[Special Episode] The Mindstate Marketing Hour #8 with Will Leach - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 56

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. Will each word live?

live again, Steve, happy to be with you. How are you today?

I'm Excellent. So here we are, again. The marketing mot to mind state our right. So this is based on the insights from Willie he says excellent book marketing the mind states how to use science to connect with your clients. That's right. So today so with this, what we talked about last week, I really enjoyed it was the three things that are going on the three main mindsets that are mind states that are going on right now with your clients, they need safety, they need control, and they need

engagement, or we like lease or something, you know, something like that release. That's right.

So that's what this, this series of conversations are based around is release, we should be having fun, we should be learning, we should be understanding. But here's here's the problem that marketing directors business owners are facing right now as Yeah, that's this is all this stuff is great in this book, okay. But my goodness, it's going to take me a while to implement all these things that are in here. And actually, I don't have a lot of time because all of a sudden now the economy is starting to heat up. People are coming rushing back in, I need to get my act together. Tell us come at some of the things that we need to focus on right now. We'll

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I think you're right, right now people are jumping back into the economy. And companies are starting to know that this is the right time to start advertising messaging, reopening their businesses going out there with social media. And with all that kind of rush to the market comes a lot of a lot of pressure to go faster, move faster, do things faster. And I think that's hurting our creative just a little bit. It's a it's it's we got to do things smartly, I think and there's a great way of using behavioral psychology to increase the speed of creative development.

Well, first of all, so I'm a creative or I'm marketing director, and I'm sitting with my team and, and we're working on this, but everyone has been default trained this focus on demographics. And instead of the persona, and the beautiful, beautiful thing about your book is it really helped me reorient the way I look at the folks that are considering our products and services. They're wondering, they're in a state of mind at that moment, when they're looking at what you do. And if we're designing for demographics, where we're missing a lot of areas that we could be connecting with our clients.

Yeah, I think we've talked about this in the past, it's because we're more complex than I am more than just a white male with a certain you know, age and, and, and a, an income, right? I'm a father, I go to church, I run two businesses, I write I love traffic lines. So all these different things have a personality and a psychology behind it. I think most people intuitively know this. But generally personas in the past have always been focused on these behavioral or these demographics only. And then we all just kind of generalize Well, if he has to do businesses, then he's probably not able to spend a lot of time with his family. No, that's not true. That's not me at all. I found a way to do both. So I think it's important to share moments in time, the book and the behavioral science is clear that moments in time, and who I am at this moment is the person you want to market to not my demographics, not even my behaviors, frankly.

So what's interesting is your book is based on science, but it's encouraging us to use empathy, empathy and science. Really, that's going to give me a competitive way to connect with my clients. Right?

Well, yeah, you know, you know this, there is science behind everything, even emotions, empathy. For real, I'm telling you, yeah, so so I think There was this dichotomy forever in the creative world that science lowers creativity, it hurts empathy, and it can it done poorly. But when done right, you will have greater empathy, greater insights than you've ever known just by taking a few scientific principles and kind of, you know, enabling them in your creative process.

So walk us through a couple of those. So empathy versus, or personas versus demographics. And in that mindset, walk us through how we can start to maneuver to take advantage of this opportunity to have a competitive slant on our messaging. Yeah.

So so I think of it like this, I think of it as a triangle almost, or a pyramid, or whatever you want to do. But there's three points. And if you really want to develop great, impactful emotional marketing, creative, there are basically three points you want to take into consideration. The first one is kind of what we just said, it is the person. And let's just think demographics, because I'm not saying you can't like you must know the demographics of the people you're targeting, because frankly, you need to go by time space, and based upon demographics, so I totally get it. So that's the first thing we've been doing that forever, right. So understanding the demographics of your target, as well as the behaviors, I would even suggest to say things like, well, this person watches Netflix five times a week, that's important information. It doesn't tell me who I am as a person, but it gives me important things to consider. That is point one, and you must take that in consideration. What we're now understanding to behavioral sciences, there's these other two points, and we talked about in the book that are, in fact, much more important as it relates to the actual development of creative. The second point is context. Our environment, right, so I'm in my home office right now. And the way I behave in my home office is very different than the way I would behave at a BMWs or Buffalo Wild Wings or whatever, right? So context, and context is going to be made up of a couple of other W's. Right? What, like, what's happening in this moment? When is this moment happening is in the morning? Is it in the afternoon? Is it late at night, those things matter? And then lastly, where I am, so I'm in? I'm in an office space right now. So think about it for breakfast, right? If you are going to be doing some kind of creative for breakfast, it's really important for you to know, where does breakfast happen? Well, it happens in the kitchen, what's happening? Well, my wife is pulling out all the stuff. She's asking my son about what kind of girl does he want? He has three different options. She pulls out the bowl, like understanding that she is really even though he's the decision maker, she is the implementer. Right? She's the hub. And then what when is it happening? It's morning. So putting those factors together, understanding the context that she's in a kitchen, two people are in that moment, she's kind of the facilitator, he's the decision maker, those things matter, to your future creative, because, frankly, you're going to want to kind of bring those moments into your creative because people identify with that moment. Right? So context. And then the last thing is mind states. That's that third part of the pyramid. But that's the why. So why is serial being chosen in this moment. And it's a function of demographics, context, that psychology, these mindsets are happening in the moment and with the mind state, we understand her goals, what motivates my wife to get the cereal versus making eggs, or whatever, leaving Nikolas on his own, frankly, to do whatever he wants to do. And then understanding how she approaches it. So it's like, it's kind of the amalgamation of those three factors that build true consumer empathy and that empathy. You know, as relates to time, right? See this, when you have that empathy, when you feel what she feels when you're in that moment with her. If you study context, you now can draft creative and create credit, you can iterate on new ideas much faster, because you're doing it for yourself. At that point, you have that stronger empathy, the more you do that kind of work to understand those three factors, the greater the empathy, the faster your creativity. In fact, I'd say the better the creative.

So help us see because this is very appealing. And then we've all been in those meetings where we had done all this work, all this research, make the presentation and we don't get the buy in because we get hung up on some some frivolous little font or color or so how does it help us see how this can be like a real success factor for us when presenting or, or coming up with ideas?

Yeah, so there's a link that links kind of what we just talked about those pyramids to your final execution. So the pyramid that I was talking about, that is to build empathy with Your creative group in your office, right? See, oh, but that helps you generate ideas. You think you're getting better creative, but like you said, Well, how do you show? And how do you convince your client that this creative is creative, that's going to win in market. And that's always that's a journey. Actually, that takes a lot of, you know, I'm sure you've been in there where you're like, Okay, Junior creatives, don't talk, let the senior people talk, because they know how to kind of, I don't know, want to use the word manipulate. But let's be honest, when you've been working with a client for a while, you know what she gravitates towards, you gravitate towards and even though that may not be the best thing for your market, and for your market, or your creative, you want to make something that is appealing to your client, right? What I would suggest is that that is not the best way to ultimately get award winning emotional creative. You have to bridge that ideation and making sure that your client agrees with your decisions you made days before that through what we call a trigger point, a mind state marketing blueprint. So we talked about this for a couple of weeks. Now, whenever you identify that mind, state, that third part of that pyramid, there comes a blueprint, there is so much behavioral psychology, in identifying people's goals, identifying their motivations, identifying the way that they approach a decision, but also in that academic literature is how do you bring that stuck to life. So if you now have a blueprint, these things are in our blueprints, like we create a blueprints for just this specific point, if you have a blueprint, especially if you have run that blueprint, past your client, now you're able to go to your client, you have three different campaign ideas, you can look at the blueprint, and that is an objective view of your ideas, not a subjective view, it's not what she thinks is interesting as much, hopefully you're pulling a lot of subjectivity out of the room, I think this is the objective, this objective review, we are priming, this motivational state, we are activating on this goal, and you can show in your creative how you're doing it. Why because you have a blueprint, you have something to work on. And in my in our past, we've seen this work incredibly well at keeping everybody focused on the intent of the creative. But I will also tell you this is that we're able to go through much, much fewer iterations and and, and kind of rewrites because everybody agreed to the blueprint, the blueprint, you can see how the blueprint is being activated on. And then you get out with maybe one set of revisions, not five or six sets of revisions, which happens to all of us, when we're just all taking subjective opinions in a room.

So walk us through an example blueprint, maybe on a project you've worked on recently, you don't have to name the client, but give us the basics. Help us envision it.

Yeah. So I was working with a client for a major hotel chain. And let me give you the premise of the idea. They were trying to drive business customers to their chain, and they're not really known for business, they're more of more of like a kind of a vacation, hotel chain. So what we did was they said, she said, Okay, well, we want to start showing that, you know, this is great for businesses as well, our hotels, great for businesses, so we created only one campaign, actually, and I just consulted on that. So I had another company working where they actually they hired me to help facilitate this entire campaign. And what we found out, if you read my book, you'll know a little bit more about this idea. business travelers are in what's called the optimistic achievement mind state, many of them. And what that means is they are trying to maximize their success on this business trip. So guy flew out to Omaha, Nebraska, he's going to go pitch his his company or pitch them sort of a product. He's there to be an achiever, he wants to win the deal. So what are you doing? So we have a blueprint around the optimistic achievement mind state, and in that blueprint, we literally have here is kind of the persona overlay, like, these are the drives in the moment if this guy's being a salesperson, so he's complex, but when he's thinking about being a salesperson, here's what drives him to act here. his beliefs here is here, his desires on what he wants out of a hotel. But then we also get into what are his goals for for a hotel? What are his motivations on why did he choose one hotel over another? So we did some work, but it's all in this blueprint. Then what we did is we created this campaign, then came to the client. And what was interesting about this campaign is we looked at their old research and their old research, the hotel chains old research, they were they were trying for about two years to bring in business travelers and what they were doing was they were showing how the hotel employees could help this guy win the deal. So things like going up there and straightening up his time. Hi, I'm giving him making sure that he gets the right breakfast. So it's the class, I'm sure you can imagine this commercial, right, and we're in partnership together, you're gonna win the deal. What you find out is when somebody is in that achievement, mind, state, Steve, they believe they're going to be winning either way, like, a good salesperson believes they're winning, right? And they don't need you, you can facilitate that. But we're not partners in this and achiever believes they're gonna achieve with or without you. So they were overstepping their bounds. So we came in with this creative. That was basically, if you think about it, if you think about the CMO of this company, very high level C suite executive, we were telling her that you want to downplay your role in this situation, because what happens is that business owner, or I'm sorry, that that kind of business sales guy, he doesn't believe that the hotel is all that important. I need a good night's sleep, I need to be close to my client, but you're not there with me in the deal. I'm doing the deal. So we told her that you have to downplay your role in the in your 32nd spot. That does not most CMOS don't like that, that you're telling me I have to downplay my brand's role. But frankly, from a psychological perspective, she was overstepping her bounds anyways, no, we had a conversation, we showed her the campaign versus what she did in the past, and how we're going to downplay the role. So it was very small little things like not showcasing these arts as much showcasing the guy's own preparation in the room, but not being facility not being helped by a clerk or by no hotel worker. So he's in the business place, you know, he's doing this stuff. Any other meeting Steve, if you're going to have that with a CMO, cmo is gonna react pretty negatively, but you're telling me to pull back on showing my brand's benefits, because we have this blueprint, because we have the psychological understanding of this persona, that said, he is not looking for you to be his partner, he's looking for you to help him. All of a sudden, we took the subjectivity out of that discussion, I had the science that showed that behaviorally, this is not the right thing to do. All of a sudden, we were not talking about the brand's role not being impressive enough, we were talking about how are we integrating the brand at specific moments to show that the guide, which is this hotel chain, was helping facilitate this, they put it out to market. This is just not a hypothetical example. Well, actually, before I even tell the market, the mo says, we got in out of there in about 40 minutes. She said, as she's walking out, this was the best creative review I've ever had. She was so excited why there's science behind it. And we took all the subjectivity out of it. Now, she didn't choose everything we wanted. She actually said, No, I want to change this. But at least she knew the scientific reason and the possible outcomes if she chose not to follow our direction. So still based on science, she loved that idea. Because now It wasn't just everybody agreeing in a room nodding his head, this is the least common denominator. It's something we all agree upon. And we all walk off thinking we had a great creative review, but yet we heard our execution. Two months later, they came back to us with the data and showed that our new TV spot was something in the realm of 70% more lift on their metrics at the time than they otherwise would have had. And that's just simply by not watering down the creative based on subjective ideas. And lastly, and that'll Shut up, right, we didn't have to go through five iterations of the creative, like the agency was loving me because it like that was awesome. They had to do one creative regroup, we went back in there presented about four days later, good. And we're good to go. Err. So it didn't take another three or four weeks of the creative process. And that saved the company a lot of time.

Wow. So break it down on the before and after? How are they using the typical demographic attitudes to to come up with their original idea? And where did empathy fit in on the transformation and the upgrade?

Yeah, so the way I understand it, and I didn't work at this hotel chain, of course, but the way I understand it is they were buying per Sonics, you know, data that you can anybody can go buy the segmentations from these large data conglomerates, right. And they have particular segments that they built into their database. And so what this hotel chain did was they bought a particular segment, I don't remember the segment name, but it was his business travel. And he talked about attitudes and it has things like here are the websites that they go to. And then here are the types of purchases they purchase that they buy, and this is their attitudes towards selling attitudes are great Steve, I don't think that those are horrible at all. But attitudes shift all the time. Like you're not always in a good mood sometimes you're not on your best game, attitude shift all the time. So that's what their old world was demographics plus some attitudes and then they just created develop creative off that if you know any creative person who developing you, I'm sure you you know this. Those things are okay, but you don't really feel like you understand the person who's like Oh, go to this website quite a bit. Oh, They value fast and speed. Okay? But man, it still leaves so much to chance, when you take that third kind of that pillar of mind state, now you're talking about their emotional desires, you're talking about belief systems like your, here's her belief system. And here's the example. They believe that they were going to be a winner with or without the help of hotel, that attitude of segmentation just said, they want to sell things fast. But you would have never known that you can overstep your bounds, you can overstep your role in this whole narrative of them being a success. If you didn't know that there is a line in the sand where achievers don't believe they need your help. And by talking to them in a way that we're going to partner together, that actually makes them it actually marginalizes them, then they're like, I don't need you and marginalizes their impact. So that's an example of how you move one step closer to empathy. And because we had empathetic kind of understanding of this person, we can now draft created that took that into consideration, I

want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released called ROI, quickstart Academy for authors. Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place, we want to create a great foundation, and we want to grow our business. But the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics, we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns, and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with, you have a great idea, you have a great book, but what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors? Imagine working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart. Team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear, to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit ROI online.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now, back to this episode. Yeah, so you're talking about, you know, the, you know, their demographics and attitudes. But as a creative person wanting to go, Okay, I need to somehow design something that really connects with them. I don't know, I don't know what to use. But when you go and your use, discerning where they are in their state of mind, immediately I've been in that state of mind, I can now start to relate with them and start to actually write, copy, create an image that would appeal to me in that state of mind.

That's right. So I just wrote an article about this yesterday. And one of the kind of best practices I was I'm writing about is if you're a creative director in for it, you really feel it to have that empathy. That's one thing to have it on a sheet of paper, and you'll look at some kind of a and I'm not saying that's horrible. To have it on a sheet of paper, all this information, what's better is to go into context, if you can. So the best thing that could have happened, let's go back to the example of breakfast, right? Your creative director, and you're going to be doing some ads for a breakfast cereal, go to the kitchen, go to your kitchen. And then think about these factors, go and have breakfast breakfast with your family and then go right into the creative process. Because when you were in context, and when you're reading this stuff, it'll make it feel much more natural, much more real, like you said, and when it feels natural, real to you, your best creative is going to come out because you're not writing for somebody else you're writing for yourself at that point. So get into context is a great when you can is a really good thing to do if nothing else, right in do that in the creative

ideation process, right?

Because that those being in context being in that environment will bring new ideas all around. I think we lose that because we're so interested in just getting it done. We have an hour to do this creative. But if you would have spent 10 minutes of that hour in context, in your in your kitchen in your office, if it had to be that could save you 30 minutes of just blank staring at a screen going. I can't come up with any ideas. Being in context being in the moment matters.

Wow, that's so different when you think about okay. How do I relate, but it's obvious it's just human, go go into a similar experience and in but pay attention to your emotions and what you're thinking or what you're feeling or what you were expecting. That's why marketing is broken on the whole, because people are trying to please the robot. And they're not even really putting themselves in the position of the humans that they're wanting to serve.

Yeah, I just read this article that talked a lot about how many creative, you know, directors or people in agencies, they start off now thinking, What's my channel? What channel does this have to live in, oh, Instagram, or it's going to be LinkedIn, or it's going to be a 32nd spot. If you're starting with the channel, you've removed the human out of it. But that's, that's, that's what's happening, creative briefs are being focused on, we need to have this this piece of creative needs to stretch across multiple channels to save time, save money. And so when you start off with thinking about the robotics of marketing, right, how am I going to capture this person on some sort of a device? You're losing all humanity? And God, he's like, Are you talking about your books, right? We are human beings. For her first, we have to get emotional, and you have to strip that out. That's the last, that's one of the last places you should be. But now we're being forced to think channel first. And just because of this, you need a business, which, like I wrote yesterday, I think is hurting creative a lot. But it is a fact we can't hide from it, we can't just say we need to have an extra three, three days or three, you know, three, three weeks, but we can adjust for it. And one way to adjust for it is to not start with the channel, don't start with the device where this thing has to live, that should be one of the last things you do.

Yeah, so don't start with the technology don't get tripped up in the technology, you need to start with the brain. If you can just remember that whoever you're designing this for, has a brain. And they're still the same, just like they were 100 years ago and will be honored, technology's always going to change. But if you're designing for things that will remain useful, they're timeless, then you've got a big, impactful advantage.

Yeah, it's funny how, how being human is now a competitive advantage, isn't it? Like, seriously ridiculous, but that's where creative world has gone. It's, you know, it's now people think they have a competitive advantage. Because I have a lot of experience on mobile, or I have some kind of data, I have a data analytics group that can, you know, run data faster. And it's, it's sad to see that that's our world, but it is, and we're losing humanity, and we're all human beings. We're gonna get there, we're gonna find a way to get everybody there, Steve, but it's pretty.

So yeah, so that's why your book is so cool, because I'm able to give myself the permission to, to dig into the science, because it's going to help me be more human. By observing the science.

It's fast, right? Like, one thing I don't want people to leave here is that, ah, sounds like a lot of work. You know, like, I only have an hour like, um, today, I've got to write a blog post on. So I talked, I talked to an agency a couple of months ago. And she told me, the head of the agency said, Will I sometimes have to write content for a PVC pipe manufacturer, or that is, you know, how hard it is to write good content. And her copywriter had been doing on this, it had been on this account for three years. So she was saying how difficult it is to come up with anything new. Like, it's just, it's hard, I totally get it. And I'm not. We're not simplifying what she does, or what her copywriter does for her. But the fact of matter is, if you just did this work, if you just got in context, thought about the reader got in the moment. And if you're doing that just a few times, maybe maybe do it 10 times in a row, so you're taking the extra 10 minutes of your hour. To do that, all of a sudden, you're not going to need to start off every hour, you know, with 10 minutes of trying to get into the mindset and the mindset of your customer, it's going to feel natural to you, it's going to feel natural. So if you do a little bit of investment, 10 minutes of investment up front, a week or two from now, when you're on your third article, it's going to come more naturally to all these ideas, because you're writing for yourself. So that's one thing I want to make sure people think like sometimes a science stuff sounds like it's hard or it takes a long time. And it's not and it actually saves you time in the long run.

So, you know, I think about that. There's PVC suppliers all over the world, right? And so they're all competing, and default excuse for not doing marketing well are not being a good salesperson, and then industry is to think that we're all the same, and so come down to pricing. But if you back up and go What's unique about this company I work for? Why did they even start this company? Why did they even pick the boring industry? That's why it may not be boring. But we're just, that's where our mind goes, first, I got to write content. This is boring. But why did that company even start there? Yeah, there's a real emotional reason. There's things that that company stands for their reasons that their customers have stuck with them for years. When they can get PVC anywhere, why? What's going on there? That's the piece that's connecting with their clients and potential clients. Something in that organization is unique. And it's emotional. And there's there something they stand for? why they do what they do.

Yeah, I think there's a book. Um, I probably, there's, I think there's a book that talks about, I think it's called the seven stories, every salesperson should know. But what is the founder story? Right? founder story, if you understood those seven stories, as as writing copy, you have not just seven stories, you have seven areas of opportunity to come up with lots of new content, but one of them is the founder story. And like you said, at some point, that company was brought on by a person guy or girl who gave everything up for their dream they did. And there is something powerful in that moment. Right? Yeah. And just understanding that there is no such thing as a non emotional company. So I work with pharmaceutical companies, every so often, and they will will do research with surgeons or doctors. And it's the classic. Doctors just want the facts. They just want the facts. They don't like it. It's marketing stuff. And I'm telling you, Steve, that is not true. We're all human beings. First, we're not demographics, we are human beings. And at first, yeah, it feels kind of weird when we when we talk them in emotional way. But all of a sudden, I'm telling you, when you do this research, you can connect at a different level, because they want to see what's best for their patients as well. And it's not just the facts about my drug, it is this drug is going to help my patient get back to a life where they can enjoy their lives. And that's what doctors want. At some point. They took the Hippocratic oath, is that the right word? Right? Yeah, they took that oath back when they're decided go to med school, or whatever. And they said they want to help people. And we tend to look at doctors and surgeons as these analytical robots. And all they want is the facts. And yeah, they may say that, at some point in time, they chose this industry for a reason. And when you talk to them that way, the world opens up because few people talk to doctors that way. They think they're robots, they think they're mechanical, that all they want is the facts. And at least for my client, we've seen really neat results of really talking about why it is that they became a doctor in the first place and then linking our brand, to that moment, to the to, to that to that emotion that they thought very different type of marketing, but very successful telemarketing.

I forget who it was that I was listening to. But my takeaway was how they were so emphatic that facts don't matter. Emotions matter way more. That's the essence of your book, basically, that before the birth of your son. Yeah, okay, you were all about the facts all about logically evaluating a potential daycare solution, then, then all of a sudden, your son shows up early on anticipated and the first thing you do is rush out and make a decision without going and getting your spreadsheet and studying the facts.

You know what? So what's so funny, I was just thinking about this last week, actually, the discipline that I came from, so I went to Texas a&m University and applied econometrics that's that was my master's degree. If you think if any, if there's any econometricians out there anybody in the economic space, we were actually trained to not put any emotion into our modeling right for you. So I was actually not it not that I even didn't know as important I was told to not do anything emotional in our in our in our hypothesis generation, just let the data speak. Don't put any of your thing in there. And now you have 25 years later, smarter, older gray hair. Now all of a sudden, it makes more sense. Like my guess we should start with the person we should start with the emotion. That's what plays out in the data I was taught from you know, God loves Texas a&m. never consider never considering motions. And so it's it's a hard road, but we'll get there. Hey, that book I just looked it up. It's seven stories every salesperson must tell. It's from Mike Adams. But one of the founders story and there's seven others I haven't read it in a while but it's the founder story is a place where you can drive emotion even for that PVC company right even if the company

is legit and don't here's the thing. It's a competitive advantage because most of the folks that you compete against are going to dismiss the emotional consideration, because they all have been trained to not consider emotions, logic, logic logic. But the truth is, we have this brainstem that doesn't even have the capacity to process all those statistics. All that text, they don't, it doesn't. And yet, it's the one that's going to go and give an approval a thumbs up or thumbs down on this decision. That's the one you need to get approval from first before I can go into the logic side, which is just a here's my data to back up this decision I made. Yeah,

yeah. That's right. Very clear. It's very cool.

What's been like one of the most one of them feedback on your insights on your book that you didn't expect around that topic?

Yeah, um, you know, I'll always go back to, um, the, the feedback I get the most is the practicality. And let me back up that intuitively. A lot of my readers intuitively knew this made sense. But they never had that they didn't understand the science existed. So I remember, actually, about a year ago this week, I was in Vancouver doing a conference at the CTA conference call to action coms huge marketing conference held by unbounce. And I talked about these sciences on stage, but 1000 people on a couple thousand back in on stages biggest conference I've ever done. And I afterwards I was brain fried, right? Because it was I was talking to that many people. And I went and had lunch, I kind of just want to sit by myself. But as sometimes happens, somebody come Grover, and she says to me, I intuitively knew that this stuff was there. But I had no idea that there's a whole science that that that told me or that would have proven my intuition. So I get that comment quite a bit. Great creatives, great artists, they knew they know that this stuff is real, but they've never been able to back it up. Because there's this whole you know, they were they were over in the art schools or in the creative world. And there's all this science stuff is in the psychology departments in the economics departments and stuff like that. So that's one of the biggest things I've learned is one, it's intuition. And then it can be very practical, like you and I are using the words emotions. And yeah, I know people say, yeah, we should get more emotional. What the book tries to do is say there is science behind the emotion, like I can show you the linkage between what emotion your customer wants to have, whether it's caring, or achievement, or success. And you can link that to creative like you can show the lines, the science is there. Just people aren't reading about that science and taking that in consideration. They're just kind of thinking we got to make people feel happy. Well, there's a blueprint to make people feel happy, there's a ton of work in, in, in happiness, like Gretchen I'm, I've got I just lost her last name. She there's there's a psychologist from Harvard, who studied nothing but happiness for over a decade. Over a decade. She knows happiness, she understands it at a deep psychological level, he's got to read these people.

funny that you had to write all this science to help a human understand that take advantage of emotion. So the emotion part one of this book was just a one page. Emotions are the most important thing period will Leach. And then he had to write this whole book. And here's the science behind it the logical backup. To

know and make it practical. So you don't have to become a PhD in psychology. So I hopefully, hopefully, I've helped people do that, you know, you don't have to understand the 10 years of Gretchen Rubin Is this the cycle of very famous psychologists, and you don't have to do 10 years of studying, you know, happiness, you can just let me read all about happiness. drop that into a couple of sentences in a book and let you be on your way because that's not your role. I love this stuff. You probably don't love this stuff, but that I love this stuff. Like I don't play golf. I read this stuff. I don't play football or watch football. I read this stuff. So let me do what I do. Well, let me work on my passion you do what you do well, which is do great creative, bringing that stuff to life and together we'll be in a happier world.

Alright, so let's review right quick here. So we are we talked about psychological empathy with your clients person, personas versus just demographics and attitudes. The beautiful thing about this, it makes it easier for creatives to come up with new ideas and execute them faster. And then once the creative comes back and you're presenting to a client or brand team, there's a less subjective opinion on the creative which drives us nuts. It's amazing how much work we can put into something, and then it just gets shot down. Because the person is in charge, they're supposed to be in charge, they're supposed to make a call, but they don't have all the background on it. And really, they're at a disadvantage unless you got them up to speed and put before you put them on the spot.

And science is the great equalizer. It's it's objectivity versus subjectivity. And science can take a lot of that subjectivity out of those out of those, it's not going to take all of it out, but it'll make your life a lot easier.

Yeah, so using science to connect with your clients, and to justify all the decisions that you used in creating a presentation or the solution that you're offering them. And just that wasn't like a big giant tweak with a hotel company that you made.

No, no, it was it was pretty, it was pretty dramatic. But um, you know, it's funny about that the strategy was dramatic, the actual executions, I'm not sure if the normal reader or viewer would have even noticed, I would have noticed. So it's interesting how these small little changes, these tweaks can make a really big difference.

So it really highlights that the actual work you had to do was on the decision making? Mm hmm. Very much. So. Not, not too big. Totally. Let's just throw in the trash and start over. You didn't have to do that you had to tweak some things based on science. But where are the real heavy lifting was getting the team to appreciate and understand that. So using the science gave you authority, and help to make be more persuasive in a business sense. That's right.

That's right. That's all we're all trying to do. And in the effort to do much better marketing and stuff that we can be proud of

being human is a competitive advantage. The biggest truth bomb of this whole conversation if you only catch this piece right here, being human is a competitive advantage. It's absurd, but true. The seven stories every salesperson must tell by Mike Adams excellent suggestion. And then of course, marketing the mind states by will Leach. So will you pop your publishing article tomorrow? And you just recently published one you publishing on once a week, is that correct? Um, it

depends on what what's publicly what the publication is. So I do Forbes once a month, usually, maybe twice a month. And so what I do is I tend to write, and then I decide where it's going to go. So I'm writing right now, I don't know where this one's going to go. I think it's going to hit forms probably in a month or two.

Okay. So tell us a little bit about your workshops, how people can connect you and start to get their own mind state blueprint in, in play.

Yep. So we have a company called the mind state group. And what we're trying to do is help other companies craft, create, develop, or develop, you know, creative, that gets people to listen, care and act. And so what we do is we do this through a number of different mediums. One of them is a workshop. So next week, next Tuesday and Wednesday of next of next week, we're running a mind state marketing workshop, it is spending two days with me and my team to run over the science behind all the stuff that we've been talking about. And that's really on day one. But then day two is where we help you apply it to your business. We run through a case study, very specific case study of how we've used all these sciences to drive sales, or we actually built a brand from the ground up using my same marketing. So there's lots of resources you can find videos on our website, workbooks and worksheets and things like that. So if you go to mindset group comm, you can learn more about next week's workshop. And and you can also learn more about the science behind all the things that we're talking about.

So this workshop is it's live, you're teaching it, it's not where I'm just going to sit and watch pre recorded videos.

It is live right now that we are working on some some videos that you can just download on your own. But right now this is live with me and my team, you can ask questions, we have Q and A's and at one point, actually on day two, which has been really successful as we allow some people to share their creative in real time. And we go through it together, you and me. We go through the creative together to show here's where I think your your advantage and here's some things that I would do differently. So allows you if you're one of the people that are able to submit your creative, to walk away with optimized creative, we solve for the challenges right there. And that has been a real fun part of the last day.

So what's one thing they're going to be surprised about in this workshop that they wouldn't expect?

You will walk away with skills in the space, it's not going to be theoretical. You're going to walk away with a brand new skill set to increase the persuasion of your the persuasiveness of your creative.

All right, will the spin awesome. I really enjoyed it. I love that one statement right there. Maybe even get that tattooed. Being Human as a competitive advantage will Leach. Okay. So we'll each thanks so much for another excellent marketing the mind state hour. And for those that are listening or those gonna watch this on YouTube or listen to this on our podcast channels, just know that every Wednesday we drop one of these new live streams. So you can watch it, you can listen to it, you can reach out to will Leach. And if you can imagine a conversation like this on a weekly basis about your brand and how I can help you grow and connect with your clients with science. You can reach out to me Steve Brown at ROI online where both will and I on LinkedIn will Leach is a little easier because there's not that many will leeches. But there's a lot of Steve Brown Steve Brown ROI online on LinkedIn. Thanks so much. Well,

thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. And we will be talking to you next week.

All right, and that's a wrap. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise that golden toilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.