After 18 months of reading my blog posts about President Trump’s talents for persuasion, you might wonder how persuasive I am on my own. If you have already read my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, check out this article in Business Insider to see an example of my influence. The author who talks about my ideas – exactly the way I talk about them – is named Adam Alter.

(What were the odds of that???)

The article links to a third author’s work on systems being better than goals. Look for my influence in that author’s work too.

I designed my book to be influential. If you reread it, look for the persuasion technique throughout. The book came out in 2013. Now you can see my systems-are-better-than-goals idea all over the place. You’ve probably also seen books and articles saying passion is overrated. That comes from my book as well. At this point, after a few years, authors are less likely to remember where they first saw these ideas, or what influenced them. The trail is growing cold.

Here’s another article that comes almost directly from my book without attribution. The author later clarified that he had read my book before writing his article. I doubt any of the authors I mention in this post were conscious of what influenced them.

All of this was predictable to me because I designed the book for maximum persuasion. I figured there was no point in writing a book about systems for success if I didn’t also make it “sticky,” so the thoughts would stay with people and be useful.

I think most of you would be appalled to see your ideas come from other authors mouths without attribution. But I’m not, because I designed my book to influence people the way you are seeing it happen in real time. You are witnessing a feature, not a flaw. I prefer more imitation to less. These are powerful ideas that are worth spreading.

#Goals