Whatever you have in your life so far or you will have, it will all come through others. We are looking for people to connect with us. Not only connecting with us, but we also want them to like us. But it’s not easy to get liked by others. People have different opinions, choices, attitudes, etc. So, how can we get people to like us?

In this podcast, we will discuss how to gain trust. More importantly, how can we create a sense of trust and care that turns into friendship?

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What to do if someone hates you without even knowing you?
We like to associate ourselves with people. We need a sense of belongingness. One of the ways to connect with people is to share the same interests. Here, I would like to share a story of a black man who managed to convert a lot of KKK white supremacists. KKK means Ku Klux Klan. If you don’t know what the KKK is, then let me tell you, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist hate group in the United States. It was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by former Confederate soldiers. It was promoting extreme racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and xenophobia, often through violence and intimidation.

The KKK is known for its hooded robes, cross burnings, and terrorist acts targeting African Americans, Jews, immigrants, and other minorities.
Now, the black man I was talking about earlier is named Daryl Davis. While some people collect stamps, others collect coins. Daryl Davis collects Ku Klux Klan robes. KKK robes are the specific garments worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group in the United States. These robes are iconic symbols of the KKK and are designed to evoke fear in people and a sense of unity among members.

Davis is a black musician.
As I said before, he managed to convert a lot of KKK white supremacists to quit the clan. And give their white pointy hat robes to Davis when they quit. How does Davis change the minds of these folks? Do you think he uses better logic and gives smarter arguments? We all want to convince people to accept our beliefs and make our friends. It’s important to have friends and to win them. And how are we going to do it?

In this podcast, we will discuss three things

• What makes people like you more?
• How to make people think you like them?
• How to gain trust when you are the last person others can trust?

In this part, we will discuss how Daryl Davis changes beliefs
Daryl Davis was 25 years old and playing R&B music in a bar in Maryland that white supremacists frequently used to visit.. After his show, he received a weird compliment from a customer who said, “it was the first time he heard a black man play music well.” Instead of getting nervous, Davis laughed and asked the customer to have a drink with him. Over the course of the conversation, he realized that that guy was a member of the KKK – a secret fraternal society that believes that people with white skin colour are superior.

During that conversation, Davis made a decision: he wanted to talk to more members of the KKK.
He decided to write a book to explore the question: “Why do you hate me when you don’t even know me?” His new friend at the bar got him in touch with Roger Kelly, who was one of the leaders of the KKK in Maryland. Kelly agreed to meet Davis when he heard he wanted to write a book, but Kelly did not know he was black.

The first meeting was tense.
But somehow they met again. And again, a few more times. Very soon, Kelly asked Davis to be the godfather for his daughter. He quit the KKK and even closed the Maryland chapter. And gave his KKK robe to Davis – the first of many KKK members to do so! So, how did the impossible happen? That too, multiple times? In Daryl Davis’s own words, he said: “He does not set out to convert these people, but instead to make friends with them. They convert themselves.”

How does he make friends with people who have a reaction on seeing him?
He simply focuses on what every human wants. What every human wants is to be seen and heard. To feel understood. To be liked. Davis does not argue or give denials. He simply listens. And shows them that he likes them – even when they don’t like him back. And you know what? It is impossible not to like someone who likes you. Now, let’s talk about the second topic: How to make people think you like them?

Psychologists Elliot Aronson and Phillip Worchel conducted an experiment in which participants were grouped in pairs to engage in simple conversations.
After the conversation, they had to write a brief statement on what they felt about their conversation partner. The participants were then allowed to read what their partner had written about them. The twist was that half the participants were actors. They were asked to write that they liked their conversation partner a lot. When the real participants read that they were liked, then in a follow-up, disregarding what they had written earlier, they all said that they liked their partner more. That is, regardless of whether they liked it earlier or not.

Adam Hampton and his colleagues performed an experiment to check what makes people like others more.
They tested various factors: do people like others similar to them, do they like people who make them have more fun, do they like people who help them grow? And by far, the factor that showed the strongest effect was “certainty of being liked”. If you knew that someone else liked you, you would automatically start liking them. This reciprocity of liking is really strong in us. Why? Because people have an inherent need to belong. And so, we seek situations where we feel liked. That takes us to the third part: How to gain trust when you are the last person others can trust?

Hanns Scharff was a Nazi officer who interrogated prisoners of war.
He was the most successful interrogator and got out a lot of secrets. Can you guess how? Unlike his fellow officers, he never tortured. He never showed that he had power over the prisoners. He never even asked a lot of questions about war. Instead, he tried to build a bond with the prisoners. Took them out of the prison environment for walks. Shared meals with them. And talked about everything except the war.

His kindness and empathy got the prisoners to tell him things they would have never revealed under torture.
When the prisoners believed that Scharff liked them, they started trusting him. It’s impossible not to like someone who you think likes you. That’s what Daryl Davis, whom we talked about in the first part of this podcast, did, and he was good at it too. He makes people think he likes them. He listens. He tries to understand. He doesn’t judge. He shares meals and experiences with them. He shows kindness.

In fact, he goes above and beyond in showing kindness.
When KKK leader Richard Preston was arrested for firing a gun at a political rally, it was Davis who put up a bond for him! And while Preston was sentenced to 4 years in prison, he went in as a changed man because of Davis. Davis shows that the way to change the world is by becoming a friend of the world.

To summarize, it’s impossible not to like someone who likes you.
People have an inherent need to be seen, heard, and understood. So just actively listen and be kind. Share time and small experiences with them. And they will build a bond with you.

The One-Liner Report:

Why Customers Don’t Listen? – How to get them to listen to you with your One-Liner?

This report will show you how to explain your business in just one-line so that your customers listen and understand you as quickly as possible. Click on the button below and get a detailed ‘The One Liner Report’. It will take only 15 minutes to read.

When we first think of any product idea, we believe it should be new and original.
However, when we present this to people, it confuses people and turns them away.

So, How should our product idea be? Does it need to be absolutely new or similar to others?
The answer is simpler than you think. All you need to do is to be similar to others and yet something new. Find out how in this podcast.

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Bill Gates predicted in 1991 that Kodak company would be bankrupt.
He didn’t say when, but Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. That’s 21 years after he predicted. When he predicted that in 1991, the stock price of Kodak would be $30, it even hit a high of $94. Since then, the stock price has gone downwards, and Kodak has struggled badly to survive. Well, Bill Gates predicted way too early and but this not the only time he predicted too early and came true after many year. Again, He also not only got wrong with way too early prediction and failed.

If you think the Apple iWatch is the first smartwatch, here’s something you may not know.
Bill Gates launched the smartwatch in 2002. He launched the first-ever smartwatch called Microsoft SPOT at the Comdex Trade Show in Las Vegas. It was 13 years before Apple launched its iWatch in 2015. Unfortunately, Microsoft SPOT failed miserably. At that time, there was no Bluetooth or Wifi. It was running on FM transmission, and people had to pay $60 a year to use it. So, it failed miserably.

It’s worse to be too early than to be wrong. And the Microsoft SPOT was too original in 2002.
You have probably heard from others to come up with an original idea. In fact, we all think of coming up with something novel and an original product idea. But you can not come up with an absolutely new idea. In this podcast, we will discuss two things.

1. Why will vastly different product ideas from the market would fail?
2. How should your product be similar to others and still be successful?

Let’s dive in.

The person who came up with the feature on Spotify called ‘Discover Weekly’ is Mathew Ogle.
He came up with the idea of generating an automatic playlist for users based on what they like. It’s the personalized playlists of new songs the users may like to listen to. It was called “Your Daily Mix” and it became a useful tool for Spotify. When this feature was built up, a bug came up that was showing a few songs that people had listened to before. Ogle’s team fixed this bug and showcased to the listeners songs they had never heard before, and they thought people would like this feature. But it failed.

The engagement dropped dramatically!
When the listeners were finding songs they never or less likely heard before, they stopped listening. This feature of recommended songs was annoying listeners. So, Ogle’s team reintroduced this bug and showcasing few of the known songs to listeners. As a result, the engagement dramatically increased. Listeners were feeling comfortable with familiar songs.

Familiarity increased the engagement.
It’s because people trust familiar things more than they trust unfamiliar things. This idea works not only with songs. It applies to any idea, product, service, concept, belief and even opinion. People buy the product because they have seen something similar to it before. People feel uncomfortable and sometimes less confident about the brand new or novel idea, product, belief or opinion. The question we are going to deal with now is how our product can be similar but not exactly similar, better, and still unique for customers. Let’s talk about it in the second part of this podcast.

What if you could carry a whole library of your own books anywhere and read them at any time and anywhere?
This is possible with one of my favourite devices, the Kindle Reader. Amazon developed Kindle reader at Lab126, which is Amazon’s secret hardware lab established in 2004. Amazon spent millions of dollars to create a device that is easy to use and simple to access device to read your books. They launched in 2007 and it has created a whole new experience of reading books. It’s convenient, compact and user-friendly. It didn’t only change the experience of reading but also gave access to publishers and authors to reach to readers who could not have access to their paperback or hardcover books.

The Kindle reader is not an absolutely new idea.
Yes, you can buy, download and read the books instantly but Amazon created this product to provide the same books digitally to all over the world as an option to paperback or hardcover versions of the books. The idea of Kindle was connected with the familiar idea of Books. By connecting your product to an existing successful product, you can easily convince people to trust you. Many big companies use the same concept of familiarity.

For example,
YouTube was pitched as ‘Flickr for Videos.’
Airbnb was pitched as “eBay for homes.’
Uber was pitched as ‘Airbnb for cabs.”
In the same way, the Kindle reader was pitched as “iTunes for books.’

“X” for “Y” is a format that works well for distilling and connecting your idea so that it can be understood more easily.
It helps people relate to something they already understand more easily. What’s the lesson? People fear things that are too novel. Familiarity generates trust. So, connect your new ideas to existing familiar ideas. So, what’s your product idea, and how can you connect with something that is already familiar to others and still better than others? Before we end this podcast, here’s the quote from Raymond Loewy

“To sell something surprising, make it familiar, and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.”

I hope you find it helpful. If you like it, share it far and wide.

The One-Liner Report:

Why Customers Don’t Listen? – How to get them to listen to you with your One-Liner?

This report will show you how to explain your business in just one-line so that your customers listen and understand you as quickly as possible. Click on the button below and get a detailed ‘The One Liner Report’. It will take only 15 minutes to read.

How much information should you share and not share to do your first sale and more sales?
When we first start the business, we want hundreds of customers. Forget about a hundred; we struggle to find the first customer. We share every single information about our product but don’t know how much a customer should know. Maybe you are shy or an extrovert, and you want to let people know about you and your product.

There is a way to get your first sale by sharing the right amount of information. Also, you should have some information, but do you know why you should keep some things secret? In this podcast, you will know what and how much information you should share to make your first sale and more sales.

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We all have stories of our school time.
We have been good at some subjects and bad at a few subjects. We have some successes in school and maybe some failures. We may not be good at everything. There was a child called Wang Tao. He was a horrible student. His parents wanted him to study hard, and to get Wang Tao to study harder, they started bribing him. They bribed him with a red flying helicopter toy if he did well in school. And guess what, Tao’s grades improved.

Unfortunately, his toy did not last longer than a day.
It was difficult to fly and crashed. Eventually, it broke. He wanted to learn how to make a toy that flies. Fast forward to the future, Wang Tao created a company called DJI which is the biggest drone-making company in the world. Sounds interesting, right?

DJI sells hundreds of drones every month, but he could not sell the first drone.
While he was in college, and he researched on a radio-controlled helicopter, but due to some errors, it crashed, and he failed. Fortunately, a professor encouraged him to work on it and provided mentorship.  With the right support and consistent efforts, Wang designed a prototype and published it on an online forum.  He did not put it to sell; he just presented it without any expectation of selling it.   Someone from America showed interest in buying it and asked Wang to ship it from China to America for $7500. Wang could not believe it. He was overjoyed because it would cost him only $2200!

Wang Tao sold the product without trying to sell it.
He did not ask people to buy. He just posted on an online forum. People started asking him to provide. While most people struggle to sell, this kid sold without trying to sell. How did he do? Because most people don’t show their creations, they keep their findings, work and products to themselves.  People are far too worried about what would happen if others steal the idea. And as a result, they miss out on the big opportunities. So, share your work out here. You may think it’s nothing valuable, but others may find it valuable. You should show what you so lovingly worked on and created. People can see that passion and love. And they value it, too.

In this podcast, we will discuss three things, 

• Why and what information should you share?
• Why should you not share information and be secretive about you or your product?
• How much information should you share and should not?

The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was a major brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1849 until 1982.
At one time, it was the largest brewery in the United States. They hired a famous marketing expert called Claude Hopkins. The company was struggling to sell their beers. They could not beat the competition.

Claude Hopkins did a tour around the factory and learned what they do.
He was amazed by the work Schlitz Brewing Company was doing. He found some outstanding facts.

• Only water from 1400-foot-deep artesian wells was used to ensure that the water was the cleanest it could be.
• Beer was dripping over pipes in plate-glass rooms filled with filtered air so that the beer could be cooled in without any impurities.
• Every pump and pipe were cleaned twice a day. Every bottle was sterilized four times before beer was filled in it.
• The bottles themselves were brown in colour because light decays the beer.

Now, Claude Hopkins is even more surprised to know that the company did not mention any of these features to the customers.
They did not educate the public about how their beer is unique. Claude asked why they did not share these facts. And they replied, “It’s because every beer producer does it the same way.” And Hopkins replied, “But nobody ever told the story.”

Claude Hopkins just gathered these facts and created ads using the process Schlitz Brewing Company was using. 
As a result, the sales increased, and the company became the number one beer company in the USA.  You know what you are doing, but people don’t know. Tell people what you do and how you do it. It puts you at the authority level.

You create trust and interest in the customers.
They engage with you. If you just show them rather than just telling them, it would create interesting drama and get people’s attention. But there are some times when you should not share. That takes us to the second part. Why should you not share and be secretive about your product?

Steve Jobs created a very secretive culture at Apple.
Apple is notoriously known as one of the most secretive, tight-lipped companies in tech. Secrecy is like a religion at Apple.
It has become infamous for its secrecy around new product announcements and launches. They want to surprise and delight the customers at the time of launch. They even have a very big team that makes sure that information doesn’t get leaked.

People are strictly not allowed to talk to each other.
People don’t even know what they are working on. For example, people working on a 9.7-inch screen didn’t know if they were working on a small laptop or a big phone. They realized they had been working on the iPad only when Jobs showed the product on the stage! Apple does enormous research on what customers want.

They invest so much time and money to find out what will sell.
They don’t want their competitors to know and also don’t want their customers to know before they launch. As we said earlier, they want to surprise and delight customers. Steve Jobs had a very strong instinct for what people would love to buy. That’s why being secretive about the product can work very well for you if you also know exactly why people buy. 

But we don’t have that instinct like Steve Jobs, and that can get us in trouble.
When we don’t know what will sell, we can not afford to spend months behind developing the product. It’s going to be disastrous for us. We need feedback from our potential customers in advance. Then we can have the confidence of making and selling the product. Marketers call it a validation of the idea.

If you are as big and successful as Apple, you will attract very aggressive competition.
Apple invests millions of dollars in creating the product, so they would want to keep things secret. But if you are just starting off or running a small business, you should share. Only share what you would be okay with your top competitor knowing. So how much should we share and what shouldn’t? That takes us to the last part of this podcast.

A very famous tech product called Slack was developed by Tiny Speck, a company co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, who previously worked on the photo-sharing service Flickr.
Slack was initially conceptualized in 2012. In 2013, Tiny Speck released Slack as a beta product. After several months of beta testing, Slack officially launched in August 2013. The team communicated their launch through blog posts, social media, and press outreach, showcasing the product’s potential to streamline workplace communication and replace inefficient email chains.

By August 2015, the company had communicated milestones, such as reaching 1 million daily active users and expanding their integration with other productivity tools like Google Drive and Dropbox.
In 2020, Salesforce announced its acquisition of Slack for $27.7 billion. Slack communicated this major milestone with transparency. This acquisition marked a new chapter in Slack’s journey, and the company continued to update users on the new features.

Here, I am not trying to share Slack’s success story.
But what we need to learn from Slack is to let people know about your product, share updates, and share your key milestones. They did not share their news via traditional emails. Instead, they excitedly shared their updates with social media posts, blogs, etc. 

Be transparent about your everyday processes.
Share how you build things up. If you want to engage even further, share your failure stories as well. Your customers are just like you. They feel connected with you when you are truthful and honest. On top of that, share what lessons you learned.

Let people know you have worked hard to build things up and do all the work that you do.  Let people know what you are creating and doing. You may feel like you are not doing anything worthwhile. But your work might be liked by someone.

The One-Liner Report:

Why Customers Don’t Listen? – How to get them to listen to you with your One-Liner?

This report will show you how to explain your business in just one-line so that your customers listen and understand you as quickly as possible. Click on the button below and get a detailed ‘The One Liner Report’. It will take only 15 minutes to read.

Why are people terrible at Sales and what to do instead?
People think marketing and selling is something that to do it, a person needs to be an extrovert, sleazy or greedy. And you don’t have to push people to buy if you know how to do it correctly. People fail at sales and marketing because they do something terribly wrong. 

You should not make those costly mistakes.
In this short podcast episode, you are going to learn why people fail at sales and what to do to be great at sales.

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What happens when you call a taxi?
The taxi arrives and the driver asks you where to go. You tell him the destination. The driver takes you to the place where you want to go. And it’s precisely where you want to go. The driver doesn’t only fulfil your wish. He makes sure that you reach your destination as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. He takes responsibility for getting you to reach your destination. And he takes money in exchange for the service he provides.

You know I didn’t say anything extraordinary.
Think about selling and earning money. Whatever you sell, you must do the same tasks as the taxi driver does. It’s nothing complicated. You need to take people to where they want to go or to be. People think marketing and selling is something that to do it, a person needs to be an extrovert, sleazy or greedy.

It’s not that difficult to figure out.
In one of my courses where I teach how to design sales pitches, some of the most introverted and shy people learn how to design a sales pitch and deliver sales pitch confidently without looking like a greedy or pushy salesman. The students learn the right structure of the pitch and the sequence to deliver the pitch.

You too can sell if you know that.
It doesn’t matter if you are introverted or shy, you too can sell without pressure if you know how to do it. I have seen people failing at sales and there is something that they do wrong. In this short podcast episode, you are going to learn, Why people fail at sales and what to do instead. Let’s dive in.

Which is the biggest chocolate-making company in the world?
If you think of ‘Mars Wrigley Confectionery’ from Chicago, USA, you are right. The second biggest company is Ferrero Group from Italy. Almost everyone loves chocolates. My daughter, Aarna and my wife, Dhruvi, love chocolates at any time.

It’s so good that even the creator of the product wants to consume too.
The people who make chocolates at Mars and Ferrero might also love what they make. But they are not interested in eating the chocolates they make. They love what they create but they love to get people to consume. They sell to people they don’t even know yet, they know what people love to have and deliver what people love to have.

People fail at selling because they do exactly the opposite to it.
You don’t have to be too much in love with your product/service. If you are terrible at selling it’s because you are not in love with your client or customers. Now, I am not talking about being romantic with your customers. If you look at the website of Ferrero, you will know how much they love their customers. When they sell one of their products called, ‘Kinder chocolate’, they say, “A little a lot. We love all the little moments. For kids, moments are never little especially when shared with you.” 

Look at the way they promote their other great product called ‘Nutella’. 
They say “We spread positive energy in families to bring more optimism to the world”. Hey, they didn’t say, we sell chocolate spread. The biggest chocolate-making brand called ‘Mars Wrigley Confectionery’ also says the similar. 

If you go on their website, it clearly says,
“When you make brands that put smiles on people’s faces and create better moments for millions, you feel a sense of pride in your work. Today, our iconic products like M&M’S®, SNICKERS®, ORBIT®, EXTRA® and Skittles® are enjoyed in more than 180 countries. We’re not just committed to our consumers, we’re focused on positively impacting the planet and the population.”

That’s what you need to do.
You don’t need to be in love with your product/service. You must put your heart and soul when you create your product or service but you also need to keep the best interest of your customers in your heart. This is not with only the two brands that we talked about. You will find the same with all the great companies in the world. Here’s another good example I saw on the internet of a lawnmowing service. Instead of selling lawn-mowing services, sell a clean lawn that customers want to feel good in their neighbourhood.

You need to sell the new identity and how can you do it?
You are not selling any product but you sell the confidence and the new self-image every time you sell. The restaurant doesn’t sell food, they sell the elegant dining experience. Coca-Cola doesn’t sell sugar drinks, they sell happiness. Check out Coca-Cola’s ads and you will find out.

One of my clients is a fashion designer and she never says that she designs and sells clothes.
Her target customer is overweight women of more than 30 years of age. Instead of designing the clothes, she says that she makes overweight women look good. An overweight woman worries about ‘not having a super-model figure’, but she can make them look good with her art of designing clothes. She sells a new self-image, charisma and confidence instead of just dresses.

So, you don’t only need to love your product and service.
Start loving your customers. You need to love to create and deliver what customers want. And you care more when you do something for the people you love. That’s why I love doing episodes on this podcast channel ‘Love Your Business’.

The One-Liner Report:

Why Customers Don’t Listen? – How to get them to listen to you with your One-Liner?

This report will show you how to explain your business in just one-line so that your customers listen and understand you as quickly as possible. Click on the button below and get a detailed ‘The One Liner Report’. It will take only 15 minutes to read.