Hacking Human Psychology with MichaelAaron Flicker

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So I'm super excited to be partnering with them to give you an exclusive offer to get Otter.ai for sales today for free. Go to otter.ai, that's O-T-T-E-R dot A-I forward slash JBSales to get your free offer and start saving time and selling more effectively today. The deep interest is the understanding of what drives how we feel and what drives how we communicate. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's conversation was a good one. You're going to like this. This is with Michael Aaron Flicker.

He's an American entrepreneur, behavioral scientist, strategist, and the co-founder and CEO of Xenocy Ventures, where he oversees a portfolio of nine companies. He's a co-author of Hacking the Human Mind, the behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world's best brands and a recognized thought leader at the intersection of business and marketing. He founded the Consumer Behavior Lab, dedicated to teaching brands across the United States how behavioral science principles can be applied to help them grow. And man, this was fascinating. I've always said that when people ask me, you know, what should they learn about sales tactics and tips? And I said, you know, those come and go. But what doesn't change is human behavior and why we do the things the way that we do them.

And one of the first books I always recommend people is the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. But I'm now going to be recommending this one, Hacking the Human Mind, because there's a lot of awesome stuff in here. So as always, we started with his background story, growing up in New Jersey, and how he really started up actually a company at 14 years old, which is now Xenosai. He's actually did marketing back in the 80s or 90s, which is bananas to me. He was coding stuff and doing stuff before most others were when it came to computers. And then he went to Boston College right here in Boston and had a double major in poli sci and philosophy, but at an honors thesis called Discerning Truth, A Life's Journey, Exploring the Limits of Language and the Pursuit of Better Interpersonal Communications, which to me just reinforces how I've always said that people buy on emotion and they back it up with fact.

We've heard that before. And this is proof of that. Now we got into what behavioral science is and how we can leverage it and leverage it for good because, you know, the difference between manipulation and persuasion is pretty significant. So got into that, talked about AI, obviously, and how things are moving so fast and why I think that's why a lot of people are struggling right now keeping up because things are moving in front of our eyes. And so we're holding on to these old beliefs and these old thought processes that are nostalgic for us, which is actually one of the things he tackles in his book. And I think people are just freaking out about it. And then we dove into some of the very specific things in his book about behavioral science that he got from these awesome conversations.

So for instance, the gold dilution effect where five guys, all five guys does is burgers and fries. They do nothing else. And there are 1.6 billion. Talked about some cost fallacy with Amazon Prime and why you actually get Prime included with shipping, expectation assimilation, all these different tactics and tools and psychology things that we can directly apply to what we do in sales. And so I highly recommend getting this book and listening to this conversation. And I know on this one, you're going to like it as much as I did. So let's make it happen. Michael Aaron Flicker, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? It's a great day. It's a little rainy here in New York, John, but I'm excited to be with you guys and have a chat today.

Yes, I was looking forward to this one. I was skimming through your book that we're going to get to. It's Hacking the Human Mind, the Behavioral Science Secrets Behind 17 of the World's Best Brands. So I'm excited to get into some of those because some of those stories are actually some of my favorite brands. Ironically enough, not really because of behavioral sciences. But before we do that, my audience always knows I love origin stories here. And you got some interesting ones because it looks like you started your first company at 14 years old and a bunch of stuff. But you also had some influence. I always like to understand the influence of family and your parents and your upbringing and kind of what got you that itch.

And it sounds like your dad had a big one working at Mattel. So talk to me a little bit about growing up and these influences before we get to the professional career side of the house. Yeah. You know, I was born in suburban New Jersey. And for me, it's the 1980s. And my father would always say to us, take it, appreciate how good the world is right now. And as a kid in the late 80s and 90s, that didn't connect with me. But my dad was a kid from Brooklyn. My mother was a kid from Nutley, New Jersey. They met on their first date. They went to the Meadowlands racetrack. I mean, I was born... Typical Jersey, right? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Proudly Jersey. And if you ask where I live, I'll tell you the closest mall or the exit number on the parkway.

And so, you know, I was raised to believe that... You're a normal kid with incredible opportunity to do what you want. And my parents always told me, if you work hard enough, you can make what it is that you want. And now as an adult, John, I believe that that's a beautiful part of being an American. We're blessed and very lucky to have a country where if you want to start a company, you can start one and have a company. And, you know, I don't know how true this story is, but in the entrepreneurial circles that I was growing up in, they always told the story that in America, you can thrive and strive. And if you fail, you can have a... Bankruptcy is no joke, no kidding, not good. But you can start a company the next day.

If you're in Germany and you have a bankruptcy, seven-year waiting period to start your next company. And so the environment here in America is that of trying and innovating and failing as long as you continue to try. It's celebrated. So big influence from my parents and my father became a lawyer and my mother started a non-profit helping autistic children. And so a lot of entrepreneurship in my family, even if they weren't traditional entrepreneurs. So I learned a lot from them. Yeah, I love it. So then, you know, in high school, at 14 years old, you started, that's when you started your first company. And it was a marketing company, am I wrong? So that's when I started Xenosci, which is the company that I still have today.

It's the same company for 28 years. We started it at 14 years old as a computer programming company on the internet. And back then in the late 90s, computer programming was meant for mainframes. It wasn't meant for the internet. That was seen as like a little silly. Like the internet was not sophisticated enough for serious programming. So we had this niche and we started it as an independent art project in our middle school. And when we finished this independent art project, we looked at it. It was like a virtual walkthrough of a school like Google Street View is today. So you could click and you can move through the school through a series of photos. Anyway, we finished and I'd say to the kid that grew up across the street from me, Abraham Wong, my business partner for many years.

What's different about what we built and what a real company would have built? And he looked at me and he said, a real company would have gotten paid. I said, we should start a company. And that's the origin story of how we got started. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB Sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that will be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process.

Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to JBarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. Man, that is super cool, especially back then, because I remember, I mean, I graduated college in 98, right? And 94 to 98, like we had a computer lab, like, you know, we were just getting started in that world. So it's almost like the story like Mark Cuban, right? When he was young and he started programming at an age where nobody was doing it. And he was like, wait a minute, this thing's cool.

Let me figure this thing out. And I think it goes back to that entrepreneurial spirit of like, hey, this is something new. Let me figure it out. And I think that's where we are with AI right now, which I think is just a massive opportunity if looked at the right way. Yeah. And the winner, the winning goes to those that want to go deep, that want to engage, that want to explore and figure it out, and then can find a commercial application. Plenty of people become hobbyists or just spend hours and days fooling around with it. But the winners are those that then say, wow, there's amazing potential here. Let's turn it into something. Let's make it into a virtual walkthrough of a school. Let's turn it.

I mean, early Xenocide projects where online forums for the Board of Education so teachers could apply online. 1997, very uncommon. So the application is where it gets interesting. And just like you're saying, just like today, what's the application of the AI that you can do to make it valuable and useful to people? And there will be lots of winners in that space. I do want to talk about getting deep here because I think, you know, being hyper-focused, the five guys opportunity, because I think that's what's right now going to your hobbyist thing. I think everybody's all over the place with this. And I do want to get to the kind of being hyper-focused on a singular thing to master it. But before that, I want to kind of keep backing up here because you double majored at BC, political science and philosophy.

And then you had an honors thesis called Discerning Truth, A Life's Journey Exploring Limiting Language in Pursuit of Better Interpersonal Communication. So where was this passion for behavioral science, for the way that people communicate? Like, why did that click for you? I mean, I understand the business. We got this cool thing. We got the internet. That's awesome. But where did the interest in human psychology and communication come from? Yeah. Thank you for reading the title of the thesis. It doesn't come up that often and it can give you like a little smile on your heart. I was fascinated in college. I was mostly a philosophy major. I did double major in political science, but maybe interest was in philosophy.

And here's the thing I was super interested in. I'm searching for a word. It's not, no, that's not the right word. No, it's not, that's the right word. Okay. What's happening in your mind that you know what you're searching for, but you don't have the language to describe it. That's a, that happens to everybody. All day for me. So that means there is something happening subconsciously that knows it wants to express itself, has the idea form ahead of language. And that was fascinating to me. That's what the thesis is about. It's about how do you know something before you can say it? How can you express something? How do you know when somebody, that feels right? I can tell you're being honest and authentic to me beyond the words, beyond the conversation.

And that was a fascinating, and for me, it was based in philosophy and theology, but it spurred that initial interest in, well, you know what? Not everything is just classical science. Not everything is, is studied and explained and behavioral science, which I got into once I graduated is just the study of how humans actually behave. And it studies what they do rather than why they say it is what they do. And so that's a very interesting place to play because sometimes our, most of the time, our decisions aren't so rational. They're, they're more innate. Almost always emotional. They're more subconscious. Yeah, yeah. And if we can understand those, we can understand ourselves better to be deep and we can be more effective in the way we interact with one another.

We can be more effective in business, of course, but we can have more meaningful communication and more meaningful engagement when we think about, there's a lot more happening here than just language. And so to me, that was, that's why I wrote that thesis. And that was really the more, um, uh, the more, uh, uh, I would say passion behind my studies. And then, yeah, I wanted to apply it. Like we were talking about earlier. So like, let's find, let's start a marketing company and find a way to help brands sell it. Let's do that in political space. And we have a political consultant company that does that, but that's all the application. The deep interest is the, is the understanding of like what drives how we feel and what drives how we communicate.

Yeah. I mean, I've heard it for years and getting into sales that, you know, people buy on emotion, back it up with facts. Right. So it's like, it's an emotional decision that people make even at the highest level, even the multimillion dollars, there's an emotional component to it. And then they search for validation through facts and, you know, all that fun stuff. But really ultimately it's like, do I feel right about this? Does this feel good? And so that question, behavioral science has said, can we study that and understand what are the insights or what we would call the behavioral biases that we're all susceptible to evolutionarily? We have been developing over hundreds of thousands of years.

Our situation in the last 200 years has radically changed, but our minds have not changed as fast. So we're all susceptible to simple things like social proof. If everybody gets into an elevator and turns one way, the last person is going to likely turn that way because everybody else turned. I don't know why, but I'm going to follow the herd. You know, there's those natural evolutionary biases that we look to understand because ultimately we want to help businesses work with human nature and not against it. We want to help people work with it. So I think actually that's interesting. I got to keep going here, but the, the, I was having this conversation the other day that I feel like everybody's struggling right now, trying to figure out what's going on.

And I, my, my gut tells me, you said like the evolution in the past 200 years, right? We've moved faster and we haven't been able to catch up, but literally in the last two years, we've moved so fast, those two years are like those 200. And, and so I, a buddy of mine was lamenting on, well, you know, our kids, they're not going to grow up with authenticity. Now the, the real music and, and the real experiences I go. And my mom is, is like worried about my nephew because he's, he's, he's 21 and he doesn't have direction. And, and, and I'm like, guys, I think you need to, I think this is the moment where we need to throw away all of our historical thought processes of what was and, and what was normal and what we are holding onto for nostalgia, which is another point in your book we can, we can talk about, but that nostalgia of all, you know, you get a, you get a degree, you get a job, you get a house, you bought your wife and kids and all this other stuff, or our kids are all, it's like music.

We go to bands, but these kids realities are going to be so much different. And I think this reason that's like somebody like me or in our generation struggles is because it used to be gradual. So it was like, ah, and it was like kind of one at a time. It's like, oh man, we lost the CD and now we're at DVD, you know, but now it is literally happening. We can watch it happen in front of our face every day. And I think that's what people are struggling so much on. So how do you see AI impacting behavioral science and are those foundational things about humans still there? Cause in, in one more piece to this, my struggle is, you know, like right now, a lot of kids coming out of school, like all the grind and shit work that I did as a, as a junior rep and all this other stuff, right?

It made me the sales professional I am today to have a real conversation without scripts and but now that AI is taking away all that, cause it can do all the junior stuff at least better than all those kids could. And we as a society are no longer accepting the fact that it's going to take that long. Cause we used to accept, ah, there's a learning curve for every young kid. Okay. That's why I pay less for this lawyer versus this lawyer, blah, blah, blah. But now that AI is taking all that over, I'm searching for two things. One is where are the kids going to get the fundamentals from? And two is what are the fundamentals anymore? And so from a behavioral science standpoint, that the reason I always love psychology as opposed to sales tips and tactics is psychology doesn't seem to change much.

Us as humans don't change the way we make decisions. But I, I guess my ultimate question to you is, is AI going to change fundamentally the way we make decisions or is it just going to, uh, expose them a lot faster? Yeah. Uh, it's a, my first reaction is that evolutionarily we will struggle to adapt that quickly. Just like we haven't adapted quickly for 200 years since the industrial revolution or two years, three years since chat GPT first launched our biases, our subconscious motivations are unlikely to change given any new stimulus, whether, you know, whether that's AI or a very famous, uh, story from the past, uh, when they first invented radio and there was a movement nationwide movement to ban them from cars, because how could you have a radio distracting the driver when they were driving legitimate concern?

I mean, that was a big moment, uh, uh, a hundred years ago. I believe that, uh, that while our subconscious biases will not change how we adapt and use technology will absolutely change at a rapid pace. So when we talk about the fundamentals, the fundamentals of doing any job as a white collar worker were different 50 years ago, we're different 25 years ago. And because of AI will be different right now. Uh, you know, we call the youngest generation digitally native because they use technology interspersed with their daily activities. So fluidly it is not a separate device and our AI native future children will use it as a, um, as an extension of their knowledge base. They'll use it as a, as a, another tool, um, in a way that, uh, in a way that, uh, currently we can't fully understand.

So I think the best white collar workers of the future, maybe all workers, white collar and blue collar, but definitely white collar workers will use AI. It just like we use word processing today, just like we use the internet today, it will be seamlessly implemented. And those that are willing to experiment and do more with it will be ahead. And those that resist it or are afraid to, to play with it, uh, inevitably they'll be on the lower, the back half of the curve. Yeah. And that, that's my fear is that those people that are like curious and that type of thing are unfortunately a very small part of our population. But maybe that's a charge for our education system. Maybe that is what, you know, more important than imagine I was just talking, uh, we were talking about conversations earlier this week before the TI 83 was invented, the need to use, to do long form multiplication division was a necessary skill in the 1970s.

That was a required ability. And today you think, well, if I had to, I could probably get through a complex division formula, but why wouldn't I just use a calculator? And so to me, they're enablement tools. They don't replace knowledge. It's an enablement tool, but you think something else. I think something else though. I think for you and I, yeah, but for a kid, like this is where, so, so, you know, something Neil deGrasse said something that really woke me up for a bit. Cause I'm, I'm kind of anti higher education. I'm like, you know, it's a joke, like spending 50 grand a year to get a 40,000, you know, be 300,000 in debt, whatever. And, and, you know, I always ripped on calculus, like fuck calculus.

Who the hell needs calculus long form shit, right? Like only 1% of people are every, and his point is it, it, everybody says that he's like, it's not about calculus. It's about the learning of calculus. And when he said that I was pushing hard for my 13, 14 year old daughter, I'm like, you've got to learn AI. You've got to learn AI. And then I pulled the brakes on it. Cause I was like, whoa, wait a minute. You have to learn how to learn first. I don't want to give you AI yet because I don't want it to suppress the learning component. And that's what, what, what I keep saying is we've gone from a, a, a search engine to an answer engine. And that's dangerous thing for our society because most people are lazy.

And so without the learning, and that's why I said like people like you and I who are old, old enough and have context and a business acumen, like it is a fucking superpower. Holy shit. Cause it's like, wait, tell me more. I don't know where you're coming from with that bullshit. Give me the different perspective on this. Let me go deep, figure this out. But for the kid that doesn't know how to learn yet or doesn't, hasn't written out that long format calculation to understand the output of why it got to that point. That's what concerns me the most. Now the flip side of this is AI knows how you learn versus how I learn and can tailor learning exactly to my learning style. But without somebody dictating that to me, it ends up being a replacement tool, which is why so many schools and teachers are scared to use it because of cheating.

And it's like, that's such the rudimentary application of this thing. I would tell you, I, I would tell you, I, um, I connect with your concern, but I wouldn't bet against the next generation. I, I believe that there are creative, uh, uh, people that want to dig and learn and adapt. And it's hard to imagine what that would be. If the entire world's knowledge is at your fingertips at all times. So while, yes, I think there's, there's some early studies coming out about how, when you use AI, you have less, uh, you have less, uh, uh, you're more intaking information and you're less questioning what it's giving you for sure. We have to work that out. But the, if you believe access to information is good, and if you believe connectedness is good, that I wouldn't bet on, I wouldn't bet against the next generation to make this even better.

Daniel Kahneman, uh, Nobel prize winning author and behavioral scientist. He said, thinking is to humans, like swimming is to cats. They can do it. They just prefer not to. And I think that's what you're getting at. You're getting at this idea that like, you know, we're going to be lazy. We're cog the cognitive misers. We're going to, we're going to, if we can take a shortcut, we're going to take it. But that doesn't mean that we can't get to better outcomes. They can't have new innovations. There's going to be one person that makes a billion dollar company. What's the question of a one person that makes a one person trillion dollar company. It's going to happen. Absolutely. And that is only going to happen through creativity, through human intuition.

Yes. They're going to leverage AI in a way we haven't imagined yet, but they're going to do it because they have that, uh, that creativity and that spark. And that's been the same for as long as you and I have been alive. Like there are those that have that spark that have that drive. And there's others that don't, and there's got to be room for both. Yeah. All right. So, uh, I like your optimism, my friend. Uh, so, uh, let's, let's kind of start the rest of the next section here about defining behavioral science. Okay. Just know that we just, we set the stage for, you know, the listeners here. What is your definition or what is the definition of behavioral science? Behavioral science is, uh, the interdisciplinary study of how humans actually behave.

So instead of classical economics, we have behavioral economics. Instead of classic psychology, we have behavioral psychology, behavioral sociology. So it's interdisciplinary in that sometimes we're looking at an economic model. Sometimes we're looking at how people think. Sometimes we look at how a group of people act doesn't matter, but what we're looking at is the actual outcome, not the self-reported why. So hundreds, thousands of academic experiments, a lot in U S universities, but plenty at international universities looking at, you said that you would do this, but you actually did something else and trying to understand, will they reliably do something else? And if you can have statistical confidence that they're always going to act in this way, in these situations, now you have an academic body of work that's usable.

And our interest, my interest is let's look at a business problem. And can we think of what's the academic studies, what's the science that can help us solve this problem using human nature? Can we make our work a little bit more likely to be successful because we understand what humans are naturally inclined to do. And when you start to look into it, I mean, this was the fun of writing the book. There's lots of human nature all around us that we can dissect, understand, and most importantly use for our own brands, for our own sales needs. You know, you can use human nature to be more effective. So with that, and I think I know the answer to this, from your perspective, how easy are we as a species to manipulate?

I think that we, back to our comments about not wanting to be rigorous thinkers, when we can take a leap, when we can skip a step, we're going to do that. We want to naturally conserve the calories evolutionarily. And if we don't have to discern this or that, we're going to skip it. And so, um, it is easy to see where we are likely to make those heuristic leaps, those jumps, and then we can use those, uh, to, to better, to better access what humans are going to do. To manipulate is a big ethical question because if you can get more people to stop smoking using these tactics, is that for good or for bad? And who is, who am I to decide? You know, this is a, this is, this is where behavioral science hits that question of ethics, uh, pretty fast.

And what, what we always say at that moment is we just want to understand how humans act and we want to write about it and make everybody aware of it. And then we always want to use it ethically. We want to use it for the good of the person receiving the message. We want to use it for the good of the company. Um, but yeah, uh, certainly there's concerns that once you understand our natural predilections, it could be used to convince you to buy more sweet candy. Yeah. That's a concern. I'm sure you've read, you know, Robert Cialdini, Cialdini's right. Influence by, right. I mean, that is, that is it. Right. And, and I always define that, you know, especially in sales for sales professionals, there's, I think the difference between a good and, and a bad sales rep is the difference between manipulation and influence, right?

Influence. People need to be influenced because sometimes they don't know what they need. They don't know really what the root problem is. They have a feeling about it, whatever it is. So you can guide them to the right decision. Whereas manipulation is usually you're doing it for the wrong reasons because you need to get your commission check. You didn't give a, ultimately don't give a shit about what the client needs. You're just trying to get them to sign. Right. So that to me is, I always look at the difference when I feel like I'm being, and also this is where I always say to people, I have no, I will debate about anything. You politics, religion, bring it on. Right. But the, the, the conversation stops as soon as you start trying to convince me that I'm wrong and you're right.

If we want to have a dialogue about this and I can open, I can listen to your opinion. But as soon as you try to flip it, to try to convince me that I'm wrong and you're right, this conversation's over. It's, it's so fun to hear you say that my, my wife and I are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. I am a blue, deep blue Democrat. My wife is, and she'll be happily to hear me say this, a red, red meat Republican. And we are on opposite sides. That's impressive that you're still married. Rule is your rule, which is we can debate, we can discuss, we can learn from each other over 10 years of marriage. We've even come closer on some issues. We never thought we'd move on, but never try to, never try to say I'm unethical because of my view or never try to change me.

We're here to discover and learn from one another. And life's much more interesting when you're with people with different views. I mean, it's much more colorful and much more interesting. And so I just, it's nice to hear you say that because that's certainly the way I've lived my marriage and it's, it's, it's been very rewarding. It's hard though. It's hard not to not make that switch. Like, especially when you're listening to something that's so off from your perspective, it's like, wait a minute, you are a fucking idiot. You know what I mean? Like that mentality comes out pretty damn quick when somebody says something, but it's like, wait, no, let me seek to understand, you know, as long as I'm not trying to convince you that, convince them that they're an idiot and be curious why I think they're an idiot.

That's a different story. I think it comes from that question of why am I so sure I'm right? Yeah. And why, and why do you believe that? What, what is causing you to believe that? And, you know, I forget who has that model of the five whys. As you keep asking why you keep going deeper, but the point at the end, we all have base instincts, base fears. We all have psychological needs that drive a lot of how we feel and what we, and what we say, of course, what we buy. And all of that is underpinned by some very base human emotions, hope and fear, you know, pain and pleasure, you know, there's not that many that drive everything that we have. And so getting to those more core need states is where a lot more interesting conversation could happen.

Yeah. I watched a interview recently where somebody was talking about, you ever seen the movie Inglourious Bastards? Yes. Yes. So I forget the guy's name, but he was also in Django Unchained. He was the, he was the German, right? Yeah. And somebody interviewed him and they said, man, how did you play evil so well? Like you just exuded evil, pure evil. And you watch the interview and he actually looks at her like, what do you, what do you mean? He's like, you played, like, how'd you get into that character and everything? He's like, he wasn't evil. And he, and the point of this is nobody thinks they're wrong. Everybody thinks they're right. And so in his view, he wasn't evil. He was doing what he felt was right.

And, and the point of the interview was like, once you make that connection, once you realize that the person on the other end of this debate, this, whatever it is, genuinely thinks that they're right and for their own right reasons, whatever that might be. That's right. That's right. Then you can start to, okay, wait a minute. Like you're not stupid. You're not a fucking, you know, evil piece of shit. Unethical. You're not unethical. You know, maybe from my perspective, you are maybe from, you know what I mean? But, but not from yours. Yeah. And I think that was something that I took away. It was like, interesting. So if you, if you have that mentality that they know, they just, as I feel like this is, is driven and as passionate as I am about my opinions and why I think they're right.

The person that I'm having a conversation with thinks just as strongly about theirs. And now it's try to deconstruct that of where that came from. I think it's a much healthier approach to look at people as opposed to adversaries. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you said you'll talk about religion or about politics, you know, politics is the passion of mine. That type of message that you just constructed would be a very healthy place for us as a country to start from. And then we can work from there. You know, we can work from there, but something, uh, with that mentality would, would probably help a lot in these days. Yeah, I agree. All right. So let's get into some of these. I mean, you get a whole bunch of cool stories in this book.

Uh, first of all, I got, you know, the ones I highlighted here, the intention to action gap and, you know, the gold dilution effect. But what was, I guess before any of that, what was your favorite, um, unexpected takeaway from this endeavor, right? So you, you bend behavioral science, you'd done a bunch of stuff, but through all these interviews, through all these examples, which one was like, Ooh, holy shit. Like I either didn't know that, or that was totally different than what I was expecting. Is there one that stands out for you? You know, uh, this is a very single minded and simple example, but it, it comes to mind every time, uh, every time a question like this comes up, it's the 1970s.

So, so just for everybody who's listening, the book is a study of 17 of the world's best brands and what we can learn about how they took advantage of behavioral insights. Okay. So here's the story. It's the 1970s. There's an American fish importer named Lee Lance, and he discovers a fish flaky, white meat, delicious flavor. And he starts importing it into America and nobody's buying it. And he can't figure it out. Like this is a great product. And he starts to think to himself, you know what? Maybe the problem's the name it's title, the Patagonian toothfish. And nobody is ordering the Patagonian toothfish. I wonder why. Yeah. So he says, you know what? I'm just going to rename it. He titles it Chilean sea bass.

And in the 1990s, a 30 fold increase in sales. One name has a massive impact on how we perceive it. And if you think about the fish industry, dolphin fish conjures up flipper, everybody's favorite dolphin, rebranded as mahi mahi, and now it sounds great in tacos, or mud bug linguine. Mud bug sounds totally unappetizing, rebranded as crawfish or crayfish, and people want it in their pasta. And so it's a fascinating insight that even just the name that we give something can dramatically change our willingness to be open to it or to try it. Frank Luntz is a famous American pollster. And he says, we label it, label an inheritance tax, the estate tax, 68% of people oppose it. Same group of people change it and call it the death tax, 10% increase, 78% of people disagree with it.

Same inheritance tax, same problem. Just change the name and you get a 10% change in how people feel about the same inheritance tax. So there's a lot of academic studies that prove this and talk about it, but it's a fascinating insight that just what you call something can make a big difference. I love that. And I think that's the same, you know, I try to, in working with sales teams, you know, it's similar to how you phrase a question. You know what I mean? Like you could ask a question one way and another way, and one way it'll get you, you know, complete lockdown, whatever short answer in another way, we'll just open them up like a can of worms. And so, you know, there's, there's how you phrase it, how you mess it, like all that stuff is fascinating with questioning skills, at least.

Without doubt. And since you mentioned it, um, we, we are fascinated by the academic studies that solve them. And we always try to make the studies as easy to understand as possible. So just because you mentioned that, let me just tell you this study. It's 1974, there's a university of Washington professors, and they're thinking, actually, if one word could it change what people perceive? And so they show, uh, all of the participants, the same car crash video. And in the clip of the car crash, they're watching it. And the challenge is, can you estimate how fast the car was moving at the moment it hit the wall? Okay. Simple enough. But here's the twist in the experiment. Sometimes they say, how far was the car moving when it contacted the wall, when it hit the wall, when it bumped the wall, when it collided with the wall and when it smashed with the wall.

So you just change the verb. Yeah. And the difference between how fast was the car moving when it contacted the wall, their average guess is 32 miles an hour. How fast was it moving when it smashed into the wall? Average guess, 40 miles an hour. That's a 27% difference in how fast they thought the car was moving just by one verb that you use. So to your point, one word can change how somebody on a defense stand responds to a question. One word can change how people think about, uh, about, about the whole, the whole video they just watched. And so that's really, to your point, one word can make a big difference. It makes me think of also, uh, you know, what, what Chris Voss talks a lot about, which is mirroring.

Never split the difference. Yeah. And, and how, how, you know, when somebody's objecting or whatever it is, they kind of throw up word vomit at you and you take two or three words and you rephrase, you know, of their words and you mirror it to them upward tone inflection. Is that, why does that work from a behavioral science standpoint? Is that because they're my words and, and there's that urge to keep talking, especially if he leaves it with upward tone inflection, like a question, but not a question. So it's almost like this forcing function for me to keep talking. And why does that work? Yeah. I, you know, it would be interesting to, uh, to, to dissect and think about it. My first reaction is there's a confirmation bias when I, and confirmation bias is essentially I need to feel that what I said.

What exists in, in, in what happened. And so when you repeat my words back to me, I feel reciprocity. I feel that you heard what I said, even if you're using it as a question, like even if you're not sure that, even if you're not agreeing and what Chris Voss says, at least in the book I read his book, never split the difference, you are not agreeing or disagreeing in this mirroring. You are simply using their words back to them to better and more deeply engage with them. So I would say it's a reciprocity bias or a confirmation bias. I want to hear that you reflect that you heard what I had to say. And that lowers my, uh, my defenses. And I think what, you know, Chris Voss has done brilliantly across his career is he's in, figure out how to use that to move towards his goal.

You know, and that's really been, he's a, he's amazing. He's what we love to call in our field. Um, you know, he's a great, uh, practitioner of these skillsets and just like great salespeople or in our industry, in my industry, marketing and advertising, great creative strategists. They don't always know why it, it works, but they have confidence that that's an insight into humanity. I can use to, to get where I want. And kind of the fun for us as academic nerds is we like to find what is that? What is the study that proves it so that you can use it more confidently? But those access to human insights, um, uh, are all over the place. In fact, we find small business owners, some of the best practitioners, they're on the ground.

They're trying to sell you a higher carwash package. They're trying to sell you the extra slice of pizza. When you're at their pizza shop, they have great access into what will motivate people. Um, I was at a farmer's market and we walk up to the stand where the woman's crocheting and she hands everybody in the group, a little crochet. And your initial reaction is to take it, say thank you. And now you're engaged in, in her sales pitch. Well, there's reciprocity. Yeah, there's reciprocity. That, that was the whole, uh, Hare Krishna is right. Giving you a flower, right? Back to the bear. Like, oh, you know, take the flower. I'm like, I don't want the flower. You know, I don't want the flower.

Please take the flower. It's free. It's take the flower. It's free. And there's a, yeah, fine. Take the flower. Right. And, but as soon as you took that, there was that reciprocity of like shit. And there was like, I think there was a time in the seventies where when Hare Krishna figured that out, their, their, um, uh, membership went through the roof. Cause people or, and their donations went through the roof because it wasn't, oh, I want to listen to your pitch. It's like, yeah, all right, here's some change in my pocket. Leave me alone. And so it was like this, just one shift in, in that, in behavioral science, which I found fascinating. And again, you know, one other example of this, which some of the listeners may remember when I was a kid and there was a nonprofit drive, they sometimes would send you a penny in the, in the mailer.

So you would get a request for a donation and there was a penny that they sent or a fascinating, right? Or a, a, some small gift to get you to do the same thing. So, yeah, I think the penny was, the penny I think is even in the, in the nickel is actually even more effective than the, you know, the return address stamps that you always get. I don't know this. So, well, at least from my perspective, because not just I'm getting something, but I don't know about you, but I was, you know, again, I'd probably not gonna be as effective now with this generation because of the lack of cash and the lack of physical touch of things, but you know, coins, it's illegal to throw away money. It's illegal to burn the dollar.

It's illegal. So like, I got this penny now and it's like, it's like, I can't just throw it away in the trash and be like, ah, it's like, fuck, I got a penny net. Like, fuck, I got a five cent, I got a nickel now and I have to, and so therefore I'm going to use it. And they're even as small of a value as it is. It's a fucking penny. I wish they would get rid of them all together, but it's like, damn it. I got something and I can't throw it away. And so that's why I think the penny, the nickel, the quarter are actually really ingenious. Well, they used to be. I don't, again, I don't know if they'll work on today, but really cool shit. Cool. All right, so let's talk about, I want to dot the gold dilution effect because the five guys example, I think is really interesting right now because I think it's really hard for people to stay focused, to differentiate because it's so easy not to be.

And now AI is making it so that I could go in 57 different directions at the same time, by the way, with all these agents and everything else. And so we go through this, especially in the tech world, we go through this kind of hourglass scenario where we go from mainframe computers, which was everybody checked. And then we went to personal devices and then we went to the cloud and then we went to iPhones, right? So we're in this weird, I think now in this consolidation moment where people are like, I don't want 57 point solutions. I want a platform that does it all for me. So how let's train, like, first of all, let's talk about the story of five guys, but how does that translate to organizations right now?

Because my fear is I don't understand how point solutions can win right now, especially with AI, because like somebody like Salesforce, somebody like Salesforce used to have the app exchange. They would have all these different companies and they'd be able to look at them and be like, you know what? That one's doing pretty well. So let's, let's buy that company and the smash it together on our platform. And it rarely worked the right way, or let's build it ourselves. And it was mediocre at best. So that's why the point solutions stayed viable, right? But now these, the big boys, the Microsofts, the sales forces, the world, they have all the computing power. They have the AI tools. And, and now it's like, Ooh, that point solutions looks like it's gaining some traction.

Hey, uh, could you just create this point solution on our platform and it'll work. So could you, with that as context, could you help us, uh, unpack a little bit of the, the goal, uh, the goal dilution effect and how we apply it today? So it's super helpful context because we're always looking for what's the business case and how can we leverage human insight to work with human nature? So let me explain the story from the book and what the goal dilution effect is. And let's come and answer this question that you have. So we opened the book in our opening chapter with a story of, uh, of Jeffrey Murrell, Jerry Murrell, sorry, Jerry Murrell. Uh, and he's a father and he's got four sons and they're on the Maryland boardwalk and he's walking down the boardwalk and he's talking about whether they should go to college or whether they want to start a business together to your point of, of, of, of, uh, higher education.

It's 1986 and they stop in the center of the Maryland boardwalk and they look at all of the food stands on the boardwalk and only one is packed with a line super long and it's a company named Thrasher Fries. And what Jerry and his sons notice is they only do one thing. They sell French fries. And so naturally you figured they're experts at it and they're better than all the other stands that serve fish and chips that serve burgers and fries. And he said, what if we created a company that only did one thing? And when they created five guys, it was the idea of a more gourmet fast food burger and fries. And that's it to today, 1.6 billion in sales. They don't do chicken. They don't do salad. They don't do anything but burgers and fries, no ice cream, only burgers and fries.

And so like we talked about, Jerry had an insight into human nature. He didn't have the study or the academics behind it. So we went and looked across hundreds of academic papers and there's a fascinating study out of the University of Chicago, 2007. I yell at Fishback and Ying Zhang say, can we discover whether talking about only one benefit beats talking about multiple benefits? So they do this study and they talk to a group of people and they say to one group of people, eating tomatoes is good at helping prevent cancer. How much do you believe that? Versus a second group of people where they say eating tomatoes is good at helping prevent cancer and stopping eye degeneration and they rate how effective eating tomatoes is at these things.

And it turns out that when you only say it's good at one thing, it's 12% more effective than saying it's two things. And that's really instructive for us. People believe it more. They're more likely to believe this fact when you stay focused on only one benefit. Most businesses, most business owners, most salespeople think if I barrage you with reasons to believe, if I give you many of the benefits, that's going to convince you. Because if you didn't like the first one, it's also good at this. And if you didn't like that, well, don't miss this. But it makes the whole argument less believable overall. And that's because we are naturally inclined to believe that if you specialize and you are good at one thing, you must be expert at it.

So it's proven by the academics. It's proven by Jerry Murrell and the Five Guys case study. And there's tons of other examples of where when you focus on one thing, it's better than talking about multiple things. So to you, go ahead. Do you want to jump in? Well, because this kind of falls, and I think this falls in line with my philosophy here of sales, right? I wrote a blog post a long time ago called Sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief. Pick any product or service you own. You only use 10% to 20% of whatever you buy, right? So your clothes, your car, your phone, LinkedIn, Salesforce, pick whatever. And because of that, I believe that's how I believe people buy. So they only give a shit about the 20% of the product that fixes their problem.

So when I present to people, instead of going through the whole slide deck, for instance, of all 30 or 50 slides that I have, I do my right discovery. I figure out what you, Michael Aaron, care about versus what Sarah over there cares about. And I focus on the 20% that's most relevant to you. Even though I might do all this shit, because that's, I think, the challenge here is, well, my product does do a lot of shit. So, so, you know, how do I distill that down to the one thing we're great at when we actually do do a lot of things? And I think you can do that in the sales process from the conversation. Is that, am I in line there? You're in line there. And the, the working with human nature is if you only focus on one thing, if they're more likely to believe you, I mean, like they're just a natural inclination.

If you stay, we are, we do a lot of things, but we are experts at one thing. This is what we're specialists at. And this is what your need is. And we're great at it. It's more likely to be believed. Now, of course, it's got to be true and you got to back that up. But if you want to work with human nature, stacking benefits is going to be, it's going to be working against that because the gold dilution effect, the more things you list, the more they all get diluted, the less believable they all are. And that's, so that's like, again, I tie this to prospecting, right? You know, sales versus marketing. Marketing is, has the luxury of blasting out. Here's the 15 different bullet points and transparency and synergy.

And when I like, so I tell, you know, I could probably wrap a tight message around what I do. I do sales training for consulting for fortune 500 companies. I do prospecting, meaning execution, negotiation, objection, and closing. I do all these things, right? But if I send that to you and you don't respond to it, I got nothing left. It's like, Hey, yeah, I still do that by the way. Whereas, whereas instead my first, if the persona is right and the relevance is right, my first email is going to be about prospecting. I kick ass and prospecting. And if you don't like that, if you don't respond to it, my next email is going to be about negotiation. If you don't like that, my next, so I'm going to keep poking at you.

Like, I think sales is about throwing darts where marketing is about kind of broad based. Does that again kind of align up? Yeah. I mean, as a marketer, I would tell you that that is probably the traditional dynamic. And what we would advise marketers is go with that pinpoint solution because you're going to be more effective with that. So let's not be so lazy. Let's use marketing to take that insight from sales, which I believe is to be correct. Let's work with human nature and let's focus on one thing to one audience. And if that doesn't work, then you can go with something else. But yeah, I think you're right about that. I agree. Great. I got so much to unpack. I think just in the interest of time, you did, I think there was an interview recently where you talked about the best ideas are in the lunchroom, not the boardroom.

And I want to translate that to where I think we are right now, just from a decision-making standpoint, because I mean, MIT came up with a study a couple of months ago that 95% of corporate initiatives and AI fail, right? And it didn't surprise me because I think AI is insane for the individual, right? It's a superpower for individuals, but for corporate things move so fast that by the time they make the decision, it's obsolete by the time it gets applied and trained and everything else. So I'm trying to kind of, my mentality right now is you got to flip the script from a corporate decision-making standpoint, you can't, the top-down decision-making of, hey, especially as it relates to AI, hey, we got to, you know, we're going to do all this stuff and we're going to now dictate to you employees what we're going to invest in versus getting your employees invested, kind of bottom up of using these things, getting their feedback and then rolling that up to, okay, cool.

Based on how everybody's been using us and their feedback, now we're going to make this decision. So do you think that's going to have to happen here with decision-making, with corporations because that, the likelihood of one person making a really good decision across the board for the entire org right now, I'm starting to question a lot. You know, it's funny, I think there's a lot of insight to what you're saying and it reminds me of the early 2000s where it was very common to have a corporation give you your laptop and for a long period of time, give you your cell phone. You had a work cell phone and the idea of bring your own device, you can use your own laptop, you can use your own cell phone was heretical.

It was not only not an option, it was dangerous. How can you control the data? How can you? But the demand for that from the bottom up literally changed the IT infrastructure so that you can now bring your own device and you don't even think twice when you add your work email to your home cell phone. And a lot had to change behind the scenes in order for that to be secure and safe, but it can happen. So if it feels like there's a parallel to what you're saying here, right now, corporations make large enterprise level IT decisions top down, but really bottoms up is going to be where you're going to find the best applications. And there's going to have to be a change in the dynamic to allow for that and still keep data safe, still keep contracts in line, still honor people's privacy.

Like that all needs to get worked out, but the idea that it's going to be made by an IT council feels unlikely. Yeah. And that's why I think I see the same parallels with AI right now. Like every, all the corporates are scared to death because, oh, our IP and what happens and I, and I just keep telling them like, look, IP is over, like cut the shit. Like, like I could go, I could go into chat GPT or what's the thing you're trying to protect as far as your business is concerned? Like, what do you think is so fucking special about what you've done? What, Hey, chat GPT, uh, could you tell me what so-and-so's company is, you know, special sauce is on this, that, and the other thing and show it to them and be like, is this what you're afraid of?

Cause it's already, are we 80% there? Are we 90%? Right. Yeah. So don't get me wrong. There's obviously special sauce and very important IP snares for different groups, but for the vast majority of us, I, and this kind of gets to the final point, right? It goes back to, and I think this wraps everything that we're talking about. It goes back to my belief that sales isn't about what you sell. It's about how you sell. And as long as you have something that's reputable, something that's good, something that does the job fundamentally, like everything else does, the difference is how you connect with people. The different, and that's where the human piece, I think I have, I have optimism about the human connection being necessary until humans start not buying things.

It's like, I keep saying, it's like, as long as there's a human buying something, then the human is, is going to be valuable in the selling process. But as soon as computers start buying shit, then we're kind of screwed because I don't know where we go from there. Well, it's an interesting final point. You know, there was a time where Amazon's easy buttons were like all the rage. I mean, I don't know if you remember, they would have a magnet that would go on your shelf. You would push bounty and the bounty paper towels would come. And the wild fear among CPG clients that we had was nobody will ever choose any other paper towel to bounty because you push the bounty button and then nobody ever, there's no decision.

That hasn't proved to be true yet. So long as humans have money and they are going to decide where to destruct that money, the decision on what to buy still feels very human. Now, if that dynamic changes, then maybe that will change. But so long as we have limited resources of cash and we want to direct that cash to their best end, humans feel like they're going to be in the buying decision process for the short term. At least, yeah. For the short term, for the kind of next three to five. That's why like three to five years, I can kind of still wrap my head. I can't wrap my head around what's happening 10 years out here and I'm not even going to try so, but hopefully the human connection will stay relevant for as long as possible.

Well, Michael Aaron, this has been a fantastic conversation, my friend. I have like 50 other points and questions that I wanted to ask you, but I think we're going to leave that for people to go read the book. So let's talk about where people can find out more information about you, the book and everything else you want to send them to. Thank you very much. The book is called Hacking the Human Mind. You can find it online at hackingthehumanmind.com. We also have a center that we've created called the Consumer Behavior Lab, where we're trying to improve all of America's marketing and effectiveness of brands. It's a project that my co-author and I have stood up. So you can go there. You can obviously learn about the book, but we have a podcast.

We have a masterclass and lots of other education. So if you're interested in this field, you'd like to learn more. TheConsumerBehaviorLab.com or HackingTheHumanMind.com will get you all of our information. That is fantastic. And I keep telling people, I'm like, the reason I've never, you know, people ask me like, what are your favorite sales books? I'm like, I don't have any. Because sales to me is like nuggets and tips and those type of things. And you can study that all you want. But the problem with techniques and all that stuff is those change, you know, they'll come and go. But what doesn't change, at least for now, is human behavior and why we do the things the way. That's why the book Influence.

That's why, like, it's like, if you study human behavior, you can evolve with all this mess. Because again, as long as humans are in the mix, then you know how to connect with them. So man, I appreciate this conversation. It was really cool. Thanks very much for having me on. Absolutely. And everybody, hopefully you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Highly recommend checking out that book and more of the work that Michael Aaron's putting out there. And like I say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

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