How to lower barriers to change when building and selling products — Jonah Berger’s advice for founders
Episode 75

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

Our guest today is Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of “Contagious” and “Invisible Influence.” Today we’re chatting about his follow-up book, “The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.”

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Our guest today is Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of “Contagious” and “Invisible Influence.” 


Today we’re chatting about his follow-up book, “The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.” Founders start companies to change industries and behaviors, but change is hard. Going back to chemistry, Jonah notes that catalysts don't just create change by pushing harder or exerting more energy — they remove or lower the barriers to change. (In the book Jonah offers a helpful framework about 5 specific barriers to change, called REDUCE — which stands for reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence.)


We focus on how founders and leaders can do that in the context of building and selling products. Jonah shares his thoughts on:


You can follow Jonah on Twitter at @j1berger. You can email us questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson