[Special Episode] The Mindstate Marketing Hour #7 with Will Leach - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 53

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 apply 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. Look at that. We'll each were live.

Hey, good morning, Steve. How are you?

Excellent. So here we are at line state marketing hour. Every week we're getting to sit and talk at in front of will each the author of marketing to mind states, how to use science to connect better to your clients. How about them, that rhymes? Well,

I like that we should probably we should put it like a jingle to it. And maybe you know how to sell it maybe.

Yeah. So welcome, Lee will.

Thank you for having me another great week, happy to be talking to you about all things mind, state and business and psychology and all that good stuff.

So today, so folks, I don't know that we're talking every week at the same time. And the things that we want to cover are how to utilize the insights and marketing the mind states and other science to really connect better with your clients via messaging via your website via email, all sorts of things. This isn't applicable across all domains. And so we'll want to talk to us about our topic that we're going to cover today. Yeah. So,

you know, I've been talking to my clients who tend to be brand managers, marketing directors, and brand planners, you know, kind of the agency side. And I've been getting asked the same question now for a couple of weeks. So I thought we would tackle it. But basically, it's coming out of COVID. And you know, the first kind of the onslaught of all the stuff we had to go do new research, go go put some advertising out there, how do we respond, that initial kind of onslaught is done? For the most part, most brands are kind of where they had to be. And now, aren't they they got to kind of where they needed to be. Now it's time to think about what are we going to do the back half of 2020 and 2021. And thinking about consumer strategy that will migrate into your brand strategy, how to think about that, as well as ultimately down to your communication strategy. So I've been having these conversations with my clients and how to think about those three things. And I figured we could talk about those as well.

That's excellent. So how do we want to start? So here we are, we're starting to see people come back online, I think that they've been convinced that they have some work to do on their online assets, because that's all they had to run with. While things change, and you couldn't work in person as much as you used to. So where's where somewhere, we can start to make a big impact right away?

Yeah, I think the first thing I think everybody out there needs to do is realize that good or bad, you know, COVID and, you know, the, you know, the economic downturn, political strife, social strife, all this stuff has impacted your target your segment your persona, in some way, some ways good some ways bad. So I think we start with, okay, so we've had basically 30 years worth of change happen in about six months, honestly. And and because of that, how has your customer change? I think everybody out there needs to start thinking about that in the good and the bad. Because the way you were marketing to them, previously, previous to this is probably no longer as impactful as as it could be. So persona, let's talk persona.

All right. So if we think about our customers, our potential customers or clients, how have they changed during this time? I would, I would really argue that they have a higher expectation. View your brand really having their act together online.

Yeah, I agree. Not even not only online, but also you know, my wife and I were talking about this last night that you know, for years, and I mean for years or decades, we used to always in corporate America, talk about our social Presence like we all knew we had to do something, you know, whether it's supporting a little league ball ball team, you know, maybe if you're running a small business, or if you're the largest company supporting the American Cancer Society right? Now, in today's world, that is a pure expectation. And you will you actually, in today's world, people have the ability to now do research on your brand, even at the smallest levels to see what you stand for. So it's not even just your online presence. But what goes into your online presence, I think is even more important than it used to be. Because these, these these customers today, any percent of you're working with, I think, has more information than they've ever had before. And they have expectations that you're going to support causes. And that's kind of an interesting place for us to be if you are going to one communicate those causes online. Or the second thing would be, who are you going to? What are you going to stand for? What's your timeline, we'll talk about this a little bit the timely expression of your company in today's crazy, chaotic world.

So remember reading a blog A while back, and we've discussed it a little bit, but not everybody watches every episode. So it's okay to recover this. But you wrote a great blog on how people's the way that they're viewing things. their mindset has changed?

It sure has, It sure has. So we do research every week, using a tracking study. And almost immediately in the third week of March, all these different mind states that we've been tracking across lots of different industries, lots of different segments changed on us. And they all kind of solidified around three core mind states. And we still haven't seen those mind states deviate very much even six months later, where before we had lots of variability, we you know, there's 18 total mind states, if you read the book, in depending on what industry you're in, those could be different, you know, if you're selling pickles, those are very different than if you're selling cars. But come March everything across all different sectors and businesses, basically shot into three different mindsets.

Right, so let's talk about those mind states. Because immediately if I'm a marketing director, or I'm a business owner, and I'm starting to address these, I'm, I love the concept in your book, then all of a sudden, you've immediately made it easy for me to start dialing in my message accurately, if really, I have only three that I need to focus on instead of all the rest of them.

Yeah, and that is what I said back then. And I still believe it's true. Right now, if mind states is a new topic for you, if you know, you're just trying to get your feet kind of step your feet into the water on all this stuff, the thing I would tell you to do is you need to communicate around three different ideas. The first one is safety. And because right now, there's just so much volatility across our lives, that people are looking for comfort and safety and feeling secure. So regardless, and I saw this, again, across lots of different brands, and across lots of different industries, safety and security was something that you want to try to stand for. The second thing was control. People and this is starting to change a little bit, but people just don't feel like they're in control their lives anymore. Unemployment is you know, kind of goes up and down with these massive swings. You know, all of a sudden, now you used to be able to take your kids to school and now sudden your home is your school used to be able to go to restaurants and entertain. Now you can't do that. So people don't feel necessarily like they're in control of their lives. And so if you can help people feel as if they control something as it relates to your brand, whether it's like just picking, you know, the experience they want online or having a kind of multiple choices and options that they can go through when they're engaging with your brand. That's also something that you should be dialing up. So control. And then third one is what we call engagement. But really what it is, is release, what we've seen is that, you know, for months now, people have been kind of, you know, again, without lack of control, and they've been in their homes for the most part, you know, people aren't able to do large gatherings parties have been, you know, events and vacations were taken away parties have been taken away social functions, like going to a soccer game with your kids, those things are gone for a lot of people. And so what happened is those areas of release, where people were just looking for enjoyment or relaxation are very, very important because frankly, when we're living in our homes, I'm looking at my home, right? When we're living here, basically 24 hours a day, it became my office, it's our school, it's our restaurant, it's our entertainment venue, it is our church. It is also our home, that just release of all that stress of everything happening in one place is really important. So if you can stand for safety, control or release, if you know nothing more about your customer or your persona, start talking about one of those three, or maybe even all three of those because those seem to be very universal right now in today's world.

So give us some examples on how we can use safety in our messaging.

Yeah, that's a really interesting, easy things you can do with safety. So when we talk about safety, I don't mean that, you know, you have to be physical safety. And I think that gets kind of a, you know, I don't want again, keep confusing, I think, Well, how do I stand for safety because I sell. Let's get into my terrible pickle example. Like I sell my grandmother's recipe of pickles. What does that have to do with safety, not just physical safety, though, that's important. If you're an alarm company, right now, you're feeling pretty good with physical safety, right? Because, or if you're, if you're selling chemicals for cleaning, safety is probably pretty good thing for you to be in right now. physical safety, but there's also emotional safety, emotional security. And this is idea that they can count on you, that you are going to go through with your promises, you're going to come all the way through with your promises, you will deliver on expectations. In today's world, people don't have that security, things are changing so fast, everything's changing so fast, that just standing for the bare minimums of like, emotionally, you can count on me, you could count on my pickles to be the greatest tasting, and they're going to be consistent. That in and of itself is a way of providing a feeling of security or safety, that when they engage with your brand, they're going to get the same experience and one that they can count on.

So we want to use controls, give us some what are some things just like that example you gave us for safety? What are some things that control can demonstrate in our messaging, or in our experience?

Yeah, in experience, like, so if you're on a website in any kind, or let's say you have an app or anything like that, control really comes from the ability for us to manage our experiences in the way that we want. So control is about our environment. And when our environment doesn't allow us to control it, we feel like you know, we don't have any, any say in our destiny. So what that means is, the more things that you can provide, that give people options, any kind of option, by the way, makes people feel like they're in control. So for instance, let's say if you have a website, and and I know this sounds small, but these things can build and they matter, Steve, if you have a website, let's say for instance, they're going to your you want somebody to sign up for your blog. And so normally, what you're gonna do is you're going to get their first name, maybe their last name, maybe you know, their email address, of course, and maybe you'll get some different you know, you had some variables that you wanted to collect, whether it's their business title, what business they are, or whatever. And maybe in the past, you made those mandatory. Now don't make all those things mandatory, make those things where people can opt in. Something as simple as that can make somebody feel like they have more control. If you force people down the path that you want them to take, they don't have control, they have a choice, they can leave or not leave, but they really don't have control. So anything you can do with your experience, that allows people to manage it in some way, is going to be useful.

All right, so then when release, when we're thinking of release, there's some great things to let our hair down, how can we help them let their hair down?

Yeah. So you know, if you're in the candle industry, or if you're in like, you know, music industry, entertainment history, this is very easy, right? Just keep doing what you're doing. But the majority of us are not in that industry. Here's what I would tell you with release, release, can oftentimes the best release, if, for instance, you are pickle, I go the pickle company, let's say you're like, I want to be in the pickle. This is I want to tap into the release. There's really two ways you can do it. One is giving a great experience and restaurants and food can do this, by the way, right? So a release can be just like great series of flavors that are calming, and that are that elevate this experience. So certainly you can do that. But a new way of doing release and actually talked to a hotel company a couple of months ago about this. Because they're saying, well, we lived on release. Like if you think about it, we were providing comfort and you know vacations, right? So this is a high luxury hotel chain. And they started talking about how when you can't come to our hotels, like how do we message what do we do? How do we provide release? Here's what you can do, you can actually get people to and this actually brings in a little bit of control steam, allow people to plan for their future idealised experience. So for this hotel chain, what it was was, yeah, you can't have people check in right now. You can't have people you can't have people you know, coming to hotels, but could you help them plan this perfect ideal experiences this this vacation in the future, let them go through the whole thing. Show them the property, you know, go out and take video of your property and show all these amazing experiences that are waiting for them. Let them go through the process of signing in selecting their room, selecting their packages, and then package that thing up. And not that they can pay for it right now. But just going through that they're imagining themselves on this luxury vacation that provides a moment of release for a mom who's trying to educate her kids, eight hours in that day gave her a half hour to imagine her life of how it's going to be in the future. That was important. So I said, even if there's no money to be made, in that, there could be because of because we know this, right? Since we talked about this last week, there are these shortcuts and these, these, these triggers that we use Well, when you go through the process of planning a vacation, and you package it up, that's there's just there's a there's a sense of commitment bias, right? Basically, you've committed to that vacation, so you're more likely to go to that website, select it one day when you can pay for and actually do it because you've done all the work.

That's awesome. I was thinking about that, you know, I do find myself kind of longingly look at some of things that I used to do. And I'm looking forward to doing them again, right. Yeah. And so we've been hunkered down and really wanting to be as much, oh, to be involved, and really doing all the things we can do to control what we can control. And we sit and think about I can't wait to when we can relax a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, it's big. And, and the thing I told my clients on this, too, is don't be literal with those three words. So much like I just said, like that, that moment of release, you're thinking like, What do I do? How can I give a moment of release, just helping people see that in the future, they're going to be able to enter interact with your brand, in a in a fun way, or the way it used to be? Just that in and of itself can provide a little moment of release. And you're right now that's a very timely way of communicating to your customers, to remind them that you provide safety, security, you know, control and moments of levity or release, they'll remember you for that when when you know, the economy opens up again.

So have you noticed some other good examples and brands naturally doing this?

Yeah. Have you seen I've been getting a ton of emails from concert venues. I don't know, if you've been getting, I've been getting a ton from guy or from Live Nation. And Ticketmaster, I think they're formally bought out. So what they're doing right now, is they are sending emails of concerts that aren't even coming up for a year. Now, granted, they may have been doing that before. But remember, they went dark, at least my email streams went dark, because they were like, We don't have anything to sell. because everything's we don't know when concert is going to come back. So let's not say anything. And what they've now figured out is no, no, let's set expectations. Even if it's a year out, let's get people excited about a concert that they may or may not obviously, honestly get to. Um, and so I think they have actually talked, they've been figuring out we've got engaged their customer, even if this thing doesn't happen, you know, even concerts online, you notice that these same the same venues are starting to do concerts online. So they're paying local people in the area to do online concerts, we have a place up here in Dallas called Cantina. Oh, God, that continuing right to a lacantina. I think it's called and it's a restaurant chain, but then it's also got a stage and what they were doing because you couldn't eat there. So what they started doing was doing live concerts from their stage, even though nobody was allowed to do that. Now it's opened up here in Dallas. But what they started doing is just doing local bands, that they were in isolation over there on a stage by themselves and just playing it on Facebook Live, right, just to give moment of moments of release.

That's awesome. Yeah. So some of the things that I think about when we think about post COVID strategy, there is there's an expected pent up demand that soon to be released. At some point everybody's going to rush back in and continue on consuming in a very deliberate way to kind of catch up or to, or to finally get to what they've been putting off. And I think it's really would be prudent to have a brand, a company of business to really think about all the assets that they could quickly flip, like chip and Joanna Gaines, if you can flip your platform right quick, and be ready to open. Much like you have with your physical locations we've seen, I've seen restaurants and businesses, like take this downtime in a way to really upgrade some things, change things around, replace equipment, train employees, they've done all these physical things to be ready to do better to be diligent. You need to be thinking about doing the same thing online as well.

I totally agree. And I think this gets into that second part of kind of this plan, if you will, when my you know my class. We're saying, Well, what do we do? First thing, go figure out your customer, right? And we just talked about that. What are those? Those latent needs? Are those things that are starting to bubble to the top that we all kind of want. And that's control and safety and, and certainly some release. But then after that, it was like, Okay, so how does that extend into your marketing strategy? Right? And here, here is what I would tell you, at least from my point of view, we, as companies have a timeless story that we stand for. So if you're familiar with Simon Sinek, of course, or a lot of people are, it's that book, why finding your why, but if you're, if you're running a brand, or if you are, you know, if you're doing work or at an agency, or just a small business out there, right? What is your timeless, timeless purpose? Is this what you stand for to everybody, this is why you got into business in the first place. And then you have a time, Li expression. So timeless purpose hopefully doesn't change very often. We learned about this in branding, many, many years ago, PepsiCo, you know, every brand has a timeless PR purpose. And oftentimes, it comes from the founder. So some of our brands are over 100 years old, the timeless purpose was the thing that the founder originally founded the brand on, either way, every company should know their timeless purpose, or, you know, their why, but then we just are coming out of a massive pandemic that is changing us. You know, all these forces, biological forces, economic forces, social forces, economic forces, all these forces are changing the way that we should be marketing to people that's timely. And so understanding your timely expression, how are you going to express yourself in today's world, so that you still maintain your time less purpose? So let me give an example. For my company. My company was founded only a couple of years ago, but the real why behind my company, Steve, you know, this was that I felt marketing was broken. I was sitting at corporate America, I was doing deep psychological research, understanding that people are making decisions at the non conscious level. But yet I would go into advertising meetings and saying they're not using any of this psychology, they're talking to people in a rational way, not an emotional kind of, you know, mind state way. I felt marketing was broken, I thought we could do a lot better. So my kind of timeless, if you will, my time was purpose, my wife, and I kind of summarized it into this idea that we shouldn't have to hold our breath. When we launch advertising, we just should. That's not that's not right, you should have more consistency in advertising, because there's all this science behind it that hardly anybody knows about. So I was going to fix advertising and 10 years from now, I want my stuff to be taught at the biggest, most elite MBA schools in the nation around advertising, and messaging. That's my timeless purpose, I will stand for that for as long as I live. My timely expression of that is very different. Right now, if you go to my website, we're doing online workshops, because we had to transition from workshops in person to online workshops, we have to talk about this discussion right now Steve is talking about what to do post COVID. That is a timely, relevant discussion we need to have right now. But it still has to fit with my overall purpose, which is I want to change advertising. So you don't have to hold your breath hoping that advertising works. So it's understanding how your brand integrates with this kind of this new strategy, communication strategy, you need to talk to people where they are today.

That's awesome. All right. So number one, is how to have your customer. How has your customers expectations changed? Yep. And using safety, control and release. And number two is you have a timeless expression. That's just like your purpose, or why you do what you do. But dress your timely expressing. So what's number three?

number three? Is this idea is that okay, so I now know my persona has changed. they desire control and everything else. Now we know that we have to find a timely expression. And so that timely expression is just listening to your marketplace, you need to know, you know what products or services make sense to them in this new world where I keep looking over my house like this is my new office. So everything has to be done in this little, you know, five by five box that I'm in right now. Right? Then the last the last part is how do I now communicate both this new in this new world to this new persona with my new timely expression that is through a communications strategy? And so how do I bring those together? What I would say is you have to evolve your strategy to meet that new consumer where they desire these three functional kind of or these three desired needs or emotions with what's really in their world right now, which means you have to spend time with your consumer with your persona. You need to talk to them. And you need to start thinking about ultimately, what formal mind state are you going to message to? And we've been talking this for over a couple of weeks now, are you going to message to and your communications just to tweak your messaging? So what so that it resonates? And, you know, those mind states are, of course in the book. And, you know, we talked about those three, those three perfect things called control, security and released, those are three specific mind states, right. cautious securities, the first one after that is cautious, empowerment. And then the third one was optimistic engagement. And so there are blueprints to help you think through that to read to read, tweak your persona, but also the types of words and language that could be useful in developing new communications.

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Yeah, yeah, I think we we've learned just like you, right, is that, you know, you build these personas on, you know, certainly your demographics, and what channels are people using the things that are really important for agencies to know. But then the best personas I've seen, I've always stopped at like attitudes, and maybe, you know, hey, these are their preferences or whatever. So they try to get into a little bit. And just like you said, that's just not enough. In today's world, there's too much change, there's too much anxiety in the marketplace, it's never gonna go backwards. It's guys, it's not going to go backwards. So it's now overlaying those mind states, because in the moment, your personality changes, I and we talked about this, you know, when I'm hungry, I'm a little more tense than I am one. I am a well fed, and I've cookies in my desk or whatever. And that's just the bare minimum. I mean, our mindsets change all the time, all the time. And because those mindsets change, so does our personalities, so to our belief systems just temporarily, but they impact the receptiveness people are to your messaging.

So, what are some of the questions that obviously, people are reaching out to and they're wanting to address this? What are some other things that you're noticing that are going on right now?

Yeah, I think there's still a lot of trial and error. I think, especially in the communication side, maybe you've seen it to where this hit businesses and agencies so fast. The and nobody knew how to respond. Whether it was you know, with us social justice issues like what do I stay Joyce? Do I not talk? Or do I talk? I mean, there was a lot of fear in the marketplace like, what do I really stand up and make people really question their own internal moral values, what their company is going to stand for their kind of timeless purpose. So people didn't know whether they should speak or not speak, right. It was all over the place. And then if you did speak, well, what do you what point of view Are you going to speak from? So that was also kind of nobody kind of knew how to deal with is that I don't mean just like small business owners. I mean, the biggest brands in the world, they shut down because they're, they were really worried about how do we react to a pandemic? So imagine companies that had more like Burger King is a great example, Burger King messaging for the last couple of years has been funny. It's actually been kind of quirky. How would you if your burger king, they were asking themselves, I'm sure that in March and April, what do we do now we can't be quirky people are dying, like hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are dying, that may not be appropriate. So people at first shut down, then little experimentation has been happening. And some experiments have worked well, and other experiments have not worked out well. So you could see brands experiments, and BMW had an experimentation that I talked about, where they did some social media posts, I won't go into it. But it was really tone deaf, it was incredibly toned up. And it just, it's probably something they had loaded up. It was supposed to go on that week. And it came out and looked really, really stupid. So because of that, what did they do? Well, they all probably teamed up together said, Okay, we have to change our social media strategy, because the other the idea of showing a rich man, you know, driving a luxury, luxury BMW and then talking about this is your way of to resist and make the change through resistance into this social, didn't make any sense. And it was really tone deaf, right? When people are dying. And there's a lot of social justice issues in our world today, that just didn't work out. So they just threw a hashtag resist in there to think that they could kind of be relevant, and they weren't. So I think there's still a little bit of experimentation. What I want to do is get us back to the point of, of, and I tell my clients this now too, is we got to build a new base of understanding, which is why we talked about persona and tweaking your persona, which is why we talked about really ensuring your timely expression of your brand reconfirming that your timeless purpose, your why is still the why. And I think I think most people have a why most companies have a wine most brands have a why. But really understanding it again, going back to why why do we exist? Why do we matter in this world, then hopefully, we build a strong base to where now we can feel much more comfortable going into 2020, back half of 2020, beginning of 2021 with like a strong base of who we stand for how we're going to communicate, and then stop experimenting, hoping that our messaging is going to work hoping that we don't piss somebody off. Because we weren't being thoughtful in our, in the words we're using, start with a new base of new insights, new understanding new communication strategy, and go out there and then tweak it back to where we work, which is getting to much better marketing to help our clients, you know, perform better.

So it's a great way to you know, we all have a timeless purpose. But how can we update our timely expression? It sounds easy. So give us some tips on maybe what are some good questions, walk us through a little scenario where you can help us to quickly do it. Otherwise, we're going to overthink it and maybe not attempt it until we feel better about that.

Yeah, I think what the first thing you have to do is understand in which you know, you have to know your purpose, your time, less purpose as a brand. You have to know that or there's no timely expression, right? So go back to the drawing board list out on a kind of a sheet of paper, your why. And there's you know, if you read Simon cynics book, there's there's great activities. But really, it's just soul searching, right, Steve, it is going back to the thing that makes you get up in the middle of the night to come to your office or to write down an idea for your brand or for your company. We've all been in those moments of inspiration. I've had them when I was on the corporate side, I've certainly had them as my own business. And I'm sure you've had them when you're thinking about somebody else's business right there. There's a purpose, you've got to get back in touch with that purpose. I think in today's world, we're so interested in making the next quarter, the next the next month revenues that we forget. So you have to go back to that purpose. And that means writing out and one thing I an activity that I've seen work is writing out the obituary of your brand. Yeah, obituary, right? Because you're doing an obituary imagine that your brand died. And then what would you want you know, or what would you want? You know, the poll but hers or you know somebody at your funeral, your brand's funeral? Talk about your brand. Why do they exist? You don't want to say well, boy, they made a lot of money. Nobody wants that right now society in some way. So if you write an obituary for your brand, or somebody has already done this work for you, right there out because that in that obituary, you're going to find your purpose. So once you have that purpose down and it purpose does not have to be, it doesn't have to be like to change the world. In fact, that's a silly purpose because most people don't have really the purpose is to change the world, it's something a little more honed in it could be just, you know, what I wanted to make cut, I wanted customers to know that somebody out for them, that you know, somebody looking out for them. Right? So finding out that purpose, then the time the expression is looking at that obituary, looking at that time, time, time, less purpose, and now thinking in today's world, and I think there are four factors that you have to think about, economically, like we're going and we're going to go through, I believe, a pretty strong swing economically. And you can even throw in there things like salary bifurcation. There's also things economically we can talk about, but basically, the economy, biological factors, like people are fearful right now, people are more people than normal are dying, right? Health is a concern for all of us in our children's lives and our work lives, etc. Look at that third factor, social justice, whatever side of the fence you're sitting on right now, understanding that there is a lot of social justice issues that are going to be addressed. I wonder if another if that's the way the world happening. And then and then and then the fourth one is politically least in the United States? Political, those four factors are influencing all brands, all businesses, all messaging, you have to be aware of these. So what I would do is I would look at each one of those factors, there's almost like I put them on a an Excel sheet, and saying, knowing what I believe is going to happen in the economy. And you got to come up with that belief yourself. And there's lots of, you know, certainly you could probably just write down what you believe is going to happen whether or not you think that the economy is going to stall, or if you think that people are going to start making more money, whatever that is, think through how does your brand live in a world where people are going to make more money or less money, where you're gonna have more bifurcation of salaries, right, where the rich are going to get richer, and maybe the poor get poorer, whatever you believe that is, you have to you have to stand for something. Talk about Now, how does your purpose How do you talk about your purpose in that in that way, so realize the fact that there's people that are scared and they're fearful, realize that people politically are there's a lot of division in our in our, in our, in our politics, realizing that there's a lot of social and justice issues that people are concerned about realizing that biology and biological forces are out there that have people really, really worried taking a look at your messaging through each of those four lenses? And how would you just tweak it just slightly to address that new world?

Well, I think about that, and I, I think an easy win on that is to figure out in your messaging, how you, what you stand for and what your business provides, what your nonprofit provides, how it impacts unity, how I impacts people coming together, I think that would be a great way. That would be an easy win for your messaging.

I love that right? Because all those all those forces are, you can make that case are pulling us apart. So I and I think there's a desire for that. I mean, as much as two you see, you know, on on, on on TV, or maybe even on social media, it feels like everybody is against each other my brother told me a couple of weeks ago, that you what you got to do the next time you you read to and social media, or you watch too much news and you're thinking this world is it's dying. We're killing ourselves there. Everyone hates each other you when you when you feel kind of disenchanted with life, he goes go to a local park. And for him, he's out near Kentucky. And there's a there's a park where we could jump in there on rocks and jump into the river, right. And he said, All he saw were parents who loved their kids, every nationality, every background, you can imagine kids are playing around he goes, that's the real world. That's 80% of the world. But we don't see that in our messaging right now. We just don't. And because and because of that. There is a desire for people to see more unity. I know that we have political extremes. I know that we have social extremes that we're being taught again and again, are kind of the focus of our lives. I don't know. I mean, I think people want to be brought together. I'm really I really I really do. I really do.

It's such a low bar. It's it's absurd. But it's such a low bar is that if there was a counter message is always powerful to what everybody is being exposed to. And it's stupid to say it feels stupid to say it but a message of unity right now is like this great counter message that I believe most people desire and want to be a part of.

Yeah, imagine reminds me of the coke commercial. We all grew up on the 70s I was I could teach the world to sing and remember that you could still see iconic, every nationality on top of that hill, if they released that right now I'm telling you, boom, it would skyrocket. It's a great point. It's a great point, because deep down you, we've talked about this, even even before belonging, and this feeling of being a part of a tribe, and certainly a part of being a tribe is on the is on kind of the extremes. But there's also the human tribe. And I think there's a lot of desire for us to just find a way to make the world a better place. I certainly feel that for sure, you know,

totally. So I was thinking about the things that I do to kind of revealed the states of mind that the folks that come to us are in and over time naturally, then most of if not all of my calls are via zoom. And I do record them. But it's interesting, you can utilize certain tools, you'll hear themes stated in their answers or their desires. And so there are three things that I'm listening for when when I'm on a call with a potential client. And it's it, what is it that they're stating they want? Now, they may not say, I want this, but they'll use interchange words for one. And they'll they'll say that, they'll also say, I'm struggling with this, I wanted to do this, but I just couldn't get it to work I'm so what do they want? What are they struggling with, and then listen to the vocabulary, they use certain words that are their internal vocabulary, that, you know, it's kind of like the insider language that exists in any organization. I'm listening for those. And if you can, you will see a pattern of the folks that are approaching you, they're in a same state of mind that you'll start to see a theme develop it in over 20 or 30 calls that can give you more confidence about those things.

Yeah, I was interviewed yesterday for a publication. And it was it was funny that it was professional interviewer. And I could tell after about the fourth question that they were building a narrative and their own, because I think at the end goal in mind, which was I got to build a story. Yes. And so one of the questions that felt a bit contrived, but I totally saw what he was going for is he said, how would that make you feel if you because he's basically saying, you know, if you were to reach your aspiration, we're talking basically about changing marketing, kind of when I went on my little diatribe a little while ago, and he goes, Well, how would that make you feel? That's the first point oh, I see where he's going with that. But not that that's wrong, if that's the right thing for him to say, because we are emotional people. But if I remember thinking myself, that's it that question of how will How will that make you feel is one of the most important things you can do as a business? Because ultimately, you're trying to make people feel something you are not, Steve, you are not providing marketing services, you're not, you're not, you are providing a desired feeling. And you should be paid very well for doing that.

So you're so the, how do you deliver that feeling, it's via that experience of interacting with your brand. Okay. So there's that experience part that gives you safety that gives you control that gives you a release, you're able to roll all three of those in the human experience that you're delivering for your people in your your customers, your prospects, etc.

And it's lost man, it is so lost, because we've gotten away from that whole world because of technology. And, you know, cost efficiencies, and, you know, bots and chat bots and everything else. And we've lost that that human connection, we're ultimately that's all we're in the business of everyone on this who's listening anyway, listen to the future. We're all in the business of providing emotion and emotional feeling for people. And and we've lost that somehow, but we will get it back. So we're gonna have to.

So the other thing I was thinking about as you were talking about how to how to tweak your timely message out, or wanting to hit on the mind state, and we're wanting to figure out how to improve our messaging, especially now that people are going to be coming out and wanting to really yeah, they want to make some mileage as to what this is going to feel like. But I think that when you when you are able to determine what is their desired transformation, they want to go from this state. And they're telling you it when they when they're struggling, they're telling you what their current state is. Okay? And what they're telling you when they tell you what they want is what their transformation. Now, here's the here's the cool thing is that they can't come manigault Okay, I'm here to evaluate this option, because I want to see how this could potentially support me in my transformation. And here's the picture of my transformation, they're not going to be able to do that. But it's your job to pull that picture out of them and assemble it, and show them what they're that image of their desired state. And that produces safety, that produces control, that communicates our care. And that gives them an image in their mind where they're going.

Yep. Amen. I mean, it's, it's going back to those first couple of discussions we had about goal theory, right? It's, you know, your, your higher order goal is your idealized self. Like, that's it like, that's what it is. So if you can get people to talk about their aspirational, where they want to be in the future, their aspirational selves, it is everything in your marketing to show not only that aspirational self, but like you just said, right, how you can help them reach that goal, their higher order goal, and it's through your product, it's through your service, it's through your experience, whatever that is,

you know, I think about that, when I read your book, I think about the science behind it all the studies all the, you know, Pete scientist and lab coats and, and click boards and pins and glasses. And they're, they're documenting things to reveal some sort of insights, right? Like, you can do that in a conversation on the fly. If you can just start to ask questions that helps them convey what they're wanting and what they're struggling with. And pretty much you can interpret what their desire is without going. So what is your desire? Because they're, they're not equipped, necessarily. It's not that they're not intelligent. They didn't come prepared for that conversation to succinctly communicate clearly their desire, they'll try, they'll use their best words, but it's your job to take and interpret that and draw that picture for them.

And how do you how do you do that? Steve? I got I know how I do it for me, how do you do that when you're on that conversation?

So when I'm listening, so I use what I call story based selling. Okay. And so when I'm talking to them, the first 45 minutes of my conversation is asking, not annoying questions, but laddering questions, questions, but here's what I do. So I don't do so will. What is it that you want? I don't I don't do that. I will hear them say what they want. like, Alright, tell me about how you tried to do this before? Yeah, what were some of the things that weren't working? What, what in? What was the event that occurred that caused this call to happen? Give me the backstory. That's, that's where I'm learning a lot of a lot of that vocabulary, they'll start to throw it out there. And then I'm just under the one column, I'm writing what I hear they want under the struggle column, I'm writing the vocabulary. Okay, then, then I'm able to use those. When I get to the point where I go right now, what questions do you want to ask me? Well, and then when they start asking me instead of going running, okay, I think got the answer running towards the answer, which it's not. Okay. So what is it that you would like to ask me Will? That's what I'm going to learn a deeper, more thoughtful question from you at that point. Then when I get ready to answer that, I'll ask in a confirming way, using their vocabulary. And drawing a picture is this what would this be what you're imagining?

Like this, what you'd be imagining? Yeah, I was gonna say something, something, you do something similar. When people come to me in my company, they tend to have a problem. They don't know how to solve the problem. But they so what I do is I actually say, well, let's talk about the problem. And I like how you do it, probably better than right, because it's the whole story. People think in story. So that's the best way to do it. Right? So you really can articulate a problem. So what we'll do is we'll we'll talk about the problems, well, not getting enough sales. You know, people aren't engaging with my website, whatever. So we list out the problems. And then I'll kind of at some point in that conversation, say, well, by solving that problem, are these problems? what's what's the, I wouldn't say the upside, but what's that going to bring to your company? I try to get them to think about what that's going to bring whether it's financial or not, and but when they're thinking about that, what they're really doing, envisioning their idealized self, they're in there visiting a company that doesn't have problems. They're visiting a website that doesn't have issues with them. And so when I do that, it's that it's that Okay, we're to solve those problems. What would that what would that bring you is the question was it What does that bring you? And then they may talk about peace of mind, which is awesome. I got the emotion, or they talk about, you know, consistent sales where I know I can meet my payroll. Okay, got that. And then I've just say, okay, so you've had an issue with consistent sales. Okay, tell me more about that. So that's how I'll turn because most times when people are calling me, my clients are always focused on a big problem that they have, right? It's never it's never Hey, I want to get a little bit better. It's always like, I have a problem. I think you could help me. So but I like your storytelling a lot.

What's when they tell you the first time what the problem is? Usually, it's a tactical bs thing that you could guess anyway, right? Yep. But where the emotional part the mind state part comes into play? Is how they feel about that problem. And that's where, when you ask them, so tell me where? Where have you tried to do this? What What happened? And that, obviously, that didn't work, because we're having a conversation now. And we don't have to say that. But then when they start talking about their struggles, you're starting to discern the emotional things that it makes someone feel insecure that they weren't successful, it makes them feel frustrated that they're having to actually risk picking another vendor that might not work out again. Okay. Those are the real problems, the first problem that they say is important, but it's not the real problem that if we're going to help them apply control, give them release, make them feel safe. It's not coming from going, Yeah, I can fix your text. Everybody can fix their text.

And what's important, I think about what you said, and hopefully, you know, people pick up on this is that we have no point did we talk about the business, the business, the business, it's ultimately your I get this question all the time, like, what does your self worth from b2b sales? Of course it does, because you're not solving. Honestly, a business problem, I guess, maybe technically, are, you're solving a personal emotional problem, like somebody is frustrated with their results, they don't feel confident in what they're doing. They feel fearful that they could lose their jobs. Like, it's ultimately all decisions are at the human level. And so as you're having those conversations, you will see that they will speak to their own experience. At first they talk about the things you would expect, you know, I have these quarterly sales numbers I have to meet or I'm running, my expenses are way too expensive. I need to find more efficiencies. But eventually people get down to so that I so that I and that's an important thing to make sure that we all realize, because I get this all the time seems like Well, I'm a b2b, I sold a surgeon. So you know, they don't they don't have emotion. That's not true. I sell to a procurement officer does, it doesn't matter, you're ultimately helping that procurement officer achieve something emotionally for themselves. Wait, that's just how it is.

with excellent, excellent conversation. Again, I love these conversations, these are fun, and a lot of people are gonna get value out of them. So will tell us for the folks that might be interested in engaging you in some way to help their organization to get squared away and prepared for post COVID. Well, how can people learn more about you what resources you have available, etc.

Yep, so of course, you can buy the book marketing domain states, which lays out this whole, you know, this whole thought piece, if you will, on how to engage, there you go, how to engage people at the emotional subconscious level, how to influence or use marketing just to better your marketing. But after that, we have the mindset group. So mindset group.com, there are resources that you can go, you can go to, you can download free resources if you want to. We also have a workshop every month, our next workshop is happening in early October. So if you want to learn more about how to apply these concepts to your business, you can learn more there as well.

All right, awesome. And let's say you have a business that you're trying to figure out how to pivot and communicate your value like we'll get to do here every week, you can reach out to me and we can discuss how we can do something similar for you, like we're doing for will Will's successful. He's impactful. He's got a great followings got a great book. And you have that as well in some in many ways, and we can help you get there. So I'm Steve Brown ROI online. We'll, again, you did awesome. You nail it every time. Thank you for being on the MindScape marketing hour.

Well, you just keep asking the easy questions. Okay. And I can come up with an easy

question. There are hard questions. All right. And that's a wrap. We'll see you next week at the same bat time. All right. That's from that man back in the day for. 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.