The surprising power of because.
Hi, everyone, Angus Pryor here multi-award-winning practice growth specialist. I am on leave at the moment, I’m painting the house, hence the messy gear. But I’ve got a thought that I want to leave with you that I think can really help. You know, Harvard did a study a number of years ago where they had people lined up to use the photocopier. And they would try to, you know, cut the line move one spot ahead in the line. And the study that they did with one group of people, they just said, Oh, do you mind if I go in front of you on the line? And then the second group, they said, Do you mind if I go in front of them the line because, then they had a reason given. Now the because group was much more successful than the non because group. But here’s the crazy thing, the words that they said after because actually didn’t affect the success rate. Can I please go ahead of the line in front of you, because my cat is old. You know, because it’s Monday, because the sun is shining. And the curious part is that it was it was quite successful and getting people to do that. But really the words after because didn’t matter. So sometimes, because can be very helpful in influencing people.
But here’s the second part about because, like, sometimes we say to ourselves, Well, I can’t be successful, because of dot, dot, dot. I can’t grow my business faster, because I haven’t had any study in that space, because there are too many competitors, because I don’t know how to do marketing, etc, etc. And you can use that argument, there’s only one little problem like, what are you left with? Okay, so that’s true. So there are too many competitors. So what are you going to do about it? Like, there’s a point at which you can use that excuse to not move forward, but it actually doesn’t serve you whereas in fact, if you go, there are a lot of competitors or I don’t know much about business or whatever. What can I do? And that’s a much more powerful statement than that because about ourselves so can be helpful for influencing people. But we’ve got to be very careful about how we use it about ourselves. See you next time.