It’s all changed….everything…

How is it possible that just as you have the most comprehensive set of rules and certainties in both persuasion and influence, a lot of it changes.

When you stop to think about it, since 1/17/2020 a lot really has changed and in  a way it makes sense that it changed.

You have your story. I’ll be fascinated to hear it. Here’s what happened to me…and then I’ll tell you what happened to you….

When the pandemic began, in March, I was in Santiago, Chile meeting the family of my future bride. 

(We ended up being together for three years, in case you’re wondering.)

In Chile, there was talk of war and threats to the constitution.  

Not a month earlier we were in Paris. Romantic, exciting, fine, filled with fascination for everything from the Louvre to the catacombs, the Pantheon to simply walking in the gentle rain. There were no worries in life.

Then we each flew home, she to Chile, me to the U.S.,  to prepare for life in the U.S.

The flight to Chile was 14 hours. (She is that beautiful.)

She met me at the gate in Santiago with a huge smile, but it wasn’t but a few days before we got to our apartment and then it wasn’t all smiles.

The countries political polarity was palpable and uncomfortable to be near. 

Going shopping in the mall the next day meant you had to pass police in complete Kevlar gear and full body length shields. 

My comfort zone was gone. And that was just part of what was changing in that location…there were definitely make shift bombs being set off, Molotov cocktails thrown and I had rented a place in the best neighborhood possible. The news was filled with nothing good. 

The pandemic that was already impacting people in South America, was discussed on Chilean TV and Chile would shut down on March 11.  We were scheduled to stay for a couple more weeks… 

In some ways this was actually a good thing to be in the best part of the country…because the streets were beyond dangerous. I still have the video. I had to help orchestrate my fiancee’s brother out of University as they were afraid of an attack there.

I arrived in a country that was partying and playing, weeks earlier. We would leave a country on the brink of war and pandemic.

That meant we had to leave March 10 and that was almost impossible to make happen, another dramatic story for another day. Ultimately, we were among the last people allowed to leave the country.  My soon to be 2 year old son, was not in a great mood in the get out of Chile line, at Passport Control. We were there for a couple of hours. Yet another story for another day.  

Two days after we got out, Chile would begin a nationwide, one hour per week out of your house to go shopping, and you must return at the end of the hour or you go to jail. It was as simple as that.

Over the next year and change our attorneys, my wife’s family and friends, and on and, caught the flu/covid and it was apparently nasty because we had to finish all kinds of legal processing via zoom, in court in Santiago. My fiancee (soon to be wife) and I both had friends who died during the pandemic.  

It was a crazy time.

Everything had changed. Who goes to court on Zoom? Who has to get get documents signed online that will change lives? How do you deal with huge problems when the only people who can help you are hospitalized, often for a few weeks?

But I digress…albeit forward in time. 

We finally were allowed to leave.

We arrive in the U.S. and my mind, for a brief 24 hours, is clear.  We arrive in Minneapolis.

The very next day, the U.S. is shutdown! This was something I had no idea was coming in the way that it would work out for the next 18 – 24 months. 

Travel via airplane is almost impossible for the foreseeable future (Just four years later, that’s all now history, as you see record numbers of people flying everyday in 2024.)  

The brunt of the physical aspects of the pandemic hit that summer and winter as they did to a similar degree the next winter in 2021.

Yes, people got covid. I didn’t even think this pandemic was all that “real” at first. I had to talk with people I knew close to the White House to find out what the heck was really happening.

And I was told by people who actually knew the details (some of the conspiracy theories were close to correct, some were just way off)  it was real and government bodies were guessing….they were making up strategy to control, keep people healthy, especially older people, and keep peace in a country full of millions of people who aren’t used to being told what to do, especially by the government.

Many American’s rebelled. Many refused to wear masks. I know it sounds silly both to wear a mask and then refuse to wear a mask. It was like listening to the adults scold the kids, tell them to behave and do what they are told.

 I wrote in Coffee w Kevin Hogan and had a number of articles describing what I thought would be the result of the pandemic as well as the psychological damage the experience would do to millions. I was ultimately wrong about the “numbers.” Twice as many people died as I projected. Meanwhile, I was correct about the psychological damages and both intra-personal and interpersonal behavior changes. 

Interesting memories? No doubt. But what does it have to do with persuasion and influence?

Nothing good was happening to people in 2020 and 2021… and today in 2024, people still suffer from a sort of PPD (Post Pandemic Disorder) which include all of the shifts of internal experience, health and outward behaviors.

Returning kids to school and the husband and wife to work was controversial.

Shopping?

I have a confession to make:

Today I still stand 2 meters behind everyone at the store in check out.

I was trained well.

I still have sanitary wipes in some of the bathrooms in the house.

The truth is our personalities changed because of and during the pandemic and as I suspected, after imprisoning a planet for almost two years, people were going to continue to change and they did.

 Do you remember this?

Most kids didn’t want to return to school. Online worked fine for them. 

Adults to this day argue they are more productive from home, which is cute because it’s not even close to true for people who had jobs in offices. (Some bogus research was done during the pandemic that showed, “It’s even more productive at home.”) 

The truth? It’s between 10 and 15% less productive.

The economy changed. Part of retail is that you need to see all the cool stuff you want to buy that isn’t on your shopping list.

People can’t be suggestively encouraged to walk the aisles in Target if you can’t get there because you have to have home delivery. A lot of businesses and people are going to go broke while a lot of people are going to make out like bandits.

Some businesses flourished, but businesses that would have been honest in a normal situation became dishonest grabbing millions of dollars in many cases, and today the government is still trying to sort out the results of their behavior from beginning to date.

Before the pandemic I had almost completed a new persuasion book of almost 600 pages, and we almost went to press at the end of 2019 only to have to question that decision because of rumors of political and geopolitical issues which I was then adding to the book and then… ripping it all out again in 2020 and 2021.

Everything was changing and personality, influence, psychological, persuasion and decision research was being done on the pandemic in massive volume.

Getting the wheat separated from the chaff was a ridiculous chore. It was exhausting. Finally in 2022, I finished the book, pulled out about 150 pages and we were all but forced to get it out in March of 2023.

It will be the new Bible for persuasion as no one has even come close to matching it. But…

There was so much that didn’t go in the book….

I was really uncomfortable putting hard research about contagion in the book so I waited until I did the Persuasion Legend Course which is where we are right at this moment on this line of text.

I was able to piece together the biggest longitudinal studies in history (some over 75 YEARS) and bring them current to date and then break them down to the level of behavioral choice and what was changing behavior. Because

… it was obvious that the new you and me, wasn’t going to change until the next predictably unpredictable experience where the world follows the blind leaders.

Almost all of this research was either persuasion (persuading with intention someone or some group to change) or influence (creating environmental cues or modifying them to shift behaviors though much more complex to effectively implement).

You used to be all but assured that the Law of Reciprocity was a sure thing. It’s not any more. It still effective with a few demographics but not cross culturally.

Then there is the Law of Scarcity.  Same thing. Effectiveness is way down especially in younger people.

The Law of Consistency was reshaped and NOW people are consistent with their “new selves” but they aren’t the same people they were before 2020.

And the list goes on and on.

There are now far more effective principles and tactics, and then strategies for influencing and persuading others to your way of thinking.

 I finally stopped codifying at 60 Laws in 2022. In 2019 I was at 36. Sixty is a lot and is not a number you can learn or teach in 10 weeks.

To just train the 12 Laws of Persuasion where we sat in 2002, and do it well, took about 30 hours. Actual applications would keep us productive at Influence: Boot Camp for 15 years. Now there are 60 and we lost the dramatic significance of 5 of the original 12.

 The Persuasion and Influence Legend Course began in 2019 concurrent with the writing of PreManipulation. But it wasn’t easy to weigh what everyone would need to know at the moment in time vs. what could wait until 2024, 2025 and then 2026.

Now we are in a very new world.