming out, I think, in the next six months or so, all about better ways to say no. And she has some great, great, great, great research on it. And she soes that if you ask people rather than saying, I can't do something, so hey, would you like some chocolate cake? No, I can't. Saying I don't eat chocolate cake, rather than I can't eat chocolate cake, I don't eat chocolate cake, makes us much more likely to stick to our goals. If you're trying to work on something, not, I can't go out Friday night,

Starting point is 00:22:16 but I don't. I'm not going to go out this weekend. Don't rather than can't works because it makes us feel in control. Can't sounds external. Oh, yeah, I can't do this, because this external thing is getting in the way. If you had to fill in the blanks, you know, I didn't do whatever because I can't or I don't. Can't things are often external. I can't eat the cake because I'm on a diet. I can't go to the party because I need to finish some work.

Starting point is 00:22:41 It suggests you want to go to the party. You want to eat the cake, but this external thing is preventing you. Because if you say I don't, now you feel more in control. The agency, that A, in the framework, it's your agency. I don't eat chocolate cake.

Starting point is 00:22:54 You know, I don't go out when I've got to finish a problem. This is who I am. I'm in the driver's seat. I'm in control. And so I feel more powerful. And it helps me stick with the things I want to do already. And so even a subtle shift here. Again, one word can't versus don't can impact our success and our own goals. Yeah. And I think it makes sense because it's essentially you're in alignment with your values. You have this value and you don't do this value. It's not because it's the wrong timing or it's because this person asks or it's the situation. It's your value that you don't break no matter what. So I can imagine that would make you feel more powerful and confident if you stick to your values.

Starting point is 00:23:31 I love the way you said it in terms of value. I was recently dealing with a consulting client that asked me to do something. And I was thinking about this can't versus don't. I was going to say, you know, I can't or we can't. And then I was like, you know what? Actually, we don't or I don't is just much, this is how it is. These are the guidelines we live by. This is what is possible and this is what isn't.

Starting point is 00:23:50 And hey, it makes me feel more certain in myself, but it also makes clear. Look, it's not about you. about this specific time. It's about who we are as an organization. And so it's often much more effective. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to read a quote from your book. You write, although 60% of CEOs in one study said that creativity is the most important leadership quality, 75% of people think they're not living up to their creative potential. So please talk to us about how we can become more creative by fostering a could mindset instead of a should mindset. This is, again, something that happens to us all the time. You know, I'll,

Starting point is 00:24:26 be working on a project and I'm stuck, right? I'll be working on a chapter of a book or a paper or a solution for a consulting client and I'm not sure which way to go. I'm not sure what to come up with. I need to, you know, I do some brand naming work. I can't come up with a name or I'm doing some marketing consulting work. I need to think about the right way to apply the strategy and I'm stuck. And this happens to us all the time, right? Clearly happens at work, regardless of what role we have. It also happens in our personal lives. Sometimes we're trying to make a tough decision and we're stuck. And problem solving is difficult. It's difficult to be creative, particularly under pressure. But as you noted, it turns out that, again, a shift in just one word can increase our effectiveness.

Starting point is 00:25:03 There was a nice study out of Harvard Business School where they brought people in and asked them to solve a tough problem. And for some people, they ask them to think about what they should do. This is how we solve problems all the time, right? We often ask ourselves, what should I do? I'm choosing between two jobs, which one should I take? I'm considering two apartments, which one should I go with. Two strategies, which one should I do? And so half the people took that traditional approach.

Starting point is 00:25:29 For the other half, they changed just one word. They said, instead of thinking about what you should do, think about what you could do. And they found that for people in this could group, the second bucket, not only they come up with more creative ideas, but they came up with more effective ideas overall. And could works for a couple reasons. First, basically widens the possibilities. We're not just thinking about, okay, what's that one right answer? Should often narrows us, right?

Starting point is 00:25:53 What should I do? There's one right answer could widens us. What's possible? And even if all those things that are possible aren't the best idea, that's not the best thing to choose at the end by thinking about those possibilities, it helps us come up with a better answer. And so whether we're talking to a team and they're facing a tough problem rather than saying, hey, guys, you know, think about what you should do.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Let's think about what we could do before we come up with a final solution. Or for ourselves, right? When we're thinking about it, okay, well, what could I do? I could do this. Thinking about those options will help us reach better solution. Yeah. I really like that advice because basically could enables us to release all the resource constraints, right? You don't think about like, well, like the money or the people involved or the time involved.

Starting point is 00:26:33 You're just like, okay, what could I do to solve this problem? And then you can think about what's good or bad resource-wise and where you want to spend your time. So I think that's great advice. Okay, so let's move on to confidence. Okay. So you have a second category of magic words, words that convey confidence. And I'm a speaker myself. So I understand that displaying confidence is really important and making sure that you speak with power is really important.

Starting point is 00:26:58 And Trump is somebody who people love and hate, right? But at the end of the day, he was an impactful speaker. That's why he went from being somebody that everybody sort of hated to becoming president, right? So talk to us about what Trump did effectively with his persuasion and speech. You know, just as you said, I think about this a lot as a communicator. We're all communicators in one way or another, whether we're standing up in front of a room and pitching our idea, whether we're standing up on a stage and talking to an audience, whether we're talking to one person and trying to get them to support our idea. We're often communicating things.

Starting point is 00:27:32 And we all have someone in our lives who's really charismatic. Whenever they talk other people, other people listen, I wish I was this person. I'm not this person, but I can definitely think of two people in my own life that are this way. And so, What do they do that makes other people listen, right? When they open their mouths, everybody listens, how does that work? And so in the book, I talk about Donald Trump. And I don't want to get into politics, but whether you like Trump or you hate Trump, you can't deny that he's done an amazing job of selling his ideas.

Starting point is 00:28:00 Right. If you like him and you like his ideas, fantastic, how do he make it work? And even if you hate him, well, even more reason to figure out, well, even if you don't like his ideas, he got a whole bunch of people to support those ideas. Why? What did he do to get people to support those ideas? And if you look closer, there's a speech he made, for example, when I think he announced his initial president run, where he said something like, you know, if elected, I'm going to build a wall, it'll build a great wall, and I'll do it very cheaply. And, you know, we don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but now we don't take China and a trade deal, you know, losing on this trade deal. I beat China all the time, all the time. And he sort of had this speech talking about his different ideas. And it was met with different responses, depending on political beliefs. But at least some people, said, look, it's overly simplistic, it's bluster, there's nothing there. Yet a year later,

Starting point is 00:28:47 he was elected president. And so even if you feel like there's nothing there, he clearly did something right. What is that thing? And if you look closer, you'll notice he does the same thing that great salespeople do. He does the same thing that great entrepreneurs do. He does the same thing that gurus do, which is that he speaks with a great deal of certainty. What do I mean by certainty? Well, certain things are obvious. The answer is clear. This will definitely work. This is absolutely true. Everyone agrees with XYZ, right? He uses certain language to communicate his points. And there's been some research that shows the benefit of certain language. Work on financial advisors, for example, shows that, hey, people are much more likely to pick an advisor that speaks with greater

Starting point is 00:29:30 certainty, even when that person is not clearly right, right? They're right in equal amount of the time. The fact that they speak with more certainty makes people want to work with them more. Why? Because regardless if someone's right or not, the fact that they speak with so much certainty, it's hard not to believe they could be right because they seem so sure. They seem so clearly sure of what they're saying. Well, they must be right. I should go along. Contrast that with what most of us do most of the time. And I am guilty of this more than anybody. When I work with consulting clients, someone will say, what do you think about this strategy or what's the right direction? And I'll say something like, I think that's a good idea. This might work. It seems like

Starting point is 00:30:08 this could be a good possibility. I use what are called hedges, and we all hedge all the time. Might, could, possibly, seams. All of these are words that indicate some level of uncertainty. And while it's good to use these words sometimes, they undermine our impact. Often without intending to by using these words, we make ourselves less persuasive. We looked at hundreds of thousands of online reviews, for example, in a variety of different types of social interactions. and we found the more people hedge, the less like other people are to listen to them. And the reason why is, well, people sit there going, hey, look, you don't seem confident in what you're saying. And if you're not even confident in it, why should I follow your advice? And so as communicators,

Starting point is 00:30:49 first of all, and I talk about a few different strategies in the book, but at least one is we've got to ditch the hedges. If we're trying to communicate uncertainty, that's fine. But if our goal is for other people to listen to us, well, then we got to stop hedging so much. Often, we hedge without even thinking about it. But those hedges are hurting our ability to persuade. This reminds me so much of, I had Kelly Roach on the show and she talks about conviction marketing and the importance of having convictions in your marketplace and really standing by them. And this reminds me a lot about it because if you're an expert and you don't strongly believe in what you're saying or doing and you're speaking in this way like, I think this might be

Starting point is 00:31:24 or in my opinion, it's like you either believe this is the way for people or not, especially when you're trying to be an expert or a thought leader. No one's going to follow you. you if you're uncertain about what you're saying to begin with. So you need to just believe in what your, the advice you're giving and say it strongly. I think that's exactly right. And the only thing I would add is some of my people say, well, what if I am uncertain? What if it's not clear what the answer is? What I like to talk about there is, well, let's own the uncertainty. Right. Like when a consulting client asked me for advice, I have a strategy I think is best, but there's often some uncertainty about how they'll implement it. Well, let me call that out.

Starting point is 00:31:57 I think this, rather than saying, I don't know. I'm not sure. I think this strategy might work. Why not say, I think this is the best strategy. But for it to work, we need to do these three things. For this to happen, these other things need to occur. I'm really certain about what needs to occur for this to work. But I'm not saying I'm uncertain about the strategy itself. I'm very certain about the strategy. And I'm certain about what we need to do to make it work. And so by owning that uncertainty, we can in some sense both indicate that, hey, some things have to happen. But it's not that we don't think it's achievable. We do think it is. You need everybody else to get on board. Yeah, that makes sense. So my next question is not in your book necessarily. I had Robert Green on the show. I'm sure you know who he is. He was one of the first interviews that I ever had on the show in one of my first viral episodes we talked about is 48 laws of power. And he's got this law number four. And it's always say less than necessary. And his logic is that if you can't control your words, you can't control yourself. The more you say, the more stupid you may appear. And he also says that if you want to sound really profound and small, you should be really simple and vague and open-ended and sphinx-like. And even if something's obvious and boring, if you are really vague when you say it and sort of succinct, people will believe you more because they're like, well, they'll try to be like a mind reader, like what does he really mean with what he's saying, right? So do you have any thoughts about that? Like all this research that you've done with magic words, agree or disagree? I know Robert came out with his book a long time

Starting point is 00:33:25 ago, so. So I would say a few things. And the main thing is I try not to have opinions. I try just to look at data. When I write a book, and I know there have been many language books written before, I try to say, here's the academic research, here's what it shows. And to be clear, not every type of language is good in every situation, right? Even take the language of certainty, research shows that when we're trying to get somebody who disagrees with us strongly to meet in the middle, sometimes it's actually better to show a little bit of uncertainty there because it makes them feel like we're open to

Starting point is 00:33:56 opposing viewpoints, and because they feel like we're open to opposing viewpoints, they're more like to listen to what we have to say as a result. And so sometimes the answer is it depends. It depends on a couple of things. I think to what you mentioned that he suggested, I think there's certainly times where being simpler in our language is better. I think, though, that there's a difference between simplicity and shortness. And let me give you an example. So often when I work with clients about making messaging simpler, they say, well, let's just cut down the number of words. So they still say, hey, there are four things you need to know or 17 things you need to know, but now I'm going to give each one a sentence rather than five sentences. And I often say,

Starting point is 00:34:34 well, hold on, we've cut the length down, but it's equally complicated. We haven't reduced the complication. And so making things simple is really not just about shortening them, but relentlessly prioritizing, particularly if you're trying to figure out what your value proposition is as a company, not saying, well, we do nine different things, but saying, well, what's the most important one? sure there's a second most than a third one, but let's rank them. And it's not that the ninth most important isn't important, but it's the ninth most important, which means it's less important than the eighth and the seventh and so on. And so that relentless prioritization helps us when we have to be simple, say, well, let's just focus on the most important thing because we can't focus

Starting point is 00:35:11 on everything. And so I completely agree that being simple is key. I think sometimes short can be confused for simple and they're actually two separate things. Yeah, 100%. And I know that people can't remember a whole lot, give or take, five, five or seven things, right? So making sure that your points are succinct are definitely important. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. What's up, Yap Gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touchpoints every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot com initially. But here's a problem.

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Starting point is 00:40:22 Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Okay, so let's continue on in terms of understanding confidence here. So let's talk about using less filler words. You say that we shouldn't hesitate. A lot of us are used to saying ums, uh, you knows, that's right. Why shouldn't we use these fill of words? And do you have any advice in terms of how to get rid of them? Because I think a lot of us have this problem. Yeah. Someone was talking to me recently about this and they said, the challenge with the language of

Starting point is 00:41:07 confidence is that sometimes it can come off badly. And so they made the point, look, you know, if you're an older white male, maybe when you seem confident, that's good. But maybe when you're a younger and non-white female, maybe it's a little bit harder for confidence to be digested. If I'm a young person in office and I'm a young woman, maybe my older colleagues don't want me to seem overly confident. And I said, I completely agree when it comes to hedges, right? And sometimes speaking too directly and removing hedges can seem too confident. But I disagree when it comes to fillers. And that is that many of us fillers, we say, um, we say, uh, we say like. And by removing those things, it's an easy way to make people like us more and think we're more professional. It's hard often to see our use of filler. when we speak, I do it all the time. When you ask a great question, I sit there going, I'm like sort of buying myself time as I'm thinking. But when we see it in paper, we go, oh, my God, look at these things.

Starting point is 00:42:04 I was working with a coaching client and they're a salesperson, and we were having these interactions over Zoom because it was during the pandemic. And eventually Zoom came out with this new feature that would allow you to get a transcript of that conversation. And we're trying to figure out why the sales pitch wasn't working. And when you looked at the transcript, it was just painfully obvious. every other sentence there was an um or an uh and it's just a a bump in the conversational conversational flow and so let's get rid of those those fillers right um rather than just saying

Starting point is 00:42:30 it because it's easy pause for for a second and i to the earlier comment about um being short and concise being powerful i think pausing can be really powerful i'm bad at this terrible at this myself but if you look at folks like great speakers like barraq obama or others he often uses pauses for a really powerful effect. Pausing can be a great way to show that you're thinking, to provide emphasis. And so rather, if you need to think, no problem, right, we often need to think.

Starting point is 00:42:57 But let's think through pausing rather than sort of filling it in with something that makes us not look as good as a result. Yeah, and the other thing I would say is like listen to yourself. A lot of people, I don't think take the time to actually listen to what they sound like on a presentation or on a podcast episode or whatever it is. Like, even if it's painful,

Starting point is 00:43:15 even if you hate listening to your voice, go back, record yourself, and listen to yourself. So one more question on confidence, then we're going to go on to questions. Let's talk about the importance of using the present tense. I thought this was a really cool hack. Yeah. So think about something that's happened.

Starting point is 00:43:30 So a job candidate comes into the office, and you can say they seemed good or they seem good. You come back from a vacation, you can say the beach was beautiful or the beach is beautiful. Many times we describe things using past tense. What happened? And it turns out using present tense is more persuasive. when we say the food was good, it makes it seem like, well, at that particular point in time,

Starting point is 00:43:50 that experience I had, the food was good. If I say the food is good, it says, well, wait a second, it is good for all time, and everyone else will have a good experience as well. And so using present tense showcases the certainty that we have, makes other people feel like we're more certain, and makes them more likely to listen to us as a result. Yeah, I feel like this theme of certainty is just popping up with this confidence section. All right, let's talk about the third, category asked the right question. So I had Robert Sheldini on the show. He's known as the godfather of influence and persuasion. And he talked about something that you also talk about in your book, which is the importance of asking for advice. And a lot of people are scared to ask for advice because I think

Starting point is 00:44:32 it's going to make them look stupid and competent. But actually, it has the adverse effect. So talk to us about the importance of asking questions and asking for advice. Yeah. I'm, again, guilty of this as anybody else is. But I think often we're worried if we ask for advice, will bother someone. They won't be able to answer what we have. Even worse, they'll think negatively of us, right? They'll say something like, oh, why don't you know the answer yourself? So we think that asking for advice is a bad idea. But it turns out that it's not. There's some very nice research out of Harvard University that had a bunch of people have different social interactions. And for some of them, people asked for advice and others they didn't. And they found that asking for advice

Starting point is 00:45:11 actually made people look better, not worse. And one question is, well, why? Why would ask asking for advice make you look better. And the reason is very simple. We're all ego-centric. We all think we have great ideas. We all think we give great advice. And so when other people ask us for advice, we go, oh, wow, that person's really smart because they ask me for advice, right? And so by asking for advice, right, we take advantage of the fact that people think of themselves positively and take advantage of that to help ourselves out as well. Yeah. So I would like to ask a more general question. A lot of the people who listen to my podcast are entrepreneurs, their side hustlers, and a lot of them are just involved in sales and love the topic of sales. So can you just give us your best advice? After all this research, this great book that you put out, what can we do better in terms of language for sales?

Starting point is 00:45:58 Yeah. I think, as you nicely said, pay attention to your pitch, whether you're a communicator, a speaker, a podcaster, whatever it is. We use language all the time. We don't see it. record it, listen to it, digest it, unpack it. Think about, okay, well, am I using a word like can't or don't? Am I using telling something to an action or an identity? Really dive down into what the pieces of what you're trying to communicate are, not just the topics, what you're trying to say, this is a great product, you should buy this, you're going to like this, that's fine. How are you saying it? What are the words or language that you're using to communicate those ideas? By delving deeply into the exact words you're using and the ways you're using them, we can all increase our effectiveness.

Starting point is 00:46:39 Are there any words in sales that we should never use? I wouldn't say there are words we should never use. I would say, and I think this is somewhat obvious already, but start with understanding. Too often as sales folks, we want to basically drop off the pitch. I want to send 100 emails with the same information in each of them and assume somebody will bite. While that seems efficient, it's often not very effective overall because it's not tailored to our audience.

Starting point is 00:47:03 the more we understand our audience, the more we understand what they care about, why they might be interested in what we're offering, the more effective we can be as a salesperson. Got it. All right, I'm going to close this interview out with the same two questions we ask all our guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Pay attention to language. We use it all the time. We are all speakers. We are all writers, whether we get on stage, whether we write books and essays or whether we just write emails or just speak to clients and colleagues. We are all writers and speakers. By understanding the power of language, we can increase our impact.

Starting point is 00:47:38 And what is your secret to profiting in life? I think now people can go back and listen to the other episode and see whether I said the same thing. But I think what I would say, and sorry if I said the same thing before, is it's always just great to be curious. There are always, almost anything out there is interesting if you look at it long enough. So I think being curious and having curiosity is a great skill. Awesome. And where can everybody find, magic words and learn more about you. Oh, thanks. Yeah. So the book is available wherever books are sold. So Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local independent booksellers, whatever you like. Folks can find me at jonaburger.com. There's not only more information about the book,

Starting point is 00:48:14 but also a whole bunch of free resources so that speak framework that we talked about, a one page or about it, a guide for using language more effectively, asking better questions, all of which should be helpful. Awesome. Thanks so much, Jonah. Thanks for having me. Well, I have to say, this conversation really got me thinking about words. Words are how we persuade, communicate, and connect. They're how leaders lead, how salespeople sell, how teachers teach, how policymakers govern. Even our private thoughts rely on language. Like Jonah mentioned in the beginning of the interview, we use over 16,000 words a day. We spend a lot of time thinking about our ideas and our requests and the things that we

Starting point is 00:48:59 want. But a lot of us put much less thought into the specific words that we use when community. these ideas and requests. But all this does us a disservice because certain words are more impactful than others. Certain words are better at changing minds, engaging audiences, or driving actions. The right word in the right place can vastly change whether somebody agrees to a request

Starting point is 00:49:22 or finds our ideas compelling. In fact, Jonah says that research shows that adding the word because to a request can make people 50% more likely to say yes. even if the reason behind that because isn't very good. People are just more likely to say yes when you say the word because. Another example we went over today was changing a noun to a verb. Don't ask people to help.

Starting point is 00:49:47 Call them helpers. Don't ask people to vote. Instead, call them voters. Let them find their identity in the thing you want them to do. Turn actions into identities. And when speaking on behalf of yourself, you also need to choose your words wisely. Turns out there's a right and a wrong way to say no. Stay away from saying you can't do something if you really don't want to do something.

Starting point is 00:50:10 And instead, say you don't do that thing. Because now you've made what you're saying no to part of your internal value system. Whereas saying that you can't do something suggests that there's some external factor preventing you from doing the thing that you want to say no to. Jonah gave us so many tips today and the net net young improfitors is that subtle shifts in language can have a huge impact in us achieving the outcomes that we're looking for. If you want to learn more about the power of words, go get Jonah Berger's latest book, Magic Words.

Starting point is 00:50:40 Thank you for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listen and Profited, share this episode with your friends and family and drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That's the number one way to thank me and everybody who works hard on the show. If you like watching your podcast videos, you can find us on YouTube. And you guys can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name, it's Hala Taha. Big shout out to my amazing and hardworking YAP team.

Starting point is 00:51:05 Thanks for all that you do behind the scenes. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast Princess, signing off.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jonah Berger: Magic Words, What to Say to Get Your Way | Human Behavior | E218

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