How to lower barriers to change when building and selling products — Jonah Berger’s advice for founders

 I, I'm curious, when you look at the body of work that's captured in the book, look, where do you see the, the biggest and most important additive new ideas?

And, and one of the reasons I was interested in, in sort of having you explain it is that you touch and build on a lot of really interesting. Things that have been, um, shared over the past 10 or 20 years. Right. In, in some ways it's picking up pieces of like the classic child Dini book influence or, um, you know, Annie Duke works with us and we did a, a, a great couple hours on her new book on quitting and, you know, exploring status quo bias and all of these things that kind of touch on different parts of what you've put together.

So like how do you articulate what you're bringing to the world in this new set of ideas?

 Yeah. You know, I mean, some of this book, um, is deeply my own. So, um, you know, there's research in the corroborating evidence chapter that, you know, is not even published yet on how, you know, multiple doses of influence encourage people to take action if they're, you know, uh, concentrated in time and, and things along those lines.

Um, similarly in, in the reactance chapter, you know, I talk about providing a menu and the, the power of choice. And we just recently published a paper showing, even if you give people sort of unrelated choice, so think about when you, when you go to a coffee shop and they, rather than asking for tips, ask you, you know, which ice cream do you like better?

Vanilla or chocolate dogs are cats, Um, uh, you know, Duke or unc, whatever it might be, and you sort of vote with your tips and showing that. Even unrelated choice can motivate people to take action. So there's a bunch of, you know, objectively new my stuff in here, but, but you're very right. There's also some stuff that is not mine and is, is not new.

So, you know, take the, the, the roots of the uncertainty chapter. Sure. It talks about freemium and, and a variety of different things. But, but the roots of that chapter is, is actually, you know, Everett Roger's old classic diffusion of innovations, Um, which, Probably most people listening have not read, um, but is an amazing sort of, uh, interesting book, Famous sociologist sort of talking about the diffusion of hybrid corn and, and various sorts of things and, and noting that the more something has higher triability, it's more likely to be successful. You know, that's not mine. I'm bringing some things together there, but I didn't invent that idea. And so I think while, while pieces of the book are certainly mine, I think one of the contributions of the book is really bringing these things together in a framework that hasn't been thought about before.

Um, you know, when I, when I've talked to executives or leaders or consultants or founders about trying to change something, um, you know, whether it's, um, a customer's mind, whether it's a a, a colleague or a peers behavior, whatever it might be, um, 98% of the time people come up with some version of pushing more facts, more figures, more reasons, more information.

That's the standard way. We think about getting people to go, Look, if I, if I just made one more phone call, if I, you know, just made one more PowerPoint presentation, if they just understood where I was coming from, they would, they would come around. And, and pushing is a sort of standard way to think about getting people to change.

Um, and if you look at most cases where that's applied, it just doesn't work, . Uh, and so it turns out there's a better way, um, really thinking about what the barriers are to change in removing them. And I think that's also a, a contribution of this book. finding the root, identifying what the barriers are, um, talking about common barriers and, and helping people figure out how to mitigate them.

 So maybe kind of building on there in, in the context of, of building and selling products and leading teams, why is in, in sort of the work that you've done change so difficult?

 I think there's a, a few reasons. Um, so, so first is the challenge of change itself. Um, and second is the approach we often use. anytime we're trying to get people to do something, whether it's buy a new product, use a new service, um, uh, you know, adopt an idea internally within an organization, we're often asking people to make a choice between something they've done before. and something new. Um, you know, the old product you always buy or a new product, and whenever people are faced with such a choice, um, between the old and the new, um, they have what, uh, is called the status quo bias, which is they have a tendency to stick with the status quo. And, and that by itself wouldn't be a bias, right? Uh, if we stick by the status quo because the status quo is better, that would be one thing.

 It's a bias because even when the new thing is better, in fact by, by some estimates up to 2.6 times better, we still tend to stick with the old one. And there are kind of three key reasons that underlie this status quo bias. We can think of this three sort of horseman of, of inertia. Um, one is, It's just easier to do things we've done previously.

It requires less effort. Um, you know, we've never gone to the grocery store together, but I, but I bet when you go to the grocery store, you tend to buy the same stuff again and again, not, not exactly the same thing every week, but if you, if you buy milk, you tend to buy a certain size milk from a certain brand, you buy eggs, same sort of thing, right?

It's just easier. It requires more work to figure out, which new thing would be better. And, and the same is obviously true with startups. You know, we all have the default way of doing things, um, whether it's a default app, whether it's a default way of, uh, working with a service provider, any, anything at all.

It's just easier, requires less work to, to stick, uh, with, with the old one. But it's not just about. It's also about attachment. Um, uh, old product services, ideas, initiatives. Things are not just old things. They're someone's old thing. It's someone's idea. It's someone's approach. It's someone's way of doing things, and they become attached to those things.

There's some nice research that shows in the, in the context of selling homes, for example, that the longer people have lived in their house or or apartment, the more they value it above and beyond market price. Why? Well, it's theirs, right? They can't imagine letting it go. It's, it's my place. and that's a little bit of the endowment effect also, that we may talk. Later. Um, and, and the third bucket, um, if it was just ease or attachment, that would be bad enough. But, um, if it, if that wasn't enough, there's also risk, which is that old things feel safe and new things feel risky, right?

We know the product we've bought, We know the way of doing business. We've tried the management strategy we, we've used, and if it, it's not perfect, and that's maybe true, but at least we know what's bad about it. Whereas that new. We don't know yet, right? It could be better, but it could also be worse.

And so that, that risk, that un uncertainty of the new also also leads us to avoid doing new things. So all three of those things underlie the status quo bias. And so the question then is how can we get people to change? And I think the challenges we talked a little bit about already is that, um, you know, we often think pushing is the right answer.

If I just push people harder, they'll change. And, and it's clear why we think pushing works, right? If there's like a chair in the middle of a room and we want people to go, well, pushing them is a good way to get the chair to move, right? But if we think about the last time we pushed someone, or if we think Chairs slide across the floor. People don't, people often dig in their heels, They resist, uh, they push back. and so I, I think what I would just say is, is very simply there's a better way, Right? Um, you can make a really nice analogy to chemistry. Um, uh, I am not a chemist. I'm not smart enough to be a chemist, but I, I do have some friends who are, and they, they talk about how chemical change is really hard.

You know, think about carbon being squeezed into a diamond. Think about plant matter being turned into oil over eons of time and, um, you know, various, uh, various, uh, forces. Pushing on them. And so in the lab, uh, chemists often want change happen faster. And so to do that, they add energy to the system. They add temperature, they add pressure, They sort of heat things up, they squeeze them together.

Almost like if you ever take a, a kernel of popcorn and throw it in the microwave, right? It, it heats it up and it. Increases the pressure inside and eventually pop, it becomes, uh, becomes popcorn. Um, and so chemists often do the same thing, but there's a special set of substances that chemists often use that make change happen faster and easier.

They don't increase the temperature, they don't increase the pressure, they take a different approach. Um, and these substances have done everything from clean the grime on your contact lenses to clean the grime on your car's engine. Multiple Nobel prizes have been won for innovations in, in this space.

And at the core of these substances are called catalyst. Um, and, and when we talk about catalysts at the office, in the social world, we think so and so was a catalyst. They were a change agent. The word catalyst actually has a very specific meaning. Catalysts don't just create change.

They create change by lowering the barriers to change. Uh, when you think about great catalyst in the social world, they don't say, Well, what could I do to get someone to change? In some sense, they say, Well, why hasn't that person changed already? What's stopping them? What are the barriers or obstacles getting in the way?

If I'm a salesperson, why hasn't this person bought my product or service? Is, is it because they don't have information? Maybe, or, or more likely they, they have enough information, but I don't understand the key problem that they're wrestling with, right? There's some barrier that's stopping them from doing this.

What is it? Um, and so, you know, uh, in writing this book, I've talked to amazing set of change agents. You know, everybody from, uh, top selling sales people, consultants, founders, all those sorts of folks. I've also talked to hostage negotiators, substance abuse counselors, parenting experts again and again. Uh, the same five barriers come up.

Um, I put 'em in a framework called the reduced framework that stands for reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence. I'm sure we'll talk about, uh, each in turn. But, um, you know, these five barriers come up again and again, if we understand these barriers, we can make change more likely in, in any situation.

 how does a lot of your thinking and research apply to sort of the classic venture idea of you need to build a 10 x better product as a starting point and, and, and sort of the thinking being, if you want people to change, you often need something, not to incrementally better, but dramatically do.

 Do you think that that idea is valid or not?

 I, in some ways yes, and in some ways no. Right. So If we can make a much better product, that's certainly a start. Um, but, but the problem is, you know, I work with a, a lot of early stage firms and, and, and larger multinationals and, um, you know, often I'll get called into something and someone will say, we've built this thing that no one's ever built before. Um, it's much better than everything came before it. Um, and so in terms of its quality, you know, it's theoretically better, right? It is 10 x better, whatever it is. Um, but if you ask them all, who needs this? Or what problem does this solve?

Or do people understand why it's better? They often sort of look at you like you're crazy. Like, what do you mean? It's, it's just better? Shouldn't it succeed? And so I think, um, I wouldn't even say being better is a necessary condition. It certainly is a helpful condition. Um, but it's definitely not a sufficient condition.

Um, it's not enough, uh, to be, to be better. because in some sense, you know, our competition isn't an established player. 

It's inert. Right. The biggest competitor I think startups have is inertia. Getting people to do something different. Sure, that thing might be better. Sure, your offering might be better, but I've gotta give up something I'm already doing to get there. And for some set of people, it may be better enough that they're willing to switch, but I think for a much larger group, um, it's just not about whether it's better or not.

It's about is it worth making a, a change? And so we really have to get people to let go of the past and help them understand why, why changing is a good idea.

 When you think about this idea of, of catalyzing someone or, or, or having someone do something different, did the strategies and tactics change based on those three pillars you outlined before? You know, which is how attached to someone, what's the perceived risk and the ease. If you dial any of those up or down, does it change the set of strategies and tactics or, or not?

 It to to, to some degree. But, but I think there's an even more basic question to, to ask, which is, is that question of why hasn't someone changed already? Right? What, what is the thing that's stopping them? Is it risk and uncertainty? Is it attachment? Um, is it, is it ease? We need to make it easier for them.

Maybe it may be something else. Um, uh, you know, I, I often work with clients where they say, Oh, we have this strategy. What do you think about this strategy? And, and I tend to do this annoying thing where, where I say, Well, well, what problem are we trying to solve with this strategy? And, and they, Why are you focused on the problem?

Like, let, do you like this strategy or not? And, and I often say, Well, it depends on the problem we're trying to solve. And some of this to me comes from, I used to work in brand naming. So, uh, uh, a number of years ago I worked for a company called Lexicon Branding. They named, um, the Penny chip, uh, Dasani Water, the Super Outback.

And I still do naming work from time to time. So, um, I named, uh, the, the real estate website, Trulia and have, have worked on a number of, of other sort of projects And when, when you name things, people are always like, Oh, you just come across the right name and you know, Right.

Like, you, you just hit it and there's that one name and you're like, This, this is it. This is the name that's just gonna change everything. And really, when you do naming work, it's never like, this is it. It's more like this is a direction and these are some solutions in this direction, and these are good solutions in this direction because they solve this problem.

But it's much less about the specific solution and much more about saying, what problem are we trying to solve? And if that's the problem we're trying to solve, what solution does, does a best job there. And so I think really starting by understanding the problem, starting by understanding your, your audience, um, the person, people, organizations, you're trying to change, that, that's essentially the most important thing.

 what was the story behind the truly a naming project

 I'll give you a quick, abbreviated version of, of, of the story. Um, uh, so, uh, you know, they were looking for something that, sounded open, easy to use, uh, but also had some hef to it, right? Um, uh, we, we want a website, uh, that is going to be sort of, uh, dealing with a, a difficult, uh, situation, buying a new house to be seeming simple and easy and sort of an improvement.

Um, but at the same time, like a bank. You know, we're not looking for that process just to be sort of flitty and fun. We wanna make sure they're gonna do a good job because it's a serious decision. And so they wanted something, they both had heft, um, uh, and, and sort of signaled openness. Um, and so worked through a number of different names, a number of solutions and, and directions.

Um, uh, you know, another name that was strongly considered was, was Portia. So combining Portico, which is obviously sort of window with, um, like cornucopia, which is sort of a lot of something. And so Portia suggesting a lot of homes, But, but the truly direction really came from thinking about kind of signoffs on, on email.

So you think of warm, uh, warm regards, um, you know, whatever it might be. And, and one thing, someone, sometimes people say is truly, and sort of thinking about words like that, but making it sound familiar. Um, and truly it sounds like a word we've heard before, right? It's like, if, if truly and Julia had a kid, it would be truly a, um, and so it wasn't that that solution was the only thing that was considered, but for a number of sort of data driven reasons and problem driven reasons, it did a good job, uh, of achieving what it was supposed to achieve.

 That's, that is very cool. Okay, so, so something you were talking about that is something that I really love is, is the idea of if you just had someone going around your office and, and asking everyone what is the problem they're trying to solve, you'd probably boost everyone's performance like that, That singular question is a powerful one.

If you peel that back a little bit or, or you help someone do that, are there any rituals or tactics that you think are particularly helpful to getting to the essence of what the problem we're trying to solve is in the context of what we're talking about, which is getting someone to adopt something, buy something, change something.

 Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is, is asking why, um, uh, and being willing to, you know, whether it's, uh, you know, the three whys where you don't ask why, once you ask why a couple of times, or whether you might wanna call it something else. But, um, it, it's really trying to think through that customer journey.

Um, uh, if you have multiple segments, what that customer journey is like for different segments and think about what's going to move them down that, that journey. So I'll, I'll give you an example. I was doing a project a few years ago for a, um, a B2B startup, um, that has software to help you find machine parts.

So imagine you, I don't know, you sell or you have backhoes or you, you know, have a John Deere tractor or whatever it might be, and you have a lot of these sort of machines. You need parts for them. Um, it often takes a long time to get parts. Often they're expensive, whatever it might be. And so they basically had a, a way to help you find parts faster.

And so they were selling a software, um, and they were thinking, Oh, you know, we'll knock off money on the price or we'll do advertising. And, and we started having a conversation around, well, well, what problem will that solve? Right? And so like, let's think through someone who's, um, uh, you know, trying to think about whether they need the software.

So first, you know, um, they may not, um, think they have a problem, right? They may not realize that they could solve more money or solve more time with this software. Maybe they realize they have a problem, but they don't think you'll provide the solution. Maybe they think you might provide the solution, but it's too risky.

Maybe they're sure you'd provide the solution and know they have a problem, but they're worried about it integrating with their existing software systems. Um, and we could come up with many other sort of possible, well, what, what the barriers might be. But what I like about that exercise is it helps us think about solutions, right?

Because if the issue is, hey, you know, I know I have the problem. And, um, I would like to solve that problem, but I don't trust that you're gonna solve the problem for me. Well then something like a free trial or an introductory rate or a freemium will will help, right? Cuz that'll sort of lower the barrier to trial.

That'll get in, they'll experience it, they'll like it and they'll adopt it. Alternatively, if they don't think they have a problem, well then free's not gonna solve that. Lowering the price is not gonna solve that. You could make something really cheap, but if I don't think I need it, I'm not gonna want to go get it.

And so for those individuals that segment, you need to raise attention to the problem, right? Maybe you give them a cost calculator that helps them see how much money they're losing every month through this problem. Sort of surfacing attention to the problem. On the other hand, they know they have the problem.

They trust you that your solution is valuable, but they don't know whether integrate with their existing systems well there, it's not about dropping the price or providing a, you know, a tool to help them calculate the savings. Then it's about having a team that comes in and providing white glove service to.

Take care of integration, right? Those are three very different solutions. And there, there are probably dozens of others, but very different solutions. And the efficacy of those solutions depends on which problem we believe is, is the issue, or which multiple problems we believe are the issue. And so it's not really until you understand the problem, can you begin to prescribe a solution.

You think about being a doctor, they, don't say, Well, let me put a cast on your leg and say, Let me understand the problem and only once I understand the problem can I prescribe a solution. And I think too often, leaders, salespeople, um, uh, founders are, are doctors that think they have a solution regardless of what the problem is. And I think they don't always understand what the problem is. And so thus not only don't understand whether they're truly selling a solution, but which facets or aspects of their solution to focus on forgive audience because they don't understand those audiences' needs.

 Any thoughts on, on the role ? Something that that sort of came up recently is, is a founder again, is building in, in this case a technical product, a piece of infrastructure. And I found that everyone's leaning in and excited on the conversation, but then they schedule a meeting for four weeks out to look more deeply at the product.

Or I'm super excited, email me and it either goes into sort of the scheduling vortex that never happens, or it happens in two months, which seems to be an indication that, that it's certainly not urgent. Any thoughts on, on that type of problem space?

 Yeah. So it relates a little bit to something I I talk about in the endowment chapter around burning the ships or sort of highlighting the costs o of an action. the challenge is like, at every moment, is it really worth doing something new? We, we can just wait. It's fine. It's, it's not that bad. Um, and there's kind of some interesting research which asks people you know, which hurts more. Uh, a minor injury like spraining your ankle or sort of, um, you know, bumping your elbow or, uh, whatever it might be, or a major injury like, you know, shattering your kneecap or, you know, breaking your arm or, or whatever it might be.

And, and everyone gives the same meds. Say, Oh, of course, you know, a, a major injury is much more painful. Like, you know, if I broke a limb it'd be really, really bad. Where, you know, just lower back pain that comes and goes once in a while really is, isn't that bad? It's just a, a minor pain. Um, and that intuition makes a lot of sense.

Uh, and it's completely. . wrong, and and the reason why is because if you have a major injury, you do work to fix it, right? You go to the emergency room, you get a cast, you go through physical therapy, you do all the difficult things because it's so bad that it requires change. But if you have a minor injury, lower back pain, that flares up once in a while, you never do the work to get it fixed cuz it's not above that threshold to change it. I think another way of thinking about it is like, you know, if you have a couple flies in your house once in a while, you never call an exterminator cuz it's just a couple of flies. If your house is infested with cockroach is you call the exterminator right away.

And, and so I think the challenge, um, as, uh, you know, a sales lead or a founder to sort of create that urgency is in, in some sense you. Make people realize that they have a major injury. Make people realize that their house is filled with cockroaches. So I'll give you a, a painfully simple example, but I, I like this example a lot. So, um, I have a cousin who every time, uh, he would, uh, sign his email would, um, you know, go down to the bottom of his email and write Best Charles.

So write best Charles at the bottom. Every email he'd sign out. and I was like watching him do this. I was like, Why do you type that out every time? He's like, What do you mean it only takes like five or 10 seconds? And I said, I, I know, but you could automate it. You could just put that in your email signature and then every time you'd save those five or 10 seconds, he was like, Yeah, I don't really know how to use email signatures.

And so, you know, it's just not worth the time for me. And, and this is exactly what we talked about a little bit before, right? At every moment, The time to go look up how to, you know, automate an email signature would take, I don't know, five minutes and the time to write that email signature would take 10 seconds.

 And so at no point in time isn't worth taking the action. There's no urgency, but over time, he's wasting a lot of time doing this. And so this would bother me forever. And, and finally I was writing this book, and so I, I was doing this highlighting, uh, the cost of an action sort of section.

 I realized this was a perfect example of this. So I went to him and I said, Hey, you know, how many emails do you write a day? He said, I don't know, 40 or 50 emails. He said, Oh, okay. How many emails do you write a week? I don't know, 300 emails, 400 email, something like that. I said, Okay. How much time do you spend.

On each email writing your email signature, and he's five or 10 seconds. And I said, Okay, how much time do you spend every week writing your email signature? And he thought about it and he did the math. And then he went ahead and he looked up how to automate an email signature 

Because at every moment, the cost of change is more than the cost of an action, but added up over a period of time, even a short period of time. The cost of inaction are higher than the cost of action. And so we have to highlight the cost of an action. We can't just tell people, Hey, we've got something better.

This is gonna, you know, save you time, save you money, whatever it is, we have to quantify it and quantify the cost of an action. Show people that they are losing something by not doing something, and help them realize that even if the moment to moment costs are harder to create change, uh, even over a short period of time, the cost of inaction is higher than the cost of action.

 it's such a great story and illustrates this idea of at any given moment that the benefit maybe isn't transformative or obvious, but it's, it's solving the annoyances over a long period of time that actually delivers a lot of value. I'm curious, is there any other, if you're the founder of a company that's, that's delivering a product like that to the market, are there any other strategies or tactics they should keep in mind?

 many of your listeners are probably familiar with the idea of freemium models, sort of, uh, you know, how do you solve this challenge of change?

 You, you lower the cost of change, right? You make it less money, uh, let's say in the first period to, to try something. And, and really at the core that's about is understanding switching costs, right? You know, you got an old product, you got an old service, old way of doing something, and there's that new thing, but there's the cost of change, right?

Even something as simple as switching your phones, let's say from an Apple phone to a Google phone or vice versa, will not only have to buy a new phone, but you have to understand how to use all the, the different apps that are in there, and you have to sign into different things and transfer all your stuff over.

There's a cost of change. It's not just a monetary cost, it's also a time cost and an effort cost. You know, a company's using a certain software system, everyone knows how to use it, not only to have to pay for that new software system, but even if it's not very expensive, they've gotta know how to use that one and learn how to use it.

And so training is required and so nobody, nobody wants to switch over. but the challenge is not just their switching costs, right? if you think about when the costs of change, And when the benefits of change occur, the costs are often upfront and the benefits are often later.

why are you switching to a new software system? It's gonna save you money in the long term. Uh, it's gonna save you time, gonna save you effort, whatever it might be. That's the benefit of change. But you incur the costs before you incur the benefit, right?

 You gotta pay the money, you gotta switch everybody over. You gotta do the work. And so the work is now, and the benefit is later and further. The work is often certain it's gonna cost a certain amount of money. It's gonna take at least a certain amount of time or effort, and the benefit is often uncertain.

Right. It should be better, but how do I know it's better? And so this is called the cost benefit . Costs are now, benefits are later. Costs are certain benefits are uncertain.

And so you gotta figure out how to solve this, this cost benefit, . Um, and this was actually one of the reasons that I, I wrote this book in the first place. I was sort of working on problems like this with a variety of different companies. I was helping, uh, Google launch a new service 

And I realized it sort of came back to the same key issue again and again. And, and if you look at what solves this problem well, things like Freeman are, are pretty good, right? What a Freeman do. How does that solve the problem? What, what, what it does, it says, don't trust me that it's good. Try it. Right.

Check this thing out. Um, and by the way, I'm gonna lower the cost of trial. I'm gonna make it not as expensive upfront. Now, maybe it still requires effort and time, but at least the monetary cost is lower. And so people are more willing to try it because it, it solves that cost benefit, at push some of the cost to later and some of the benefits, uh, to sooner.

And, and, you know, everyone's used, uh, freemium models and there's an appendix in the back of the book with sort of how to do freemium better. But, but I often work with clients that say something like, God, you know, I love this idea of freemium, but how do I use it here? Right? I sell a physical product and can we do freemium with a physical product?

I'm a doctor. What would freemium be in a doctor sort of space? I'm a fleet management company that helps manage, uh, vehicles for other firms. What's freemium in, in, in that case? And so if you look at it though, freemium is just one example of a much broader phenomenon. Right. If you think about going to a a car dealership, and you say, Hey, I'm interested in this new car.

And they say, Great. Give me $50,000. You'd say, No way, right? I'm not gonna give you the money until I actually know that, that I like the thing. They don't do free at a car dealership. What do they do? They, they give you a test drive, right? They allow you to sit in the car and see whether you like it.

That's not free in the sense, no free version of the car and premium version of the car. But the, the underlying idea is the same, right? There's a first period of time where we lower the costs or the barrier trial. We make it easier for people to experience the value of the offering and. If they like it, there's a later period in which they incur some of those costs, whether monetary or otherwise.

And I think the, the thing I don't like about freemium is it focuses on the monetary costs. And the monetary costs are part of the costs. That's part of what the switching costs are, but it's also the time and effort and energy. And often we are unaware of those costs and don't think about them. And if we only focus on the monetary costs, we miss out on getting a lot of people to come over.

And so it's really about lowering the barrier to trial, whether that's through a test drive, whether that's through freemium, whether that's through sampling, whether that's renting rather than buying, whatever it may be. Creating some sense of, of urgency. Resolving that urgency problem by saying, Don't trust me.

Try it yourself. And more likely to try means more willing to buy.

 Are there, when it gets to the, when it gets into this idea of, of effort is required and time is required to get to some unit of value, are there other strategies and tactics for people to keep in mind other than lowering the barrier?

 Yeah, I mean, I, I think, uh, we, we have a very good sense of what lowering the monetary barrier is. We have a less good sense of what lowering the time or the effort barrier is. Um, but, but one thing I talk about there is, is how can you drive discovery in some sense? How can you bring the trial to people?

Um, because the challenge of trials, look, there's a set of people that are willing to try something. Um, but trial usually takes effort. I have to know you exist to try something. Um, and I have to think I would like you and I have to be willing to do the work to go try it, right? If I, um, you know, test drive a car, I have to know that the brand exists.

I have to identify where the dealership is. I have to drive there, I have to sit in it, I have to experience it. It's some work. Um, if you look at what company like Carvana has done, right, um, they bring the car to you so they reduce some of that cost. You can try it at home for seven days, so they reduce some of that cost of trial.

Um, but, but that idea is sort of saying, Well, well, how can we bring the trial to people? How can we embed trial in something they're already. Doing, And there's a nice example of this with the company. Acura obviously makes cars and um, you know, they had this problem a number of years ago where it turns out lots of people like Acura.

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Wharton professor and author Jonah Berger on overcoming barriers to change when building breakthrough products, convincing customers or leading teams.