Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey there, Melina. Here. Really quickly, before we get into the episode, if you've ever wanted to level up your goals or your communication, I've got great news. Two of my most popular courses through Texas A and M's Human Behavior Lab are open now for enrollment. Setting brainy goals helps you to actually achieve those big plans, not just write them down and forget about them. And creating better presentations will totally transform the way you communicate at work and in meetings or on stage. They're part of the certificate in Applied Behavioral Economics. But you don't have to commit to the entire program to join either of these classes. There are no prerequisites, no fluff, just three weeks, all virtual directly with me and some other brainy folks from around the world. If you're interested to learn more and enroll, head to hbl, like Human Behavior Lab, tamu, like Texas A and M University Edu, and click on certificate program to learn more and enroll again. That's hbl, tamu, Edu and click on certificate program. I can't wait to see you in class. And when you're ready, let's start the show. Welcome to episode 547 of the Brainy Business, Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Toby Stewart, author of Anointed. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:37]
B
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:53]
A
Hello.
- [01:53]
B
Hello.
- [01:53]
A
Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer, and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Let's say you have two ideas. Same product, same pitch, maybe even the same business plan. One gets millions in funding, the other. Crickets. Why does this happen? We love to believe that we live in a meritocracy, that who gets farther along is just based on merit. But the truth is, who says something is valuable often matters more than what's actually being talked about, who they're talking about and what they say. From founders getting funded to artists going viral, to employees rising through the ranks, there's something that's often invisible but incredibly powerful at play. It's called anointment. And I'm super excited, of course, to talk more about it today with today's guest, Dr. Toby Stewart, who is here to share about his new book, the Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner Take Most World. Toby is a professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of business and one of the world's leading experts on entrepreneurship and status dynamics. He has spent decades studying how social signals, endorsements and perceived prestige determine success not just in Silicon Valley, but across every industry all around the world. It is absolutely fascinating. You're going to love it. What we dig into today is why this happens and what you can do about it. If you've ever wondered why some ideas take off while others that are just as good don't, or why your resume needs more than just skills to stand out, this conversation is going to change the way you think about influence, leadership, customer behavior and power. As you listen, consider who are the anointers in your industry and whose ideas might you be unintentionally overlooking because they don't look the part really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes, books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and atthebrainybusiness.com 547 now. Let's jump right in. Dr. Toby Stewart, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
- [04:06]
B
Thank you, Molina. Thrilled to be here.
- [04:08]
A
Yes. I'm very excited to be chatting with you today. Have loved the book and looking into your work. For anyone who doesn't yet know you, before we jump into that, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
- [04:21]
B
Yeah. I'm a business school professor. I have been for a long time. I've had an itinerant career, so I've been at a lot of them. I'm at UC Berkeley right now. I run our entrepreneurship department and I have a research team that works on a bunch of projects. A little bit varied. A lot of AI these days, but. But most everything has a social status angle.
- [04:47]
A
Definitely. Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of AI in stuff these days. Everywhere, it seems. Right.
- [04:53]
B
Yeah.
- [04:56]
A
Well, I'm sure we can have some thoughts and things on that. And I know at the end of the book you include some of this kind of future look and perspective. I'm so engrossed with the theming of the book and it's a term that I have not seen seen used in this space before, but it feels like so perfect in the way that it's put together. So this idea of being, you know, anointed. Can you share a little bit about how, how we got here kind of what, what it's about?
- [05:25]
B
Yeah, I mean the title, I think I'm disclosing a little bit my Catholic school roots, but anointed. So I have spent the better part of my career working on questions around social status. And you know, I think when people think about that they often like your mind goes to fashion or Hollywood or spheres of life such as those. I actually have mostly worked on science and technology and entrepreneurship. So the role of status in driving outcomes, differential outcomes in those contexts, which is one of the super interesting things about the phenomenon. Like you think like these are super objective areas of economic activity where you know, it's like the greatest idea that wins in science, or it's the coolest company or the most novel technology or the best team or whatever, some objective measure of a startup that determines who wins. And it turns out so much of it is who gets anointed. So that's the book and it runs about, it runs sort of big to small. So anointed with a capital A. Like, you know, you're blessed by somebody super, super important or you get a degree from an Ivy League university and you experience elevated status because of that to just way smaller episodes of like daily life. And you get a compliment in front of people by someone who's significant or you know, you add a key connection on LinkedIn or you know, or, you know, as I often say about social status, it all sort of goes back to the middle school playground. Whatever happens there is like status dynamics playing out. And so, you know, you're like, you're, you're sitting around and, and the popular kid throws you the ball or whatever.
- [07:13]
A
Yeah, well, and that's like. So in, you know, behavioral economics we talk a lot about social proof, right? So I have multiple episodes on social proof and we talk, you know, there seven or you know, depending on where you look. I'm sure somebody's got 50 types of social proof that they list out somewhere. Right? But so this like slightly different lens, it's like very similar to social proof. But the way that you talk about that anointment and like how it gets kind of like this deeper aspect of what's kind of behind the social proof, I think in that way was something that just was very interesting to me. And like I said that idea of the like and you are now blessed, right? Like I put the, you know, you're good to go. You like the, the literal stamp of approval that's like, ta da, I've made it right. But like why, why is that right? And showing how that ripples through. So for you, where you're saying like social status or social proof and Anointment. Like, why did you kind of, like, lean into, I guess, that particular term versus just talking about social status? Maybe it just came around with the book. I don't know. Or is it something you've talked about in this way for a long time?
- [08:21]
B
You know, so. No, I mean, I. The. The story of the book is partly. I mean, there are 15 stories of the book. Of course, it's always that way. But one of them is. It was like. It was a typical deathly quiet day during COVID and I was walking on a. On a beach in Southern California, and, like, the title came to me. And then, you know, it's one of these things where, like, if you. If you. If. If you think of a. A title you're infatuated with, then you have to write the book.
- [08:51]
A
Yeah.
- [08:52]
B
Kind of obliged to oblige to. But I had really spent a lot of. So a lot of my research was on. And, you know, I mean, kind of there's. There's social proof is a. Is a. Is a broad concept, but. But I had spent a lot of my research career looking at what. What I mostly called endorsements. And the idea was that social status is this kind of peculiar resource because it's kinetic, like, it moves around a lot. And it's funny because it doesn't deplete. Right. So Harvard, year after year after year, can give out degrees. And if it's a little bit selective about who it. Who it brings in and it's thoughtful about what it does. Right. It doesn't lose prestige when it. When it gives it to somebody else. So it has interesting character to it. But you could think of it as a secondhand social proof, right? Where, like, you know, where what. What. What happens in the status world, which is, by the way, all worlds. Because one of the arguments I make in the book is this is literally ubiquitous phenomenon. Like, it impacts us on. In, like, all walks of life, you know, the economy, our social life, even our families and personal lives. You know, what we pay attention to, what we consume, how we behave. But endorsements are like secondhand social crews, where people who are prominent or organizations that are prominent bless somebody else via their affiliation or they're imprimatur. Um, and anointment is just kind of a catchy term for that process.
- [10:31]
A
Oh, definitely. It. Like I said, I love it. And I've been, you know, thinking about it a lot as I've been, you know, reading the book, preparing for our conversation today. And so thank you for digging in on that a little bit for People and getting a feel for that sort of idea. I also. So I feel like there's a little bit. I know. See, I always get so excited. I want to talk about 10 things at once, which I guess I'll use that as it's time to make a choice. I have to choose a direction to go. And you have a really, you know, great section talking about choice, which is one of my favorites. You know, in true behavioral science fashion. Can you share a little bit about why choice is even important when it comes to being included in this book?
- [11:17]
B
Yeah, so one of the, I mean, one of the key arguments and you know, talk about wanting to go in 10 directions. I have that affliction too, kind of at all times. So, you know, so. So let me try not to do that right now. But one of the, one of the key themes in the book is that we actually need social status. Like, it's functional for us and it absolutely comes with downsides, but it helps us a lot. And the way in which it helps us is. And, and you know, Cherry, done many programs on, on this in the past where we have choice overload. We're not amazingly good at making decisions. Right. We don't. We have these like, theoretical models of how we should make choices, but none of us are able or capable of, of acting in that way. There's all of behavioral economics and all the psychology, cognitive psychology, about all of the heuristics that we use and so on, and those are all aimed at like, let's get to a decision in some reasonable period of time and hopefully it's a reasonably okay decision, but we don't get bogged down forever and ever and ever. And status is absolutely a dimension of the reduction of optionality and decisions. And, and there are really three in that section of the book. I, I argue there are just like three broad kinds of decisions that we all make. One is what to consume. And I mean that extremely broadly. So I mean just classically, like, you know, you go to it, you go into a clothing store, you're going to walk out with an item, what item are you going to walk out with? Or you go to the wine store and you're going to walk out with a bottle of bottle. Walk out. So those are standard consumption choices. But, but I would include like the bigger one that confounds me all the time, which is like, what am I going to look at, what am I going to attend to, what am I going to read, which social media posts am I going to belabor and pay attention to like all of that. So we're deluged with optionality around that. And, and social status is a way of cutting down the optionality on it. The second, the second domain is behavioral. Like we spend our lives in groups, in teams, at the workplace, in social groups, nearly everything that we do. And we then have to decide how to behave. And the status ordering in the group dictates lots of behaviors which then just kind of make things more expedient. And the third one, which, you know, maybe I won't get into because you asked, you said 10 and I'm already up to four or five. Five things right now is status is really valuable for, at the group level, for, for coming up with a scheme to allocate resources across members. And if it isn't obvious, I'll just say it. If you have high status, you tend to get more.
- [14:17]
A
Yeah, in all fairness and everything in the way. Yeah, like, not the way that it should be, but that's sort of the way it works out. Right?
- [14:24]
B
I mean. Exactly. And so the book, I mean, that is another dimension in the book, which is how, you know, status orders. Like we have these status hierarchies everywhere. And that part of the status hierarchy comes from what we would think about as equitable differences among us, which are, you know, things like talent and effort, which very much influence status. Like, you work hard, you're often rewarded in the status hierarchy for that effort. And if you're really, really, really good at something that's valued by a group, the group recognizes your talent. Status also comes from ascriptive characteristics, race, gender, family background, caste or social stratum. For very stratified societies for which and most of human civilization. That is exactly the world we live in, where you were born into a social stratum and you didn't really ever move out of it. So status comes from other places that are less equitable, but it very much determines the distribution of opportunities. High status actors in all walks of life are rewarded with greater opportunity.
- [15:36]
A
Definitely. So as we think about the, you know, just sort of applying some of this into, you know, work and business and whatnot. As we think about how to use this, knowing you have, you know, a bit at the end of the book that's kind of talking about this forward looking, but we'll, we'll pause a little bit and think about just kind of conceptually here. So, you know, we have some different kind of categories in the way we talk about information here on the show, one of which is kind of that brand or customer experience and Also like pricing and sales. So I think that consumption, general bucket of choice is one where this comes into play a lot. What would you say that, you know, ideally, if we're looking from that brand side, you know, or as a business, as you're thinking about how people consume things and how this status or anointment comes into play, you know, what are some things that people should be keeping in mind as they're considering how to, you know, communicate about their company? If they want people to consume the things that they're selling?
- [16:37]
B
Well, so we, so if we think about it from the standpoint of you're a company and you're driving revenue, you know, we, we and in many more walks of life than I think people think about, we live in a status based world. So, so like take the market for luxury goods or something. You know, there were blatantly obvious that there is prestige attached to logos and that people are, are willing to pay a great deal for, you know, a particular, a particular brand. And then if you're a producer in any of those markets, you are implicitly, deeply aware of the anointing phenomenon because you're super careful who you affiliate the brand with and what the imagery looks like and what the message you're crafting with. But, but if you think about the process of building a brand, it's this interesting, reflective, ongoing, reflective process where you create affiliations for the brand, you create celebrity endorsements, and you take photos of just the right people, you know, carrying the item and all the things. And that's a way to reflect their status onto the brand. And it also goes in the opposite direction if it's a super high prestige logo. Right? Which is why, which is why we want them. So in certain walks of life, people are super attuned to it, but like, but then let's go to an area that's home turf to me. So I have, you know, for, I don't know, 15 years run these entrepreneurship programs at some of the prominent business schools in the United States. And so I don't know how many students I've had who have started companies or coming to me to pitch their companies. Hundreds, thousands by this point, might be up to like four digits. I'm dating myself, but lots and lots of starting companies and you know, and they're like, it's exactly the same thing. So you think about like, you know, so I live in a world typically of venture capital backed entrepreneurship and you think about building a company. And so much of it is. Did you get into Y Combinator? The Like Super Prominent, you know, formerly Sam Altman wasn't the founder but ran Y Combinator for a while. Super Prominent accelerator. That's just like such a branding stamp in Silicon Valley or who's the VC who wrote your check. And you know, and if you think about what happens at like that. So you, you might just be a person or he might be a founding team, you might be three people. NYC comes along and then Sequoia Capital comes along, right? And like it, you might not have had the best idea, you might not have been the best team. You know, there's like some other team that's really, really good where. But that didn't happen to them, right. And so now imagine all the things the kes gave of things that happen afterwards. You know, like you this startup then needs to recruit somebody who do. Who are they able to recruit? The top of the talent market. And then as these things happen, it all fuels back to itself, right? Then the company goes out to raise capital again. But it has like the All Star employees now because the all Star branded invest investors come in and you know, and we go on to, you know, we go on to build the company.
- [19:58]
A
So as you're talking about that, I think that is such a valuable piece of information, right. For people. It's like you get the one right person and everything can snowball in a really positive way for people. It actually helped to remind me too about, I love at the beginning of the book you give a lot of examples of. So there's the Rembrandt piece, there's the scientist, the pseudoscience paper that doesn't get published. Right. So I think these examples are really helpful in kind of showing almost how silly some of this is. Like being able to realize we're doing this thing whether you share one or both of them. Can you share a little bit about those pieces?
- [20:36]
B
Yeah. Thank you for the question. And that's like these kinds of examples and there's an endless number of them just got me so juiced up about this topic. And so what I'll do is I'll just. Let me just take the 10 seconds and lay out the thought experiment and then give you some examples. Like suppose you take an identical thing, okay. It's a, it's a paper or it's a bottle of wine or it's a company or it's whatever you or or a painting and it's identical and you associate it with two different people and one is very prominent and the other isn't. Right. So in this thought experiment like the quality or the merit of the item is unchanged because it's literally the identical item across the two identity states. But the fate of it. And so the opening and story in the book, which, you know, I love it when, I just loved it when I found it, is about a Rembrandt. And at the time, so I know much more about art now, but I was, I was definitely new to the, to the field when I, when I came across the story. But it was so intriguing because like, you walk into a museum and you see these placards on the wall of a museum and it says, you know, van Gogh or it says Monet or it says Rembrandt or, or it says Picasso or. But it turns out like, we're not always 100% sure, particularly for the old masters, like, the older it gets, the more question marks there are around provenance. And so we think there's like 384 Rembrandts or something. But, you know, is there, like, are we really sure about all 384? And there's probably a bunch that we haven't identified. Right. And so the opening story is about a painting and it's being auctioned by Christie's, and Christie's has it attributed to the Circle of Rembrandt, which means disciple and Rembrandt experienced Rembrandt collector sees the painting at an auction and just in the auction catalog and kind of light bulb goes off and he says, he thinks to himself, this is natural Rembrandt. So he buys the painting and he pays like £100,000 or something, which was actually after it was bid up a lot, which happened because somebody else thought it might be a Rembrandt as well. But if it were actually a Rembrandt, it would be worth, I don't know, fifty, a hundred million dollars. So it would be worth thousands of times more. But the interesting thing is, no matter what, it's the same painting. There's just one painting. And you're either going to call it the Circle of Rembrandt and then it's like, eh, and. Or you're going to call it a Rembrandt and then every museum in the world is going to compete to have it and you know, it's worth a fortune. And you know, that's an extreme example, but it turns out this is true for resumes. So you take a resume and you, you create two versions of a resume. They're identical, but you put a name on one that implies a Caucasian nail and you Put a name on the other that that implies a Hispanic or, or a black male. And like, the resumes get different callback rates. They're valued differently, even though they're the, the ident. The identical document. And that's status at play, like directly because you literally. There's no difference whatsoever by definition of this, the, the thought experiment we're running and these vignettes, there's no difference in the product, but there's a huge difference in how the market values the product. And that's status. It's this, the, the, the status of the person connected to the, to the artifact.
- [24:11]
A
Yeah, I loved that Rembrandt story as well in reading it and this. And you can see, like, even without having a huge background in, you know, art provenance and whatever, but I could see where this was going, right, as it's like going through the story and to say, so it's still undecided as people can't. Haven't weighed in to say it's definitely a Rembrandt or not. But if once the right person says, okay, it is, then it goes from being worth a hundred thousand dollars or actually less than what he paid for it, you know, 10, 15, $20,000 pounds, whatever, to be worth 50, 100 million. Because someone said yes. Right. Like, but why?
- [24:51]
B
And then there's the whole question of who gets to say but yes, right. Which is another, which is another status game. Right. I mean, why is it that the Nobel Prize is so, so prominent but some other prize isn't? Right. I mean, and so that's all part of the status process, the anointment process.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah, well, and so, so good to show that, like just a tiny tweak and things go a different way where you were talking about the resumes and this sort of future space and just leaning back to where you're talking a little bit about AI at the end of the book, you talk about in trying to predict founders, I think it feels like a good segue, even though it's like we're jumping all over in the book content. So hopefully that's okay for you, but can you share a little bit about that work that you did and just, you know, thoughts for people as now AI is becoming much more prominent.
- [25:44]
B
Yeah. So that one kind of gets at a slightly different angle of things here. So that project was, was something we did a long time ago where we had collected this, like, ton of resumes from LinkedIn and we used the resumes to run predictive models of who becomes a founder of a company. And you know, it was a super fun exercise. It's like, can you predict who becomes an entrepreneur? It turns out there's like a lot of things that predict who becomes an entrepreneur. And I should qualify this by saying that by entrepreneur I mean somebody who starts a high potential venture backed company, which is different than someone, you know, who starts a restaurant or you know, a dry cleaner or something else is a very narrow slice of entrepreneurship. But if you take like millions of resumes and you're trying to try to figure out like which which person in that, in that sample of millions of people is most likely to transition to become founder of a, of a venture backed company. That's the question. And when we did that, it turns out, yes, there are lots of predictors of that, right? So if you worked at Google, you were way more likely to start a company. And if you had an Ivy League degree or you were a UC Berkeley or a Stanford or UCLA grad, you were more likely to start a company. My recollection is if you worked in the Peace Corps, you were more likely to start a company. If you worked in McKinsey, you were more likely to start a company. I wasn't really expecting that one. And, but then it turned out that if you then take this group of people and sort of rank the whole data set based on who's most, most likely to start a company that receives venture financing in the future, it turns out that everybody's male. And that's like nearly like you know, and you're going to get there if, like if you just know the basic facts of the venture entrepreneurship world, which is the vast majority of companies, companies historically have, that have received venture capital financing had been funded by, by men, have been started by men, male founders. And so if that's true and then you ask a machine to predict who's most likely to start a company, the answer is a male. Right? Because like it's all, nearly all companies in past that have this, these, these characteristics were started by men. So the naive answer is well, it's going to be men who are most likely to start it. And I included that in the book because that, that part of the book was, was talking about how, well, what if we started to outsource decisions to AI systems that were trained to be unbiased. Right. Which is effortful. Like you have to put some work into training an AI system to not be biased because, because they're all trained on the data generating process that is human society. Right. So all biases that, that have been historically reflected in human behavior are going to be replicated in a machine learning context and a model that naively learns from what we do and then just replicates our behavior. But, but the argument in the book is you have all these status dimensions like gender. So historically in the workplace men have been perceived as being higher status than, than women. And that's super well documented across sociology, economics, psychology. And that perception is widely, widely held. And so we quietly, behind the scenes, often implicitly without recognizing it, factor in gender when we're making quality assessments. And the argument in the last chapter look as well, if we can train AI assistants properly and if we audit them carefully, then if we pass out decisions to them like who gets a loan and who gets financing and who gets a credit card and who gets, you know, whatever decision is, it needs to be made, we probably are going to end up in a more equitable, less hierarchically status ranked world in that version of decision making than in the current one. Yeah.
- [29:47]
A
And it's interesting, like you're saying you have to understand the bias that exists to train the model to not have the bias. Right, right. And so if you don't necessarily know it's going to be showing up, but being able to ask the right question once you see the data, come back and say, oh, these are all men. Like something might be off here, like let's go look and see what we might need to factor in to not let that actually be an issue before this rolls out in a bigger way or something along those lines.
- [30:16]
B
Yes. And of course, given the, given the importance of this topic, you have now many, many people working on unbiased AI and protocols for auditing AI systems and designing models that don't exhibit standard human bots. So that's a whole field of research now.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And good, very good. Hopefully we can be reducing that for sure. So as you think about the, you know, from the book itself, and I know how much time goes into writing a book and investing all that time in that, as you think about the audience that's listening and what you really want is like when people walk away from having read the book, how are you hoping they are fundamentally changed from, you know, before they started reading it?
- [31:06]
B
Yeah. So thank you for the tee up. So, you know, first off, I, a lot of the work in this one was, was to try to make it fun and engaging and so fun and engaging and filled with stories and, and an interesting read. So I hope, I hope it's that. So it's really, I was really pushing that aspect of it. But what I want people to understand is that we live in this sort of this status based system and literally every walk of life and it's almost always hidden from us. That is like it operates in the background of our lives and but it has profound impacts on us as consumers, as partners in relationship, as employees, in, in the workplace. It impacts our mental health in profound ways. It impacts our physical health and most of us don't really think about or understand it that much. And so the book is, you know, hopefully unveiling all of this bit in a fun and interesting and engaging way.
- [32:13]
A
Definitely. And I can vouch for, I can lend what social status I have on the book piece there for the stamp of approval on good stories and a really interesting read for sure. And I think again, I mean it just as we look at these different aspects of choice and knowing that the status is included in everything. Let's share this story too. I know you mentioned wine a little bit and we talked about the piece with art, but I think that's another good story just to show people kind of this being thoughtful and understanding some of those different notes or things to take into their own work or maybe if you were going to apply this for, you know, if someone is looking to get themselves hired into an organization, what are some things they should keep in mind, you know, in learning from these aspects?
- [33:03]
B
Well, the wine story, the Matt Cooper story that, that is, I mean that one is just like I think it's my all time favorite.
- [33:12]
A
So, so good.
- [33:14]
B
It's so good and like not a thank you Coop, who's, I'll tell him he's got to listen to this. He'll, he'll, he'll love it. So that story is just so good. So I met an entrepreneur I it's a decade ago and we're good friends now and a terrific guy called, called Matt Cooper. And Matt is this guy, he grew up, he now lives in the bay and it's biotech entrepreneur. But he grew up and he, he attended undergraduate university if I remember at the University of Tulsa and then he got a PhD in toxicology at the University of Kentucky. So he's kind of in the middle of the country. Not, not what you would think of as like the thriving wine regions in the world. But he gets this keen interest in wine and he does a whole bunch of things and this happens and that happens and the other thing happens and he ends up out and out in Napa and this is in the late 90s and the sort of the boutique Wineries are just coming into full form in Napa. So, you know, Screaming eagle, Harlan, Opus 1. If those. If those. If those names mean anything to you. If you're a wine person. And he goes out and he meets some winemakers, and he's. He's super personable, as if friendly guy. And he's talking to the winemaker at Screaming Ego, if I. If I recall. And she says, well, she's heard that Robert Parker, who is the most important wine critic in the world, is going to go to Australia for the first time to write an issue of the Wine Advocate that rates Australian wines. And Cooper's like, huh? So he goes back to Kentucky, and he. By he. He acquires some back issues of the Wine Advocate, and he acquires a bunch of bottles of wine, and he essentially teaches himself Robert Parker's pallet. So, I mean, he's already super into wines. He's already a very good taster, and he has that gift. And so after a little while, he's pretty good. Like, he'll taste a wine and he'll say, 93, 97, 98. Parker's going to love this. 199. Um, and then he front runs Parker to Australia. He takes his life savings with him. He buys up. He goes, like, to all the boutique vineyards he can find. He buys up everything that he thinks Parker is going to love. He rents an entire box, shipping container, moves the wine back to California, queues it up an auction, and then auctions it off, like, the week after the Australian Wine Advocate comes out. And that is the Rembrandt story. Because what he does is he buys a bottle of wine. I think that, you know, they'll never remember the name, but, like, Muckety Duck, Muckety Muck or something Shiraz. He finds this vineyard, and he pays, like, $60 a bottle for Muckety Muck. But he. Which is very expensive, but he's convinced Parker's gonna love it. And Parker gives it, like a 99 or a hundred for the bottle, and he acquires a bunch of cases, and he auctions it for, like $1,300 a bottle. When he pays $60 per bottle. And there we are again. We're back to the Rembrandt. It's the same bottle of wine, but the day after Robert Parker says it's 99, it's worth 14 times more than it was the day before. So Cooper does this. I just love it. It's this great story about risk. He rolls the dice. He risks his life, his. His life savings. And he uses the proceeds to start his first biotech diagnostics company. So then he comes back into my world. So I, I love that one. You know, puts together two characters. I, you know, Coop, who I write about and then Robert Parker who's just this fascinating guy because it turns out, you know, he, he is for anointers in, in an industry, he's really nearly unsurpassed at how influential he was in, in the wine industry.
- [37:12]
A
Yeah. And like you said, there's the question of, so if you know who the person is that can be providing that anointment, whether it is, if you're in the wine industry, you know what status pieces you're looking at for, you know, restaurants with Michelin stars have a similar aspect or you have some celebrity that says they, they eat or drink or wear or use or love whatever the thing is, especially when you can get that naturally you talked about like Y Combinator for VC backed type of founders and things. And so just knowing in whatever your industry is or for the person that you're looking to impress, it's your boss or someone you would like to work for. Right. Like who do they care about what's going to hold that status for them? And it might be Kim Kardashian is your best friend, but it's probably something else. Right, but to know what sports team they like or who knows. Right. But those sorts of things to help break that sort of status line and to show you've been anointed by a thing that they care about being something where anybody can kind of look at understanding what will make you interested in talking to me is different than if I'm, you know, trying to impress the, you know, parents and my kids soccer team or something. Right. But like knowing that we want to lean on different aspects of this, they love it.
- [38:33]
B
And, and you get to, and I'll, and I know we have to wrap up and I'll let you, but, but you know, let me just reiterate that point you made because it's such an important one, which is that all of us live in many social worlds and we have very different statuses across the social worlds that we live in. So you might be like the head honcho at the workplace, but you know, when you go into your, your, your, your kid's school, you're just another parent. And Kim Kardashian's this, you know, huge name. You know, I, I only know because I know as like a celebrity. But you know, if you move into the tech entrepreneurship world, for instance, or the science world. It's not like that's a name that carries a lot of influence. So. So we have different statuses in the different social groups of which we're members of.
- [39:22]
A
Right. And so knowing when to share each one and you know, we shouldn't be spending our entire life. We can build up our own status. Hopefully we can be also lending the status we have. I think that's another aspect that's key as well of like you can be that for other people too, if you're able to lend that out, seeing this in that reciprocity side. Right. How you can be helping others to achieve by anointing them in. In whatever way you're able to.
- [39:51]
B
Exactly.
- [39:52]
A
Awesome. Well, for everyone who I know is now so excited to go get their copy of Anointed, we will of course have, have, you know, links in the show notes and whatnot. But for people who are excited to follow you to learn more, to get the book, you know, what's their best path to do?
- [40:08]
B
So find me on LinkedIn, find me on the Internet. I'm super easy to. I'm super, super easy to get. Shoot me an email. I love to hear what you think about the book. And Molina, I'm so grateful for you making the time for me to join you. Really appreciate it.
- [40:24]
A
Oh, definitely. And thank you for joining me. It's been really fun to chat with you for sure.
- [40:28]
B
Thanks, Melina. Have a good evening.
- [40:31]
A
Thank you again to Dr. Toby Stewart for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, one of the big takeaways was the reminder that status is sticky once someone is anointed. Even a small endorsement can snowball into massive influence. While others with just as much talent might never get noticed. It's not just frustrating, it's something we can change if we start seeing invisible levers behind success. I really love how the insights from the book really weave in beautifully with all sorts of aspects of work that I talk about. Right. So we have the leadership, influence and understanding, perceived status and authority at work and these unspoken cues of who gets hired, who gets promoted, really ties in with my book what yout Employees need and Can't Tell youl. Also, as you think about how people make decisions on perceived value and about buying and whether or not someone has anointed a particular brand, like when we talked about wines, or the way that social proof is influencing into who goes and eats at a particular restaurant or things that we think about brands goes both with what your customer wants and can't tell you as well as with the truth about pricing. I think it's really cool to see see how this looks at something. I talk about a lot in Social Proof and like I said, in everything because it's so, so key and really getting at this extra layer, this new depth and thinking about it as this idea of being anointed, being kind of blessed by someone or something and how that can go on to make a huge difference in whether those customers buy or employees buy in. So this extra layer, this way to think about something like Social Proof in this new way about anointment, I thought was really, really cool and I really enjoyed reading the book and talking with Toby about it today. So with all that in mind as we close out the show, here's something to think about. Where have you been anointed by someone and had that play out for you in work and life or anywhere else? Right? Is there a point where someone said hey, you should trust that person or they gave their stamp of approval and it really had an impact on you and your life? I would love to hear about it. Please do come share it with me on social media. You'll find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy, along with links for my top related past episodes, books, including Anointed and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 5. And thank you again to Dr. Toby Stewart for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me next time for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.
- [43:36]
B
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.