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Oct. 9, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
36:36
Episode 253 Scott Adams: A Persuasion Lesson While Persuading You to Try the Interface App
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Hey everybody come on in here It's time for a special Coffee with Scott Adams.
I hope you have your coffee.
If you do... This would be the time to sip it.
Because it's time for the bonus sip, the extra sip, the simultaneous sip.
Grab your cup, your mug, your vessel, your glass, fill it with your favorite beverage, and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Now, what I'm going to do today is different from my normal thing.
I promised I would give you a lesson on persuasion, and I would wrap it around a lesson in actually, well, I'm actually going to persuade you I'm going to try to persuade you to use the app my startup has created.
So we'll be talking about the app, but I'll keep stopping as I go to point out any technique I'm using.
So you should learn how to do really a pitch for any kind of a product or offering.
And so let me jump right in.
This is the app. It's called Interface by WenHub, and it's for either being an expert or contacting an expert.
If you want to be an expert, you get to set your own price.
You could be paid in regular, ordinary money.
Or you could be paid in our own cryptocurrency that we created for the app.
I won't get into those details for now, but assume that you can get on the app, you could say my price is $100 an hour or $12 an hour or $500 an hour.
Depends what you're offering. Now in our world, an expert could be any kind of expert.
And I'll actually make a call here so you can see it.
The app is available in stores right now and in the App Store for both Apple and Google.
Wait! Stop! Let me tell you what persuasion I've already used.
Number one, do you think the simultaneous sip is just for fun?
Well, it is. When I do it on my regular periscopes, it's sort of a bonding exercise.
It's for fun.
People say they like it.
It's sort of branding. But in the context of selling something, in the context of persuading, there's a little persuasion rule that somebody is saying in the comments here.
Asking somebody to do anything, no matter how minor, gets them in the mood to do more.
So it's very important to get somebody to do something very small that has no cost to them whatsoever.
So the simultaneous sip in this context is getting people to pace me, to match me, to feel comfortable with me, to enjoy an experience with me no matter how minor, and to do something I asked you to do.
So that was the first technique, in case you missed it.
Now you also want to be visual, and you want to be visual fast.
Alright, being visual alone is great, but being visual fast makes a difference.
So you notice that I was only in this for a few seconds before I held it up.
Because I can describe things forever, but seeing it is just a whole different impression.
Your visual sense dominates your senses.
So if you're going to give a pitch, The wrong way to do it is to start with, well, we had a problem and here's our concept and we worked the concept and we thought about it and our business model is this.
Nobody cares. Get to the picture.
Here it is. It's a real app.
It does two things.
Be an expert or contact an expert to make an immediate video call.
Bam! You're done. Alright?
So now that the person I'm trying to persuade, which is you in this case, has an idea, a visual idea, now I can put all kinds of detail on it and you've got a framework that you can attach things to.
Go visual, go fast, and go simple.
Simple is very important.
How hard was it for you to understand?
It's an app. It's available now.
You can be an expert and set your own price.
Or you can call an expert.
And it's a video call.
Simple, simple, simple. There is more complexity to it.
There are different ways to pay, etc.
But you don't need to know that for now.
So I stay simple. Keep you with me.
Now I'm going to do a little more visual persuasion.
I'm going to give you some examples of how people could use the app.
Some of these might apply to you, but some of them might not.
But the important thing I'm going to show you is how telling the story and bringing you into the scene It really makes a difference, okay?
So imagine we've got doctors on here.
We're bringing on some doctors now.
You may know that Dr.
Drew has used the app, and we hope you'll use it again.
Now did you see what I just did?
I just used a famous name and I said this famous person, Dr.
Drew, a famous doctor from radio and TV and internet and everywhere else, has used the app.
So that's sort of a trying to attach the app to somebody who is notable and important and knows what they're doing.
So it's sort of a social proof, yes.
Another part of the social proof is when you first sign on the app, it tells you how many other people are on the app, and it tells you, oh, lots of people use this.
So we've had over 50,000 people sign up, and so you immediately say, well, if 50,000 people signed up, that's something.
So now let me tell you some examples.
I'll give you several examples of how to use the app.
So let's say you've got some doctors on here.
We're signing up doctors.
We expect to have a lot more in a few weeks.
Let's say you're one of the people who's on the scene of an accident.
You're not the first person there.
You're one of the 20 people who gather around any accident.
The first people, they know some first aid.
They're not doctors, but maybe they're putting on a tourniquet or something, and they're helping the person who's been hurt.
But you'd like to help too, but there are only so many hands and legs that can be on the patient.
So as your help, you pick up the app, you find a doctor, you contact the doctor, and you say, look, we've got a situation.
Can you just hold on in case we have a question?
And then you're helping. You just say, I've got a doctor on the line.
If you need any, if you got a question, let me know.
Maybe you take the video over and let the doctor see what the situation is.
You say, are we doing everything right?
Doctor says, put the tourniquet a little higher.
Doctor says, put a blanket over him because you've got maybe some shock, all right?
So immediately, you've added value to this highly important situation.
That's optional. You might never be asked, but you'd have that option.
Let's say you're tutoring.
I'm sorry. Let's say you've got a kid who wants to do homework and you don't know how to help them on that homework.
So you pick up the app, Call an expert who's tutoring on that subject.
Put your phone on the kitchen table.
You don't want your kid to be on the phone with an adult, you know, if you're not watching.
But you stay in the room, you can make dinner, and your kid is getting tutored at the same time.
Let's say you need translation.
Perhaps your police or your other kinds of services, and you run into a situation where you really, really need Somebody to translate for you and you need it right now.
Go on the app, find somebody who speaks French, call them up and say, look, I got somebody here, can you translate for me?
Boom, you're done.
Let's say you want to do tech support.
For your company, and you're not a giant company.
Let's say you're a small company, and you want to be up and running with tech support.
Well, you could just get on the app, set your price to zero.
We don't care if you charge zero or anything.
So we're not concerned with how much you charge.
So you could just make a zero.
And then people can call you up on the app.
You could put a notice about it.
At some point we'll have a A way to add a button to your webpage.
Let's do that now.
Let's say I wanted to get tech support about the app itself.
I would hit expert.
And I would see that there's a list of people who have been recently on the app.
That tells you that real people have been experts on the app, and you can see what kinds of things people have been doing.
That's just, again, it's another social proof.
Here's real people.
They've been doing things. Did you notice there was also something else that I did?
I'll bet you didn't. Faces are really influential.
It's not an accident that Facebook is popular.
It's not an accident that Tinder and dating apps are popular, although they have a real function, of course, that people like.
Faces have an unusually large impact on us.
We're just wired for faces.
So we put faces on here.
Faces are good. If you can put faces on stuff, you're way ahead of the game in terms of engaging other people.
All right, so I open the app and I say, I want to find out something about the interface app.
Well, I could just put an interface in the search bar and it would pop up.
Let's do that. Interface.
First few letters and it pops up.
And sure enough, I'll take one of those choices and look.
It's one of our developers.
He's on there and he'll take my call.
So I push one button.
I can put the slider for any time I want.
15 minutes is fine.
I'm just going to call him and then hang up.
This is a test call while I'm on Periscope.
Alright, I just did voice to text because it was faster.
Push one button.
I have to say I understand the rules.
And then I hit it.
It is now connecting.
Now, he won't know my phone number or contact.
I won't know his phone number or contact.
So it's happening through the app.
And there he is. John.
Say hi. So if we were going to ask Jonathan a question, we're on a video call, we're live.
I promised him that I wouldn't bother him while he's working.
He's in the middle of a deep dive on some technology.
So I'm just going to say thanks.
Thanks, John. Bye for now.
You're welcome. Alright, so Jonathan's gone, and then I can rate him.
I'm gonna say, man, that was a five-star call.
So the ratings of the experts will be more useful over time as more people get rated.
Alright, so you just saw the demonstration.
There were faces. I kept it simple.
It was visual. All good.
I also kept it short, which was good.
So let me give you a few more techniques.
One of the techniques I like to talk about is making the customer think past the sale.
The sale is I'm going to try to get you to download the free app.
So it's free to download.
You don't ever have to use it.
And it's in both the Apple and the Google store.
But notice what I did is I put you in the scene of you using the app in the future.
You imagined yourself in the kitchen with the kid who needs tutoring.
You imagined yourself at the scene of an accident.
You imagined yourself calling somebody for tech support.
You imagined yourself perhaps signing up as an expert of anything.
We have somebody signed up recently just for conversation.
Just for conversation.
So if you wanted to have somebody to talk to over lunch, you could call this person.
And it was a nice woman in Iowa who will just talk to you about whatever you want.
So by making you think about how you'll use it, I've made you think past the decision of downloading it.
That's always a good technique.
So the car salesman won't say, do you want to buy this car?
The car salesman will say, you'll probably want to play the radio a lot with this car.
So that you're thinking about being in the car and playing the radio and you've already thought past the decision of getting it.
All right. It's also helpful to tie your persuasion to things that people care about.
For example, can you use this app to save your life?
If you could, that would be a good persuasion, because fear is very persuasive.
So if you can convince people that it's a way to lessen their fear, that's very powerful.
Now this app is not really optimized for that, although I can imagine ways in which it would keep you safer.
That would be sort of a hard explanation in this case.
Now, I'm reading your comments as I go here.
So in this case, the things that people would look to as the benefit of the app would be not just that you can use it to call somebody and get information.
You've seen some examples where I had some really big ideas, but I didn't know how involved to get in them until I talked to a few experts that were hard to find.
So if you have a big idea, it might cost you a lot of money for, let's say, $25.
You can talk to somebody who really knows this area and can tell you whether it's worth going forward.
Somebody said, adult entertainers.
There's nothing to stop anybody from using the app for anything they want.
So we do expect some adult entertainers will find the app at some point.
I don't believe there are any on there at the moment.
So think about this.
You're using the app, and you can work at home.
If you get a regular group of people who call you, especially, let's say you're doing some kind of counseling or therapy.
Let's say you're a Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor.
How much would it be worth to someone who has an addiction problem to be able to talk to somebody very quickly to just keep them from using?
It's like, I need somebody right now.
And it doesn't matter who, I just need to talk to somebody who understands this.
So think about it in terms of money.
So you have to put yourself in the person you're trying to persuade, their mind, and you say, what would they want?
People want money.
They want a way to work at home.
They want an easy way to make money in between their regular job and other things they have to do, for example.
But there's a bigger call in this one.
So it's not just about you using the app and using money.
I contend That if this app becomes big, it's really a civilization-changing kind of experience.
Because it fills in this enormous gap between the things that you can Google and get a good answer to.
And you can Google a lot of stuff, but it's not good for a lot of stuff that you really need to just talk to somebody about.
And actually hiring somebody and paying $400 an hour or something like that.
So there's this enormous range of things that society needs to understand in order to move forward.
Let's say you wanted to help somebody in the inner cities.
You wanted to be a mentor.
You wanted to tell somebody how to start a business.
Tell somebody how to manage their money.
Tell somebody how to keep their money.
Think of all the things that people need to know But don't have mentors.
They don't have anybody who knows things in their circle.
In my circle, I'm surrounded by people who know a lot.
I'm in a very lucky position, partly because of my job, partly because of where I live.
But I can find an expert in just about anything, and somebody who's a world-class expert.
Most people can't.
Most people are sort of, you know, landlocked by the fact that they need a certain kind of expertise and they don't know how to find it.
They don't need more than maybe $100 worth of expertise, but if you can't find it, you're not going anywhere.
So this could fill the gap.
I think it could make a huge, huge difference to civilization, to people who Don't have mentors, people who don't have access to information in the normal way that other people do.
So think of it as something that you can be part of to help it grow.
So you don't even have to use it.
You might just want to sign on.
You might want to just try it out.
You might want to just tell a friend about it.
You might want to recommend it to somebody you think could benefit from it.
So it's bigger than just do you want to use it.
There's a whole societal thing about this that's probably more important than say a Facebook.
Facebook is great, but maybe we could have been better off without it.
Something like this fills an enormous social need.
All right. Notice that I've been very permissive in describing how somebody would use it.
I give lots of examples, and I made sure you know there's no wrong way to do it.
You could just sign up as an expert on jump rope, and the worst that could happen is nobody would contact you and ask for your advice.
It's always good to be permissive in letting people imagine what they could do with it.
Because you might be having an idea right now that I couldn't have thought about.
So there's somebody, and the people watching this, there's somebody here who's thinking, hey, I'll bet I could use that app to do X, and I would never have thought of X. So by making it permissive, giving you some examples, you can fill in some of the selling yourself.
When we get to a specific ask, then you want to be very specific.
So when I ask you at the end of this to consider downloading it, it's free.
It'll take you all of 30 seconds to search for it.
Just look for Interface by WenHub.
It's on the Google Store and the Apple Store.
That's all I'll ask.
I'll ask for that one little thing, but it's very clear.
So your ask needs to be crystal clear and simple.
But you want people's imagination to be expansive as possible.
That's your optimal situation.
And you saw me just create that.
Now, just looking at my notes to see what else I want to tell you.
Here's another tip on how to make something viral.
The way you make something viral is you want to have something about it that just speaks to people.
It says what they were already thinking, but it says it better than they were thinking, for example.
Or maybe it's funny. So there has to be something about the content that's interesting and provocative.
That could be any form, but it has to be interesting and provocative.
The next thing you want it to be is Sort of something that you'd like to say, but it's being said better in this content.
So people will forward things that agree with them.
People rarely forward things they disagree with.
So you want to find something that people agree with and they understand.
And here's the next part.
Would make them a hero for sharing it.
It's the hero effect.
When you're watching this, have you said to yourself, there's somebody I know who is maybe, maybe they have a disability, they can't leave the house.
Maybe they have kids, they'd like to make some money without leaving the house.
For whatever reason, they just need money and it's sort of an app they can use.
You would be a hero simply for suggesting that they look into it.
Maybe they use it, maybe they don't.
But you would be a hero.
So that's part of what makes things viral if you give people a way to be a hero.
Small hero, but hero.
The other thing that's good is tying what you're doing to the headlines.
So I'm gonna do that right now.
If you can tie your product to the headlines, you have a gigantic advantage in getting people to forward it and talk about it.
Watch me do that right now.
We saw in the news that there was a lot of questions about memory.
What if? When there's a headlines about memory and we're questioning whether Christine Ford, for example, Dr.
Ford, we're questioning whether her memory was good or what we should know about the accuracy of memory over 35 years.
Well, there could be experts such as this expert, Carmen Simon, who wrote Impossible to Ignore.
This is a book very much about the techniques I'm talking about in which you're creating memorable content to influence decisions.
Wouldn't you love to hear from a memory expert In the context of the headlines.
And likewise, if a plane goes down, wouldn't you like to have an aviation expert who knows about that plane?
Well, the interface app would allow anybody who is an expert on anything that's being talked about in the news to just go on, and then the media can decide, hey, we need an expert.
We need to understand this thing.
Give us an expert. Oh, here we go.
Here's an expert on that very thing.
So the interface app works with headlines better than most things, but in general, you want to tie your thing to a trend, to a headline.
All right. Now there's also a network effect.
If you haven't heard that phrase, it's sort of like, it's a way to make your product sticky.
And here are some examples.
If you join Facebook and you've put all your pictures on there and you've got a bunch of friends and stuff, if somebody created another Facebook tomorrow, it would be a big problem For you to get off of that Facebook and move to the brand new Facebook.
So the network effect is that everybody's using it, the same product you are, you don't want to lose that group.
You want to stay with them.
That's why Twitter is hard to reproduce.
That's why Facebook is hard to reproduce.
That's why LinkedIn is hard to reproduce.
Because once they have enough users, going to any other place, you're going to a smaller network, and why would you?
Why would you? So the interface app has that potential.
It has the potential to have enough experts on it that if you were going to be an expert, why would you go anywhere else?
Because this is the one that has all the customers.
This is the one that has all the experts.
If somebody tried a new one after this one gets big, they would have some trouble attracting people.
They would be in the same position that we're in right now.
You Can help that network effect happen by using the product.
By the way, the word you tends to be very influential, so I'm stopping for another persuasion tip.
When you say you, it makes people think, me?
What about me? I love me.
Let's talk about me. And then you say you can help the interface by WenHub app develop over time a network effect that makes it far more valuable for everybody using it.
It allows the experts to make more money.
It allows the users to find more experts.
It allows everybody to connect information with the people who need it.
It's like lubrication for society.
And you, you can be part of that and it takes almost no effort.
All you have to do is say, I saw this periscope, this cartoonist was talking about it.
If this were a normal pitch with a normal startup, I would introduce the team and I would tell you about all of our qualifications.
But, because most of you know me and you know that I'm a cartoonist, you may not know I have a degree in economics.
You might not know that I have an MBA from Berkeley.
You might not know I have 16 years of large business experience that ranges from marketing to strategy to finance to technology.
You may not know that I've started food companies, I've owned restaurants, I've been involved in a number of startups, and the Dilber business has, at different times, been worth hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of throughput.
So normally you would want to push those credentials.
It's a little less important in my case, but I did it anyway because it always works.
If there was anybody here who didn't know I have a serious business background, it was good to tell you that.
Let me pause here and see if you have any questions.
So either as soon as you get off the app, Or if you have a second screen open, you might want to download the app.
Just search for Interface by WenHub.
It's free. And you can kick the tires yourself.
Somebody's asking why tokens instead of cash?
We take tokens and cash.
So if you're an expert and you only want to be paid in regular old cash, you can do that.
You just select that option.
The other option is to be paid in the cryptocurrency that we created just for the app.
If you use the cryptocurrency, we don't take a cut.
So anybody who gets paid in our own cryptocurrency, they're taking a risk that the value of the crypto will go down or up, right?
There's an upside potential, but there's also a downside risk because cryptocurrency fluctuates.
At the moment, it is trading on the LA token exchange, for example, and I think it's equivalent of like two and a half cents right now, which would be Actually pretty good for a startup.
So the value of those tokens will fluctuate with demand for the tokens, which will fluctuate in direct way with how popular the app is.
So if you were to accept payment in when, There is some possibility that that WEN token could increase in value and then you could trade it on an exchange.
If you don't want to bother with cryptocurrency or exchanges, and that would be 95% of you, if you don't want to bother with that, you don't have to.
There's no requirement to know any of that.
If you wanted to tiptoe into the crypto world, well, the app comes with a wallet built into it, and you could start just getting a toe wet in trying to figure out how crypto works in a very low-risk way.
Must you have a LinkedIn account to be an expert?
No.
In the first version, just to keep things simple, we ask people to have a LinkedIn account, but right now you can just put in your bio.
Have the icon show online.
in.
How do you know that someone says they're a doctor is a real doctor?
Excellent question. If that doctor happens to be Dr.
Drew, it's pretty obvious.
So that's the first answer. Secondly, I'm going to give you a specific reason to that, but I can't tell you.
So there will be some doctors coming onto the app, doctors, plural, and there will be a mechanism that you can tell that they're vetted.
So there will be a mechanism to do that.
I can't tell you more about that, but in a few weeks that should be up and running.
But yes, in the case of a doctor, you do want some kind of assurance that you actually are talking to a real doctor, and ideally one that is licensed to practice in your state.
Now we also allow that the first minute or so, the charge doesn't kick in.
So if you call somebody and you look at them, you know, in 60 seconds you're going to know if this is a real person or not.
You won't be 100% sure, but you usually know, right?
And then you can just cut the call and you won't be charged.
What's the persuasion behind the name interface?
You know, frankly, it's hard to find a name that's not already taken.
So you don't have a lot of options when it comes to picking names.
But interface has actually face right in the name.
So that's a big plus. That's one of the things I liked about it, persuasion-wise.
And you are interfacing with one other person.
So, you know, given the few names that have not been taken, it's pretty good.
How do the experts get more money by taking tokens or cash?
If they take cash, there's a 20% fee that we take out of it.
So you should price accordingly because between the bank and what we take, it's 20%.
If you're paid in when, there's nothing taken out of it.
But the value of the when might be less than the value of a dollar.
So you would have to be careful that you knew what the value of the when was so that you don't underprice or overprice.
You can do it on phones or you can use it on a tablet.
If you're using the app on a tablet, be sure to download the phone version.
Because we don't make a tablet version.
It works just fine on a tablet.
But you have to download the phone version onto your tablet for now.
At some point we'll have a tablet version.
Liability concerns.
Not really, because we are a communication platform.
So if somebody makes a phone call with a doctor, the phone company doesn't have a liability.
If you email your doctor, as I do, I email my doctor quite often, there's no liability of the email company.
It's just a communication vehicle.
A link to the site.
If you want to see information on it, go to wenhub.com.
W-H-E-N-H-U-B.com.
How can you check the value of WEN tokens?
Go to latoken.com.
T-O-K-E-N-L-A-T-O-K-E-N.com and just type in when and you'll see its current price.
All right. Doctors, of course, do have liability.
Somebody asked that question.
But they also have liability insurance.
So right now we take credit cards.
Uh, On refund. Refund wise you can contact us and depending on the situation we'll see what we can do.
But there's a contact in the app so you can contact the company and we'll see what we can do about things.
Anybody can use it, so it's international.
If you want to do your transactions and you don't want your bank involved, then you can use the crypto option and then there's no banking records, no banks involved.
How many apps have been downloaded so far?
Last I checked, there were over 50,000 people who signed up.
I don't know how many downloaded, but that's how many downloaded and signed up.
Your cat is too skinny and won't walk.
Who do I talk to? I saw this morning there was a veterinarian on here, actually.
So you might try that.
I don't know if there's still a veterinarian on there, but there was recently.
All right. Did you learn anything from this?
So independent of what you thought of the app, did you learn anything about persuasion?
And do you have any other questions?
I've seen lots of yeses.
Oh good. All right.
I'm very happy. People are saying yes, they are learning something.
I didn't want to do this unless they had value.
And it looks like it did.
I'm very happy about that.
Very, very pleased. If you want to learn more about persuasion, you would look at my book, Win Bigley.
It teaches persuasion.
It's wrapped around the story of the 2016 election, so you can learn what the president does, persuasion-wise, as well as other people.
1099s issued, no, but that's a good question.
I should probably look into that.
All right. I'm going to sign off now.
What was that book name again?
My book is called Win Bigley, and the other book I recommended on the question of memory is Impossible to Ignore.
So the Impossible to Ignore book is the one you would want to read to learn how to make presentations that people will remember and persuade.
All right. That's all for now.
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