[Special Episode] The Mindstate Marketing Hour #10 with Will Leach - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 62

Welcome to the ROI online podcast. And this is a special series of interviews with will Leach. He's the author of marketing to mind states the practical guide to applying behavior design to research and marketing. And I'm your host Steve Brown, the author of the funniest book on marketing the golden toilet, stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business and then this series of conversations we're going to explore everything about marketing, your messaging, and connecting with your clients, your customers your employees so come on and join us and let's have some fun and we're live at 935 with will Leach in the marketing mind state our will what's up

Hello Hello everybody. Good to see you Steve. You look well rested. You have a different environment behind you tell the audience where you are what you're doing today.

Well, I'm working but it's a fun because it involves will Leach but getting to hang out by the beach as I work with will Leach there's a band there's Bay part of our Mexico two beautiful little overcast morning. The weather's gorgeous rooms nice and air conditioned by the beauties of the internet here we are doing our mind state marketing our

well I'm glad that I can steal you away for an hour from from that beautiful place. It's nothing better than working in a beautiful place so good for you.

I love it that this is fun for me. So the mind state marketing hours where you learn how to use science to connect with your clients. And by using the insights from will leeches very popular book, marketing to mind states by will Leach

you bring that book

now. I just realized as I was saying that how I failed.

I thought it was I thought it was one of the top things you put in your bag. Most most people most of my people buy my book, they put that in their bag before their underwear save. So I'm really surprised. All right, I got I always got a copy to put on camera for sure.

All right, so so the mind state marketing blueprint offers a framework to identify emotions to connect with your clients will. I was watching your your little presentation this morning while I was getting ready, the CTA 19. And I just love all these things. I learned this one in particular, you were talking about watches. And that's not the lesson today. But I just wanted to brag on you that you were really I was learning some really cool stuff I didn't know. But you were talking about watches. Can you tell us just a little bit about that? Yeah,

there's this famous kind of story that I tell oftentimes at conferences or whatever. And the concept is, if you go to any browser, right now, if you want to do is you can follow along, go to any browser you want to and just type in the word watches. And then look up all the different photographs, and all the visual, all the visuals of watches all the images. And you'll notice something that's very consistent. And you know, as you're scrolling, just keep scrolling, you'll start noticing and picking up that all the watches are set at 1009 36 or 1010, something around that space. And the idea I tell this whole long story that this concept of showing watches set at 1009 36 in advertising has been going on since the 1920s. And it's it's well before kind of viral campaigns, but you see an advertising from the 60s 70s 40s 1009 36. And it comes down to this science called oblique orientations. And the idea is that the human eye finds that curves are slightly more difficult to pick up what it is like, you know, a sharp corner, a sharp corner like you know, something like this out of paper, you see a sharp corner of the eye picks up corners, it's a little bit more difficult for the AI to pick up oblique orientations or curves. And what this watch example does is there's this whole there's this whole story about how because the watches are set at 10 or 936, people couldn't see the actual time very well. And so it may just cause a couple people to stop because the human eye takes a quarter of a second to figure out what time it is. And maybe because of that you could get some extra people to look at a watch and they go You know what, I need a new watch. It's a whole long story I tell about that. But it is a The idea here is that if you understood that 1009 36 for whatever reason, even if you weren't a neuro psychologist and you didn't understand the biology of di even if you just knew the tenor on 36 helped drew stop people to kind of look at your watch. Why would he You use that. And that's kind of the idea of behavioral design. Everything that the book is about is using the sciences to make your marketing more effective. And whether that's creating an emotional reaction or whether it's just getting somebody to pause because they can't can can't figure out what time it is use those things to your advantage.

What I love about this story is that this guy that started utilizing this, he just innately felt it he didn't have a bunch of data and research to go justify it, but he innately felt it and and went with it. But I think that's a theme that is consistent to everything that you teach is that there's these things that our brains, will, you can hear the the tire skidding on the pavement for, you know, the brain just goes what, yeah, it takes a second, and you may not know it consciously, but it's happening. And that's the things you're teaching us to take advantage of. Absolutely. You know, what I when I talk about, we compete against weaponized machine learning, Instagram, Facebook, they have data scientists, they have the machines, they have all the coding, and they're exploiting these principles that you can learn about in your book. And but that's what you and I compete against. But yet, we can be just as effective if we can just honor a few of these principles in our marketing, our messaging, our presentations, etc, of which is a great segue to the title today that we want to talk about. So you have today where we're going to talk about why I missed that part of what's the title of the day, it's

very much in the theme of Halloween is the importance of helping your customers become heroes. You know, right now in my house, we are on the on track of trying to figure out the costume that my son will wear on Halloween night, even though we're not sure how trick or treating is going to work this year, we're going to figure it out, because a big part of this time is becoming a hero superhero. So with that I was thinking about over the weekend, I thought, you know what I want to talk about, you know, our customers, and no matter what age and and how we are innately designed to want to become our own heroes, and what that means to you as a brand, as a marketer, as a creative director, and how you can help your customers come here, and there's a ton of big benefits it can happen if you can help them become their idealized health, their idealized self, or a hero.

So there's other books out there in particular bill, building a story brand that really brought brings home This lesson is that we view the world from the perspective that we're the heroes in our story. But most marketing is broken because the brands position themselves as the heroes of the story which we feel we don't feel connected or understood. Usually in those stories, or there's two heroes, they fight each other for a bit anyway, right? So in this, you don't want to be fighting with the folks that you actually want to be the guide for So talk to us about how do we we strive to become our aspirational selves?

Yeah, so there's this whole field of psychology called narrative psychology. And narrative psychology is this science that's, it's it's studying, or it looks at how we experience life is through stories that were either told as kids or, you know, that, that some people would even say, you know, thousands of years ago, stories were being written or at least communicated, to help, you know, help establish societal norms, what's appropriate behavior. And in those stories, you will find that there is almost always in almost every story, a hero. And so books entire books have been written about these stories and a journey and like, there's one here I even have, it's called 20 master plots, and 20 master plots by Tobias or Ronald Tobias, or the seven basic plots. This book was from Christopher Booker. The The idea is that these scientists have studied stories across all societies across the globe, and found out there their particular journeys or stories that are told again and again and again and again. And I think even in the story brand work from Donald Miller even talks about that there are specific stories that keep coming up as as you know, as prize winning, you know, stories right? It comes up again and again. Why Why are Why are stories? Why can you tell the exact same story Again and again in a slightly different way and still win an Academy Award. It's because they're built on narrative psychology stories that our ancestors told, and becomes a part of our DNA. So, because of that, if you know that your customers are constantly on a journey, they may not even know it, Steve, right. But they're in their minds, their world is nothing more than a story, they're living out a story every day, then it's important to understand what constitutes that story. And ultimately, the biggest thing you need to know about is in everybody's personal story, they're the hero just like you said, their hero. So if you're not talking to them, or helping them realize your hero, or telling them how you can help them become a hero, you're missing a large part of your kind of customers desires for you as a brand.

Okay, so number two, we get closer to becoming heroes by reaching the conscious goals that we set and non conscious goals that society or others set for us. That's right, what does what does that mean to explain it to this, this kind of dense guy here

in life, um, you know, I'm sure you guys go through this all the time, right? That in life, you set goals for yourself, I want to lose 20 pounds, I want to get my college degree, I can't wait to get married you these are conscious goals. And the reason why you're setting these conscious goals is because when you reach those goals, good things happen, you feel good, right? When you reach a goal, you feel as if you are, you're more of your idealized self, the person you strive to be. So those are conscious goals. We have those, you know, goals all the time, big life goals, but also even small goals like, Hey, I'm gonna go exercise today. So every time you reach a goal, whether it's a small goal or a large goal, there is a bit of dopamine that's released, right? You you, if you're constantly where you met that goal, you feel good on your wedding day. That's why you know, you're, you remember your wedding day, you remember the birth of your child, you remember that first job, you remember graduating from high school, right? So these go into MIT marry, those are goals that you set. But did you know that there are a ton of goals that you never really consciously are setting for yourself, but you're striving for. And those are the ones that society sets for us. So being you know, things like being a good human being, right. Like we have societal norms, and, and when we have when we're going along this journey, um, we are actually being kind of guided to reach societal goals, don't murder people, right? That's a goal like that, whether we know that that's a journey that society is setting us up for, to not murder people. And so every day that you don't murder is, frankly, you're reaching a goal that society sets for you. And so what I wanted us to think about was that, when you help your customers reach those conscious goals, or even those goals that we're not even aware of, that we're kind of, you know, that are being set for us. And probably even more so than non conscious ones. If you can associate your brand with reaching these goals, you can become iconic, and that's in fact, the way to become iconic.

So by aligning with people's either conscious or unconscious goals, you can become iconic, but that means that you need to really understand the people that you're serving. That's right.

It's so we've talked about this before, right, Steve? It's, it's one of the first things you should do. If you're thinking about branding is understanding people's goals. It is the target for all human behavior is to reach a goal, whether it's conscious or not conscious, who cares? It is about reaching a goal. So it's so important to understand these these these goals that your customers have for you, or I'm sorry, not for you the goals that they have for themselves, and how do you kind of, you know, push your way or become become associated with that goal, push your way is not the right word. How do you become associated with helping them reach those goals?

I remember a conversation that I heard Jordan Peterson having over how as humans we have this thing about aim, we want to aim towards something. He went through this whole thing about why birth is so painful because our brains were designed to be beautiful machines that can process vision. Vision is takes a lot of computing power. Therefore our brains are bigger than normal, which, when it comes to the birth canal, it causes pain. He also talked about how our eyes are set up in more of a tele binocular set setting to give us an advantage over for our vision to see Long, long in over the plains or whatever to to discern if if danger was coming or to throw a spear or rock. And so this aligns exactly with what you're talking about us having a goal It's just innately designed us to be moving towards something that where we're wanting to hunt.

Yeah, I love that moving towards thing because one thing, um, you know that that you want to make sure in your journey, everyone's journey is about getting to a better place, right? It's not it's, it's everybody thinks of themselves as as if I can reach this goal, if I will get to a better place that idealized self. And so I like how you just said that because I think sometimes we forget that ultimately, you're, it doesn't matter what you sell, it really doesn't matter what you sell, realizing that your customer is on this journey to a better positive self. And that journey could be from now until an hour from now, or it could be 100 years. Now imagine it in their world, it's just this long story. There's ups and downs, there's ups and downs, like everybody's story. But knowing that ultimately, it's kind of like the stock market, you're hoping that it's rising, you're getting better and better more and more returns, people desire greater returns on their goals become the hero, something that a better version of their current self.

So number three talks about how brands that guide people along the journey, this journey become memorable, important image, the iconic, and so I think about how you are you're handing them a spear, you're handing them a rock, you're handing them some sort of tool to accomplish what it is that they would like to yeah to accomplish. So that you can see your brand as this, I'm helping you with the tools with the map with protection, sunglasses, whatever it may be. I'm alongs to support you on your Safari,

you the right word is support. I think this is what you know, you talked about earlier on Steve is this idea that sometimes we get so caught up in the brand that we support, or in the brand that we're doing the creative force that we forget that you are one very small element, I don't care how big you are, I don't care if you're Google or Apple, you're just one small element and people's lives and this journey that they're taking. And so the support thing is really, really important. So I remember, years ago, I was I was running research for sunchips, you know, the snack company. And I'm not particularly environmentally aware, I'm just not. And I remember when our brand was going through this whole thing around, you know, we want to be the first sustainable snack company, this was a decade and a half ago. And I remember thinking I said at first I was like, whatever I'm doing, it's fine. It's my job, I'll do it. But I noticed when you're when you're talking to people, and you're in the brand team, and you're in the day to day, and you're talking to people who are really environmentally conscious, and how important it is to save our planet, you start being bring bring those beliefs on yourself. And also I started thinking like my world, like, I'm going to save the world by making sunchips. The bag, one bag for one chip, Chip flavor, in fact, more environmentally sustainable, and it's gonna be a compostable bag. And that became my whole identity was like I'm going to and I started thinking about the role of the brand was such a big part of me, Well, it's because I was only thinking about the brand, 10 hours a day when I was going to work, your customers are not like that they're not they think about you for a split second, and then they move on to the next goal, they move on to the next story. And so it's I think what you said is really, really important. And we as marketers, and as creatives we forget, because especially if you only work on one now, I think with you, Steve, you probably work on so many different brands, you don't fall into this trap. But if you're on the client side, you fall in this trap, because for nine months, 18 months, three years, some people up there for 10 years have only thought about their brand. And you can't help but feel that your brand is much more important in people's lives, therefore you only talk about your brand. And in the reality of things. That's just not how people live?

Well, I've seen it where brands they kind of get they get self centered. Yeah, I'm thinking of one in particular. And then they went through a period or a time or a phase where they they really, it was cool to see them kind of sober up and realign themselves back with the importance of supporting the client, their customers. Yeah. And therefore while they were having so much success that they kind of they got when they were drinking their own Kool Aid, so to speak.

Yeah. Well, as a researcher, one of the things I started doing when I started looking a lot more in narrative psychology, all the stuff that we all tell the stories, very quickly, you realize that the story is so broad, it's way beyond even your category. It's way beyond your brand. So I started and good researchers will do this anyway, to set up a good conversation. So imagine if you and I are, you know, we're doing I'm doing research on you. I don't go immediately to So tell me about the environmental awareness and what snacks mean in that role, like, No, you say, how are you doing what's going on your life

right now.

And when When you do that, imagine you have your brand to your research, you have your brand team behind you. And then they don't even bring up snacks, it'll bring up sunchips, they don't bring up your brand, when they talk about their broader life, that should be a good realization that you're not nearly as important. Even if you're Nike, even if you're Under Armour, even if you're Apple, if they're not bringing you up. It's because you're not really all that important. You are important in certain parts of that story, but not another. So that's one of the first things I do is just like talk about your life in general, just so everybody can reset their expectations of where their brand fits in this broader life perspective.

All right, number four, this is what we're talking about, especially true at key points in times, something we call temporal landmarks, hey, this kind of goes with the Safari, here

like that. So Dan pink, he is he's a famous author, you guys should look at his stuff. It's amazing stuff. And he wrote a book called when. And he started looking at moments in time and their significance, how time has such a huge significance on our behaviors. And there's a particular chapter in his book that I've always been fascinated with. And it's, it's all the work around temporal landmarks. So rather than I hate those words, I know you hate those words. So what a temporal landmark is, it's a moment in time that you kind of evaluate your life, this journey you're on, and you are more likely to make a decision to change. So let me give you a classic temporal landmark. It's your 50th birthday. So on people's 50th birthdays, it's kind of a landmark event in somebody's life. And a lot of people since maybe they're thinking in their 20s, you know, one of my picture might be a multimillionaire, and I'm going to have, you know, models all around my, my pool and my big mansion, well, people get 50. And they realize that's not if they evaluate themselves, I don't do that. There are these temporal landmarks, these moments in time that we evaluate ourselves on how we're doing against that aspirational self, the hero, and am I the hero I thought I was going to be. And the point of this is that if you can identify these temporal landmarks for your customer, these are moments where they're reflecting on Are they a hero, and most times, we're not the hero we wanted to be, we're just not. So if you can now integrate your brand, and these moments in time, and help them become the better version themselves the hero, you now become incredibly important in their lives, right? So let me give an example of life insurance. Actually, before I do, let me tell you some other temporary landmarks. There's a ton of them, you may think, well, how does how's my brand, you know, get involved with somebody's 50th birthday party, you don't have to, there's a ton of them. The first one are first think of yourself first. So the first day of the week, Mondays usually are when people evaluate where they are in their career or where they are as a parent getting their kid off to school. So on the first Mondays, we evaluate how we're doing against last week, or what we have to do this week. First day of the month, is a great day when people start gym memberships, because they look at themselves and they're like, you know what, I've got to get in better shape. And so a lot of people in fact will even wait till the first day of the month. Why it's a natural first. It's like it's a time to reset a temporal landmark is a moment where you're like, Out with the old in with the new will. So it'll be the first day of the week. It can be the first day of them or the first day of the month. It can be the first month in a season. So the beginning of spring is a natural temporal landmark. The first day of summer is a natural temporal landmark. There are a couple other here there are special holidays Independence Day, people for independence date or Christmas, particularly religious holidays are time for people reflect on their own selves at Christmas time. Are we being charitable enough? Am I am I really think about the reason for the season. Right? So people look at themselves on these religious holidays. But there's also things that are both things like the first day of school every parent knows that first day of school when they're getting their kid ready whether that's a kindergarten or a kid going to college. That's a moment where we reflect on Are we being good parents are our child happy as our child ready for the next level? Um, first day on the job. your very first day on the job is your moment to Out with the old This is the new will the new confident, you know guy who's going to really change marketing. Your first home, your anniversary, see where I'm going? There are a book there's like 87 different firsts, that if you're a brand you could look at it's it's in Dan Pink's win that you could look at and go How do I become a part of that first day of school because you know, people are reflecting Are they the hero? Are they the parent that they want to be? So if you are a snack company, or you sell pencils, that's the day, that's the day does your child have the best pencil so they can get to the place, you know, to become the top of their class. Now all of a sudden, the parents reflecting is it Have I prepared my child to be the top of their class. So use these moments in time, these temporal moments, or these landmark moments. And if you can do that, when people are resetting, evaluating, and then they're striving to become their best self, be be be the person that can help them be that guy that they're looking for.

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Yeah, I'll give you my my own personal example of how a brand became iconic to me that I had no affiliation with before so back, um, I was married. I was married to Melanie and we didn't have a child yet. And I had a I was working at a company I won't name the company nor the boss but this FOSS was the most horrible sin I've ever worked for. She broke me down see she broke me down. So it's one of these boxes hopefully I don't know maybe you guys can have somebody out there can can identify with a boss that just for whatever reason we're not clicking and and just broke me down to I lost confidence in myself ton. I've lost so much confidence in myself because I just couldn't make her happy. Whatever I did was never right. It was never enough. So I went into like a very kind of melancholy time where I just didn't trust myself. I didn't believe in myself at all. So I was walking. I went to a gym, which I wasn't doing a lot at the time, I gained a lot of weight. And I saw this poster, and it was the gym was doing this competition. He said if you write an essay about why you should have free training for a triathlon, um, we will give you free training for three months to become a triathlete. And I didn't know that triathlete was to have no idea. So what is this triathlete? triathlon thing? I saw it like that's interesting. And I wrote this essay, I wrote this essay about how I was in the military, and how I become like this fit person. But now over the years, I've lost all my, you know, I've lost all that discipline, my body looks terrible. And I didn't win. I didn't win the essay, right? So somebody. But through that writing the essay, I actually convinced myself that I should do a triathlon. And when I started training, I started building confidence. It's kind of funny how that happens. Like, all of a sudden, I really couldn't run two miles and all of a sudden after about six weeks, I was able to run a solid two miles and then you know, I about nine weeks are about about 10 weeks in to this training of 12 weeks. I did my first triathlon, so it wasn't supposed to, but I was so excited about doing triathlon because I was, I was building self confidence. My wife has told me I look great. I was waking up early, I found passion. And I did my first triathlon. And I did terrible, but I finished it, but I did terrible. My bike broke down. Everyone's beating me a lady in her 70s I'm sure just smoked me. I can remember watching on the run, but I walked away feeling really Coming I felt like I was this idealize, like this person that I remembered being in the military was now like, it was there I could kind of see element of that. Then all of a sudden started, I started researching triathlons and I heard about the Iron Man. And if any of you guys don't know about the Iron Man, Iron Man is at one point was, was categorized as the hardest individual sport you can accomplish. So in one day, you're going to swim 2.4 miles, you're going to bike 112 miles and you're gonna run a marathon on the same eight hour, 10 hour 12 hour time limit. And people who can do that, I believe are set at least at that time, especially I celebrated like that you can put that kind of commitment that kind of you could beat your body into the ground over the course of a day to reach you know, this this this landmark event people get tattoos with the Iron Man logo, and whenever you compete a triathlon almost always I'm sorry a an Ironman triathlon. The full Ironman you get you on your right calf, you get the Iron Man tattoo is a signal that you put yourself through the conditioning, the pain to do that. That brand became iconic to me. When I started, I went from regular sprint triathlons to Olympics, tap Ironman, Ironman. And because I did that, because I, Iron Man became this iconic brand to me. And to this day, even I haven't done a triathlon in a decade, probably probably a decade more than that, actually. Because before Well, just before Nick was born, so about a decade, it is still iconic to me. Why? Because they were the brand that was helping me reach my idealized self. I was buying Iron Man gear, I was thinking I was branded Iron Man, I was buying it because I associated Iron Man with that idealized will. So what you to do, when you think about that I had a transitionary moment, I had this kind of temporal landmark for me, it was a job where a boss just broke me down. And I had this moment when I saw and I know it doesn't fit the book. But I saw this poster that all of a sudden said, I can be something that is outside of her control. She can't control what I do it, you know, seven o'clock at night or on a Saturday morning. And it built me up and built my confidence. And this one brand was a part of that journey with me. And because of that, I gave this brand thousands of dollars over the course of seven years doing Iron Man triathlons. I could not wait, you know, to get that tattoo, I couldn't wait to tell people my wife was telling people you know, he's an iron man. He's an Iron Man. ashay It's always love that brand. And, and I know that's kind of maybe a story that's a little bit far out there. But any brand can do that any brand can do that if they associate me on this journey of being better than I was at that moment.

I love that because I think all of us can relate to that in some way. There's some brand that we associated a part of our identity with. UK and that's that's us wanting to be a part of a tribe. And so I think that you're helping us as marketing directors, marketing people, business owners. Go Oh, this is so legit. I need to figure out where I fit in that process with my heroes, the people that we serve. But be careful on that.

Right. So narrative psychology is really clear and you brought it up Steve right it's that in any journey there are never two heroes. They start off as heroes but they end up in conflict why is because when you are on your journey You are the hero like is your world it's your it's your your job is to try to reach that better place. And sometimes brands can overstep their roles we kind of talked about this so I always use the Batman analogy there's other analogies to the best the best way I could kind of showcase a tell my clients their role in the journey is that you are the utility belt let them be the Batman, that man is the hero now, that man can't really be a great hero. They're still a hero. Even without the utility belt Batman still is able to throw it off you know, you know the Joker, the Riddler, whatever, without the utility belt, but that utility belt elevates Batman to the ability to become the Dark Knight or the hero. So remember you are the utility belt they are the hero and where I've seen this cross over too much is when we get so enamored and not by nefarious reasons but you just love your brand you know your brand can help this person and you can you can help you know the person achieve this great stature to get to a better place. But remembering that when you overstep that, that role that boundary and you become the hero and you're the reason why Batman You're the reason why you made it, you know to become the hero in the first place. You can actually have a negative effect you can actually the brand can overstep their, their role so much that the customer looks at them and says they're arrogant. They only talk about themselves. And maybe many I don't think many people can be aware of it, but you'll just lose some credibility because nobody wants to be told that they're not the hero in their own story. So always think of yourself as the utility belt, you're, you're a part of their hero of their story and very important part, by the way, but you're just a part of the story.

Yeah, so that's the part where, you know, if we watch these movies with superheroes, they always highlight some insecurity, some little secret that they carry, that reveals their vulnerability that they could actually feel if this thing was exposed, or if it came into play.

Because that narrative has been in our dialogue across every culture for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's that same story play, it feels right to us, because it's been told by our ancestors, and through movies, and through our own real general lives, that we all are never going to be the hero that we are, we all have our insecurities. We all have our faults, and we're aware of those as a matter of fact. And so the best stories, the best relationships between a brand and a customer is the realization that we are fragile, we do have these insecurities. But yet a brand can help us overcome just a little bit overcome one of these insecurities, overcome a barrier overcome a place where we're not equal to where we want to be our aspirational self, and get them to a slightly better place. It's a job to be done. And we talk about jobs to be done in our industry a lot. And I and Clayton Christensen, you know, kind of created that word years and years ago about a brand's role is to help somebody get a job to be done. What he left out is that job is to get the customer to a slightly closer place to their idealized self to becoming their own hero. And that's

remember, I think about the utility belt in that case. So I used to watch the old series. Yeah, Batman and I'm what was the guy's name? He was

obviously the the actor's name or the clown wasn't it? I kept saying Bert, but that's not it. What do I remember? Oh, Adam West, Adam, Adam West.

Alright, so perfect. So but he always more that belt around. And he would always get into some jam. And that belt would happen to have the little thing that helped him get past his his short fallings, right.

Yeah.

And when you think about it, he didn't walk around with the belt swing and and bragging on the belt. It just came in handy. Every little situation at the right time. And that is how our brand is supposed to help our heroes

I love the situation that's I love that analogy. Because it's that situation is not the belt is not our your brand is not made for every situation. But when that situation is needed, you are the only brand hopefully that can overcome are helping that situation. It's a great point. It's a really important point, actually.

Yeah, so I just remember Adam West looking at Robin and and just the poison white. Why Batman did the poison not make you sick meals while I drank some buttermilk a little while ago? Yeah. Right. And it looks like butter milk is just so your brand is to be the buttermilk in the right scenario at the right time. Not the butter milk with a capital B chasing around and opening the doors for Batman.

Yeah, yep. So I I would just tell you guys understanding these moments. Because to your point, if you're trying to interject yourself in a moment where buttermilk is not needed, Steve, what do you do that it doesn't matter? Right? Right. So So what do you do? So let's say if you're a life insurance company out there, and I know, in fact, I know life insurance. And insurance companies know this very well, these moments matter. So when you reach 50 years old, people start looking at like, wow, I better start really considering life insurance. That's a huge kind of temporal kind of moment, if you will, landmark moment. The birth of a child is another big part. Like you're like, wow, when my child's born, you started looking, it's like, do I have life insurance so I can cover my kid or the death of a parent is another landmark where you're like, my parents were didn't have life insurance. And now that burden has been placed on me whatever that burden is. So if you're a company think through when are these moments where you are the buttermilk, right where you are the right solution, and then you heavily find those moments and you put yourself in that moment. All right, I wrote here. I'm triathlons. Do you know that? The number one time that people sign up for triathlons or their 40th birthday. marathons are the same way. If you look at marathon runners, a ton of people just before their 40th birthday, or just before the 50th birthday, they sign up for marathon training, they get the equipment for it, and they sign up for the race. Why? It's because people reflect I always thought I'd, you know, run a marathon before I'm 50 and I'm 48 or 49. That's only a year away. I got to go do this. That's their aspirational goal. So so if you're a company out there, think about these firsts, you know, that I even laid out laid out here and what are these moments because if you're not Speaking in those moments, you're less likely to be effective. Like you're just less likely, because you're not the buttermilk when they need it, you are the motorboat when they don't need it, it's great to know that you have buttermilk, it's great. But that's not what I need right now. So do that do the do the work, the due diligence of thinking through somebody's day, these landmark moments, these temporal landmarks, and figure out where your brand or category is being thought of. And it doesn't have to be these, you know, big events, it could be the first day of the week, it could be the first week of the month, the first month of the year, like there's 80 some odd of these that are in the book, when that you can look at and go, yep, that would be a great place for me to start. But let me give you one last one fast food restaurant may be trying to serve healthy, healthy meals. If you know that on Mondays, people are looking at their bodies on Sundays over the weekend, they put too many chicken wings, Mondays would be the day that you promote your healthy offering. If you're if you're a restaurant, why that you find that people eat healthier on Mondays, they really bad on Fridays, right? Because they've lost their discipline. So on Mondays of the day, you promote your healthy stuff. And on Fridays, and the weekends, you promote your less healthy stuff. Because it's this narrative, right? We are trying to be our aspirational selves on Mondays, and a little by little over the course of a week, we fall into all habits. So these are able anybody out there can find these moments in time, you just got to do a little bit of diligence to kind of figure out which ones are right for you.

This is this whole conversation again, highlights why being human is a competitive advantage. By thinking of the folks that you're working with. They're humans with brains and aspirations and dreams. And by the only way you can relate with them is by being human yourself. And amazingly, it was a joke when we said it last time, but it's so true. being human is a competitive advantage.

It is it's a we talked about it last time, it's we believe a lot of times that our competitive advantage is going up through technology or some sort of a data firm that's going to show us things that we've never seen before. We know everything we need to succeed in marketing and in life by just being human by by realizing that our customers are human, we're human, if we treat people as human beings, eventually, we have the competitive advantage of so few people don't have so be human, everybody, be human. So in this

episode of the mindset marketing hour, we talked a lot about narrative psychology, how understanding the things that people go through the phases are the first and why these are common. And even though we experienced them. And then very important, there's a theme that runs through our lives, that's based around the rules of story. And so in the mind state marketing, marketing, the mind states book, it offers us a framework to really identify these things and connect with a client. So number one. throughout life, we strive to become our ideal aspirational selves, and then become our best selves. We're actually participating as a hero in our journey, in that a brand that understands that will help us reach success, however, that fits into what your brand does. Number two, we get closer becoming heroes by reaching the conscious goals that we set, and the non conscious goals that society or others set for us. So to me, the conscious goals are the obvious goals, the features, I want to I want to lift 200 pounds, but actually what's going on as far as the non conscious, there's a reason why I set that goal, why I wrote it on the board or whatever is like, I feel like a loser, I will really want to hold myself accountable to something. I'm just kind of ashamed of the way I let myself deteriorate. So that's something I want to get our brand messaging that really understands that and connects us with us, right there makes us feel safe and understood. So you're not going to walk up and go, Well, now I know you're feeling like a loser. Okay. But it's like, well, I understand that this is something that's important to you now that you're starting to realize, you know, I've I met this certain age, and I need to get focused on this so I can not feel so weak. Yeah. And so that's like, how did you know that? Steve? I didn't say that. Well, I relate. I don't feel the same way. Okay. And so that's how your brand can really start to connect and be the utility belt. Brands guide people along this journey become memorable important. So it The example of the Iron Man, there's so many examples, that there are stories where when women become pregnant, the sense the brands that they chose before they were pregnant, and the brands that they choose after that become this have this opportunity to reset with them. So that's the first, the first pregnancy as well. Number four, and how this can be especially true. And the key points such as the first a temporal landmarks, where humans, we aim at things, we go on a journey on a path to somewhere. And for brands to really realize that and help provide the tools, the shoes, maps, the protection, the sunscreen, whatever that is, to help us on our journey. That's who we we want to carry with us and reach in our backpack at a little time when we want to snack, by the little river, in the forest with our loved ones. And, but be careful, don't overstep your role, just go along to support, be understanding be like that mom, that just always, always hands you the tissue, when when your nose is runny. So tell us a little bit more on this mind state marketing workshop where we could learn a little bit about this together in

your teaching. And we're trying to teach our clients to gain a competitive advantage by being human, my friend. So every month, we do a two day marketing workshop. And this next one is happening in early November, you can learn more about it at mine state group.com. And what we do is we spent two days together where we go through a series of activities to work through how to identify these moments and mindsets in these moments, and then actually teach you how to apply, you know what's called behavioral design. But some of the concepts we're talking about the watts example was one of them right? on how to better your marketing, ultimately, to get your clients or customers to listen, care and act. And the idea is, if people will will if you can break through the noise, get people to listen, and you can create this emotional engagement, get them to care, they will act so we teach you the whole process to do that. Over the kitchen is to your unique situation to your unique situation. That's right.

You can learn more about this at Tommy Wwm mind state group comm Of course you can buy wills book everywhere that books are sold.

Marketing mindsets.

Yeah, I bet they're on some of your professors desks. I bet they're out there. You've seen it maybe even and didn't know that you were close to a very famous book. Yeah. All right. Well, anything else you want to share with us before we hang up and get back to our lives in Mexico?

You're on a journey right now, Steve? So no, it's great talking to you. I love having these weekly events. And I look forward to seeing everybody next week.

All right. And that's right. So every every day, every Wednesday, actually, every week, every first Wednesday of every week, we're having my instinct marketing hour, right? Well,

it's a temporal landmark for you guys, you could reset every Wednesday if you're ever improve my marketing. So let's set up a new temporal and market some of your first and just keep doing the first but we're here. We're here to help you guys. And just have a great conversation. So thanks for facilitating.

All right. Thanks for watching, folks, we appreciate you. Be sure to let us know if there's topics you're interested in. And we'll see you next week at the same bat time same bat channel, wearing the same bat man utility belt. And I will that's a wrap. Thanks. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise that golden toilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.