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Perpetual Traffic
The #1 Communication Book Everyone Needs to Read in 2026 with Charles Duhigg
00:33:07
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- [00:00]
A
We can't have a practical conversation until we match each other on this emotional level. We are living right now through the golden age of understanding communication on meta.
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What we're finding is the more non call to action kind of ads is the thing that's crushing right now. It relates so much back to super communication.
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If tactic one is then tactic two is.
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You'Re listening to Perpetual Traffic.
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Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside my non technically challenged co host Lauren E. Padulo, the founder of Mongoose Media. So glad you joined us here today. If you're a vp, Marketing Director of Marketing, CMO or CEO trying to figure out all this marketing stuff, you have come to the right place because we try and teach people how to do this the right way through metrics and matter and growth that scales and today we are extremely excited to have the key to all marketing I believe is communication and if you're really good at this stuff, you are a super communicator. I am certainly not. So I'm going to be an apt pupil here on today's show. But we have coming back for the second time. He actually requested to come back. I have no idea why but he just decided, he said I apparently had nothing to do on Thanksgiving.
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A
I had so much fun the last.
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B
Time you did actually we had an awesome time welcoming back a New York Times bestselling author, Charles Duhigg, the author of the Power of Habit, one of Kassam and my favorite books and also Super Communicators, which is now Lauren and my favorite books. And I think I'm going to go on a limb Charles on this. This is the most important book people should be listening to and or reading right now in this day and age of divisiveness. And we're probably just coming off maybe I'm so so maybe not so great family experience at Thanksgiving. Maybe you can turn the tide for Christmas with some of the things that you're going to learn here today. So welcome back. Absolutely can. Thank you.
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A
Thank you so much for having me.
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B
So I think it is worth mentioning that the last show that we did we'll leave links in the show notes which was July of last year. We talked high level about the two books that are amazing, Power of Habit and Super Communicators and how they sort of cross over today, the Super Communicators. Having read it over the course of the last couple of weeks again, I really did realize that this is like there's so many individual little hacks and tips and tricks of like you. You explain it in allegory fashion through storytelling, but also give the reader tactical things that they can do in everyday life. I was just telling you about a cocktail party I was at where I knew no one. I was like, I wish I had actually reread this chapter. So that's what we're going to be talking about here today, is those sorts of. So there's a couple of different stories in here that I think are really just compelling because of the way things are right now in the world. I'll just put that out there, let you go wherever you want to go with it, and maybe explain sort of the concept behind super communicators and sort of how you got to this point.
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A
So you're exactly. I mean, obviously, the folks who are listening to this are probably super communicators. They're professional communicators. Right? You people who communicate for a living, even if you're just an executive in a company that has nothing to do with marketing, it has nothing to do with. With the Internet, you're still really a communication professional because you're communicating your direct reports. You're trying to help people share a vision. And what's interesting is we are living right now through the golden age of understanding communication like never before. Because of advances in neural imaging and data collection, we can see what's happening inside people's brains and inside their bodies as they're having a conversation. And that's been sort of transformative because one of the big insights is that until now, we kind of assumed that people knew what they were talking about when they were having a conversation. Right. We're having a conversation about marketing, or we're having a conversation about where to go on vacation next week or the budget for next quarter. But actually, what researchers have found is that when you are having a discussion, you're having multiple different kinds of conversations. And some of those conversations that most of them fall into one of three buckets. Most of them are either practical. We're talking about solving problems, ranking plans, or they're emotional, in which case, I don't want you to solve my emotions. I want you to empathize. Or they're social, which is about how we relate.
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B
Why is Jordan laughing? I'm like, every conversation is emotional. This month it's November. We've had quite a few of those.
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A
Yeah, yeah, it's November. It's November. And then you come out of Thanksgiving and you're. You're like, wow, the Like, I just get to hold my breath for a couple of weeks before I have to have another round of really, really awkward conversations. But so understanding what kind of conversation is occurring and matching the other person or inviting them to match you, that's really powerful.
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B
And then the third type is the social. Social.
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A
Social side. Yeah, yeah. Which is about, like, how we relate to each other, how we relate to society, the identities that are important to us. A lot of the conversations with our family where we say, like, you're not giving me the respect I deserve because you're trying to be the parent, even though I'm. I'm your kid who's, you know, in my 40s or. Or crazy Uncle Gary, when crazy Uncle Gary is like, everyone thinks I'm crazy, but I think lizard people run the government. Like, those are oftentimes identity conversations, social conversations. And once we understand that, they're a.
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B
Lot easier to have coming off Thanksgiving. And you did have that conversation with Uncle Gary or Uncle Bob, in my case.
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A
True story.
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B
One of the best passages from the book, and we'll just sort of pull this one out, is the. Where wherever you stand on this, in your ideology, your political beliefs, doesn't matter. The point is this, is that the example that you use in this book, which is counterintuitive, it's almost like, and I think you even mentioned this, is like Jedi mind tricks, but actually not manipulative in this way, is that, like, there's a great deal of people right now which are highly relevant in the fact that they're suspect of vaccines. And I actually just read in Massachusetts of all places, like the bluest of blue states, maybe the exception of California.
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A
Where you live, is that 10% of.
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B
People are reluctant or have questions or are not going to give their kids vaccines. So it's a divisive issue. And you actually talk about this like how. I believe it was a pediatrician, maybe an internist.
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A
Yeah.
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B
How they talk about this. Maybe you could just sort of talk about that.
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A
I thought it was transformative.
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B
I was like, I had to listen to it two or three times because. In preparation for Thanksgiving this week.
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A
Yeah, no, it's. And it's really interesting. And so, yeah, there was a bunch of experiments that was done at the beginning of COVID to try and figure out. Because there's a lot of people who are vaccine skeptical. That doesn't mean that they're like anti vaxxers, but it means that they. They have questions and they're concerned and they might choose not to get their kids vaccinated for all kinds of things or get vaccinated themselves. And what's interesting is that when doctors, at the beginning of the pandemic, when the vaccine first came out and even before then, when doctors had conversations with these patients who were vaccine skeptical, they figured it was a practical conversation. They figured this patient just needs to hear the evidence. Right. If I tell them the science, if I give them the papers, and that almost never worked like it. You could never persuade someone the vaccines are safe by giving them data. And what was happening there was that the physicians thought they were in a practical conversation. But for the patients, this was really emotional. Right. They're talking about, I'm worried I'm going to put a poison in my kids. I'm worried that I can't trust the government. And like, I look at the government and they lie about all these things, I think, and so why aren't they lying about this? You're just some, like you went to some fancy school and you have an MD and I didn't go to college, and I think you're looking down on me. And so I'm, I'm going to be distrustful of you. Those are all emotional conversations. And so what the physicians realized was we can't have a practical conversation until we match each other on this emotional level. And so oftentimes what doctors will do is they'll say, tell me how you feel about vaccines. And they just give the person all the space in the world to bring up all their concerns. And they don't say, no, that's wrong, or, let me show you the study. They say, I understand exactly what, why you feel that way. Like, I, I would feel exactly the same way. And I've. And I'm worried about my kids the same way that you're worried about your kids. And you're right. Like the government does let us put crap in our bodies. Right. There's not enough, like, organic rules, whatever it is. So we're going to get aligned on this emotional level. You're going to, you're going to see that I've heard you and that, that I'm someone who can empathize with you. And then I'm going to say something like, can I tell you why I decided to give my kids the vaccine? Right. Which is a way of asking, can we move from an emotional to a practical conversation?
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B
Can I touch your lies at the same.
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A
Yeah, personalized. Personalized. Yeah, personalized. But. But instead of having to, to think about this on a purely emotional level, do I have your permission? To move us into sort of the practical questions. And what they found is that works perfectly. That doesn't mean every single person gets a vaccine, but it means at least they're listening to what you have to say, they're absorbing what the arguments you're trying to make. And most, most of the time they agree to get the shot, if that's the thing that you're advocating for. And so a big part of this is recognizing when you're talking about Crazy Uncle Gary or when you're talking about politics, the goal is not to convince the other person that you are right and they are wrong. The goal is not to convince them that you are smart and that they should respect you or even like you. The goal is simply to understand how they see the world, to show them that you understand how they see the world, and then to speak in such a way that they can understand how you see the world.
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B
And if you do that, even if.
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A
You walk away deciding you're going to vote for different people, you don't agree on who should be president, you are going to feel connected to each other, you're going to feel a little bit closer to each other. And oftentimes that's all that we need to coexist peacefully.
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B
The interesting part to that, and I was sort of expecting, when I reread it, re listened to it, I forget. Which I did at this point, is there was no, like, closing question. Like, so what do you say?
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A
Right.
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B
There was not rat.
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A
No, no. There was. There was not a call to action.
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B
Right.
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A
There's not the closer question, which. And I think this is different because, like in advertising, we're very explicit that we're trying to convince someone of something. Right. We're not necessarily in advertising. We're not looking to have a conversation. We're a dialogue. We're looking to kind of have a little bit of a monologue. Right. You might. My ad pops up. But most of the conversations that happen in real life are conversations where they are dialogues. If there's not a back and forth, then, then it's really not a conversation. And one of the hallmarks of a good conversation is oftentimes it doesn't end because you've gotten to the end of the conversation. It ends because you've run out of time. And so. So you don't have to have the final question or the killer closer because oftentimes you feel so close that it's easy for people to just kind of continue it, pick it up again.
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B
Yeah. What I find really interesting about this is that we've had another. I think of super communicators as a wave, like connecting. And I think there's persuasion, there's a part. There's a persuasive part of this to a certain degree. We had another guest on here, Oren Claf is also. He has written multiple books on this, and his last book was very similar to how you're positioning this right now. And I think this is super important if you're a manager, salesperson, marketer. I can also relate this to how marketing is actually done right now with this creative diversification thing that we've been talking about here for the Meta Andromeda update. Is that you make the subject, the prospect, feel like it's their idea.
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A
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
And that. That is what Oren Clapp says. And flip the script. He's like, you don't sell them. You make them feel like they sold themselves.
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A
That's exactly right.
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B
It's exactly the same principle here.
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A
We're exactly the same. And. And so let's talk about how to do that. Right? Because one of the things that we know from studies of psy is that people who are really good communicators, consistent super communicators, they ask more questions than the average person. They ask like 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And what's interesting is that some of those questions are just invitations to kind of participate, right? Like, oh, what do you think about that? Or, yeah, did you see that movie? But some of the questions are what are known within psychology as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks me about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And that can sound kind of intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you work at? You can ask them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? Break that second question. That's a super easy question to work, to ask, but it's a deep question because it invites the other person to tell you about their experiences, to tell you about their values, what they enjoy about their work, why they want to be a healer. And then you're having a real conversation. And once you're having that real conversation, that's when people are engaged and they start to sell themselves, right? Then you can ask the deep question, like, tell me what's bugging you about your marketing right now? Like, what's the thing that's driving you crazy? And now they're starting to describe their problem to you. And you say, like, well, have you thought about it? Have you thought about this solution that we're experts in? Now they're convincing themselves that this is the right answer, and that's so much more effective. And so we like to work with and we like to buy from and we like to sell to people who we like. And the way that we like people is through conversation, real conversation.
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B
And this, this is the thing that.
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A
I wish I had at this park.
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B
That weekend was that because in the passage in the book, you say shallow, shallow questions can become deep very quickly. Just like what you said. You know, start off with, hey, where'd you go to medical school? Like, I know a lot of doctors. And then it's like, sort of ends up there. Oh, I went to Harvard. I'm like, oh, great. Well, I worked in and around the Harvard area for years and years. And then it's like, then where do you go?
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A
Yeah, exactly. Whereas if you ask a why question. Oh, Harvard.
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B
How'd you like it? How'd you like, are you still close.
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A
To people at Harvard? Like, is it still a big part of your life? Like, those are real questions, and they're just as easy to ask, but they bring you to a real place, cocktail party.
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B
Questions, like, are even more like this. It's like, you know, you meet somebody and I told you this before we hit record here today is like, you know, where do you live? Can. Then all of a sudden you can ask a deeper question, which would be, what? Then all of a sudden you're deep. Like a great fall.
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A
Yeah. Like, what do you like about the Heights? Like, why. Why did you decide to move to the Heights? Oh, it's because you move there because, like, the community is so great. That's. That's funny. I live in the Valley for the same reason. Like, like what? You know, do you. Do you belong to a synagogue?
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B
Do you belong to a church?
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A
Like, there's all these questions that, like, give us an insight, a window into who this person really is. And the truth of the matter is, and we all know this, we love being asked real questions, right? Everybody loves being asked real questions. Nobody wants to have a boring conversation like, oh, your kids go to this school, My kids go to that school. They want to be asked, like, you know, when your kids are like, they're applying for college right now, is it driving you crazy? Because it's driving me crazy, right? Like, that's a real conversation.
- [15:12]
B
Nobody really wants small talk. Like, nobody wants surfacy conversations. Although I do know a couple of people who like surfacey conversations. But.
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A
Well, it's interesting because there's been a bunch of studies looking at this. So there's something called the fast friends procedure. And what's interesting about the fast. It's that it's. It's 36 questions that studies have shown. If people go back and forth, asking these 36 questions only takes about 45 minutes. They feel very, very close to each other. Like, so close that they'll. Even if they don't know each other's names and they were strangers before, they'll seek each other out to try and get together. Some people actually end up getting married after doing this. And there was a theory that you had to start pretty shallow and then get deep. And what they discovered was that's actually not true. That pretty much you can get deeped by the second or third question. So it's weird. If I come up to you and I ask for instance, like, oh, just out of curiosity, when's the last time you cried in front of another person? By the way, my name's Charles. Nice to meet you. Right. That's not going to go over so well. But if I come up and ask you, like, I know, right? Right. What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a doctor. Oh, why did you decide to become a doctor? Oh, you know, because, like, I really wanted to be a healer. I imagine that's tough. Like, do you find yourself, like, getting teary sometimes with. With patients because you probably get attached to them. That's three questions in. And I'm basically asking you, when's the last time you cried in front of. Yeah, but, yeah, like, the other nice thing about it is that if you'll notice, each of those questions was posed as an invitation rather than a mandate. So instead of saying, tell me when you last cried, I'm saying, oh, what's this like? And you could very well say, yeah, actually, like, sometimes it's really emotionally challenging. Or you could say, you know, I'm able to, like, kind of leave my work at work and come home. And, like, I find it doesn't. If they don't want to get deep with you, that's totally fine, and they'll let you know. The point is that, you know, you're a super communicator. You know this tactic. You know how to do it, and you can invite people to get deep with you, and they can choose to say yes or no.
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B
It's so good. And a couple of your examples there. If people go back and hit rewind here, they'll actually hear you asking that first question and then the deeper question, then. And then relating it back to yourself quickly, but not too much, because otherwise it becomes a monologue. Feels like an interview.
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A
Right. That's the nice thing about deep questions is that when you ask someone a deep question and they answer it, it's very natural to answer your own question. So why did you decide to become a doctor? Oh, my dad got sick when I was a kid, and I. And I wanted to be a healer. Oh, that's funny. I'm a lawyer, and it's because I saw my uncle get arrested. Right. And now I can ask another deep question. You're exactly right. We've all been at that party where someone asks us where we went on vacation, and we realized about 30 seconds into answering the question that they don't care. They just want to tell us where they went on vacation.
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B
Yes.
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A
And. And. But that's easy to avoid if we're asking genuine questions that we're really interested in. And deep questions almost always are genuinely interesting.
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B
It's a great quote I heard once. I'm going to butcher this, but it was the former Prime Minister of Britain that says, like, I went to the party and I. I met him as Disraeli. Benjamin Disraeli. He said the difference between him and every other Prime Minister I've ever met is that when I met the other prime ministers, I felt that they were the most important people in the world. Whereas when I met Disraeli, I felt like I was the most important person in the world.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. Bill Clinton has that same capacity. Right. It's just this. This guy. And actually. And I'm going to say this as. As someone who's not necessarily a fan of this person, but actually Donald Trump does, too.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like. Like, when you're. I've. I've gone to a number of rallies. I've. I've met him and been in the room. When he meets other people, he kind of turns that laser beam on you, and it feels special.
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B
Yeah, I noticed that about, like, George Bush, too, apparently.
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A
Yeah.
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B
In pro. I've never met him, but, I mean, I could see what you're saying. I was like, you know, it's a reason why he's where he's at. It's not just because of the outward appearance.
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A
And there's something else going on there. So if tactic one is ask more questions and ask deep questions, then tactic two is prove that you're listening. Right. So we tell the story in the book of this Experiment that was done with people who were gun control advocates and gun rights activists. And these researchers brought them together to kind of the goal was not to convince each other because these are people who are sort of like sworn enemies, but just to see if you could have them have a civil conversation where they feel connected afterwards. And so they go in and they bring them into a room and they teach them this one technique, a technique known as looping for understanding as three steps. Step one is ask a question, preferably a deep question. If you can't. Step two is after the person has answered the question, prove that you're paying attention by repeating back what you heard them tell you. But the goal here is not mimicry. The goal here is to show them that you're thinking about it, you're paying attention. Oh, I heard you say this thing and it reminded me of something else you said back a little while ago. And most of us end up doing this, these two first two steps kind of intuitively, right? It's step three that I always forget. Because step three is once you've repeated back what you heard the person say, ask them if you got it right. Oh, because what I'm actually. Did I hear you correctly? Because what I'm actually doing in that moment is I'm asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. And if you acknowledge that I was listening to you, you become 10 times more likely to listen to me in return. So step one is ask these questions. Step two is prove that you're listening by asking follow up questions, by engaging in looping for understanding, by doing a callback where you say, oh, you said this thing at the beginning of the conversation. That's really interesting to me and germane now, right. When we do that. And am I hearing you correctly? When we do that, the other person feels listened to. That's why they feel special. They feel like you are paying attention to them. Yeah.
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B
You know, it's funny, like, now that you mention it, I have one friend who does that so well. Yeah. And it's. So we don't get together all that much, but when I do, it's like, wow, like we're really great friends. But he has probably 20 other people just like me.
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A
Because if I already does the same.
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B
Damn thing to them, they probably all feel the same way.
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A
And I get to hang out with them. Yeah. Is that, is that we are all super communicators at one time or another, right? When we are talking to our siblings or when we're talking to our best friend and we just know. We know exactly what question to ask to make them feel better. We know when they want help and when they just want it. Like they want a suggestion and when they want, like, a shoulder to cry on. As humans, we have evolved to be amazing at communication, and so we know how to be super communicators with some people. The difference is that there are these consistent super communicators, people who recognize, oh, I can treat everyone like I treat my best friend. Right? The same. The same skills that I use with my best friend, I can use with a stranger on the bus. That's like the folks, the person you were just mentioning, they end up connecting with almost everyone. Yeah, everyone they want to.
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B
And they have a very busy social calendar.
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A
They do. Yeah.
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B
I know time is short here, but I wanted to ask you this question. This is something that I don't think I picked up the first time I read it, but it's something that I've been conscious of and first time I've ever read it in a book. Like yours is in a virtual company. Like, we, Lauren and I both run virtual companies, and so much of our communication is done through Slack, through email, through project management, click app, you name it. And you talk about these two magical phrases. We didn't talk about this prerecord that you recommend for people to use, especially in fast communication back and forth when. If you're running a lot of your communication through, like, Slack messages, it could be quick, it could be text messages, you know, or whatever it is. Instant messaging. Can we talk about that just for a second?
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A
Sure.
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B
Sure.
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A
And which phrases in particular do you mean?
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B
It was the use of please and thank you. Yeah, and I thought it was. And I. I am consciously aware of this and that. I will do like a massive of Slack communications. And then I'll think back, like, man, did I communicate that right? And then I'll go back and I'll.
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A
I sound like an asshole.
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B
So then I actually please or thank you.
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A
It is like, fascinating.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So. So there's this one researcher. What he did is he got a bunch of debates between Wikipedia editors. So we have all of the records right in the end. And Wikipedia editors take their job very, very seriously. So they would get into these huge debates, and what he found was these would often spiral into conflict, like name calling, people being really upset with each other. Unless there was one person. All it took was one person saying please or thank you, and it would bring down the temperature, often by like, up to 60%.
- [23:52]
B
Wow.
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A
So.
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B
So let.
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A
Why is that, well, it turns out it's because different forms of communication have slightly different rules, right? And. And oftentimes we're subconsciously aware of this without you realizing it. When you're on the telephone, you will over enunciate your words by about 30%. You'll put about 20% more emotion into your voice because you know the other person can't see you. So you're not aware that you're doing this. You're doing this almost subconsciously, but it's because your brain has learned that there are rules about speaking on the telephone. I need to over nuncate a little bit. I need to put more emotion in my voice. Every form of communication has its own unique rules. And Slack has its own rules. Texting has its own rules. Email has its own rules. When we get into trouble is when we forget to remind ourselves of those rules. We're in such a hurry that we're just like, typing as fast as we can. And instead of saying please or thank you, because we know that please or thank you really makes a big difference online, we just say, hey, go do this. And the person on the other end is like, screw you, jerk. I'm not like, you don't get to tell me what to do. And suddenly you have this conflict. But if we just say, hey, would you mind please doing this. Right. Thank you so much changes everything. And so part of digital communications is just taking a second and saying, okay, I'm sending this text. Would this be better as an email? Like, like, would this be better face to face? If I am going to send it as a text, be like, what's going to help soften it a little bit, make it, make it more palatable? What? We all know those rules. We just tend to ignore them because we're in such a hurry sometimes.
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B
Are there rules that change generationally or regionally?
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A
With.
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B
Yeah, so.
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A
So not so much within the regions of a nation, but definitely across the world. Right? From culture to culture and yes, generationally, right? Like my kids, if I put, When I text my kids, if I put punctuation in my texts, they say, dad, it makes it seem like you're really angry at us.
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B
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
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A
It's punctuation. Like, who, who doesn't write with punctuation? But again, that's a rule that I didn't know for teenagers texting, right? So, like, and I learned that rule and now I don't put. Now I don't put. Put punctuation in or I do and then I put, like, 12 exclamation points because I know it'll drive them crazy. Yeah, but. But the point is that. Yeah, absolutely, it changes. And. But it's very easy for us to pick up on how it works if we simply ask other people about it or if we just pay attention to how they're communicating with us. If I'd paid attention to the fact that my kids never put punctuation in their texts, I would have seen something there. Yeah.
- [26:24]
B
So true. The last thing is the use of sarcasm online. You talk about that. And I always. This is always. This is a real trap because I did this yesterday and then I reread the passage from the book this morning, and I was like, oh, my God, I forgot to, like, put an emoji after it or a gif or something. Or a smiley face. Right. And I always tell people, like, whenever I talk about, like, building a virtual company, and we've been doing this for 10 or 15 years now, is like, I say the emojis online are, like, saved this company because you can't really communicate without, like, a smiley face or a crying face or whatever.
- [27:02]
A
Exactly. Well, and so what I love about it is that emojis, if you think about it, our emotional communication in a digital form.
- [27:10]
B
Right. Like.
- [27:11]
A
Like when I sent you a smiley face, it's not the same as me typing out smiley face. Like that smiley face is something that's come to convey an emotion.
- [27:19]
B
So.
- [27:20]
A
So we can have emotional conversations. And in fact, our kids have emotional conversations with emojis all the time.
- [27:26]
B
If you'll.
- [27:26]
A
If you ask your kids to look at their text messages, I guarantee you some of them will just be a string of emojis. Right. But they know how to. To.
- [27:34]
B
To decode that.
- [27:35]
A
They know that that's basically me saying, hey, I was happy, and then I was sad, and then I got angry, and then I got happy again. Right. It's not hard to learn these rules. It's just sometimes we forget to remind ourselves of them. Yeah.
- [27:47]
B
So good. Well, I think everything that we talked about here in today's show is going to be helpful for anyone and everyone, whether it's, you know, intercommunications between their family members in and around the holidays, or whether you're a CEO or you're a VP of marketing trying to lead a staff here, or you're just whoever you are doing whatever you need to do in marketing. The interesting part of this, though, and I do want to say this, is tying this back to one of the bigger strategies that we found right now is that on Meta, for example, what we're finding is the more non call to action kind of ads that just allow the consumer to make their own decisions by just putting the message in front of them is the thing that's crushing right now.
- [28:35]
A
Yeah.
- [28:36]
B
And it has so much invitation.
- [28:38]
A
It's invitations making that invitation.
- [28:41]
B
It relates so much back to super communication in a lot of ways.
- [28:44]
A
Well, like it's interesting you mentioned that because you know, one of the stories in the book is about how this show, the Big Bang Theory, the TV show, became actually the most popular sitcom in history.
- [28:54]
B
Oh yeah.
- [28:54]
A
And it's paired with a story about NASA and how NASA looks for astronauts with emotional intelligence by studying how they laugh. And I think what's interesting about both of those, that's that applies to what you were just saying is they're both very, very soft approaches right there. When I'm writing a sitcom, if I try and force you to laugh, if I try and say you have to laugh, people don't like it.
- [29:20]
B
Right.
- [29:20]
A
They like to be invited to laugh, they like to be invited to find the humor. But if you're, and if you're coming in with one of those heavy handed messages like, oh, friendship is really what's most important, like everyone's going to be like, whatever, dude. Yeah, you're exactly right. That oftentimes what we're trying to do, even though it's static, even though we can't hear the other person, we're trying to have a conversation with the customer, we're trying to have a conversation with the viewer, with the client. And a big part of that is making them feel like we are hearing them even if we don't have a chance to hear their words. I know that you don't want to be sold to for this product on Meta right now. And so I'm going to show you that I'm paying attention to you. I'm going to show you instead of trying to, to sell you, instead of making this a call to action, like I'm just going to say, look, here's this thing that's interesting to me. It might be interesting to you. If you have any questions, I'd love to engage with you about it. That is an invitation that I think is it starts a conversation and that's powerful.
- [30:16]
B
Yeah, it's so true.
- [30:17]
A
Because that's.
- [30:18]
B
People naturally don't want to be. There are some people that are at bottom of the funnel, are ready to buy right now and all they need is, yeah, 3%. Yeah, 3% if not less. But the point is, is like that, that takes out 97% of your potential market. So you've got to approach it differently and you can't exactly be a pitch.
- [30:36]
A
And if they're coming to you because they feel like they have like you are a brand that has mean something to them. Right. And I'm an Apple person, I'm a. Nobody ever says like I'm an Exxon person or a Chevron person.
- [30:48]
B
Right.
- [30:49]
A
But I'm an Apple.
- [30:49]
B
But there are people that say Buc Ees Buckeyes, there's. Yes, that's exactly.
- [30:55]
A
Buc Ees is a great example, right. Because Buc Ees is having a conversation with its customer. It's, it's saying, it's asking them deep questions. It's saying, you know, when you come to a Buc EE's are, what are you looking for? You're looking for, you're a family man who's on the road. You're looking for clean bathrooms. You're looking for, you know, sort of a wholesome place where you can sit down and you don't feel like you got like all these people all over you and it's just dirty. And.
- [31:21]
Having that conversation is really important. And a conversation is a two way street. It means you have to listen to your customer, you have to show them that you're listening to them and you have to invite them to share with you.
- [31:32]
B
Fantastic. Where can people connect with you?
- [31:35]
A
Where's the best absolutely you can find me on so, so Super Communicators is in Power is in paperback now. It's wherever you your books. If you listen to books online or listen to books on Audible or anywhere else, you can download it from Audible or Spotify. I actually read it myself. And then if you want to find me, I'm just@charles duhigg.com it's-u h I g g.com and my email address is on there and I'd love to hear from anyone and, and I actually read and respond to every email I get from a reader.
- [32:05]
B
So tell you what, you are fooled. Giving out your email, that's impressive. Yeah, yeah. Seriously guys, best like this is the book you should be reading right now. The most important book of 2025 into 2026. And I am not exaggerating, it's just not because you've been a two time guest here, you got preferential treatment. Point is, I think it's super important for all of us to get a deeper understanding of what the other person is all about. And I think this is a way to really connect with them. And I think, you know, the book is tremendous and it gives you so many tactical ways. We've just scratched the surface here on today's show, but go get the book. We'll leave links in the show notes, Obviously, over@perpetualtraffic.com Charles, thank you so much for coming back for episode.
- [32:45]
A
Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is such a treat. So much. I really appreciate it.
- [32:49]
B
Also, on behalf of my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrulo. Ciao until next show. See ya.
- [32:59]
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.