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Outrage Dilution

Posted January 26th, 2017 @ 8:24am in #Trump #Whenhub

I’m having a fun time watching President Trump flood the news cycle with so many stories and outrages that no one can keep up. Here’s how the math of persuasion works in this situation:

1 outrage out of 3 headlines in a week: Bad Persuasion

25 outrages out of 25 headlines in a week: Excellent Persuasion

At the moment there are so many outrages, executive orders, protests, and controversies that none of them can get enough oxygen in our brains. I can’t obsess about problem X because the rest of the alphabet is coming at me at the same time. 

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Battle of the Hats – Hitler Phase

Posted January 25th, 2017 @ 5:49pm in #Trump #pink hat #Hitler

I can’t stop laughing at this. All the silliness of the past year in one picture.

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Battle of the Hats

Posted January 24th, 2017 @ 11:14am in #Trump #pinkhat #branding

When Donald Trump ran for president he put his clear, simple message on the front of bright red hats. The message was perfect. The choice of a hat instead of a t-shirt or other garment was perfect. The color red was perfect for his message – bold, sexy, and important. The hats were a master class in branding and influence. Political historians will be referring to Trump’s hats for ages.

Compare that to the Million Woman March. They chose pink because – I assume – it is a bit of an ironic color for women who are fighting for their rights. Women are “owning” pink to rob it of its power to brand them as the so-called weaker sex. At least that’s why I assume they picked pink.

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A Look Back at My Trump Predictions

Posted January 20th, 2017 @ 10:28am in #Trump #Whenhub #inauguration

Many of you asked me to provide a quick index to my Trump-only blog posts. I did that for you here in a Whencast. Feel free to share on social media or embed in your own blog. My updates to this will flow automatically to wherever it is shared.

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The Master Persuader Scrambles the Frame

Posted January 11th, 2017 @ 11:14am in #Trump #WhenHub

What was Trump’s biggest persuasion problem in the election? 

Answer: His opponents did a great job of framing him as some kind of Hitler. Do a Google search on Trump and Hitler and you get an avalanche of comparisons. 

It was sticky persuasion, and it still hangs over the country like a chorus of stale farts. I’ve said before that half the country believe they are living in 1930s Germany and the other half think we got a better economy and some free entertainment. Those are two completely different movies running on the same screen at the same time. So how does the Master Persuader deal with the second-largest case of national cognitive dissonance in our history? (Slavery was first.)

Ignoring the Hitler branding from the other side won’t work. It’s too sticky.

Denying the Hitler branding won’t work either. That would just make people debate the details and harden the association by reputation. In the 3rd dimension, where persuasion matters and facts do not, brains recognize “Bob is totally NOT like Hitler” as “Somehow Bob and Hitler are connected.” So denying doesn’t work. Not even a little.

What’s left? You can’t ignore it and you can’t deny it. There’s no solution, right?

Well, there’s no solution if you operate in the 2nd dimension. That dimension is out of ammo. But the 3rd dimension is not. A Master Persuader neither ignores nor denies. 

He plays offense and scrambles their frame. 

But he had to wait for the right time and the right opportunity. That opportunity came to him in the form of an intelligence meeting leak and some fake news. Here’s how the Master Persuader played it:

Trump Tweeted: 


How do I know this was calculated and not just a Godwin’s Law universal reference to Hitler? Because he played it exactly the way I would have done it. And I have a similar skill set in persuasion. This was the only play that can work. It won’t solve for the Hitler branding the other side put on him, but it’s a start.

Update: Now this…

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You might enjoy using my start-up’s app, WhenHub, because it makes you happy to know exactly when your friends and family will arrive. I’m hearing great things about it from users. Feel free to get some free happiness for youself by downloading the free app.

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Is Meryl Streep Persuasive?

Posted January 9th, 2017 @ 10:10am in #Trump #meryl streep #golden globes

Yes, she is.

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Is The Onion Advising Democrats Now?

Posted January 5th, 2017 @ 11:19am in #Trump #Clown #nancy pelosi

Worst. Persuasion. Ever. Someone needs to do an intervention. This is officially embarrassing.

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Coincidentally, a good way show an audience the changes in healthcare coverage and expenses over time is my startup, WhenHub.com. It’s the best way to create and share visualizations of events over time. If someone builds one, let me know and I’ll publish it on this blog.

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How About an American Expense-lowering Investment Fund?

Posted January 5th, 2017 @ 10:58am in #Trump #Housing #startups #venture capital

I’ve been saying in this blog for some time that we can’t tax and budget our way to a better future. We need to work on dramatically lowering the average cost of a high-quality lifestyle. Technology can make that happen if the right startups are nurtured.

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The Kristina Talent Stack

Posted December 27th, 2016 @ 11:36am in #kristinabasham #WhenHub #Dilbert #Trump #TalentStack

Over the past eighteen months or so my girlfriend Kristina Basham grew her Instagram following from zero to 2.5 million followers. She adds about 10,000 new followers per day.

That’s ten thousand new followers per day.

You might think this kind of accomplishment is easy for her because of her extraordinary attractiveness. Sure, that helps. But there are lots of attractive women on Instagram – most of them showing more skin than Kristina – and almost none of them are adding followers at Kristina’s rate. There’s a reason for that. I call it the Talent Stack.

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The Trump Economic Bump

Posted December 22nd, 2016 @ 1:03pm in #Trump #Clinton

True story: Yesterday I was talking to a friend who invested in Gilead stock right before Hillary Clinton started giving speeches about forcing companies in that space to lower their prices. The stock dropped and my friend lost money. He blames Clinton.

Over the summer this same fellow sold off his entire stock portfolio to avoid the risk of a Trump win followed by what he assumed would be a catastrophic market downturn. If Clinton won, he figured he could buy back in at about the same prices. But Trump won, stocks zoomed higher, and my friend lost out on the rally. Hillary Clinton cost him money for the second time this year.

But don’t feel bad for my friend. He reports that since the election his phone has been ringing off the hook with new job offers. He’s a residential contractor. Apparently the country got optimistic right after the election. Normally this would be his slow period. He’s swamped with work.

I love a happy ending.

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