Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action

For Anil Dada, who gave me my first chance to be a marketer and left us far too early.

The more people trust you, the more they buy from you.

–David Ogilvy

Warning: Unexpected Honesty…

This Book Is Not about the Like Button!

This is not a book about Facebook. It is not really about social media, either. If you are looking for a book about either of those topics, I would highly suggest that you do not buy this book.

Not many books start off with a declaration of why you shouldn’t buy them, but maybe more should. Maybe more businesses should do the same thing. Honesty isn’t something that comes easily today. In our society of constant manipulation, everyone from businesses to politicians to the media want us to buy something, believe something, or do something.

The biggest crisis in our world today is one of believability. It makes it tougher to build a successful business, find and keep a job, or convince anyone to do or believe in anything.

This is a book about trust. But it is not another obvious declaration that trust matters. I think you probably already know that. The big idea behind Likeonomics is that you cannot build trust without being likeable. In the 1980s, Japanese businessmen adopted the word dochakuka to describe the idea that communities and people could think globally but act locally.

The most important global currency isn’t made of paper anymore—it’s made of relationships.

Likeonomics is a word to describe a similar idea. It is a way of looking at the world simultaneously on a large and small scale. Whether you are launching your own business, or trying to land a job, or working to win an election—the principles are the same.

As you’ll see in Likeonomics, the idea of likeability goes far beyond getting people to like you on a superficial level. It is not just about being nice. Instead, we will look at how people and organizations lose trust, how they can get it back, and what it really takes to be more believable.

My first step in building a relationship with you is to make sure you’re buying this book because you know what you’ll get out of it. My second is to try and offer a nonobvious and entertaining roadmap for how to be more believable in an irrational and information overloaded world. So let’s get started.

Prologue: How a Lard Salesman, an NFL Agent, and a YouTube Star Explain Likeonomics

Just over 10 years ago, I was part of a pitch that I knew we would win. I was leading of one of the hottest and fastest growing digital production teams in Australia. We had built a glowing reputation in our market, won tons of creative awards, and boasted a long list of top-notch references.

More importantly, our creative concept and strategy for the potential client we were about to meet was perfect, and we knew it. We had such an original approach, in fact, that we knew none of our competitors would even come close.

By the pitch day, our team had rehearsed for two days straight and we were supremely confident. It showed. The meeting went almost perfectly. Everyone knew their part, and the client asked the right questions. As we walked out, we allowed ourselves to enjoy a momentary feeling of triumph.

We were ready to take a victory call the next day and accept the client’s business. It was just a matter of time. Like clockwork, we got the call the very next day, as expected. Only the outcome wasn’t what we expected. We had lost.

In the weeks afterward, our team went back over every step. What did we get wrong? How could we have lost? We simply couldn’t understand. It was one of those rare situations where if we had the chance to go in and pitch again, we wouldn’t have done anything differently. We longed to know the amazing idea that we lost against. Unfortunately, we never got a good answer. It was the first time in my career when I learned the frustrating lesson that sometimes you lose and never really get to know why.

A year later, I was at an industry conference and happened to see that same client we had pitched to. I asked her how they were doing, and exchanged some polite conversation. With nothing to lose, I then asked her the question really on my mind: Why didn’t we win? She looked at me and told me something I have never forgotten: You guys had great ideas and they did, too, she admitted. "Honestly, we chose them because we just liked their team better. We wanted to work with them."

It didn’t seem fair. It still doesn’t—but now I understand. Since that time, I have had countless pieces of business won or lost over this single metric of team chemistry, but relatively few clients with the personal insight and ability to understand or admit how critical this piece was to their decision.

The fact is, the significance of this goes far beyond just the world of business.

People trust and choose to believe people they like.

We all choose our friends and teammates for everything from work to hobbies based on likeability. Relationships, not logic, power almost all of our decisions. In order to be more believable and more trusted—you need to be more likeable. That is the simple idea behind this book.

To see why this idea matters so much, let’s begin the journey by going backward in history to 1912 and a dusty classroom in Harlem, New York, where one of the most enduring philosophies of modern business was first born—even though no one there that night knew it.

The Lard Salesman

It was 6 p.m. in a dimly lit classroom at the YMCA Harlem Evening School in early 1912, and the instructor was nervous. His topic that night was public speaking, and even though more than half the seats were empty, his heart still raced. At 24 years old, he had already dropped out of college and failed as a young actor. His only modest success in his short career so far had been rising to become the number one salesman of the highest quality tins of lard (yes, lard) in western South Dakota.

That night he had walked to the classroom from his small, roach-filled apartment in a part of New York City that easily lived up to its nickname of Hell’s Kitchen. He certainly didn’t look too well, as his biographers would later write: You could tell he had come upon hard times…[as] though one warm bowl of soup might have been enough to restore an appearance of health.

Standing there in his ill-fitting gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses, he was struck by a sudden sense of panic.

What was he doing here?

Why would anyone want to listen to him?

His mind went blank.

By any account, he was an unlikely character to teach anything, much less public speaking. His voice was often described as possessing a slow, rambling Midwestern twang. He wasn’t a politician, or a famous athlete, or even a radio personality. He was the poor son of a pig farmer in Missouri who desperately wanted more than anything else to avoid becoming a farmer like his father.

If he was going to become famous, it certainly wouldn’t be from his chosen topic for that night either. In the early 1900s, public speaking was not as popular a professional skill as it has become today. Despite his ambition, the obscurity of his topic meant that he had already been turned down by both Columbia and NYU for his lecture. In desperation he had made a deal with the director of the YMCA to deliver his course by agreeing to forego the customary night teacher salary of $2 per course. Instead, he would share in the profit—with the unspoken understanding that there probably wouldn’t be any. Finally, after all that work, his first class was happening and he could feel his big chance fading away before it had even begun.

In his moment of panic that night, a sudden burst of inspiration hit him. He asked a man in the back row of the classroom to stand up and talk about himself and his life. Then he asked another student to do the same. And then another. That simple format got people talking because they were each listening to personal stories that brought them together. In this moment, he would learn an important insight that would shape his career from then on. There is nothing people care about more than being able to build better relationships with the others around them. This was, in fact, a skill that they would even be willing to pay to learn.

There was a phrase for this new skill…human relations. It started to be used to describe the ability to get along with and influence other people. So that year, building on his original insight, he formally named his new and improved course on human relations after himself: The Dale Carnegie Course in Public Speaking and Human Relations.

He would go on to fanatically refine and improve the course for the next 24 years. In one class he would use improvisational acting techniques; in another he would have participants do one-on-one exercises. The course spread to thousands of students and turned Carnegie into something of a business celebrity. He was filling large auditoriums with willing students, but it was in 1936 (almost a quarter of a century after starting his course) that he would achieve his biggest claim to fame.

That year a persistent editor at Simon & Schuster finally convinced Carnegie to write a book based on his course. The title would be easy: How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was an instant best seller. Over the next decade, the book became the second bestselling book of its time, after the Bible.

Meanwhile, Carnegie’s course grew into a full training Institute. In 2011, his Institute celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the book’s first printing. In that time, the book has been translated into over 60 languages and sold more than 16 million copies worldwide.

Today, everyone from business executives to political leaders from around the world have studied the principles and are using them to transform the way they relate to other people. More than 2,700 professional trainers offer Dale Carnegie’s course in 80 countries and 27 languages. The Institute has trained over 7 million graduates across the world.

The NFL Agent

In law school, you don’t spend too much time learning how to win friends. Chitta Mallik, however, never wanted to be an ordinary lawyer. His real passion was football, but sports law was about the closest he expected to get. After graduating law school, he accepted a job at Latham & Watkins, one of the largest and most respected firms in the United States.

In October of 2004, after realizing that he had billed 434 hours that month (an average of 14 hours a day, every day, including weekends!), he decided it was time for a change. A lifelong sports fan, he knew that he wanted a career in sports. And despite working in sports law, Mallik realized what he really wanted to do was become an NFL agent. Unfortunately, it was an almost impossible field to break into.

Around the same time, a former standout NFL player named Tony Paige had been growing his own services as a highly successful NFL Agent. Paige had been a starting fullback in the NFL for nine seasons, an extraordinarily long career in a dangerous sport where the average career lasts only about three years. He got his accidental start as an agent shortly after he retired by agreeing to help a desperate former teammate renegotiate his contract. He did more in a week than the player’s agent had done for him in years. As anyone inside the NFL knows, there are generally two types of players: those that get attention from their agents and those that don’t. Agents are notorious for following the money, focusing their time and attention on their most highly paid clients—and shortchanging the rest. Most of them have little idea of what it takes to succeed in the NFL. Of the over 600 agents officially licensed by the NFL Player’s Association to represent players, less than 15 are former players themselves.

So Paige had a natural advantage, but he also started in the business with a unique philosophy. While most agents cared about the player, he also tried to care about the person. This meant he would become a part of his player’s lives. He would advise them on everything from buying a house to donating their time to charities. He was a genuinely good guy in a job where that was sadly uncommon.

In the spring of 2008, Mallik met Paige for the first time through a personal connection. Within 5 minutes, it was clear that the two men shared the same business philosophy and morals. Paige quickly convinced Mallik to join forces and help him run the Football Division at Perennial Sports and Entertainment, a full-service sports agency. Later that year, one of the first players they signed together was a 6-foot-2, 315-pound offensive lineman named Cecil Newton Jr. Newton had played college football at Tennessee State University and entered the NFL draft in 2009. Unfortunately, he wasn’t selected, but Paige and Mallik worked hard to find him a home in the NFL. They paid for his training, and reminded him that as long as he was in the building, he had a chance. Newton finally landed a rookie contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars. That year, he made it onto the field and actually played. The NFL is full of small victories like Newton’s but the story doesn’t end there.

Two years later, Cecil’s younger brother Cameron was about to enter the NFL draft. Cameron, or Cam, Newton had been a star quarterback who had won the Heisman Trophy (the highest individual award offered to college football athletes) and led his Auburn Tigers college team to the BCS National Championship. For the 2011 draft, he was anticipated to be among the first 10 players picked overall. As a result, he had his pick of an NFL agent, and 12 agencies were all courting him.

But Cecil’s father had promised Mallik and Paige they would have a chance to meet with Cam—and he kept his promise. They met with him in January of 2011, amidst 11 other agencies desperately selling their own services. Yet, instead of talking to him about his future as a player, they talked about his future as a man.

They asked him what he wanted to be known for. They talked about what life after football would be like. And they talked about his brother. At the end of the first round of meetings, Cam and his father called back Perennial Sports. In January of 2011, Newton announced that he had selected Paige and Mallik along with Bus Cook, another agent.

It was like a real-life moment from the film Jerry Maguire where the agent wins the client based on his principles.

Six months later, Cam Newton was drafted by the Carolina Panthers with the number-one overall pick in the 2011 NFL draft, and signed to a four-year, $22 million contract. In his first game ever, he became the first rookie to throw for 400 yards in his regular NFL-season opening game. Through the rest of his first season, he would go on to break more than a dozen other rookie quarterback records.

For Paige, Mallik, and Perennial Sports, landing the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft was a defining moment. The following year, they were two of the hottest agents in the league and went on to have their most successful draft class ever.

The YouTube Star

For Ana Gomes Ferreira, the first YouTube video was just for fun. It was January of 2007 and she was sitting on her bed with a guitar in her lap. With a friend holding the video camera, she recorded her own version of Sheryl Crow’s Strong Enough to Be My Man and uploaded it under her stage name, Ana Free. As song goes on, the camera zooms in and out randomly. The audio is muffled and you can tell that she isn’t entirely comfortable in front of the camera. (Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWVsQEGLXo)

You would never, at any point during that video, have mistaken Ana Free for anything more than a girl just having fun. It would be a nice story if she was discovered by an enterprising music executive, but that’s not how her future would go. Her first video didn’t get a million views. She was never meant to become another viral one-hit wonder—but that was perfectly fine for Ana.

As a child in Portugal, Ana didn’t grow up wanting to be a singer. She went to an international school, studied hard, spoke five languages, and studied international trade and game theory while majoring in economics at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. She had the sort of background that would usually have led a smart, young enterprising woman toward a career at a big institution like the World Bank or IMF.

All of which makes what would happen over the next five years even more extraordinary.

Every day, dozens of budding musicians look to the Internet as a place to get discovered and perhaps duplicate the phenomenon of Justin Bieber—by launching themselves and their music careers. Almost no one succeeds.

Ana, however, had one important thing going for her—she didn’t start uploading her videos in order to be famous. She started by performing songs that she loved and then sharing them honestly with her audience. And unlike so many other musicians, she didn’t avoid playing cover songs or gaining popularity by playing songs that people recognized.

Despite having written hundreds of her own original songs, every few weeks she would record a video of a new cover song that people recognized. Each song featured her sitting on a bed or a couch playing her acoustic guitar and singing directly to the camera. She has a great voice and slowly gets more and more comfortable in front of the camera. The audio improves. She buys a tripod. You can actually see her getting better from video to video. Yet the thing that sets every one of her videos apart is that they are all a surprisingly intimate musical experience.

When she sings and looks directly at the camera, it feels like she is singing directly to you. She shares outtakes where she breaks guitar strings and forgets lyrics. And her audience has grown because she is so genuinely passionate about the songs she sings, even when those songs have been written by someone else. As one music critic wrote, The thing about Ana Free is her voice…[it] has a rawness that seems to reach into my chest and pluck on my heart like a guitar string. Not too high, more of a husky tenor.¹ Before