Steve Jobs: Master of Influence

I have spent weeks analyzing Steve Jobs career and in today's show I'll share how he uses psychological biases and principles to influence people and even manipulate them Steve was a master of persuasion but he wasn't superum he just used simple tactics that I think anyone can replicate now when most of you think of Steve Jobs you probably think of this there's just one more thing about the iPod mini which is it comes in colors so in addition to Silver we have gold that's the charismatic Steve Jobs that dazzled us with new Innovations and groundbreaking Tech during Keynotes at Apple but Steve was able to influence people decades and decades before that probably the first notable example of this is an old school picture with Steve and his classmates now in this picture all but one student is wearing a Hawaiian shirt it was a Hawaiian shirt themed day at school so all the kids brought in a shirt to wear you might expect Steve to be the odd one out he's not by the way he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt but the story is that Steve had forgot his shirt the only reason he's wearing one is because he persuaded a friend to swap shirts with him his friend is now the odd one out so Steve knew how to get his way from a young age he knew how to convince people now we don't know what tactic he used back then to convince his friend but it's an early sign that Steve Jobs has a knack for persuasion and he'd use this skill for good and for bad Steve Jobs met Steve wnc back in high school in 1968 the two of them would stay close friends for years eventually co-founding Apple together Steve wnc or was as he's known was and of course is an incredible engineer one of the first projects Steve and was worked on was was well mischievous they loved playing pranks on strangers and started to build Contraptions to take their pranks to the next level their favorite prank involved a custombuilt TV Jammer put together by was it's essentially a TV remote that could cut the signal to any TV and turn it back on with the click of a button Steven Wars would creep up to a stranger's house peek through the front window and then they turn on the Jammer and watch the family get frustrated they keep turning the Jammer on and off annoying usually the dad to no end this was pretty funny to them and I can imagine why but Steve Jobs had an even better idea he'd come up with a strategy to make it even funnier he'd only turn the signal back on once the dad was standing next to the TV with his hand on the aerial after doing this a few times it made the father believe that the only way the TV would operate was if the dad stood next to the TV with his hand on the aerial Steven W would leave in fits of laughter wondering how long the dad would stay there with his hand on the aerial it's a funny and I think fairly harmless prank and it shows again that Steve understood the basic principles of human behavior the obvious principle here is the principle of conditioning Steve is building a behavior in someone through repeat conditioning over time I think it's the earliest example I could find of Steve using a psychological principle to influence someone and it's something that he would continue to do throughout his career not always through conditioning but through other psychological principles that influence and persuade the next example comes later on in his life it's with another Steven W's invention see the two stayed close friends in high school during that time wnc designed what he called the blue box the blue box generates sounds to manipulate the telephone Network and make free long distance calls see this is back in the day when telephone calls played a sound to make the right connection play the right sound and you'll be able to make that call without having to pay the Hefty fees at the time now obviously this is totally illegal but it's also a fun and potentially profitable way for the two high schoolers to make money was built the blue box and Steve well he was in charge of selling it now put yourself in Steve's shoes you're a senior high schooler just 16 years old how would you sell the blue box now if it was me I'd be had a bit of a loss I guess I'd go speak to my friends start telling them what the product is what the benefits are maybe I'd tell them how much they'd save and ask them if they want to buy I doubt I'd think of anything smarter than that but Steve isn't like the rest of us he in intuitively used a psychological principle called social proof social proof is a principle that affects all of us it means that we follow the actions of others it's why when we know something as a bestseller or most popular we're more likely to use it and more likely to buy it it's an evolutionary trait developed tens of thousands of years ago to Keep Us Alive if a bunch of cavemen were running out of a cave you wouldn't go in that cave you'd follow the actions of others social proof is used today in marketing Richard Shon a marketing psychologist added a bestselling sign to a beer in a London pub and increased its sales by 2.5 times however social proof is notoriously hard to use for products that aren't popular this is a problem for Steve he can't say the blue box is the best seller because no one has bought it so Steve uses social proof in a different way what he did did is he went into the dorms of other seniors at high school and he'd say is George here now the seniors would often say no because there was no one called George there they would say no why and Steve Jobs would say ah George was interested in buying the blue box no problem I'll come back later now in most cases before Steve could leave the seniors would stop him and ask him what was the blue box Steve would then start his pitch and in most cases he would get a sale this is a genius tactic one that some of the best salese use today now obviously George doesn't exist but that doesn't matter merely suggesting that someone is interested in buying your product will Peak the interest of others what's impressive is that Steve intuitively knew this at just 16 years old it takes some salespeople decades to discover a tactic like this Steve knew how to persuade a manipul people at a young age he might not have known he was using social proof or conditioning but he knew what worked let's fast forward a few years after one semester at College Steve Jobs dropped out it wasn't for him he went back to his parents and he needed a job but the story behind how Steve Jobs got his first job is another example of his persuasion tactics and it's one that he continues to use time and time again in his career he'd read an article about the company Atari and the AR spoke about what a wonderful place it was to work the staff there were laid back they were building exciting new video games so Steve said to himself I'm getting a job there problem is there were no job openings with Atari at the time but this doesn't bother Steve he decides he'll get a job there anyway so he goes to the office of Atari and refuses to leave the lobby until someone at the company would interview him remember at this stage of his career he is a complete unknown he's dropped dropped out of college and yet he has this huge confidence in himself that he'll get a job now they tell him to leave the lobby they tell him no one will interview him but he doesn't he sticks around and stays in the lobby Steve here is using sunk costs to prove his worth now you might think that sunk costs affect you as an individual and not those around you see sunk costs is the idea that the more money or time or effort you spend on something the more you'll value it but it's a risky Tac because it works the other way too if you see someone sinking time or money or effort into something you'll value that thing highly too for example if you know someone has spent 10 years painting a watercolor you'll value it much more than if you knew it only took 10 minutes it links with the endowment effect and labor illusion other principles we've spoken about on the show Steve's showcasing his own sunk costs here he's spending hours in the lobby quietly waiting for an interview sinking all his time and arguably reputation into this makes the folks at Atari value him a little bit more it's a bit like a hunger strike the longer someone goes on strike for the more we value and pay attention to their cause I should highlight though this is a really risky tactic it only works if you have strengths to back it up Sun costs might get you an interview but you'll be held to a much higher standard than a normal interviewee and if you don't have the skills to back it up you'll be disliked even more arguably there's a study by Elliot arenson that highlights this he filmed an actor answering quiz questions correctly the actor got 90% of them right and then the actor spiled coffee down himself appearing clumsy and showcasing a weakness what's interesting is people liked the actor more if he spilled coffee down himself matching a weakness say clumsiness with a strength in this case intelligence made the actor more likable but in another variant of the experiment when the actor got most of the quiz questions wrong and we seen as stupid and then spilled coffee down himself he was disliked even more than if he hadn't spilled the coffee what this tells us is that if you showcase a weakness and a strength you'll be liked more than if you just showcase strengths however if you showcase a weakness and another weakness you'll be heavily disliked than if you just showed one weakness so Steve he can get away with this he's showcasing a weakness which is his stubbornness and inability to say no while waiting in the lobby but he can match it with a strength he comes across extremely knowledgeable in the interview and gets a job he realizes that he can manipulate people this way by sinking hours into contacting them and then dazzling them with his knowledge and he uses this same tactic of sunk costs multiple times in his career later on at Apple he desperately wanted a well-renowned marketing agency to come aboard and create the 1984 ad for apple apple was too small a client they didn't work with companies of that size so Steve called the head of the agency dozens of times every day for a week even on weekends until he finally agreed sunk costs made the head of the see pay attention Steve uses the same tactic when recruiting the famous logo designer Paul Rand from IBM to design a logo for his newest company NeXT now IBM wouldn't let this logo designer Paul Rand leave to join Steve and most people wouldn't fight that he's at IBM after all but Steve isn't most people he called the IBM Vice chairman 3 days in a row before he eventually agreed Steve is not afraid to Showcase his commitment to SN time and reputation into a task to get what he wants most people if they did this would come across as petulant stubborn and childish but Steve gets aare with it because he's got other strengths that make up for it it's a smart tactic that Steve uses to manipulate people but one that you and I probably couldn't replicate as we haven't got Steve's Charisma or raw intelligence anyway eventually Steve decides he wants to leave Atari after all that work getting a job there he's become a bit of a hippie at the time and decides to go to India to find his Guru seriously that's not a joke that is what Steve decides to do however Steve has no money for his flight to India he's skint the job doesn't pay very well and he hasn't saved any cash most of us would get a second job to save up but not Steve he decides to persuade Atari his employers into paying for his trip to India he does this by using what I think is his favorite psychological principle anchoring anchoring is the idea that we are heavily influenced by the initial piece of information we see imagine you look at a menu at a restaurant and you see that most bottles of wine are priced at £40 you'll think that a 30 bottle of wine seems like a good deal however if you went into another restaurant where most of the bottles are priced at2 a bottle then a 30 bottle well that would seem overpriced price we are anchored by the information presented around the offer and it changes our perception and our decisions Steve uses variations of the anchoring bias dozens of times during his career but one of the first examples I noted was how he left Atari so he simply told his boss you should pay for my flight to India I've been a tremendous employe I've outperformed my peers I've done everything you've asked of me so buy me a flight to India now unsurprisingly the Atari bosses laughed at him he was leaving why enough would they pay for a flight for him to go on holiday they've never done this for anyone else especially not a junior employee like him but it crucially set an anchor something that Steve could use to negotiate down from Steve was able to say okay if you can't get me that flight how about you send me to Munich I'll do a bit of work for the German branch of Atari and then I'll go to India after that now this appears to be a much more reasonable request and Atari ultimately agreed to it they thought look of course we can't send her to India but Munich's much more reasonable it's a bit cheaper and if he does a bit of work for us then why don't we do it it's classic anchoring in action he frames the request in this way to make it seem much more reasonable if he had asked to be sent to Munich outright Atari probably would have disagreed but through the frame of sending him to India the ask to go to Munich seems much more sensible Steve uses this same tactic throughout his career in fact he used it to convince was to drop everything and co-found apple with him initially was was dead against starting a business he simply refused and Steve had a really hard time convincing him to co-found Apple that's until Steve Jobs used anchoring to reframe the decision to convince was Steve Jobs said we could lose all our money but we'd still have a company that that one line that convinced was according to him that's what changed his mind why did it change his mind well I think it's because it's a smart bit of anchoring because he eliminates the objections Steve Jobs is agreeing that you know Apple might not work they might go bankrupt but they'd have a company they would have built something that was worth something that's the anchor that convinced was to join Steve and co-found apple and much later into Steve jobs' career he used again the same tactic but this time with Pixar jobs was CEO of Pixar at the time that's the Pixar behind the world's most successful animation films like up bugs life Wally you know who Pixar are but before Pixar had created any of those films they solely worked on smaller shorts that hardly Drew in any Revenue in fact the company was really struggling at the time however they had one incredibly Talent ented animator on staff his name was John Lassiter he's probably the best animator of all time he creates a short film for Pixar called tin toy it cost 300,000 to produce and didn't make anything in return but it won an Oscar for best short film it was the first Oscar win for Pixar and the first ever CGI film to win an Oscar obviously John Lasser was good really good and Disney who had no connection to Pixar at this time Disney saw how talented John was so Disney tried to hire him they offered him a huge pay rise much more responsibility but John says no he's not interested he's happy at Pixar most CEOs would be happy to hear this they'd be delighted they would say great news John thanks for agreeing to stay but not Steve Jobs he saw an opportunity to Anchor he tells Disney they can work with John but only if they help Pixar create a featurelength film see Pixar didn't have anywhere near enough funding equipment or manpower to create a feature film but Disney Disney did so Steve used John as his anchor to get what he wanted Steve suggests that Disney and Pixar co-produce the first ever animated featurelength film and John ler would direct and write it John would stay on the Pixar staff but Disney and Pixar would split the profits Disney agreed of course they couldn't turn down the offer to work with John and even though they'd be helping a rival they thought it was worthwhile and that film well that was Toy Story one of the most successful movies of all time generating $362 million worldwide making it the second highest grossing film of the year and also winning three Oscars and it wouldn't have happened unless Steve Jobs had used that opportunity to Anchor Disney wouldn't have agreed to co-create a feature film with a Ral if Steve had just asked but by using John as an anchor by saying you can't poach John but you can work with him if you help us out Steve Jobs was able to get what he wanted as I mentioned Steve used anchoring extensively in his career especially during his keynote presentations for Apple I'll dig into that in part two of this show which will come out on nudge in a week or so so make sure you're subscribed if you don't want to miss that but for now let's focus on some of the other tactics Steve has used to convince and arguably manipulate people while building Apple now one of the things all great CEOs seem to have in common is the ability to reframe things to take a problem explain it in a slightly different way to help people discover a solution Elon Musk does this a lot he reframes sending satellites into space for commercial Jan as a way to save Humanity by building a future settlement on Mars he reframes expensive electric cars as a chance to save the environment and Signal your commitment to stopping climate change but Elon doesn't come close to Steve Jobs when it comes to reframing jobs was the master of reframing he would take a problem that seemed impossible and help someone solve it by reframing the problem in a different way there's one br brilliant example of this when Steve was overseeing the creation of the Mac OS the engineer Larry Kenyan had done everything he could to make the Mac boot up as quickly as possible he'd spent months working on this boot up startup sequence and had finally presented the bootup sequence to Steve but Steve wasn't happy he wanted it to boot up even faster now remember Steve has no reason to believe it could boot up faster Steve was not an engineer he didn't know how to make the Mac turn on faster he just believed it could so Steve used reframing to reframe the problem for Larry Kenyan Steve described the problem in a different way that persuaded Larry to dig even deeper and find a better solution he asked Larry if you could save a person's life would you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot up time Larry Canyon said wow yeah I would I would do it if it would actually save someone's life I could probably find a way and then Steve pulled over a whiteboard and he started writing he did some calculations he showed that if 5 million people use the mac and it takes 10 seconds longer to boot up that adds 300 million hours of waiting time per year that equals 100 lifetimes each year this is classic reframing increasing the boot up time doesn't remove a tiny unimportant weight no it saves a 100 lifetimes worth of waiting each year he said to Larry this won't save one life if you do it it'll save a hundred every year it might be an annoying thing to hear as an engineer but it is certainly motivating a few weeks later Larry Kenyan presented the new bootup sequence to Steve and it was 28 seconds faster than before now Steve was is Happy Steve comes back to reframing time and time again when he's trying to motivate his team he used reframing again during the development of the first iPod when the team started the project he kept repeating the same point he said I have to be able to find a song that I want in three clicks or less now to everyone who heard this at the time it seemed totally impossible no MP3 at the time could do this just think you have to press a button to open music you have to press another button to open songs you have to press a bunch of buttons to type in the song you want and then you have to press a final button to play that's at least a dozen Taps and clicks but Steve was insistent he reframed the project it wasn't about building a nice UI it was about doing the impossible finding a song in three clicks or less obviously this reframing pissed off his Engineers they thought he was mad but by reframing the problem and intensely focusing on letting users find a song in three clicks the engineers discovered a breakthrough an innovation that actually made it possible you'll know what it is it's the iPod scroll wheel this was on the first iteration of the iPod it was a big wheel that people could scroll through to look at a list of songs they would simply scroll find one they wanted and click play it took just three clicks to find a song with no typing if Steve hadn't have reframed the problem there is just no way the engineers would have come up with that Innovation they would have built some normal user interface at the time that required double the amount of clicks and the iPod probably wouldn't have been the landmark product that it was there's one final reframing example that I'm sure you've heard because it's famous when Steve was reviewing the final design for the first iPod the engineers in the room were tense if Steve approved they'd finally be able to ship this product of the months and months of long hours and hard work The Story Goes that Steve was tossing the iPod prototype in his hand and as he was looking at it he starts to shake his head and he says it's too big the engineers at this stage went berserk the engineers explained to jobs that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller that they would have to reinvent The Invention to make a smaller iPod and jobs he was silent for a few moments with the iPod in his hand and then after a few minutes without saying anything he stood up walked to an aquarium which was in the corner of his room and dropped the iPod into the water tank the device fell to the bottom and small bubbles came out of the iPod and floated to the surface Steve said those are air bubbles that means there's space inside now go and make it smaller the engineers went silent they couldn't complain with this Steve was right they clearly was excess space in the iPod and it could be made a little bit smaller Steve did a classic bit of reframing here he didn't just say make it smaller he said eliminate every bit of spare space and that the engineers could do they went away they removed the space and the iPod became that little bit smaller if you run a team or a company or need to motivate a team think about how you can frame the problem you're trying to solve because subtly reframing the problem can help someone come up with better Solutions and in Steve's case groundbreaking technological innovations so we've heard how Steve Jobs uses social proof to sell the blue box how he uses sunk costs to get a job at Atari and anchoring to co-produce Toy Story with Disney and even reframing to create the iPod so let's go back to 1983 Steve Jobs and apple commissioned an ad for Apple at the following year's Super Bowl the ad was direct directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Fairbank films and Steve Jobs loved it today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification collectives we have created for it depicts a dystopian setting from all Well's book 1984 big brother is lecturing an audience while one woman the only person dressed in color runs through the scene chased by the thought police she hurls a hammer towards the screen which is projecting Big Brother's face and the screen is destroyed leaving the audience in shock we shall Prevail on January 24th Apple computer will introduce MacIntosh and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984 the screen Fades to Black and the voice over ends and the rainbow Apple logo appears Steve is in the room when the Apple Executives first see this ad and the response is unanimous the executives hate it it doesn't show the product it doesn't say what apple is it doesn't say how much it'll cost the Apple CEO at the time John Scully asks if they should fire the Ad Agency who created it but Steve Jobs loves it he thinks the ad is brilliant he thinks it's a work of art problem is Steve doesn't get the final say Apple's CEO John Scully does and John Scully tells the agency to sell off the ad slots for the Super Bowl they won't be airing this ad we're not going to put it out but Steve intervenes he tells the agency on the sly to keep the slots and to lie to John Scully and say that they can't sell the slots it's too late in the year Steve tells the Ad Agency that they'll have no no choice but to air the ad or lose millions of dollars so Apple had no choice but to air the ad they go ahead and play the ad at the 1984 Super Bowl and as many of you know this ad is an unprecedented success in fact it is considered a milestone event for apple one which elevates them to a legendary brand the ad wins numerous awards for best advert of all time and $3.5 Million worth of macintoshes were sold just just after the advertisement ran which Brent Thomas the Arts director at apple called an absolute success but why what was so good about this ad and how come Steve knew it was so good when no one else did well there's one thing that Steve knew that others didn't he knew about the Curiosity Gap it's a really simple principle if you Peak someone's curiosity saying a new product will change the world world but don't reveal how the new product will change the world then you'll capture more attention and more interest than if you had actually revealed what it is leaving something unknown captures attention this is why trailers are so successful they show just enough of the film to Peak our interest while leaving enough unknown to make us watch it it's why Cliffhangers Works a TV show ends but we don't learn the whole story so we play the next episode to find out what happened Steve knew all about this curiosity Gap he used it time and time again at his Keynotes and he knew it would make the ad a success so he defied his leadership team and went ahead and aired the ad and this works the ad hints that Apple will change the world and it Peaks people's curiosity triggering the Curiosity Gap and making viewers interested to learn in what apple is Building without Steve Jobs that ad would have never seen the light of day and as one more example I wanted to share before ending today's episode it is 4 years after the Super Bowl ad since 1984 Steve's had trouble at Apple the company was failing and Steve was disliked by many of his peers not least because he is constantly undermining them and constantly as we know going behind their backs he is eventually ousted as board member and leaves Apple unfaced Steve goes and starts a new tech company called Next the company itself isn't too notable it's arguably one of Steve's few failures in his career but Steve's first keynote presentation there his first presentation to the Press is fascinating it's another Glimpse at how Steve uses psychological bias to manipulate and Influence People First he rents out a huge Arena ONE used for concerts not business presentations he invites thousands of people and has them waiting for hours for the event to start this annoys some people but it pequs the Curiosity of others building anticipation eventually he comes on stage and with some classic anchoring he says thanks for joining us today I think together we're going to experience one of those times that occurs once or twice in a decade of computing a time when a new architecture is rolled out that's really going to change the future of computing and uh we've worked on this for three years it's turned out incredibly great so I hope that he's anchoring their expectations this isn't just another presentation this is history he goes on to say that this is the biggest invention since the printing press now we might be used to this type of hyperbole now but at the time this was unique no businessman had the audacity to say stuff like this but Steve would he knew the power of Framing and anchoring and would use it to raise expectations and increase awareness and he pulls it off not really because the product he presents is a success but because of the product demo for the demo he invites a world famous violinist on stage and has him play a song accompanied by Steve's next computer now remember this is 1988 computers were giant boxes with the computing power of a modern day calculator they weren't known for playing music and definitely weren't known for companying famous musicians but that's what this next computer did and now I'd like to introduce Dan K ala the principal second violinist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra thank you good [Music] luck it's another Steve Jobs masterclass he's reframing the classic product demo most CEOs would walk through features talk about benefits present financials Steve knows that doesn't interest people people don't like demos they like music so Steve uses music to demo his product it works hundreds of articles are written about the event people are suitably excited about next and predict it to be the next great innovation in the tech industry now ultimately next fails to hit these goals and it didn't reach those lofty Heights but Steve managed to convince people dere it wood and he did so by using a number of psychological [Music] principles Steve leaned on four core principles he used sunk costs to Showcase his commitment and get what he wanted he used anchoring to win at negotiations and change people's perspective he used reframing to help his employees come out with unbelievable Innovations and he used the Curiosity Gap to capture his audience attention and get them hooked on his product Steve Jobs came back to these principles time and time again throughout his career using them to create more award-winning marketing campaigns create new breakthroughs in techn ology and ultimately make apple the world's most successful company I should add that anchoring sunk costs reframing in the Curiosity Gap aren't the sole secrets of Steve's success of course they are not there is much more to him than that he's also smart focused and Incredibly diligent but those psychological principles they probably gave him the Edge by leveraging those principles he managed to manipulate people to get what he want whether that was funding from Disney to produce Toy Story or a Hawaiian shirt from his school friend and while I wouldn't endorse you or others to follow his tactics using them in the right circumstances is a no-brainer if you want to build your company motivate a team or persuade an audience

I have spent weeks analyzing Steve Jobs career and in today&#39;s show I&#39;ll share how he uses psychological biases and principles to influence people and even manipulate them Steve was a master of persuasion but he wasn&#39;t superum he just used simple tactics that I think anyone can replicate now when most of you think of Steve Jobs you probably think of this there&#39;s just one more thing about the iPod mini which is it comes in colors so in addition to Silver we have gold that&#39;s the charismatic Steve Jobs that dazzled us with new Innovations and groundbreaking Tech during Keynotes at Apple but Steve was able to influence people decades and decades before that probably the first notable example of this is an old school picture with Steve and his classmates now in this picture all but one student is wearing a Hawaiian shirt it was a Hawaiian shirt themed day at school so all the kids brought in a shirt to wear you might expect Steve to be the odd one out he&#39;s not by the way he&#39;s wearing a Hawaiian shirt but the story is that Steve had forgot his shirt the only reason he&#39;s wearing one is because he persuaded a friend to swap shirts with him his friend is now the odd one out so Steve knew how to get his way from a young age he knew how to convince people now we don&#39;t know what tactic he used back then to convince his friend but it&#39;s an early sign that Steve Jobs has a knack for persuasion and he&#39;d use this skill for good and for bad Steve Jobs met Steve wnc back in high school in 1968 the two of them would stay close friends for years eventually co-founding Apple together Steve wnc or was as he&#39;s known was and of course is an incredible engineer one of the first projects Steve and was worked on was was well mischievous they loved playing pranks on strangers and started to build Contraptions to take their pranks to the next level their favorite prank involved a custombuilt TV Jammer put together by was it&#39;s essentially a TV remote that could cut the signal to any TV and turn it back on with the click of a button Steven Wars would creep up to a stranger&#39;s house peek through the front window and then they turn on the Jammer and watch the family get frustrated they keep turning the Jammer on and off annoying usually the dad to no end this was pretty funny to them and I can imagine why but Steve Jobs had an even better idea he&#39;d come up with a strategy to make it even funnier he&#39;d only turn the signal back on once the dad was standing next to the TV with his hand on the aerial after doing this a few times it made the father believe that the only way the TV would operate was if the dad stood next to the TV with his hand on the aerial Steven W would leave in fits of laughter wondering how long the dad would stay there with his hand on the aerial it&#39;s a funny and I think fairly harmless prank and it shows again that Steve understood the basic principles of human behavior the obvious principle here is the principle of conditioning Steve is building a behavior in someone through repeat conditioning over time I think it&#39;s the earliest example I could find of Steve using a psychological principle to influence someone and it&#39;s something that he would continue to do throughout his career not always through conditioning but through other psychological principles that influence and persuade the next example comes later on in his life it&#39;s with another Steven W&#39;s invention see the two stayed close friends in high school during that time wnc designed what he called the blue box the blue box generates sounds to manipulate the telephone Network and make free long distance calls see this is back in the day when telephone calls played a sound to make the right connection play the right sound and you&#39;ll be able to make that call without having to pay the Hefty fees at the time now obviously this is totally illegal but it&#39;s also a fun and potentially profitable way for the two high schoolers to make money was built the blue box and Steve well he was in charge of selling it now put yourself in Steve&#39;s shoes you&#39;re a senior high schooler just 16 years old how would you sell the blue box now if it was me I&#39;d be had a bit of a loss I guess I&#39;d go speak to my friends start telling them what the product is what the benefits are maybe I&#39;d tell them how much they&#39;d save and ask them if they want to buy I doubt I&#39;d think of anything smarter than that but Steve isn&#39;t like the rest of us he in intuitively used a psychological principle called social proof social proof is a principle that affects all of us it means that we follow the actions of others it&#39;s why when we know something as a bestseller or most popular we&#39;re more likely to use it and more likely to buy it it&#39;s an evolutionary trait developed tens of thousands of years ago to Keep Us Alive if a bunch of cavemen were running out of a cave you wouldn&#39;t go in that cave you&#39;d follow the actions of others social proof is used today in marketing Richard Shon a marketing psychologist added a bestselling sign to a beer in a London pub and increased its sales by 2.5 times however social proof is notoriously hard to use for products that aren&#39;t popular this is a problem for Steve he can&#39;t say the blue box is the best seller because no one has bought it so Steve uses social proof in a different way what he did did is he went into the dorms of other seniors at high school and he&#39;d say is George here now the seniors would often say no because there was no one called George there they would say no why and Steve Jobs would say ah George was interested in buying the blue box no problem I&#39;ll come back later now in most cases before Steve could leave the seniors would stop him and ask him what was the blue box Steve would then start his pitch and in most cases he would get a sale this is a genius tactic one that some of the best salese use today now obviously George doesn&#39;t exist but that doesn&#39;t matter merely suggesting that someone is interested in buying your product will Peak the interest of others what&#39;s impressive is that Steve intuitively knew this at just 16 years old it takes some salespeople decades to discover a tactic like this Steve knew how to persuade a manipul people at a young age he might not have known he was using social proof or conditioning but he knew what worked let&#39;s fast forward a few years after one semester at College Steve Jobs dropped out it wasn&#39;t for him he went back to his parents and he needed a job but the story behind how Steve Jobs got his first job is another example of his persuasion tactics and it&#39;s one that he continues to use time and time again in his career he&#39;d read an article about the company Atari and the AR spoke about what a wonderful place it was to work the staff there were laid back they were building exciting new video games so Steve said to himself I&#39;m getting a job there problem is there were no job openings with Atari at the time but this doesn&#39;t bother Steve he decides he&#39;ll get a job there anyway so he goes to the office of Atari and refuses to leave the lobby until someone at the company would interview him remember at this stage of his career he is a complete unknown he&#39;s dropped dropped out of college and yet he has this huge confidence in himself that he&#39;ll get a job now they tell him to leave the lobby they tell him no one will interview him but he doesn&#39;t he sticks around and stays in the lobby Steve here is using sunk costs to prove his worth now you might think that sunk costs affect you as an individual and not those around you see sunk costs is the idea that the more money or time or effort you spend on something the more you&#39;ll value it but it&#39;s a risky Tac because it works the other way too if you see someone sinking time or money or effort into something you&#39;ll value that thing highly too for example if you know someone has spent 10 years painting a watercolor you&#39;ll value it much more than if you knew it only took 10 minutes it links with the endowment effect and labor illusion other principles we&#39;ve spoken about on the show Steve&#39;s showcasing his own sunk costs here he&#39;s spending hours in the lobby quietly waiting for an interview sinking all his time and arguably reputation into this makes the folks at Atari value him a little bit more it&#39;s a bit like a hunger strike the longer someone goes on strike for the more we value and pay attention to their cause I should highlight though this is a really risky tactic it only works if you have strengths to back it up Sun costs might get you an interview but you&#39;ll be held to a much higher standard than a normal interviewee and if you don&#39;t have the skills to back it up you&#39;ll be disliked even more arguably there&#39;s a study by Elliot arenson that highlights this he filmed an actor answering quiz questions correctly the actor got 90% of them right and then the actor spiled coffee down himself appearing clumsy and showcasing a weakness what&#39;s interesting is people liked the actor more if he spilled coffee down himself matching a weakness say clumsiness with a strength in this case intelligence made the actor more likable but in another variant of the experiment when the actor got most of the quiz questions wrong and we seen as stupid and then spilled coffee down himself he was disliked even more than if he hadn&#39;t spilled the coffee what this tells us is that if you showcase a weakness and a strength you&#39;ll be liked more than if you just showcase strengths however if you showcase a weakness and another weakness you&#39;ll be heavily disliked than if you just showed one weakness so Steve he can get away with this he&#39;s showcasing a weakness which is his stubbornness and inability to say no while waiting in the lobby but he can match it with a strength he comes across extremely knowledgeable in the interview and gets a job he realizes that he can manipulate people this way by sinking hours into contacting them and then dazzling them with his knowledge and he uses this same tactic of sunk costs multiple times in his career later on at Apple he desperately wanted a well-renowned marketing agency to come aboard and create the 1984 ad for apple apple was too small a client they didn&#39;t work with companies of that size so Steve called the head of the agency dozens of times every day for a week even on weekends until he finally agreed sunk costs made the head of the see pay attention Steve uses the same tactic when recruiting the famous logo designer Paul Rand from IBM to design a logo for his newest company NeXT now IBM wouldn&#39;t let this logo designer Paul Rand leave to join Steve and most people wouldn&#39;t fight that he&#39;s at IBM after all but Steve isn&#39;t most people he called the IBM Vice chairman 3 days in a row before he eventually agreed Steve is not afraid to Showcase his commitment to SN time and reputation into a task to get what he wants most people if they did this would come across as petulant stubborn and childish but Steve gets aare with it because he&#39;s got other strengths that make up for it it&#39;s a smart tactic that Steve uses to manipulate people but one that you and I probably couldn&#39;t replicate as we haven&#39;t got Steve&#39;s Charisma or raw intelligence anyway eventually Steve decides he wants to leave Atari after all that work getting a job there he&#39;s become a bit of a hippie at the time and decides to go to India to find his Guru seriously that&#39;s not a joke that is what Steve decides to do however Steve has no money for his flight to India he&#39;s skint the job doesn&#39;t pay very well and he hasn&#39;t saved any cash most of us would get a second job to save up but not Steve he decides to persuade Atari his employers into paying for his trip to India he does this by using what I think is his favorite psychological principle anchoring anchoring is the idea that we are heavily influenced by the initial piece of information we see imagine you look at a menu at a restaurant and you see that most bottles of wine are priced at £40 you&#39;ll think that a 30 bottle of wine seems like a good deal however if you went into another restaurant where most of the bottles are priced at2 a bottle then a 30 bottle well that would seem overpriced price we are anchored by the information presented around the offer and it changes our perception and our decisions Steve uses variations of the anchoring bias dozens of times during his career but one of the first examples I noted was how he left Atari so he simply told his boss you should pay for my flight to India I&#39;ve been a tremendous employe I&#39;ve outperformed my peers I&#39;ve done everything you&#39;ve asked of me so buy me a flight to India now unsurprisingly the Atari bosses laughed at him he was leaving why enough would they pay for a flight for him to go on holiday they&#39;ve never done this for anyone else especially not a junior employee like him but it crucially set an anchor something that Steve could use to negotiate down from Steve was able to say okay if you can&#39;t get me that flight how about you send me to Munich I&#39;ll do a bit of work for the German branch of Atari and then I&#39;ll go to India after that now this appears to be a much more reasonable request and Atari ultimately agreed to it they thought look of course we can&#39;t send her to India but Munich&#39;s much more reasonable it&#39;s a bit cheaper and if he does a bit of work for us then why don&#39;t we do it it&#39;s classic anchoring in action he frames the request in this way to make it seem much more reasonable if he had asked to be sent to Munich outright Atari probably would have disagreed but through the frame of sending him to India the ask to go to Munich seems much more sensible Steve uses this same tactic throughout his career in fact he used it to convince was to drop everything and co-found apple with him initially was was dead against starting a business he simply refused and Steve had a really hard time convincing him to co-found Apple that&#39;s until Steve Jobs used anchoring to reframe the decision to convince was Steve Jobs said we could lose all our money but we&#39;d still have a company that that one line that convinced was according to him that&#39;s what changed his mind why did it change his mind well I think it&#39;s because it&#39;s a smart bit of anchoring because he eliminates the objections Steve Jobs is agreeing that you know Apple might not work they might go bankrupt but they&#39;d have a company they would have built something that was worth something that&#39;s the anchor that convinced was to join Steve and co-found apple and much later into Steve jobs&#39; career he used again the same tactic but this time with Pixar jobs was CEO of Pixar at the time that&#39;s the Pixar behind the world&#39;s most successful animation films like up bugs life Wally you know who Pixar are but before Pixar had created any of those films they solely worked on smaller shorts that hardly Drew in any Revenue in fact the company was really struggling at the time however they had one incredibly Talent ented animator on staff his name was John Lassiter he&#39;s probably the best animator of all time he creates a short film for Pixar called tin toy it cost 300,000 to produce and didn&#39;t make anything in return but it won an Oscar for best short film it was the first Oscar win for Pixar and the first ever CGI film to win an Oscar obviously John Lasser was good really good and Disney who had no connection to Pixar at this time Disney saw how talented John was so Disney tried to hire him they offered him a huge pay rise much more responsibility but John says no he&#39;s not interested he&#39;s happy at Pixar most CEOs would be happy to hear this they&#39;d be delighted they would say great news John thanks for agreeing to stay but not Steve Jobs he saw an opportunity to Anchor he tells Disney they can work with John but only if they help Pixar create a featurelength film see Pixar didn&#39;t have anywhere near enough funding equipment or manpower to create a feature film but Disney Disney did so Steve used John as his anchor to get what he wanted Steve suggests that Disney and Pixar co-produce the first ever animated featurelength film and John ler would direct and write it John would stay on the Pixar staff but Disney and Pixar would split the profits Disney agreed of course they couldn&#39;t turn down the offer to work with John and even though they&#39;d be helping a rival they thought it was worthwhile and that film well that was Toy Story one of the most successful movies of all time generating $362 million worldwide making it the second highest grossing film of the year and also winning three Oscars and it wouldn&#39;t have happened unless Steve Jobs had used that opportunity to Anchor Disney wouldn&#39;t have agreed to co-create a feature film with a Ral if Steve had just asked but by using John as an anchor by saying you can&#39;t poach John but you can work with him if you help us out Steve Jobs was able to get what he wanted as I mentioned Steve used anchoring extensively in his career especially during his keynote presentations for Apple I&#39;ll dig into that in part two of this show which will come out on nudge in a week or so so make sure you&#39;re subscribed if you don&#39;t want to miss that but for now let&#39;s focus on some of the other tactics Steve has used to convince and arguably manipulate people while building Apple now one of the things all great CEOs seem to have in common is the ability to reframe things to take a problem explain it in a slightly different way to help people discover a solution Elon Musk does this a lot he reframes sending satellites into space for commercial Jan as a way to save Humanity by building a future settlement on Mars he reframes expensive electric cars as a chance to save the environment and Signal your commitment to stopping climate change but Elon doesn&#39;t come close to Steve Jobs when it comes to reframing jobs was the master of reframing he would take a problem that seemed impossible and help someone solve it by reframing the problem in a different way there&#39;s one br brilliant example of this when Steve was overseeing the creation of the Mac OS the engineer Larry Kenyan had done everything he could to make the Mac boot up as quickly as possible he&#39;d spent months working on this boot up startup sequence and had finally presented the bootup sequence to Steve but Steve wasn&#39;t happy he wanted it to boot up even faster now remember Steve has no reason to believe it could boot up faster Steve was not an engineer he didn&#39;t know how to make the Mac turn on faster he just believed it could so Steve used reframing to reframe the problem for Larry Kenyan Steve described the problem in a different way that persuaded Larry to dig even deeper and find a better solution he asked Larry if you could save a person&#39;s life would you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot up time Larry Canyon said wow yeah I would I would do it if it would actually save someone&#39;s life I could probably find a way and then Steve pulled over a whiteboard and he started writing he did some calculations he showed that if 5 million people use the mac and it takes 10 seconds longer to boot up that adds 300 million hours of waiting time per year that equals 100 lifetimes each year this is classic reframing increasing the boot up time doesn&#39;t remove a tiny unimportant weight no it saves a 100 lifetimes worth of waiting each year he said to Larry this won&#39;t save one life if you do it it&#39;ll save a hundred every year it might be an annoying thing to hear as an engineer but it is certainly motivating a few weeks later Larry Kenyan presented the new bootup sequence to Steve and it was 28 seconds faster than before now Steve was is Happy Steve comes back to reframing time and time again when he&#39;s trying to motivate his team he used reframing again during the development of the first iPod when the team started the project he kept repeating the same point he said I have to be able to find a song that I want in three clicks or less now to everyone who heard this at the time it seemed totally impossible no MP3 at the time could do this just think you have to press a button to open music you have to press another button to open songs you have to press a bunch of buttons to type in the song you want and then you have to press a final button to play that&#39;s at least a dozen Taps and clicks but Steve was insistent he reframed the project it wasn&#39;t about building a nice UI it was about doing the impossible finding a song in three clicks or less obviously this reframing pissed off his Engineers they thought he was mad but by reframing the problem and intensely focusing on letting users find a song in three clicks the engineers discovered a breakthrough an innovation that actually made it possible you&#39;ll know what it is it&#39;s the iPod scroll wheel this was on the first iteration of the iPod it was a big wheel that people could scroll through to look at a list of songs they would simply scroll find one they wanted and click play it took just three clicks to find a song with no typing if Steve hadn&#39;t have reframed the problem there is just no way the engineers would have come up with that Innovation they would have built some normal user interface at the time that required double the amount of clicks and the iPod probably wouldn&#39;t have been the landmark product that it was there&#39;s one final reframing example that I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve heard because it&#39;s famous when Steve was reviewing the final design for the first iPod the engineers in the room were tense if Steve approved they&#39;d finally be able to ship this product of the months and months of long hours and hard work The Story Goes that Steve was tossing the iPod prototype in his hand and as he was looking at it he starts to shake his head and he says it&#39;s too big the engineers at this stage went berserk the engineers explained to jobs that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller that they would have to reinvent The Invention to make a smaller iPod and jobs he was silent for a few moments with the iPod in his hand and then after a few minutes without saying anything he stood up walked to an aquarium which was in the corner of his room and dropped the iPod into the water tank the device fell to the bottom and small bubbles came out of the iPod and floated to the surface Steve said those are air bubbles that means there&#39;s space inside now go and make it smaller the engineers went silent they couldn&#39;t complain with this Steve was right they clearly was excess space in the iPod and it could be made a little bit smaller Steve did a classic bit of reframing here he didn&#39;t just say make it smaller he said eliminate every bit of spare space and that the engineers could do they went away they removed the space and the iPod became that little bit smaller if you run a team or a company or need to motivate a team think about how you can frame the problem you&#39;re trying to solve because subtly reframing the problem can help someone come up with better Solutions and in Steve&#39;s case groundbreaking technological innovations so we&#39;ve heard how Steve Jobs uses social proof to sell the blue box how he uses sunk costs to get a job at Atari and anchoring to co-produce Toy Story with Disney and even reframing to create the iPod so let&#39;s go back to 1983 Steve Jobs and apple commissioned an ad for Apple at the following year&#39;s Super Bowl the ad was direct directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Fairbank films and Steve Jobs loved it today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification collectives we have created for it depicts a dystopian setting from all Well&#39;s book 1984 big brother is lecturing an audience while one woman the only person dressed in color runs through the scene chased by the thought police she hurls a hammer towards the screen which is projecting Big Brother&#39;s face and the screen is destroyed leaving the audience in shock we shall Prevail on January 24th Apple computer will introduce MacIntosh and you&#39;ll see why 1984 won&#39;t be like 1984 the screen Fades to Black and the voice over ends and the rainbow Apple logo appears Steve is in the room when the Apple Executives first see this ad and the response is unanimous the executives hate it it doesn&#39;t show the product it doesn&#39;t say what apple is it doesn&#39;t say how much it&#39;ll cost the Apple CEO at the time John Scully asks if they should fire the Ad Agency who created it but Steve Jobs loves it he thinks the ad is brilliant he thinks it&#39;s a work of art problem is Steve doesn&#39;t get the final say Apple&#39;s CEO John Scully does and John Scully tells the agency to sell off the ad slots for the Super Bowl they won&#39;t be airing this ad we&#39;re not going to put it out but Steve intervenes he tells the agency on the sly to keep the slots and to lie to John Scully and say that they can&#39;t sell the slots it&#39;s too late in the year Steve tells the Ad Agency that they&#39;ll have no no choice but to air the ad or lose millions of dollars so Apple had no choice but to air the ad they go ahead and play the ad at the 1984 Super Bowl and as many of you know this ad is an unprecedented success in fact it is considered a milestone event for apple one which elevates them to a legendary brand the ad wins numerous awards for best advert of all time and $3.5 Million worth of macintoshes were sold just just after the advertisement ran which Brent Thomas the Arts director at apple called an absolute success but why what was so good about this ad and how come Steve knew it was so good when no one else did well there&#39;s one thing that Steve knew that others didn&#39;t he knew about the Curiosity Gap it&#39;s a really simple principle if you Peak someone&#39;s curiosity saying a new product will change the world world but don&#39;t reveal how the new product will change the world then you&#39;ll capture more attention and more interest than if you had actually revealed what it is leaving something unknown captures attention this is why trailers are so successful they show just enough of the film to Peak our interest while leaving enough unknown to make us watch it it&#39;s why Cliffhangers Works a TV show ends but we don&#39;t learn the whole story so we play the next episode to find out what happened Steve knew all about this curiosity Gap he used it time and time again at his Keynotes and he knew it would make the ad a success so he defied his leadership team and went ahead and aired the ad and this works the ad hints that Apple will change the world and it Peaks people&#39;s curiosity triggering the Curiosity Gap and making viewers interested to learn in what apple is Building without Steve Jobs that ad would have never seen the light of day and as one more example I wanted to share before ending today&#39;s episode it is 4 years after the Super Bowl ad since 1984 Steve&#39;s had trouble at Apple the company was failing and Steve was disliked by many of his peers not least because he is constantly undermining them and constantly as we know going behind their backs he is eventually ousted as board member and leaves Apple unfaced Steve goes and starts a new tech company called Next the company itself isn&#39;t too notable it&#39;s arguably one of Steve&#39;s few failures in his career but Steve&#39;s first keynote presentation there his first presentation to the Press is fascinating it&#39;s another Glimpse at how Steve uses psychological bias to manipulate and Influence People First he rents out a huge Arena ONE used for concerts not business presentations he invites thousands of people and has them waiting for hours for the event to start this annoys some people but it pequs the Curiosity of others building anticipation eventually he comes on stage and with some classic anchoring he says thanks for joining us today I think together we&#39;re going to experience one of those times that occurs once or twice in a decade of computing a time when a new architecture is rolled out that&#39;s really going to change the future of computing and uh we&#39;ve worked on this for three years it&#39;s turned out incredibly great so I hope that he&#39;s anchoring their expectations this isn&#39;t just another presentation this is history he goes on to say that this is the biggest invention since the printing press now we might be used to this type of hyperbole now but at the time this was unique no businessman had the audacity to say stuff like this but Steve would he knew the power of Framing and anchoring and would use it to raise expectations and increase awareness and he pulls it off not really because the product he presents is a success but because of the product demo for the demo he invites a world famous violinist on stage and has him play a song accompanied by Steve&#39;s next computer now remember this is 1988 computers were giant boxes with the computing power of a modern day calculator they weren&#39;t known for playing music and definitely weren&#39;t known for companying famous musicians but that&#39;s what this next computer did and now I&#39;d like to introduce Dan K ala the principal second violinist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra thank you good [Music] luck it&#39;s another Steve Jobs masterclass he&#39;s reframing the classic product demo most CEOs would walk through features talk about benefits present financials Steve knows that doesn&#39;t interest people people don&#39;t like demos they like music so Steve uses music to demo his product it works hundreds of articles are written about the event people are suitably excited about next and predict it to be the next great innovation in the tech industry now ultimately next fails to hit these goals and it didn&#39;t reach those lofty Heights but Steve managed to convince people dere it wood and he did so by using a number of psychological [Music] principles Steve leaned on four core principles he used sunk costs to Showcase his commitment and get what he wanted he used anchoring to win at negotiations and change people&#39;s perspective he used reframing to help his employees come out with unbelievable Innovations and he used the Curiosity Gap to capture his audience attention and get them hooked on his product Steve Jobs came back to these principles time and time again throughout his career using them to create more award-winning marketing campaigns create new breakthroughs in techn ology and ultimately make apple the world&#39;s most successful company I should add that anchoring sunk costs reframing in the Curiosity Gap aren&#39;t the sole secrets of Steve&#39;s success of course they are not there is much more to him than that he&#39;s also smart focused and Incredibly diligent but those psychological principles they probably gave him the Edge by leveraging those principles he managed to manipulate people to get what he want whether that was funding from Disney to produce Toy Story or a Hawaiian shirt from his school friend and while I wouldn&#39;t endorse you or others to follow his tactics using them in the right circumstances is a no-brainer if you want to build your company motivate a team or persuade an audience

Transcript for:Steve Jobs: Master of Influence

Transcript for:
Steve Jobs: Master of Influence