[Special Episode] The Mindstate Marketing Hour #15 with Will Leach - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 77

Welcome to the ROI online podcast. And this is a special series of interviews with Will Leach. He's the author of Marketing To Mindstates, 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 in 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. Hey, everyone, welcome back. We've missed Will Leach, he's the author of what that, what do we call your beautiful book? My favorite book Marketing To Mindstates, the practical guide to applying behavior design, research, marketing, or as I like to say how to use science to connect with your clients. Will, how are you?

I'm doing great. I gained a few pounds since we last talked. Thanksgiving was small but memorable in the amount of food that I ate. But it's good. Everything's great. Finishing out 2020 getting ready for 2021 how are you today, Steve?

You know, I was excited to see you. I missed you last week. I felt a little lost. I was walking around. You know, I was thinking I'm supposed to be live streaming right now at 11 o'clock. But I was there with my parents and I got over, it I got over it.

Well it's probably good that we didn't live stream unless you're going to have me live stream my overcooked turkey. I did. I'm so glad we're small we didn't have anyone to show to the house of course this year. And I'm very glad because the pressure was on and I overcooked the turkey by hours. It was it was a version of do I trust the technology that's telling me that the turkeys not done? Or do I trust my judgment and experiencing the turkey must be done? I went the technology route. And I failed. It was the worst turkey we've ever had. It was, my wife is gracious. Awesome. But it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing.

Will you have to go with your emotional mind state? Did I you know best?

That'sso true. My emotions are telling me to pull

00 and I kept it on till 5:30. So yeah, you're probably right, man. always trust your emotional brain. That's that's what we should take away from this whole conversation today.

Always pull the turkey, you can always put it back in.

That's true. Bad mistake.

All right. So here's the thing that I really loved when I read your book, and I was going, I felt this but I needed someone to walk up and kind of balked me on the forehead and say, Steve, people don't buy what they want. They buy what they psychologically need. And although you might have had I would have said, yo Yeah, prove it to me. So, here's the deal, prove it to me Will.

Right. Well, I can prove it to you through lots of different years and years actually, of scientific work. Um, but here's the deal. Here's what I mean by this. So if some of you guys may read this, and say, Oh, I know like, Well, you know, we only buy our needs, like, I'm not being kind of place it or kind of trying to be funny with those words, what I need to tell you is that deep down inside of you, you have a need, we all have these needs for lots of different things, by the way, and for the most part, they are subconscious. You're not even actively aware of those needs. But if somebody asks you what your needs are, you can rattle some things off. But technically, those aren't really needs. Those are your functional goals. So I'm going to step into goal theory today. And why that matters to you, if you're a business owner is that I want you to stop thinking that you need to deliver what your people ask for and what they want. That's not necessarily your job. I want to expand your thinking to deliver what people need, which I'm going to show you can expand the offerings that you offer and your competitive set in a very good way.

Will I'm telling you that you're you're forcing us to step over a courageous barrier. Because when especially if you're a smaller business, and you've been you just need to pay the bills. And so people come in and they say I need this and we're all excited, Hey, I got what you need. Really, there's a place that we're going to get to where we can better serve them if we go, Why no, that's what you're saying you need but really, this is what you really do need.

That's right, not even just from the the emotional payoff of getting something that you said you needed, but how it's going to make you feel and why that's going to be important. We'll talk about this later, is that when you deliver on people's psychological needs, that seems sometimes way far away from the product you offer, they will remember you in ways that you will come up to mind in topics and conversations that otherwise have nothing to do with your product offering, but you will come up the top of mind and they'll talk more about you, the glut of benefits for long term memory, etc. So when it comes down to Steve, is goals and we've, we've talked about this in episodes before, but if you read the book, there is this whole chapter on goals. And here's what I tell you for your, for your customers out there.

So let's let's just help us understand goals. It's clear in your head. I've got goals, and maybe it's soccer inclined, what do you mean exactly?

That's right. So a goal is defined as where you are right now, versus or where and compared to where you are as an aspirational self.

A desired transformation is your goal

A desired transformation. That's right. So whenever I talk about goals, you can rattle off the first part

Yeah, I love that you're, you know, when you talk where you are today, many people can rattle off want to be better soccer player, I want to eat healthier, whatever, what's harder for you to do. Because we just don't have the time we don't think about this as much is understanding your desired end state who you want to be. And when you look in the literature, it's we always move towards our goals of who we want to be, our aspirations, like th better version of ourselves, th better version of our business the better parent that we thin we can be. So if you only focu on the things that people sa what they want today, that' good, I mean, you'll you'l satisfy them. But that's not point of differentiation Anybody can deliver bette value, better quality, you know great tasting product. Wha people don't deliver, oftentime is that feeling of I'm a bette version of myself. And that' the point of differentiation, think, in a very crowde marketplace. about when you do this, right, and you'll be remembered and people will value. It's because there, there's a learning process that's happening. And that, you remember that time you went to a workshop and you learned something you left with a little bit of a skip in your step? It's because you learn something, you left with a little bit of a flashlight to help you see through this area that is dark, often. And all of a sudden, you're empowered. And that's what you're talking about.

Well, also, what's interesting about that, as any learning experience, you should think about it as a journey. And if you are on that journey with your customer, you have more time to create these connections and bonds and everything else. If you deliver, you know, the rational kind of a regular goal, today's goals, that's usually a transaction. And that's all it is. But anybody can do a transaction. It's that journey brings you into a more of a emotional place. And where this hit me was years ago, in when I decided to buy a pool or to put in a pool. Have you ever done that Steve?

No, I've I learned that you shouldn't do the pool. Because it's big money.

That's exactly it's like buying the boat, right? You never buy a boat, you always have your best friend by the boat.

Right? You go with your buddies. Yeah.

See? Okay, so I live in a community. And it's suburbs of Dallas. And we had two community pools, and it was just starting to be built out. So those pools were oftentimes just us and maybe three or four other families. So I remember years ago, my wife talked about getting a pool and I did the exact same thing he doesn't we will never put in a pool because I will never recoup our costs. And today, there's no reason I have a pool because there's a pool right down the road, we just got to jump in the car, get over there walk to it in fact, and we can get there in the pool is never very crowded. And so I resisted. And then a year later, so we'd go to the pool whenever we needed to. And a year later, same thing. I think we should really get a pool like there's no reason why I should get a pool. We have that pool right down the street. And it is always available. We can go in there anytime we want. Nobody wants to stay past 10 anyways. So then I made the mistake. And the mistake was we took Nicholas to a birthday party, his for his birthday party actually was at the pool, right? Cheap, we go to the pool, and it got crowded, right? And there's a moment where other kids were kind of sneaking in and grabbing pizza, you know, and you're kind of like, are they at our party? I don't know, I don't know these kids. And all of a sudden, you know, you can't see your kid because your kids kind of away. There's too many kids are losing them or whatever. So that was the first time where I said all right, well, let's just think about putting a pool I don't know how much these things cost. And guys they are expensive, man, they're much more expensive. I would have thought a pool would be I never though, we have a big yard. So but if you ask me, especially back then, before I was really thinking in this way, what do you want out of a pool? Like you know, I want it to be you know, low maintenance of course. I want to have really clear water. I want my pool to be clean. I want it to look good in my backyard. I want to make sure that the chemicals don't hurt us in some way, you know, the basic things you would ask me if I was it's a, this is the stuff that would happen when we went to a couple of different pool companies to have them, you know, give us a bid we went to like 4. And those are the things I asked for. I said, Hey, you know, I want a pool that's low maintenance, I need this kind of dimension, I kind of like the shape, those are all great things. But frankly, every pool company can make whatever shape you have, they all basically have clear water, they all basically have low maintenance. So there wasn't really a point of differentiation until this one pool company came. And I remember it was the third bid. And they did a design. And the way they designed the pool had us looking like where they place like an area to sit, you know, they do the whole thing, not just the pool, but they kind of show you where you're gonna sit maybe. And they had us looking directly into our neighbor's house. And I remember thinking to myself, well, that was stupid, like what, who would think that was the right thing to do? And but what and I didn't say that to him, of course. But my guess is the guy put my stuff in an hour before the appointment. He was probably Oh my God, I got to do something. He did it. He did it through AutoCAD, right? But that was the first time I thought to myself, wait a minute. That was a point where this guy was going to give me a very bad experience. If I didn't noticed I'd be looking directly into my backyard or into my neighbor's house. That would be a bad experience. I started thinking about the experience side, and the aspirations I had. So I started asking better questions rather than saying, Well tell me about your maintenance plan. Tell me about how we're going to finance this thing. I started talking about how are you going to give me a better experience for my family. And the fourth pool company told us and they designed the dimensions of the pool to show how Oh, from here, from your back window, you can see Nicholas swim, which is important for my wife, right? Because she always wanted to make sure she could swim. So all of a sudden, it wasn't about a pool about pristine water. It was about a pool being that Melanie could see my son, which is safety oriented, right? Being a good parent, they got this emotional place. And I'll never forget this. So people ask me, in our community seems to like me, and you know, like, I'm thinking about doing a pool. I'm thinking about doing a poll, and I actually recommend them, which I know you hate that, right? Cuz you're like, what are you doing? Like, because you'll never make your money out of a pool. But here's why I recommend it. Because it gave me something in experience I never thought, and I always dimensionalize it like this. There was a Sunday. I never forget this. We all went to church, we came back from church, we then actually, as a family went to go play tennis for about an hour, we came back home. Then Melanie and Nicholas jumped in the pool. And I was grilling, and there's this moment where I looked down, and they're in the pool, and they're playing around, I'm sitting there grilling, and I said, we've been together the entire day. And it's like that American dream. It's like the thing we all want, right? That like having a place where we're at our house together. We didn't have, we weren't like all in different rooms. I think we're all in this one place, enjoying ourselves as a family. And I was like, This is why it was an investment. It was in a cost. And it's you know, these things are like $80,000 nowadays, $100,000 - $120,000. And I thought to myself, that is the real reason why that pool matters now. And that's the place where if you're a pool company, if you want to compete on goods, pristine water, you go down to those those kind of goals, if you will, today's goals, and you're going to be price competitive. And if you're not price competitive, nobody's going to choose you because it's it's basically whoever charges me the least amount of money. But if you can now start talking about how you're going to help me reach this aspirational goal, which in this case was I was thinking like, I didn't know I had that aspiration was like, I'm going to bring my family into like the Clark Griswold moment, right and Christmas vacation where everyone's jumping in the pool and Uncle Eddie is there. And I was thinking that's really what I paid for. And that's what differentiated them and they got 100 - $100,000, I guess out of my out of my budget, because they were able to show me how I was going to be able to reach this aspiration.

Yeah, I love that. You're right, totally right. Because if you're just selling features, then everybody else is selling features. But if you're helping them see themselves in the moment that they truly desire, for some reason, they started this journey, checking out pools. Why did that start? And you're starting to dig in and connect with them. And you know what that says, hey, I understand you. You're safe. I'm going to help you figure out what's the best version of this that you need.

That's right. And I did not buy what I wanted. I wanted clean water. I bought what I needed psychologically they even realize it, which was these moments of connection. And so that's why I want you to figure out and they always figure out what do people need, not what not necessarily what they asked for but we are going to say like it has to have pristine water like it has to deliver but those are table stakes in today's world.

Here's the thing that here's the reason you said I want clean water is because you sat and you thought, What questions should I ask? That's all that you could come up with truthfully? Okay? But really, if you were to back up in like a foreign movie, you know, movie with the subtitles. It's like, hey, I want to actually have a place for my family and I can hang out, and then enjoy ourselves.

That's right. That's right. So a guy's got to figure out what people need. That's what you got to figure out. And there's a way to do that.

Well, let's see, let's go through, how do we figure out what people need?

That's right. So the first thing you have to do is do kind of what I did, even though we say that's not, you know, we don't want to talk about what they need today. But you have to start somewhere. So what you do is you got to list out those things that people ask for pristine water, how much it's going to cost, you have to list those things out. Because you can't get to that "more than need" until you list those out. So go to a board or ask your customers specifically, hey, as it relates to pools as it relates to a restaurant as it relates to my, my agency, what is it? What are the important things that your customers are asking for? And just write those down on a sheet of paper on a whiteboard, it's really good to try to get a group of people together, if you have a group of people from your company, write them all out on a board all in one meeting.

Yeah, and so you're gonna get a list of generally what are called, obvious external features, right?

External features. That's right. And in my world, we call goal theory, we call those functional goals. Those are just features that people ask for which, or if you're in the CPG world, it would be called a reason to believe this is like the things that people talk about forever, about how you're the message, you're the message to reasons to believe. Now we know that messaging the reasons to believe is not nearly as important as driving, you know, kind of engagement or revenues than it is to ladder these into something more meaningful, which is step two.

Step two is?

That's right. So here's where you know, you get all these things on a board. And then what you want to do is look around the room, or if you have to do this yourself kind of clear your head and look at these features in aggregate, and ask yourself, why are these things important? Which is why is it more just start brainstorming. Why is this collectively important? You're probably going to get to, or I want you to try to get to two to three statements. So if you had 20 statements of features that people are asking for, ask yourself, why are those features important in that person in their life? And then write down maybe two statements.

Okay, so they're gonna go well, well, you know, the water, we want the water to be good for our health or, or, you know, I know, we want salt water.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, why? Why do you want salt water?

That's right. So why is that important, right? And so then now, if you can ask your customers, that's the best thing you can do. But if you can't, you got to write, you got to write that down. So maybe salt water is like, well, I heard that salt water is easier to maintain and less chemicals. And so there's less chemicals that could possibly hurt my family. Or if it's easier to maintain the pool is always ready. I don't have to worry about oh my gosh, you know, people are coming over and I got to drop in some chlorine tablets to make sure everything is looking good. Like the salt water in a pool is supposedly better for you. Okay?

Okay, so next?

Next, do that, again, take those two statements, that whatever it is you came up with, and say, but why is that important? Why is it important that you don't have to put chlorine tablets into the last minute? And then when you could get to it they'll say, Well, it's so that the pool is always available when I need it. Because the worst thing you may be able, you'd have to do is you have your kid come over he's got his friends like dad, we're gonna go swimming and you're going no, you can't say I got green pool, I got a green pool. Or you know, there's some algae or whatever. So really, what you're the real important thing you're trying to do is saying I want to make sure that the pool is always ready cuz just like on that Sunday, Steve, I never planned on us all jumping in the pool. But we play tennis were hot. And everybody could jump in. Imagine how that day would have looked. If we got home. And like, hey, let's go in the pool. Oh, guys, we can't Nicholas would be upstairs taking a shower up staying upstairs in his room, my wife would be in the kitchen, I'd be watching football all in different rooms. But that pool was available. It's like jump in that pool. We all jumped in the pool plate a little bit, I jumped out, got my got my flip flops on and started grilling. That's the real meaning. So do it twice, not just once why it's important, do it again, that oftentimes leads you to that aspirational goal, the thing that I want you to start messaging against.

Then?

Now, now that you understand that, you know, let's say for the pool company, that your real job is to make sure that it's available the pool is available. So whenever a spontaneous moment happens to bring your family or friends together, it's available now imagine how you're going to expand your business and communications to reflect that business that you're really in. Your not a pool company that that manufactures pools, you're a company that brings your families together. And you just so happen to do that through these features, you make pools that have, that has pristine water, etc. Why this matters is in a crowded, crowded marketplace of pool companies of restaurants of agencies, whatever, you now have expanded your list of possible features you can offer. So if you're a pool company, now you can say, well, to have it always available, maybe you know, you'd offer pool maintenance, which is a natural thing you should be doing, right? Most pool companies, I'm probably not sure, but most pool companies, I would imagine offer maintenance. And then it could be well, you know what, we have 24 hour service that if you at any moment, if your pool goes down, we will be there within 24 hours guaranteed. And that may be an upcharge, we will provide you, we can actually start building grill areas and we can start building like pergolas and things like that. So we're not just gonna provide pools, we're gonna expand our offerings into spaces where you bring your families together, now you can start, you can start offering more and more services, to bring people and families together so that these backyard experiences are ready to go. You could go into Home Security from there because now all of a sudden, having a pool ready and feeling safe in there, you want to make sure that you know whether it's a higher fence line or you bring in shrubs to give you more privacy, like you see how you can expand if you know people's real reason why they want that, that service. That's why I think it's important to to think about not just your marketing, because that'll differentiate you by showing families getting together in the pool is always ready. But also in your innovation, the products you serve that you that you offer.

I want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released called the ROI quickstart Academy for authors. Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place. We want to create a great foundation and we want to grow our business. But the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with, you have a great idea you have a great book, but what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors, managing working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit roionline.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now back to this episode. So I love that. So here's the thing. The aspirational image is the emotional aspect of the decision. So it's made, whether they, they really whether they acknowledge it or not, the emotional part of the brain says this is exactly what I'm looking for.

What I want to feel, that's right.

Then the logical part of the brain hops in and goes, Okay, and these features are the justification of why you feel that way.

That's right. That's right, guys, we always, always, always, always, it's in the book, we always make emotional decisions first, and we justify them by features. And so you got to have those features, you have to show that you have pristine water, and all that stuff. But basically, most time they've already made the decision emotionally, you just have to make sure that they feel comfortable with that decision. How do you do that? Your features, your rtv's, yo

So once you learn what their aspirational image is of this decision, so I want my family to be able to connect and spend a little time when the weather's just right or when the situation's just right, then you're going, Okay, perfect. And so these functions or these features will facilitate your desire.

That's right. That's right. And that is the way to compete nowadays. And the reason why here's some really good benefits too, right? Let's just like we said, table stakes, if you're only talking about the great tasting pizza you offer or that we get our design work done in 24 hours. That's table stakes in today's world, like everybody is going to say that even if they can't deliver they'll say that so that's table stakes, very few people and few companies understand that really people buy off of these emotions and so have to deliver table stakes, but you will sell and make revenues off of the emotions that you promise to evoke in your in your customer.

I love that. So one time I got to participate in this exercise where this particular bank in San Francisco was about to roll out a new campaign. And they were discussing about how important being socially conscious was to their, the folks that they would like to serve, which happened to be unbanked people. So what they did is a they got a lot of unbanked people to come in and talk to them. And so some, at some point as they went from each group, and got asked different questions they would drop in. So what do you think about banks being socially socially conscious? The big takeaway that day was, pretty much everyone goes, Well, aren't? Aren't all banks socially conscious?

Yeah.

It's like, so that's not a big deal. Everybody is, right? And it's table stakes.

Yeah, that's, I love that. It's a great, it's a great, great story. And I think sometimes we get so enamored with things that we do well, that we think those are really meaningful to other people. And like you said, very quickly, especially amount of change we have right now, things become table stakes really, really quickly. And so, as you see, like meeting these aspirational goals, is a new point of differentiation. And there's a lot of reasons why, we've talked about this, it makes you more human. Like if you talk to people about your pristine water. And you know, we have lots of different shapes of pools. That's one thing, if you talk to somebody, as a business owner, as you're going to help, you know, bring families together, it just makes you human in today's world where people don't, or they desire human connection, even with the brands that they buy. It's it's a nice point of differentiation.

Yeah, when you when you're connecting with them on their aspirational goals. You think about the last time you were talking to someone, and you realize they really understood you. You remember the energy you got from it? It's like this person special. Not everybody realizes or has this understanding. And so you get this connection, this actual human connection with someone that actually gets you. And that's what understanding these aspirational goals actually do for you. That's why it's so differentiating for you.

That's right. In a world where we're not all that human, this is a great way to do it. Secondly, yeah, if you can meet these aspirational goals, if you speak to these, if you actually have products, products that meet these aspirational goals, at least you can show that it can help them help them reach that goal, you're mostly more relevant because there's no emotion behind, Oh, you gave me a square pool. But I could have gone with the kidney shaped pool, there's no emotion. I don't care how much you know, you design, or you love aesthetic design, there's not really much of what real emotion comes from is that you created a mechanism to bring families together and motions change behaviors, right? People remember the emotional feelings they have, right? Also, when you message in this way, it breaks through the clutter, and it remains memorable your messaging. So you know, our research shows that roughly about 89% of all messages are psychologically filtered or modified. So your brain is just being inundated with advertising and people wanting to sell it and just input. And so when you speak to these aspirations, people as aspirations, without even realizing it, people take notice because it's going to the psychology thing. That's for you, because you get me. So it breaks through that filter. So your messaging, your breakthrough should be better. And it actually if you talk to people in the in the kind of in this way, I always tap here my long term memory this short term memory, Steve, this, I keep dumping like what is he doing? Long term memory, people remember your product or your brand longer are more likely to anyways, because you're going to that emotional kind of, you know, the the the reptilian brain that people will talk about the old brain, it's more likely to go to the old brain versus prefrontal cortex, new brain.

This is actually a beautiful application of that quote, we always hear is like people don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. And that's exactly what you're doing. You're making them feel understood and safe.

Yep. And this last one is just like we said, expand your competitive set, because but it's in a good way. It's I'm not asking you to get more competitors. What I'm asking you to think about is that if you are now not just selling pools, or if you're not just selling pizza, you know? And you would have the greatest Italian pizza or whatever. We always bring up pizza in our conversations. You're not just doing that. You're saying no, no, I'm bringing families together. You're now competing. If you're a restaurant you're competing against not just other pizza places, you're competing against Mexican restaurants, coffee shops, entertainment venues, All of a sudden, you know, when somebody wants to connect, you may come to mind where otherwise won't even think about pizza. They may have thought Chinese food or like, Oh, you know what the pizza place down the block, though, that's really fun for the family. Let's go there. That's what I want to do. I want to expand the number of times that people will think about you. And then, know Steve, you and I are like passionate about this in today's economy, the middle class will be built upon entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs are disadvantaged right now, because it's the big companies have all the marketing dollars. And it's not companies like ours, that have smaller dollars. So we have to take advantage of little small techniques to expand consideration. It's the only, I believe it's the only hope that our economy has in the future. It's an expanded middle class of entrepreneurs.

One time I had to, I had to live in a different city for a while for one of my jobs. Right? And so I had a per diem every day where I can go to dinner. And it was kind of weird, because I ended up going to the same Outback every single night. And it's like, well, Steve, why did you do that? Why are we in such a rut? Is because that they knew my name? Okay. And so I got to thinking about well, I'm reason I go there is because actually, Oh, hey, Steve, how's it going? And then I would get like, an extra dessert every once in a while. Or they would offer me like another drink. But it was because they made me feel at home when I was away from home.

That's right. Yeah, you leave a bigger tip. Right? So benefit efforts, everybody. Yeah, I've, uh, my best friend goes to a diner down in Lakeland, Florida. And he's got to a point where as he walked, they see him coming in from his car, and they start cooking his breakfast. So when he gets in there, they've already got his order. They're already starting to get his juice to save him time because and he goes there. It's called Jack's. He goes there all the time. Now, just because they get him they know what he's gonna order. And they're they're prepared. They're thinking about him and makes him feel special.

So in that case, is aspirational. Identity is, Hey, I'm important and people like to cater to me.

And imagine how that that starts your day, every day. He goes there before work. And he starts every day knowing that he's loved or feeling loved, feeling important. And he gets to go to his job from there. That's not a bad place to be if you're an entrepreneur right now is to have that connection with your customer.

Well, I tell you, the flip side of that, is that the restaurant, the people that do that every day, they receive a fulfillment from that as well. That makes them have a connection with the human where they're not just cooking eggs. They're providing breakfast for their friend.

Yeah, there's a book. I wonder if you've read it. But it talks about finding happiness. It might be called The Happiness Project? I can't remember it. But anyways, basically, um, I think it's Gretchen Rubenstein. Rubenstein, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. She was looking at happiness. And she found that people's fulfillment in life was to elevate there are a large part of fulfillment in life was to elevate their role in their job to something more aspirational, meaningful. And so she got there because she was she was in a hospital, she was she went to talk to doctors and nurses. And they're like, well, these people are like saving people. So they must certainly be happy. And what they found out it was on this one weord at this one hospital, the cleaning crews, people in the cleaning crew, they said, well describe your job. Oh, actually, they noticed that these cleaning crews are going in there talking to the patients and be like what? You know, is that right or whatever? And they found out that the cleaning crew did not see themselves as cleaning anything, they're like we're here, because we're helping save patients. And they took this meaning on their job and their role to where they saw, they said we're an integral part of people's health, because we're making sure that people don't get infections here. We're making sure that doctors have worked with clean items. And I thought to myself, and because of that they were highly satisfied with their job, same idea, right? Is that when you can connect people to their aspirations, they work harder for you. They, they're enjoying their jobs, and they're more likely to work harder and stay with you longer, right?

Yeah, I think, you know, people go, Hey, I'm trying to figure out how to be happy, but I happy is, you know, it comes in waves and you can wake up one day and be all happy, but something happens. And you're not going to be happy. But being fulfilled, feels very rewarding, because fulfillment comes from overcoming challenges from leaning in and figuring out something and there's something innate in us that really receives a, an emotional reward over overcoming challenges. And so that's fulfillment. And so I really look for these things that we're talking about as a way to connect with humans and feel more fulfilled that you're doing something above and beyond bigger than just selling them a pool.

That's right. So I have a tennis coach right now Melanie finally got me to get a tennis coach. She's sick of losing matches with us, right? I'm terrible, terrible at tennis. But our coach, I looked at him one day, and this is really meaningful because I was I was like, man, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. And I think as a coach, he was like, well, you're paying me for my time. I'm like, No, no, no, you are giving me expertise. And because I'm getting better, you're helping my marriage not to look at my wife. And she's like, well, would you stop rushing the net, right? Like, you're helping my marriage, you're giving me greater confidence in myself, which makes me a better father, which makes me a better business owner. And I'm telling like, like, it matters, like what you do matters. Beyond, you're helping me on my horrible, you know, slice or whatever, or my or my horrible golf swing, or, you know, tennis, stroke or whatever. And I remember thinking, like, everybody wants to feel that they're helping people reach their aspirational goals. So like you said, it's not better for your business, but it's better for you, as a person, like help people reach their aspirations, you're going to be a happier person, and they're going to be happier, too.

And that's so true, and some beautiful way to wrap it into your marketing, your messaging, actually, humans wanting to be impactful and other humans lives. And this is a legitimate application of a universal truth.

Yeah, it really is. It really is. So it's been fun. I'm glad we're talking about it. I'm glad we're back after Thanksgiving. I'm going to lose some weight. I'm gonna go get back on the tennis circuit. But yeah, so hopefully guys aspirations help people have aspirations everybody's better off.

Aspirations, if you know someone's aspirations it just means you care. Mindstate Marketing Hour with Will Leach he's author of Marketing To Mindstates. Will you actually even have a website, right? You're like this legitimate concern and actually applies this and applications other businesses? Tell us a little bit about that?

I do I do. So I have a research company called Trigger Point Design, which does research to understand people's aspirations and understand, you know, the psychology behind why they make the decisions they do. Mindstate Group is a company that takes that information and helps train marketers, brand managers, brand planners, how to use behavioral psychology, to get messaging to get people to think and act differently, and really engage them in your brand. So we offer lots of different services, like a blueprint here, we have blueprints, that once you identify these factors you can give, you can hand off a blueprint, kind of a psychological code to make your marketing much more effective. And you see behind me, if you notice, I got it I got I kind of look like you a little bit, got a microphone back here.

Yeah. what's going on here? You're upping your game

I'm upping it. So you know, we've been offering workshops, two day workshops for a number of months now. And the feedback has been like, it's great, except for how many people have the time to take two solid days out of their life, to learn about all these things in the mindstate book. So what we do, what we're doing is we're filming a master class. So the master class is being filmed. And we're going to offer a master class where you can take you can download a whole bunch of different videos, about 10 to 12 hours so far, it looks like it's even expanding of teaching and we'll go through step by step on how to understand these mind states but also then how to draft new creative and even audit your creative to make sure that you're tapping into the psychology of people's mind states. So we got a master class is gonna be offered in January. So when I'm not talking to you, I'm doing a lot of filming. And, and we're going to also every month after January is offered our workshop for just one day. So in the one day workshop, you will actually work through your data as a business owner, to identify your customers mindstates how to do audit yourself on your data. So eventually, these things are going to kind of reside together, you'll do the masterclass on your own, try to understand and learn about it, and a workshop a couple of hours work with me direct to actually identify these for yourself.

That's right. The big epiphany for me reading Will's book was that people are in different states of mind during the day. And generally they're in a common state of mind when they're evaluating the solution that you offer for the challenges that they're encountering. And that was like, Of course, that makes sense. But how do I understand that? Well, that's what Will's book does. That's what his workshop does. That's what his training. So, the other big thing, here's the big, big drop right here, there it is, being human is a competitive advantage. It sounds funny, but it's true.

Talking about all day as humans. So if you believe in anything that we talked about today, you should now know that being human is a competitive advantage. Take advantage of it guys because people are going in a totally different direction with technology and efficiencies and if you can be human, you can be relevant.

Alright, and that's from two humans to all you humans out there. Hey, we got a comment. How about this masterclass? Sounds great from Michael Ferguson, the workshops enhanced and book teachings really good. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. There you go.

Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that.

So, thanks, guys. We'll see you next Thursday. At The Mindstate Marketing Hour, Will you have a great week you guys be sure to reach out you can reach Will on LinkedIn or The Mindstate Group. Check it out. Talk to you later.

Bye, guys.

And that's a wrap. 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, thegoldentoilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.