3 Influence principles that Tony Robbins overlooked
Tony Robbins just finished the three days event of "time to rise 2024" - basically a free live stream about how you can be a new you and a new year and how to achieve breakthrough, available on YouTube and also on website.
If you haven't watched it I think the replay is still available on YouTube within seven days so you can go ahead and watch it, but in this article I would like to share an interesting observation and that is - the number of people reduces with each day of event!
The first day of the event has almost 1 million people joining and watching.
Second day of the event it has around 500,000 people joining and watching (50% of the previous day).
Third Day only around 300,000 people joining and watching (a little bit more than 50% of the previous day).
This is an interesting data to look at (even for the guru like Tony Robbins who definitely highly influential and highly known for the effectiveness of his program, he could not encourage more people to keep up the motivation for 3 days) and in this article I am going to share:
(1) why the number of people reduces with each day of the event and
(2) how we can fix this with the power of influence psychology
stay tuned.
I've all due respect and appreciation for Tony Robbins, who have spent a lot of efforts and resources on the three day events teaching people live and for free.
This is generous.
I was a bit frustrated about the less number of people who turn up on day two and day three does I feel like they're not getting the full impact of the events but it's very common for us to quit and to stop doing something right after the beginning so that's why I decided to write about it and share more about what actually happened and how can we improve.
If you are a businessman or women and you would like to hose a few days of events and this would be an article that may help you to capture your audience attention for days.
If you are still working in corporate or if you are doing some freelancing this article would also help you to notice the basic principle of the law of influence.
I started the online business as an interview coach and later on became a sales coach, now teaching more people how to monetise knowledge. In all of those niches there is a common underlying theme - influence.
This social media is playing the attention game - whoever can capture more attention and for longer time wins.
1
At the beginning of day one Tony Robbins told a story about how he paid a weeks of his salary at that time who is almost everything that he have got for a seminar that changed his life and he shared that story to inspire and illustrate the importance of treating this free free day program as a paid and expensive one.
The purpose of him starting with that story is to hopefully obtain a personal commitment from the audience.
But obviously more than 50% of audience forgot about that or failed to do as they promised on day two day three.
That is actually similar to the situation where we set our New Year resolution at the beginning of the year and by February we would have already forgotten about it and failed to act accordingly.
The intention is good but honestly it's hard to remember something remote (such as our dream and goals), because they are not urgent and they don't scream loud enough (unless we feel very emotional about the goal).
In Profitable Learner, I shared tricks how we can remember everything we learnt. That is important because if after learning something new we forgot about it then we can't probably use it and apply it for our own benefits. That is even worse than we never learn, since we would have to wasted time as well.
So how can we strengthen that?
One influence psychology that we can make use of in the situation is what I called "voluntary choices".
It means that we need to enter into something voluntarily and not being forced or being promoted being persuaded in order to stay and for a longer time.
We all have the rebellious mentality within us - it is established from when we are two years old.
So if we are being persuaded to join the events or we somehow don't feel like we want to do it voluntarily for the three-day event, we won't be able to stay for a long time.
That's why so many people quit in between the events because people are persuaded into join in because of the marketing campaign.
Tony Robbins has a lot of marketing resources and this free events is definitely one of the tools he used to grow his list, so when people feel like they are being persuaded to join that they are being marketed to join, the motivation is already halfed.
How to improve that?
By playing the influence psychology voluntary choices, people may feel more motivated if they need to fill in a more detailed questionnaire about why they want to join this three days event so that they would persuade themselves that "yes this is the reason why I'm joining" or "yes this is why I need to attend or the 30 days event".
Do it may hurts the sign up rates, those people who sign in to the events would be more committed because they have a reason and they voluntarily choose to join the event knowing what their reasons are.
This influence psychology is also used in my learning program to improve learning effectiveness by at least +50% when we know why we want to study or learn about a specific matter or subject in advance of learning.
The reason of why it works well, is because most likely we won't write the reason as "because I see the marketing campaign", more often than not the audience will look into themselves and their own situations to come up with the answer.
That makes it voluntary and that makes it relatable, hence higher commitment.
2
Another influence psychology that is relevant to explain why the number of people reduces with each day of the event is called "reciprocity".
When people join the free day events they already entered the name and email in exchange for the participation rights, that makes the audience think that they are the one giving first and expect something in return (which is the right to participate).
And so with this trade of personal data and right to participate in the event, which the rights of participate is exercised on day one, so the reciprocity has completed.
The audience would not feel like Tony Robbins is giving them more things so that they need to repay by staying in the event further.
It would be like when we go to the market and we pay for a product and we get the product that deal is done and we can leave. Same thing happen for the event.
When there are no more further obvious giving from the organizer's side, the audience feel like there's no further need to stay in the event based on the law of reciprocity.
How to improve that?
Well what Tony Robbins can do with little cost and little additional efforts, is to provide some take away maybe notes or maybe the PowerPoints or maybe something extra like a document etc, that he can give away at the end of day one, so that people by the law of reciprocation feel like they need to give something back in return and so they would come to day two event.
And by the end of day two, again give something to the audience so that they would return on day three.
Using the power of influence psychology, that giving is going to influence more audience to come back on the next day.
3
The third relevant influence psychology is "rebellious mindset".
The theme of the free event is "a new you in 2024 with breakthrough".
By the sound of this message it makes people feel like they are not good enough that they need to break through to achieve a new them for the new year and give up who we are already so there's a fear of loss of who they are currently in and friction in asking them to be better.
By rebellious mindset, when children can't get a toy, even though they doesn't want that toy before, they will find the toy very attractive and go for their toy immediately. The same psychology works for adults.
So when being asked to get a new you with breakthrough and to be better, people would be influenced to stay where they are.
When our freedom of choice of being who we want to be is restricted and limited, the more we want to rebel the message.
How to improve that?
Rephrase the message to include a part that reconfirm that here we are is already enough and ask whether we want to go even further would be one of the ways to get around the rebellious mindset.
Because we are asked to choose.
Then the answer would of course we want to be better of course we want to have more - but that is a voluntary choice (going back to the first influence psychology principle) that we choose, not something that you told me to. So that would feel more committed and motivated than merely "create a new you".
To your success,
Connie
