people with new ideas whether they have neurodiversity or not are threatening to the status quo right and there's nothing wrong with the status quo per se the reason status quo exists is because things are kind of working right and the people who are the most defensive of the status quo are people who benefit from the status quo so if you come in and say I'm going to try something new with good no guarantee of success and by the way if we fail you're all going to lose your jobs not lot of takers which is why
most people don't start businesses most people aren't entrepreneurs and nor should they be because the chances of failure are overwhelming and even if you have the desire and you've got a family and kids like it's just not worth the risk because the chances are in the high 90th percentiles that you're going to fail in the first three years and so you have you have to remember that and so my rule has never been to try and convince people who don't want to be convinced cuz all you're going to do is fight I'm right you're wrong
and they're going to say no I'm right you're wrong and you're both right contextual for me My Religion for new ideas has been something called the law of diffusion of Innovations bell curve in every population you're going to have a standard deviation you're going to have high performers you're going to have low performers you're going to have an average always right what EMT Rogers wrote about in the 1950s when he wrote about the low of diffusion is that the first 2 and a half% of any population this one included are going to be your big
idea people your innovators Steve Jobs Richard Branson right the next 12 and a half% of your population are your early adopters these are the people who are very comfortable spending time money or energy to be a part of something that reflects their own beliefs they have a pretty good res risk tolerance they stand in line for 48 hours to see a new Star Wars movie where you could just go two weeks later and buy a ticket and go in for them that's worth it right then you have your majority the 68% more cynical more practical
what's in it for me will I get my money back am I going to get in trouble if everything goes wrong right then you have your laggers the last 16% the only reason they make any change is because you have no choice anymore the law of diffusion says that mass Market success or mass Market acceptance for any idea or product you have to achieve between 15 and 18% Market penetration and there's a social phenomenon that happens called a Tipping Point it just goes and the reason is very simple it's because the early majority will not
try something something until someone else has tried it first problem is is that if you ignore this you'll always get about 10% of people who believe what you believe who see what you see right always ah love her she gets it oh my God he's an idiot he doesn't get it get what but that's how we describe it right and that 10% is not enough to make the system tip and that's where you get frustration and so uh What Jeffrey Moore wrote about called crossing the chasm is how do you get from 10% to 15
to 18% and what I learned is that the way you talk to early adopters is by starting with why talk about what you believe not what you do talk about why you're doing it not what the plan is right talk about the dream and what I learned was the more I did that the more I found the early adopters and they were willing to take risks and they were willing to experiment I built my entire brand with zero marketing budget and no public relations and at the time no social media right it's because I made
a decision that I was going to Focus only on early adopters and I was going to start with why I got really good at learning how to talk to people at an emotional level not a product or fact level right eventually the facts and product had to Bear out but that's not where I started start with why um and the system tipped and I've done it in companies I've done it in companies um and so if you want to affect change in your company stop trying to convince people so I'll give you real life example
in the early days of me spreading this message of start with Y I was doing consulting because I still hadn't figured out like how I wanted to spread it and um uh I needed every dollar I could get I was living hand to fist I mean I had no money in the bank account literally like pennies and uh I remember a guy called me and he heard about me and he said you know I got your number from who you know whomever uh I've heard you do great work he literally said this to me convince
me why I should hire you now as much as I needed his business I got very good at hearing who's an early adopter and who's not convince me I should hire you not an early adopter so I literally I said to him don't don't he goes what I'm like I am the wrong guy for you right but the people who called me and said you're onto something it's not perfect but you're on to something I said yes to them every time even if they paid me zero because what ended up happening is they let me
experiment on their businesses I would literally say can I try something new on your company went yeah try go that's an early adopter mentality going back to you find the early adopters the ones who want to try it volunteer I'll tell you a real life example of how it worked inside a company you'll like this too a big company they got 100,000 employees they wanted me to build a millennial training program for them right because of the millennial leadership issues so I said okay but we're going to do it my way because this is how
big companies do things they spend lots of money to hire all the best people to make the training program and then they launch it and they have PowerPoints Galore saying this is why you need to take part in this program and people go no and they go no it's really good and then it fails it's good stuff just no adoption and a lot of resistance I know this because you can't take new things and give them to the majority duh so I said we're going to do it my way and here's what we're going to
do because early adopters you want small barriers you don't want to make everything too easy you want small barriers right so I said here's what we're going to do I'm going to teach the first class and I don't know what the program is going to look like we have no program we're going to teach one class and I'm going to teach it and they have to apply we only have a hundred spaces and they have to apply to be a part of it and I made them write essays from across the company we made the
announcement it's going to happen you had to we we did an application process wasn't easy we read the actual essays and chose a 100 people uh we told them that you're going to have to come to New York for the training wherever you are across the country you're going to get no extra money for it um we said that nobody born before the year 1984 was eligible to come into the room which means all the senior leaders couldn't come spy on me I was the only person born before 84 who was in the room and
it was fantastic and we had tons of fun and at the end I said look this program isn't built I need volunteers to help build it and here's the conditions I'm going to we can't we don't have any more money to give you you still have to do your regular job it's not it probably won't help you get promoted it's just that you think this is important work I had 50 volunteers from the room who wanted to help build the program great I let them all go back to their job they all fly home about
two weeks later the sponsor my sponsor at the company calls me up furious at me you screwed me I'm like what happened he goes I'm getting calls from across the country from all of these managers screaming and yelling at me demand in why aren't my people invited into this thing and I leaned in I said that's called demand we created demand because all the early adopters went back and said this is amazing we need it no marketing no PR no powerp points and best of all they were going to build it for us so that's
how you leverage the low of diffusion when you have new ideas in a system that's largely resistant to new ideas
