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Welcome to Mini-Sowed Monday.
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Happy to be here with you, kicking off the week with something quick and actionable that you can implement right away that ll make you more magnetic and effective.
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Today, Adam Grant.
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Talking about persuasion and highlighting counter-arguments to your intended goal.
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In other words, arguing against yourself in order to make your arguments more convincing.
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A little bit counter-intuitive here, but here s Adam Grant.
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Adam, you mention in the book Originals that we discussed earlier that if one wants to persuade, for example, an investor meeting, of course this isn t limited to that, but one should highlight the reasons not to support your idea.
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So counterintuitive, yet effective.
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Talk about this.
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Discuss this.
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I learned about that from Rufus Griscom.
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He s this great serial entrepreneur who had this idea to start a parenting website called Babbel, where he wanted to tell people the truth about parenting instead of all the lies we re often fed.
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And he went to investors and he started saying, here are the three reasons you should not invest in my company.
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What in the world is he doing?
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But he walked away with over $3 million in funding that year.
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And I think there are a couple of things that are going on here.
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One is, this is a marketing gimmick at some level.
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It s attention grabbing, it s unusual, people are intrigued.
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But the second thing is that he s showing he s self-critical, he s balanced.
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He s not so in love with his own ideas that he can t see their flaws, which is a good signal to send.
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But most interestingly to me, when he lists all these problems, he makes it harder for his investors to think of problems themselves.
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The harder it is to think about something, the less you think it s a real issue.
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If you really struggle, if you have to work to come up with some real reasons not to invest in this company, you re like, this company must not be so bad.
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There s a lot of psychology research behind that, but what s so interesting about it is how the investors responded.
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I normally show how smart I am by coming up with like here are the two big problems with your company that you didn t see.
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But Rufus already covered my two big problems that I saw.
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So how am I going to show off my intelligence?
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Well, I m going to tell you, you know those three problems you pointed out?
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Those are not a big deal at all.
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Here s how I would solve them.
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They end up actually talking themselves into fixing the business and thinking the problems are not a big deal.
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What s funny about that is Rufus then goes to Disney two years later and says, hey, whatever you do, you should be aware.
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There are five reasons you should not buy Babel.
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and Disney buys it for $40 million.
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So I think there s a time and a place that we can lead with our weaknesses, not just our strengths.
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This is brilliant.
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It s powerless communication.
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It s a great social dynamics hack.
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Essentially, along with changing the frame of the interaction, as we call it at Art of Charm, you re being forthright with the faults, which alters how the audience evaluates the idea.
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It also, of course, makes you look smart, as you mentioned, and it allows you to look more trustworthy, as you point out in the book as well, because you re not trying to hide the ball.
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It s not something that they re trying to figure out while they re listening to your pitch or looking at your slide deck.
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Where s the rub?
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You re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
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The shoes have dropped.
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You dropped them before you started even trying to sell the idea.
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And then, of course, it leaves the audience with a more favorable assessment of the idea itself due to that
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that sort of hack in the way that we process information where people who are trying to solve problems, like investors, are busy working on the solutions and therefore feel more confident about the idea.
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Brilliant stuff.
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Adam, again, thank you so much for taking the time.
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Much appreciated.
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Thank you.
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My pleasure.
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Thanks to Adam for that, and don t forget about the Art of Charm Challenge.
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It helps you connect with others, creates more productive personal and business relationships, and of course includes step-by-step challenges every week to help you move forward.
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Text CHARMED to 33444 in the USA, or go to theartofcharm.com slash challenge and get rocking.
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Now here s producer Jason with this week s upcoming episodes.
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Thanks Jordan.
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This week we re talking to Nick Unsworth of Life on Fire.
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We discuss his entrepreneurial journey from failed attempts at multi-level marketing to bad real estate decisions, an absentee dad, selling his company before 30, and hitting rock bottom before finally learning how to let go and focus on other people s success.
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We also talked to networking and interviewing expert Michelle Laterman.
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The episode is chock full of practicals on how to perfect the art of the interview and land the job.
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And as always, we re back answering your questions on Fan Mail Friday.
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Make sure you re getting all of the episodes of the Art of Charm podcast by subscribing.
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If you need more info on how to subscribe, check out theartofcharm.com slash subscribe for more details.