From the Archive: The 7 Techniques to Influence Anyone of Anything | Robert Cialdini

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This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

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Presenting The Archive. Classic episodes that remain timeless. The raw, unfiltered conversations from the early days in which people shared their failures, and showed us exactly how they rebuilt everything from the ground up.

**James Altucher** (1:34)
I'm certainly going to recommend to my two children that they listen to this podcast. Listing the negatives is often a powerful influence technique. Warren Buffett almost starts off all his letters to shareholders with, here's what we did wrong this year.

**Robert Cialdini** (1:48)
James, I'm a stockholder, and I've seen him do it for 20 years now. And it's disarming every time. He says, you know, we made this mistake.
I believe the next thing he says to me, and that's where he puts the strength of the last year. He's just readied me to listen to and process the next thing he's going to say more deeply, because he's established himself as a trustworthy source.

**James Altucher** (2:26)
What if somebody is building up their career? They want to leave their job, they want to be a speaker, they want to write books. How can they start to bring in some of these techniques?

**Robert Cialdini** (2:36)
Here's what I would advise.

**James Altucher** (2:44)
I can't believe I have Robert Cialdini in the room. Robert, how are you doing?

**Robert Cialdini** (2:48)
I'm well, James.

**James Altucher** (2:49)
For those who don't know you, your book Influence has sold over 3 million copies. You give the six techniques for how to best influence people, and this has become, I would say, and you probably would agree, like the Bible of marketing for hundreds of companies. I know I have very directly made a ton of money because of your book Influence, so thank you very much for that.

**Robert Cialdini** (3:12)
It's gratifying for me to hear.

**James Altucher** (3:13)
And now you have a new book, you're like the Thomas Pynchon of marketing, like you wrote Influence, then you disappear for 30 years doing your research, whatever, and now you have a brand new book Out of Nowhere, Pre-Suasion, which is about how the moment of persuasion often happens well before the critical moment where two people meet and start negotiating or talking or whatever, and that so many factors play into pre-suasion, like managing the persuasive process before it even begins, before most people think it begins. So we'll talk about that. You also, in many cases in that book, update a lot of the techniques in influence. I want to talk about that as well.
But one thing we were just talking about right before the recording started, I really want to hit on because it's fascinating. You were telling me you were walking around for six hours in New York City yesterday pointing out where companies or organizations or people were doing pre-suasion techniques already to kind of help persuade people to go in their direction. You mentioned specifically voting and that example you showed was interesting and I have a question about it.

**Robert Cialdini** (4:18)
Well there's a study for example that shows that if you stop somebody who's walking along a street and ask them about penalties for prostitution, they will be significantly more severe if you ask them in front of a church.

**James Altucher** (4:38)
That's very interesting. True and you talk about this a lot in Pre-Suasion that the background of where someone is. So for instance if a guy is asking a girl for her phone number in a mall, she's much more likely to give it if they're standing in front of a flower store which is kind of I guess triggers romance feelings in the head than if they're standing in front of a clothing store which doesn't necessarily signify romance.