In this weekly episode* of the Mindstate Marketing Hour, host Steve Brown of ROI Online, interviews Will Leach, author of Marketing to Mindstates, founder of Triggerpoint, and CEO of the Mindstate Group on why focusing on customers emotions and mindstates is key to successful marketing.
*Originally produced as a Livestream video
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Hey, everybody, welcome to a special series of conversations sponsored by The ROI Online Podcast with Will Leach. He's the author of Marketing To Mindstates, the practical guide to applying behavior designed to research and marketing. And in these conversations, we're going to deep dive and explore all the insights from wills book, as you learn how to use science to connect better with your clients. I'm Steve Brown and here we go. Welcome everybody to The Mindstate Marketing Hour with Will Leach, he's the author of Marketing To Mindstates. So you need to right after the show, run and get this, okay?That's right, don't run on the ice, though. The practical guide to applying behavior design, research and marketing, or as Texas boy likes to say, how to use science to connect with your clients. I'm Steve Brown, your co-host and today we've got a really excellent topics called, how to grow sales by lowering buying friction. Now will you know how many times I don't know how many times it's been that I'll go somewhere and I'm excited about it. But then I get into the situation, I've already researched it, I looked online, I made the decision to do it, then I go over to get it. And I run into all these I call them stupid taxes, but you're calling them friction. But they're like these really just unsmart things are in the way of just getting what you want. And it's friction. It's just stupid tax friction that's been put in there that frustrates you and potentially could run you off. But you've got a plan on how to lower buying friction.
Will Leach:I do and I'm guilty of putting in my own stupid tax even on my own website, actually brought you brought this thing to mind, actually just now. So I remember, when we first launched, I wanted to uncover all this information from people coming to my website. So if you wanted to get some of my free materials, certainly you know, I want your first name and your email address. But then I started saying, well, where are you from? And then what city you're from? Because maybe one day I could use that so if I'm going to do a tour, I would know what city and then I started asking, what profession are you in? Because I want to know whether you're a marketing researcher, or marketer, or an agency owner or a small business owner. And after I got all my wishes, all my things that I wanted out of the way I started noticing that I had about five different questions you had to answer before you got your free assessment, right? And at some point, you know, you start realizing that people were dropping off as you would expect, because every one of those things is a point of friction. So you know, got out of my own way, now we only ask first name and email address for me to be able to send you this stuff and my rates have gone up again, because I started thinking more about my customer, imagine that, as a human being than I did about myself and my desire to learn more about who's coming to my website.
Steve Brown:Yeah, so more submission rates, you get to meet more people because you lowered friction. And I don't know what it is sometimes is it that we're looking at how other people or other brands are doing and we're just mimicking it instead of just going, you know, one thing I found it super funny is like, I'll sit and do something then I'll have someone that's totally disconnected come in and go, and Tiffany comes to mind, she works in my office, but she doesn't have any problem asking the question that makes you feel stupid on what's the reasoning behind that because she just sees it as a consumer she's not in the industry, or you know, she doesn't have all the the curse of knowledge or whatever. And is like going Oh, it is true , that's so embarrassing that I I put that or spelled it that way or whatever.
Will Leach:Yeah, we all need a Tiffany in our lives. Mine oftentimes is my mom, who doesn't come in this industry at all. But she looks at stuff that you know, that we launched and just says well why would anyone want that? And I try to explain, the more I try to explain it the more I realized that she's probably, yeah, you know, I think a lot of it is Steve is this. I don't remember in school me ever talking about friction or barriers, what you learned is you learned about marketing and how to get people to do stuff. So it's almost like that motivation side of what we talked about so much, you and I but how do you increase motivation for your business and increase people's desire to buy and all that kind of stuff? And it was actually the reason why this theme came up because I don't traditionally think about friction either because I'm in motivational psychology, I focus on trying to create hot states, right? That's what the book is all about is creating a hot state with your customers so that they will buy, or they'll engage with you. And I'm doing some work right now with a company. And it was through this exploration that I started thinking a lot more about the kind of counterpoint of motivation and marketing and the point of marketing is to get people to buy and to get them excited about you. But then the counterpoint to that is, so once they get excited about you, how do you make their life easy, so that they will keep that motivation going. And there's this analogy of a slide, there's a guy by the name of Roger Dooley, who wrote a book called Friction, we'll talk about that a little bit, but he talks about a slide. And when you're at the top of the slide, you have this momentum, right, you have the motivation to buy. But then what he says is, if you just get out of the way, you'll slide right down, and the shopper or your customer will get exactly what they need. But what we tend to do as businesses is we put in all these stupid, you know, I guess they stupid taxes, or just friction, things that we think are really important to us and we're getting in the way. And so it's such a neat experience of learning more about friction and so I figured I'd share with you some of the things I learned from his book, and some things that I know from cognitive psychology.
Steve Brown:Yes, friction, those little stupid taxes, and they weren't apparent to me. But then when you talk about you go, Oh, my gosh, why didn't I? It's obvious. It's not like this hard concept that we have to really struggle to accept?
Will Leach:No, it's just I don't think we think about it. I think we're business people who think about marketing, and motivation and getting more sales, getting more sales, we don't realize that the fastest and the easiest thing you can do to get sales is get out of yourself, and make things easier for your customers. And it's hard for me to think that way, right? Because I live in a world of behavioral psychology. But these are simple things to do, you could do immediately right now, and you could probably increase your sales almost immediately.
Steve Brown:So let's talk about the ways that you kind of do a friction audit on your processes, or is it your product? It's not just on your marketing materials, it's on the whole customer relationship experience, right?
Will Leach:I think you're right, I think it's the whole customer journey. And in fact, I don't know if you really want to focus on marketing at first at all, frankly, right? I think what you want to do is get like, you know, you said, was it your Tiffany? Is that her name? Tiffany, my mom, you can hire us out, you can hire my mom, and she'll come look at your buyer journey and my mom will show times when you think it's so clear, and she will make sure you know that it's not clear, I'll tell you that. Yeah, I think what I know, one of the best things I've done recently, is I've gone through my website, which is my key, you know, mechanism to, you know, interact with people as well as to drive sales. That's my sales channel, right? And me going through the process, that's not the best thing to do. But it's a really smart thing if you're an entrepreneur to actually go through it. And you'll find out where just even today I saw a link was broken because it was buried into three different levels. And I just never went to the process that link is broken, if you don't go through that process yourself then the secondary thing comes which I got an email from one of my customers last week that said he was disappointed in something that we did. And that's not the way you want to learn about friction is when somebody says, Hey, I'm disappointed in the customer service that we gave and so we rectified it and he was gracious. But I was like that's not a good way to learn about it's the first thing you should probably do is just go through the process yourself. And even better have somebody who's not like you said, A Tiffany or my mom, who doesn't understand the industry doesn't justify why this point of friction is in there and why it makes sense as a business and let them go through it and tell you where they're confused, where they felt drained, etc. So that's a really simple thing you can do, is just have people go through your process.
Steve Brown:Yeah, bring them in, set them down. It's kind of humbling. And don't be defensive and don't defend it. But you need to ask open ended, non leading questions while you're watching them experience, whatever it is that you created or to talk out loud while you're doing this and why are you going down this path? It's shocking to think how how all this hard work you put into something and you throw it out there and you're not realizing you just added a bunch of friction places that are unnecessary.
Will Leach:I love that word shocking. And let me give you $1 figure that is shocking. If you think to yourself, this probably isn't a big deal to me, here's what I'll tell you. So in that book, Friction by Roger Dooley. He quotes that in 2016 $4.6 trillion was left in abandoned e commerce cards, I didn't say million, I didn't say billion, I said trillion. So you don't, so imagine that right? So somebody is on your website, you got to be part of that like we're all probably a part of that world of 4.6 trillion In dollars, where somebody has gone, they've looked at everything, they put something in a car so they had all the motivation they needed, right, Steve like they actually made the selection to choose you. But somewhere right after that you created friction. And sometimes it's your fault, sometimes it's not your fault but imagine that then that case you lost on that $4.6 trillion. And, you know, one of my biggest, you know, kind of, Oh, I don't know, heroes is a guy by the name of Daniel Kahneman. And Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, though he's a psychologist, he's the guy who's, you know, kind of the father of behavioral economics and all the topics that we talked about today, he wrote this book, Thinking Fast and Slow. And he has a quote on Thinking Fast and Slow, which I think of Daniel Kahneman is the guy who understands subconscious motivations, and how to get people to act, you know, so really heady stuff, I mean, you know, Nobel Prize winner, and what he says here, it's so like, something my mom would say, but he says, in a very profound way, but he says, a general law of least effort applies to physical and cognitive effort, people will gravitate to the least demanding course of action. And then da da da, like laziness is built into our nature, that's what my mom would say laziness is built into our into our nature, meaning that at the end of the day, you can motivate people as much as you want and sometimes that motivation gets people even though you have friction, they will still buy from you, because you are an incredible marketing, you have an incredible product. But laziness is built into our nature, by habit, by circumstances, we're all lazy. So make sure that you have something that's so easy, and he would say, that's probably the fastest thing you can do to get people to change their behaviors, make that new behavior as easy as possible.
Steve Brown:It just feels weird, but it's the same concept when you're writing copy and so you write this sheet of copy, and then they go, Okay, now cut it down by half. And it's so difficult, then cut that down by half, get it to one sentence, and that there's a quote by Mark Twain, he goes, I would have wrote you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time. And that's the same principle here, is that to get it super simple to get it without friction, it's a lot of work.
Will Leach:It is, but work, once you do it, it will make all the difference, then you can focus on what marketing does, which is drive that emotional arousal, that motivation, things like that. So, you know, it's funny, I went through that book friction, and in my head, because I was trying to consult with this company about, you know, this idea of their behavioral model and things. And I said, You know what? I better learn a lot more about this friction idea, because I focus a lot more in the other side. And so I kind of summarized, you know, Roger Julie's book into three overall principles. And the first one is right there, which you said, is you got to find ways to lower those physical barriers to buy. And so I started thinking about what are those physical barriers to buy? So we're not talking about psychology, we're just saying things like, okay, somebody is on your website, somebody has your proposal, or they're on your, you know, they're on your app, or whatever. And you've got to make it physically easier. And so the first thing I thought of was like, find the ability, like having out of stocks, like I don't know, if you're in the retail space, you know, it's out there if you're listening, but even just SEO, being available, and make it easy for people to find you is a very easy way and probably the first thing you should be doing, like if they can't find you because your website is buried on SEO, or if you know, you're on the bottom shelf of something, that right in and of itself, if you can do anything, to make it easier to find your company, that's going to be really, really good even so much as inbound. So I do a lot, I mean, I do a lot of writing, right? And what I noticed, especially when I first started is I wouldn't tell people the very end go to mindstategroup.com. I just, I didn't think about that, right? And so let's say if I'm on a podcast, or I wrote an article for Forbes, and then says, Hey, you can reach out to Will via LinkedIn. Well, that makes friction because now you go to LinkedIn, you got to remember who but my name was, whoever that guy was, then you got to look me up, which Will Leach is it? Oh, it's this guy. I think I remember that face. Now I got to figure out what companies, could you imagine that amount of friction. Something as simple as making sure that you tell people on every point of communication, where to go and buy, as simple as possible. It's a simple a small thing to do, but something that I even forget about man.
Steve Brown:You know, and what you're talking about is universal in nature and whether it's online, whether, I mean think about a business card, what is a business card? It's a way to help people find you and build a relationship, and so you need to be thinking, when you're in a digital realm, that you're doing the same thing, not just the physical. But having little intros and outros built in to your conversations are really important. So what are some other physical barriers that you? Yeah
Will Leach:Second one, I thought is just cost, right? And there's some things you can do with cost and some things you can't do with cost. Now, I'm not only suggesting, hey, if something is too expensive for your customer, then you have to lower your cost or give some sort of a coupon. I don't necessarily believe in that, frankly. But you can make cost more palatable by chunking it or chunking into chunks, right? That's something you did for your starter packs, right, Steve? You're like, hey, it's a big investment so we're gonna chunk this out for you to make it more available to you, right? So just simple chunking, or even payment plans, right, simple payment plans, or pay by credit card, or you can pay by, you know, Bitcoin, whatever it is, but just make things easier for people to buy doesn't mean a lower cost, necessarily, but it can just be easier way of getting those costs to something manageable on a weekly or a monthly basis. So it takes a little effort. But once you do that, you eliminate a huge, huge barrier. Size is another one so I started think about size. And, you know, sometimes I don't need to have 48 rolls of toilet paper, right? And that shouldn't be my only size, though in today's world, maybe that's a good idea. So sometimes size is like, what's the right size for my family? And so one of the things that comes to mind is I used to multipack research, and multipack Cheetos and stuff like that, you know, snacks. And what happens is, you know, there's a reason why you can have 18 packs versus 24 packs, whatever. The reason why is what you do is you try to figure out how many, what's the average number of children in the home? And you want to make sure that mom doesn't have to on a Thursday night, get up in the middle of the night to go over to Walgreens to be able to come back and grab chips for a Friday lunch, what do you do is you think through, how many sandwiches are going to be made that week? And make sure that one snack pack for that it's just simple things like that is giving people the right size for who they are. And so that just takes a little bit of thinking and saying, okay, am I offering the right number of products when I bundled these things up? A fourth thing was features, and what I mean really by features are just basically, you know, one of the biggest barriers we have and this is just in general, like what if you're just offering the wrong product? Right? So I've done work with companies that do candles and incense and, you know, there are candles you can buy out there that our Louisiana sent, like we got one. Now I love Louisiana sent, my wife's from Louisiana and I think when I smell it kind of smells like home, Louisiana or whatever. Um, my guess is that's not for everyone, there's a lot of alligator smell on that. Right? It may not be for everyone so this idea is like do you have the right product and proposition for your customer and if not, you have resistance, obviously. And then, you know, the last one, which is the one you and I just talked about is excessive steps. Like what I was doing with my customer, when you want my free download, I want to know five things about you. That's not fair, you don't know me well enough to want to give me your state and your city because in my mind is like, Well, of course you would because then if I come to Chicago, I'll look you up, no one wants Will Leach to look them up, but not yet anyways. So that's an example of just too many steps because I thought it was great for me, but it's not great for other people. So anything you can do. That's what the audits really good for Steve is saying, you know, how can we eliminate a step? And I actually like what you just said with copy, like, once you get kind of your copy use Okay, now eliminate half of it. What if we were to do the same thing on our website or on a purchase? Like what if we can eliminate half of the things that you have to read, half of the steps you have to go through before you can purchase. And so what I like about what you guys do is oftentimes you'll go, and you'll create these links that go right to the purchase page, because some people don't want to go and keep scrolling to the bottom of the page before they go. Okay, like they're ready to buy the minute they got there. They've heard about on a podcast, they saw a very cheap price they just want to buy right then and what do we do, we force people to scroll and look for the purchase button. What you did very smartly is you put that purchase button at the top and then a couple of times throughout the page so they don't have to go find it. That's an easy way of eliminating a step of me having to scroll down a page to find something. So eliminate steps, very easy ways to lower physical barriers.
Steve Brown:Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you about a book that you need to get today. It's the funniest book on marketing. It's called The Golden Toilet, stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business. And guess who wrote it? That's right. I wrote it and I wrote it just for you because I want to help you get past the last hurdles of setting up your business and getting it squared away. I wrote it so that you can avoid time, wasting time wasting money, wasting frustration, get the book on Audible, you can get it on Kindle, you can get it on Amazon, but get the book, take advantage of the insights in there and let me know what you think. And now back to this excellent episode. You know when you're talking about chunking, you'll see that trend happening because the status quo changed in a lot of companies, like mine, they used to be just fine doing a one service offering. But what many companies realized is that we need to have other offerings so that people can do a test drive with us. And so breaking them down into smaller things little entry level, that's chunking and you see that across. So that's why you see more courses, that's why you see more free seminars, you see some free training. And so then you can like, try it, I really liked this concept, read the book first. But then you go to a workshop, and then you go, Hey, can I hire you to work on our stuff specifically? So you'll see a lot of those chunking business models happening now.
Will Leach:Yeah, and like I said, it's just another way of lowering a barrier.
Steve Brown:So we've got those physical barriers. But then those cognitive barriers are harder ones, they're hard.
Will Leach:They are those mental barriers that we're not even aware of with our customer. And this is where I love to focus, right? This is what Mindstate Marketing is all about, It's lowering the resistance, we have to marketing, it's lowering psychological resistance to experiences because we're all conditioned to resist being messaged to, and marketed to, and sold to. So cognitive barriers are really, really important to do and to eliminate as best possible. And what's so funny is, some of the easiest things you can do are in this space, but we don't think of it. But the number one thing you can do is eliminate excessive choices, so there's a rule of thumb in neuroscience that says that if you have more than five different options, no matter how clear you think they are, that actually creates this thing called choice overload or cognitive disassociation. But the idea is that it's too complex for you to make a choice, even if it's super, super clear. So what do you do? You have an avoidance response, a neurological avoidance response, so you look away. So sometimes I'll look and I'll say, well, we got to offer a new version of a product. And we got to offer a physical version of product and within the physical version of the product, what if they really don't want the whole thing, so I'm going to cut in half so that people can get that option. And then you can get... you see where I'm going? Because in your desire to make options for all these different types of people that you know could benefit from each of these different options, collectively, it becomes too much to look at. And there's an initial avoidance reaction, we've said this online before you make 35,000 decisions on any given day, like 35,000. The number one decision you make every single day is to not decide you do it all the time, so you see five options of something, and you're like, I'll look at Steve's website later, I'm gonna go grab my Cheetos or something, right? That's a big issue. So we try to make all these programs for customers, because we know there's a small niche of customers that can benefit from it. And I'm not suggesting you don't do that. What I am suggesting is to put them all up on the same point and show all these different options. That is a cognitive barrier, in your desire to help out your customer, you're hurting your customers by doing that.
Steve Brown:I love that quote, the number one decision you make every day out of the 35,000 is to not decide. As you were talking about all these, too many choices, I've gotten to the shopping cart, I've decided to make it but when I get in there I got him like choose a color. I gotta choose a size, I'm not sure about size. And so I just I just experienced this Oh, I don't have the energy for this and then I leave.
Will Leach:Yep, that's exactly right, decision fatigue is the idea. This is my Galaxy S nine. I've never had a galaxy before I bought this phone, I bought about two or three years ago, maybe. I've always been an Apple guy, an Apple Phone guy anyways. And what's really cool about the galaxy and what sold me on this idea is that I could customize almost anything on this phone. I mean, like anything, I want background colors. I could put different number of logos on here. I could do anything. And at first I was really appealing Steve, until about four minutes into it I'm like, I just want the phone to be on, like why am I choosing everything? Like they have so many options that I got mad at it, even though I bought it, in YouTube they said, this gives you so much more flexibility, they call it flexibility, can give you much more flexibility than the iPhone. And I remember thinking myself, what was smart about iPhone is it's almost like this recommended, like, here's your setup, it's really quick to do. I was in four or five minutes and I'm like, I'm not even done to the home screen yet, I'm still trying to figure out, what color? Where do I want the calendar? I can move anything around, that right there is decision fatigue. And it gave me actually a bad experience, well, my guess is I'm using about 20% of the power of this phone, because I never got into the details two years ago, because it was so overwhelming. Samsung wants me to have all these choices. Brother, it just made me frustrated so my next one will be an iPhone again. And even though I know technologically is probably a better phone. That's what I hear anyways, I'll never know because it's too damn complex for me to know, to use it. So I have to go back to the iPhone.
Steve Brown:So, what are some ways we can lower it ambiguity and confusing vision? Yeah.
Will Leach:One of the best things you can do is low, or what I call is having a very clear call to action. So a couple of years ago, maybe a decade ago, it seemed as if people in marketing did not want to have a call to action, a call to action based on your marketing is telling people what to do and when to do it. So it's at the very bottom of an ad or it's somewhere that you've kind of created this emotional rails, we've got people excited about your company or the offer. And then you would say, hey, buy now or something. Well, what happened about a decade ago is it seems like marketers and agencies thought that was ugly. And so what they want to do is they create commercials or some kind of a video on YouTube, that creates excitement, or some passion and they show people running through fields, you know, touching wheat, or whatever, right? And then all of a sudden, you're done with this commercial and you don't like, I'm inspired. And then I go to the next commercial. Why? Because there wasn't a call to action, now that's coming back. More and more people are realizing, remember 35,000 decisions you make every given day? Just tell the human mind what you want them to do. And when to do it, add some immediacy, because we're being inundated with so much research and so much advertising, so many decisions, that the mind just craves some clarity. And the easiest thing to do is say buy now, what to do, when to do it. Learn more today. And when you do both of those things that actually can create very quickly, Oh, you gave me the next step on what I was trying to do, you've eliminated a barrier, because I'm not wondering what I want to do. So very easy, be very clear and simple with your call to action.
Steve Brown:Yeah, you think about our brains trying to conserve energy. They don't want to make all these decisions are looking for the path of least resistance because it's safer. And so by accommodating the way that your brain desires to make decisions, makes total sense. But it's way harder than it sounds.
Will Leach:Absolutely. I mean, clarity rules, as a guide said, like, you know, I think Donald Miller stuff is really smart in that it makes you understand how important clarity is and I loved what you just said a while ago, Steve, saying the way to be clear, is contrary to what you think it should be. So this is what I do all the time and you guys have been really good about getting me out of this habit, I've always believed the way to be clear is to give you more information, give you more information, just let me explain what I mean by this, let me explain. Because the more I can explain the clearer I will be. The cognitive psychology is the exact opposite of doing that, the fewer words you use makes things clearer, the fewer words and the simpler the world words are. So jargon is the other thing, right? So in my world, my first year, I can remember, one of my biggest clients was Capital One. And I had somebody there who just took a liking to me, she was great, Cathy. And I was talking about cognitive heuristics, I was into the science. And I remember she took me aside, she's a Virginia girl. And I won't do her accent, because I won't do it very well, but I remember saying Will, stop saying those words we talked about, she told me that. And she was trying to help me. But she said, Every time you say that cognitive psychology or cognitive heuristics, you throw everybody into this state of we don't know what you're talking about. And she would coach me a great, great client to have right, she would coach me when I first started my company I didn't know what I was doing. And she would coach me on how to sell and the thing is she was doing things stop talking to us, like scientists, we're not scientists so stop using those words. Those words were a crutch for me to make sure you knew I was smart. But all the cognitive psychology literature tells you that every time you use a word out there that you may believe makes you sound smart it actually creates mistrust, because simple words help you create trust, because it's very clear what the definition is. And if there's any ambiguity on your words, it creates an avoidance response and more and more mistrust. So every time you use these big words, if you think you're being smarter, and you're being perceived as smarter, you're not, it's the exact opposite. You're seen as untrustworthy, I guess is the right word.
Steve Brown:So, you know, the folks that are listening this, you know, they are thinking, wow, I need someone to kind of look over my shoulder and give me a little bit of help. You have you bet you've launched a workshop, right? So let's talk about those where maybe we can come learn how to get cognitive heuristics squared away, but get that word out of our marketing materials.
Will Leach:Yep. So you know, when I wrote the book, it was clear that the feedback I got was like, we want you to help us understand this so we can do it ourselves. So many small business owners were like, We want to be able to do this ourselves. And the book will get you so far, the book is a great tool to learn about these things. It's an incredible tool to use and I would encourage you to do that. Now after that, the next logical conclusion is I want to go to a master class, because certainly you can learn from the book. But that's different than watching somebody go through the task of actually using these behavioral psychology principles, and integrating these things into your marketing. So we did a masterclass and the masterclass is our option where you can watch and download these videos that take you through the entire Mindstate Marketing course curriculum but you see me do it for a company called Wicked Crisps. And so we go through the website, we look, I mean, it's everything from the way we design, the logo, the tagline, the website, but all through the lens of Mindstate Marketing. So that's cool for those do it yourselfers who want to work on this at night, etc, then there are some that are like, that's great for Wicked Crisps, but I'm where I work for, you know, the Candle Company, or I'm a lawyer and that Wicked Crisps, that case study on snacks doesn't work for me. That's when we have our third program, which is called our partnership program. And the partnership program is, we work side by side together in a workshop to have you identify all these different psychological factors that would make up a Mindstate. Then once we understand it, we identify your Mindstate, we send you right there in class, a blueprint. And then the blueprint is kind of your, think of it as a as an architectural blueprint. It's a way of looking at your business and a way of looking at your marketing through this lens that'll tell you, use these words not those words, use these types of images not your type of images. And it goes from strategy, all the way down to very specific tactics, that you will learn how to use in your marketing before we even leave the class. And the last part of it is, which I love, is when I get to do audits of marketing. So what I do is I call on one or two people in the class during the workshop, and I say tell me about your blueprint and they'll explain me what their blueprint is. And then we look at your marketing right there in real time. And I coach you in real time saying, see these words, let's take those words off, see this jargon, this word here, we want to pull that off, because I want people in that class to walk away with like actionability stuff where they can literally walk away, give that stuff their agency or do it that night themselves. And they should have a more clear, more compelling website, or app or whatever it is that we're looking at, by the next day. So that's our third program, the partnership program,
Steve Brown:You should call it my mother's audit of your stuff program, right?
Will Leach:We always have my mom come in, she comes in at two o'clock and then we do the wheel of fear, and we have everybody's website set up to do the wheel and then she pokes at it and like, that's the one mom go get it. She's nice, she would love it.
Steve Brown:Yeah, but you get to have Will do that. So he's gonna look over and he's gonna have fresh eyes, and he's gonna call you on all your heuristic words that you have packed into your stuff. So, you know, I was just thinking, as you're talking, the folks that are listening, you know, we're assuming that they understand the whole premise of the Mindstate concept. And what was so cool to me when I read your book, and it made awesome sense is that we usually as marketers designed content to a demographic to a persona, an avatar, but the way we're looking at it is this person is just in a static world, they always are that same way. And what I really learned from you is that we're in all different states of mind throughout every day. But we're usually in a common state of mind when we're evaluating a solution, especially the solutions that you're providing. And so to honor that, state of mind is really important. So, but that was really cool to me was that to think about the people that are in, what state of mind they're in that at that moment, that they're actually considering what you do?
Will Leach:Yeah, I love how you explained that. That's very, very clear. You know, I almost got to the point of saying stop marketing to people. Because i'm not a segment, I'm not a persona. I am more than that. I'm a father, I'm a husband, I am a business owner, I play tennis, I have all these different roles in my life and you need to message to the role or the mind state that I'm under when I am in that role. And so you know, what's great about a mindstate guys is that this is not a personality test, it is not a segmentation. It is a moment in time, where your personality, your attitudes, your beliefs, your wants, your needs, your desires, they change, they change based upon the mindstate you're under at that moment. So why would you ever market only to a person? You have to message to the person and that mindstate because when you do both, and you get those attitudes, those beliefs, you understand these people at a TPM level, but you understand the moment in time when they're thinking about your product. That's what a mindstate does, and what's so great about a mindstate is once you identify these things, they are very clear actionable guidelines to create messaging for those people in those mindstates. It's all based upon academic research, and cognitive psychology, social sciences, things like that so, it's not just a framework that we came up with. It's housed in different types of Social Sciences, goal theory, motivational psychology, regulatory fit theory, and behavioral economics, all those jargon words that you don't want to know about, that make me sound smart. But to say, there are ways of tapping into the human being so those things are important. And we should use those things on our marketing and building out our experiences because when you do that, you will feel more intuitive to your customers, and your customers will remember you they'll talk to other people about you, Why? Because you just feel right.
Steve Brown:Yeah, I love it. And then that makes you more effective on how to figure out how to remove barriers, or remove friction from folks developing a relationship and becoming a long term customer. So just to quickly review, we talked about friction, is defined as the unnecessary expenditure of time, effort, and money in performing a task, and recommended book is by Robert Dole and it's called Friction. And so we're using the states of mind, and considering them, and figuring out ways to lower physical barriers to reduce cognitive, tax or stupid tax as I like to call, these stupid things that cause confusion, clarity rules. It's harder, clarity is hard, but it's a big fat competitive advantage. Will, you got any little word of wisdom, or maybe a little teaser about next week's episode on The Mindstate Marketing Hour?
Will Leach:Well, I will say first, I'm going to go back to something you said in terms of a cool teaser, not the teaser, but a word of wisdom. I love what you said about, you know, cutting copy. I think that's so smart and not just from friction perspective, but also from a motivational perspective. So if you can ever, you know, cut your copy in half, it's very difficult to do, that's a worthwhile endeavor to do. I struggle with that myself and so I'm actually going to take you up on that and do my best, especially when I'm writing for these big articles at Forbes, 1000 words, if I could get that cut to 500 it would probably be more effective for my listeners or my readers. Next week I think I'm going to go back, I think I'm going to go back to something more personal, I love the friction thing. But I'm gonna go to something a little bit more personal like we kind of did last week. And kind of talk more about using some of these sciences in your everyday world. I don't know for sure yet I'm playing around with this idea. I'm usually inspired over the weekend. Last weekend was super ball and so I was not inspired that's why I came up with this thing. But who knows what's happening here today in my world and over the weekend, so but always a good time with you and that's what's most important.
Steve Brown:Yeah, it's my favorite time of the week. I really, I really look forward to this. I've learned so much. This is The Mindstate Marketing Hour with Will Leach, he's the author of Marketing To Mindstates. And as I like to say, I reduced your tagline I cut it down and I put it in my language, and how to use science to connect with your clients. And you can learn more about Will and his workshops at mindstategroup.com. And it ties into were all have different states of mind every day. And by honoring the state of mind that people are in when they're evaluating what you do is a big fat competitive advantage. That's Texas terms right there, fat advantage. Will, this is my favorite time of the week, I've really enjoying it. You've been great host, I'm Steve Brown, your co host, ROI online. And if you're looking for someone to help you do something like this, like we with Will every week, a d empower you to connect b tter with your clients let me kn w
Will Leach:Best thing going. Thanks a lot, Steve. I appreciate you, see you nex week
Steve Brown:All right and hat'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.