Thanks...My Pleasure

Social Currency: Does talking about your product make people look good? Can you find the inner remarkability? Leverage game mechanics? Make people feel like insiders? Triggers: Consider the context. What cues make people think about your product or idea? How can you grow the habitat and make it come to mind more often? Emotion: Focus on feelings. Does talking about your product or idea generate emotion? How can you kindle the fire? Public: Does your product or idea advertise itself? Can people see when others are using it? If not, how can you make the private public? Can you create behavior residue that sticks around even after people use it? Practical Value: Does talking about your product or idea help people help others? How can you highlight incredible value, package your knowledge and expertise into useful information others will want to disseminate? Stories: What is your Trojan Horse? Is your product or idea embedded in a broader narrative that ...

Key Points: People do not think in terms of information, they think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride. Effort pays off. Take the time to do something right. You might not have as much fun right away, but you'll find that it's worth it in the end. Stories, then, can act as vessels, carriers that help transmit information to others. The mere fact that it happened to someone who is like me makes me feel that there is a pretty good chance it will happen to me too.  People are also less likely to argue against stories than against advertising claims. Trojan Horse:  Just like the Trojan Horse itself, stories are more than they seem. Sure, the outward shell of a story, we could call this the surface plot-grabs your attention and engages your interest. But peel back that exterior, and you'll usually find something hidden inside. Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter. ...

Key Points: People often imitate those around them. They dress in the same styles as their friends, pick entrees preferred by other diners, and reuse hotel towels more when they think others are doing the same. If it is hard to see what others are doing, it's hard to imitate it. Making something more observable makes it easier to imitate. This a key factor in driving products to catch on is public visibility. If something is built to show, it's built to grow. Behaviors are public and thoughts are private. College students may personally be against binge drinking, but they binge drink because that is what they observe others doing. Public Visibility boosts word of mouth. The easier something is to see, the more people talk about it. Cues in the environment not only boost word of mouth but also remind people about things they already wanted to buy or do.  Social Proof: Social Proof. People assume that the longer the line, the better the food must be.  Every time ...

Key Points: Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; (3) make people feel like insiders. Inner Remarkability Remarkable things are defined as unusual, extraordinary, or worthy of notice or attention. Worthy of remark. Worthy of mention. Learning that a ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber is just so noteworthy that you have to mention it.  Leverage Game Mechanics This in a greater sense means make your product or service a game that others can work towards for personal and social status. People don't just care about how they are doing, they care about their performance in relation to others. After all what good is status if no one else knows you have it? Great game mechanics can even create achievement out of nothing. Airlines turned loyalty into a status symbol. Make People Feel Like Insiders ...

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, spent the last decade answering one question. What makes things so popular? We will follow Jonah throughout his book to discover why ideas, products, behaviors, and services are contagious and catch on in our world.  Introduction:   Why do products, ideas, and behaviors catch on? Some become popular because they are just plain better. Other because of an attractive price, and advertising. Although quality, price, and advertising contribute to products and ideas being successful, they don't explain the whole story. Social Transmission: Social influence and word of mouth. People share more than 16,000 words per day and every hour there are more than 100 million conversations about brands. The things others tell us, email us, and text us have a significant impact on what we think, read, buy, and do. Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for t...

We are what we repeatedly do; excellence then is not an act but a habit.      A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things. Athletes often worry so much about where they want to end up that they lose track of the particular day-to-day things they need to focus in order to get there. Stick to the improvement plan, one mindful step at a time, and your talent will naturally grow.  Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all these things and still be calm in your heart. This is the real meaning of peace. Questions to ask yourself: Am I a student of the game and open to learning? Do I take 100% responsibility for my successes and failures? Do I give everything I have? Am I just mindlessly working hard, or am I aware of what I'm doing? If I won't trust my sports skills in competition, then why am I working so hard to practice? Am I mindful at p...

Goal Setting: The key is to identify which goals are the most important to you and then write them down and display them in a location where you can look to them for motivation. Then set your sights on strategically taking your goals one at a time. Step by step. Day by day. Mental Imagery: Visualize to Actualize Imagining optimal performance is accomplished by creating or re-creating the whole or part of a sporting event or meeting. Imagery is one of the most powerful performance weapons we have in our mental arsenal. Mastering this mental skill will increase the probability of success in sports and business. Self Talk: Feed the Good Wolf One wolf is positive and beneficial, while the other wolf is negative and destructive. These two wolves fight for control over us. Which wolf is going to win? The one that you feed. The first step in feeding the good wolf is learning to identify your own negative and self-defeating thoughts.  The mind guides action. If we succeed...