Why People Buy: It’s Not Price, It’s Energy

Summary

Podcast Summary: Special Ops – Episode: "Why People Buy: It’s Not Price, It’s Energy"

Host: Emma Rainville
Release Date: July 8, 2025

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Special Ops, host Emma Rainville delves into the intricate dynamics of consumer purchasing behavior. Challenging the conventional belief that price is the primary driver behind buying decisions, Emma explores the pivotal role of "energy" in influencing consumer choices. Through an engaging conversation with industry experts Perry, Brian, Cathy, David, and Emily, listeners gain deep insights into how energy, risk assessment, and strategic marketing converge to shape purchasing behaviors.

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Understanding Consumer Decision-Making

The episode opens with a discussion on the complexity of modern consumer decisions. Perry highlights the overwhelming abundance of information available today, making simple decisions like buying a car increasingly challenging.

Perry [00:00]: "When you're trying to buy a car now, it's harder than ever to make a car buying decision because you can go on and analyze every aspect."

This analysis paralysis leads consumers to seek guidance, preferring clear directives over sifting through endless options.

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The Role of Energy in Purchases

Emma steers the conversation towards the central theme: energy. The panelists discuss how emotional and psychological energy influences buying behavior more profoundly than price alone.

Cathy provides a compelling analogy:

Cathy [16:18]: "If I have to pick you up, kicking, dragging and screaming and carry you across the finish line on my shoulder, then dammit, I will do that. Because you losing upsets me more than it upsets you."

This statement underscores the emotional investment consumers place in their decisions, emphasizing that energy expenditure can be a significant deterrent or motivator in the buying process.

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Risk Assessment in Buying

David and Perry engage in a dialogue about risk perception in purchasing decisions. They argue that while monetary risk is often addressed by marketers, time and energy risks are more impactful on consumer choices.

Cathy [15:36]: "The energy for a lot of people buying a lot of products is, what if this doesn't work? What do people think about me if they fail?"

This highlights that consumers are not just worried about financial loss but also about the emotional and energy investment involved in trying a new product or service.

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Marketing Strategies: Risk Reversal

Cathy elaborates on advanced marketing strategies that address these multifaceted risks. She introduces the concept of "risk reversal," which goes beyond traditional money-back guarantees to include time and energy guarantees.

Cathy [08:57]: "Instead of, hey, this thing could do all these things, it can only do this one thing. But it's almost 100% certain that if you do this, you'll get that result."

By minimizing the perceived risks, businesses can enhance consumer trust and increase conversion rates. Cathy emphasizes the importance of operational support to back these marketing promises, ensuring that companies can deliver on their commitments without compromising margins.

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Operational Support in Marketing

The conversation shifts to the necessity of aligning marketing promises with operational capabilities. Cathy discusses the challenges of providing high-value offers, such as coaching, without jeopardizing profitability.

Cathy [18:25]: "If they fulfill on all of those coaching sessions, I would go broke. So I say, how do I create conditions that they meet?"

She introduces "conditional coaching" as a solution, where additional value is offered based on the customer's commitment and success, thereby mitigating financial risk for the business while providing substantial benefits to the customer.

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Future Trends in Consumer Behavior

Towards the episode's conclusion, Perry and David speculate on future trends, particularly the impact of AI and robotics on consumer behavior and business strategies.

Perry [05:50]: "Anybody that tells you they know what's going to happen with AI and robotics is full of shit."

Instead of predicting specific trends, Emma encourages listeners to focus on adaptable strategies that prioritize consumer energy and risk management, ensuring businesses remain resilient amidst technological advancements.

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Conclusion

Emma Rainville wraps up the episode by reinforcing the central thesis: understanding and addressing the energy and risk factors in consumer decisions is paramount for business growth. By implementing strategies that reduce perceived risks and align operational capabilities with marketing promises, businesses can foster stronger customer relationships and drive sustained revenue growth.

This episode serves as a valuable resource for entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking actionable insights to enhance their marketing and operational strategies, ultimately leading to more effective and energy-conscious consumer engagement.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Perry [00:00]: "When you're trying to buy a car now, it's harder than ever to make a car buying decision because you can go on and analyze every aspect."

• Cathy [16:18]: "If I have to pick you up, kicking, dragging and screaming and carry you across the finish line on my shoulder, then dammit, I will do that. Because you losing upsets me more than it upsets you."

• Cathy [08:57]: "Instead of, hey, this thing could do all these things, it can only do this one thing. But it's almost 100% certain that if you do this, you'll get that result."

• Cathy [18:25]: "If they fulfill on all of those coaching sessions, I would go broke. So I say, how do I create conditions that they meet?"

• Perry [05:50]: "Anybody that tells you they know what's going to happen with AI and robotics is full of shit."

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Key Takeaways

• Energy Over Price: Emotional and psychological energy plays a more significant role than price in consumer purchasing decisions.

• Risk Perception: Consumers assess not just financial risks but also time and energy investments, influencing their buying behavior.

• Risk Reversal Strategies: Effective marketing must address and minimize various risks, ensuring that promises are backed by operational capabilities.

• Conditional Offers: Structuring offers that reward customer commitment can enhance value without compromising business margins.

• Adaptability to Trends: Businesses should focus on adaptable strategies to remain resilient amidst technological and market changes.

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For more actionable strategies and insights from Emma Rainville, download the free playbook accompanying each episode at Special Ops Podcast.

Transcript

[Perry]

When you're trying to buy a car now, it's harder than ever to make a car buying decision because you can go on and analyze every aspect. The heat seeder warmers and the. You know, I was in your car the other day and I was amazed at how cool it had. Much better heat sealer warmers than my German car had. The point is it takes longer to make those decisions. So sometimes people just want to be told what to do.

[Brian]

When you say take on the risk and you're also talking about like changing or transforming the energy, Is that one of the ways that you do that?

[Cathy]

Yeah. So, you know, like on a micro level, a clothes that I'll use is like if I, if I have to pick you up, kicking, dragging and screaming and carry you across the finish line on my shoulder, then damn it, I will do that. Because you losing upsets me more than it upsets you.

[Perry]

If you look at the music industry, right. What's happened in the, in the last 20 years in the music industry? Recorded music is fundamentally valueless.

[David]

Right.

[Perry]

Just like recorded information today is fundamentally values. Because you know why? It's old. Even though we like old music, but it's not worth a lot of money. But old information, it stinks, it rots like bananas.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

It, it can hurt you to have old information.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

But, but concert tickets are at an all time high. They're the most outrageous, most expensive they've ever been.

[David]

Yeah. Outrageous.

[Perry]

If you apply that. I do look back and I think, oh, that's. Yeah, I could sound smart and say I identified this trend and I followed the trend. I didn't do any of that. I just kept throwing a lot of against the wall to see what would stick.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

And it just turned out that these live workshops have really worked. And I think that it models the trajectory of where other things have already went.

[Brian]

Do you think it's like the experience of it? Because people want to be participating in an experience, Right. Not necessarily just buying a product or a service.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Brian]

There's, there's a journey that goes along with it. Do you think that's part of it or.

[Perry]

I don't have a friggin clue. I really don't know. I mean, why would, why would you pay. It is amazing to me. Why would you. Because look at these concerts now, they're in stadiums, right? You're watching them on tv.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Perry]

You know, you're literally sitting in Cowboy Stadium watching Britney Spears on a big tv and you can see a dot down there or not Britney Spears, Taylor Swift or Whomever, you can see a little dot of a person down there that you couldn't possibly make out. That could be me in a tutu. And you wouldn't know it from your seat.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

Unless you had that big Megatron. So why do people feel the need instead of just listening to Taylor Swift music in their car?

[David]

I think that that is such an easy thing to answer.

[Perry]

I don't know what it is.

[David]

I there if I sit and I listen to it in my car, that's great. I get this feeling of like singing poorly down the street to myself. Or I can have this experience with these other people. What do people want to do now? You said this to me. They want to have fun and they want to feel like they belong to something. And so if we can be at this concert in Wrigley field Together with 50,000 people, I have 50,000 friends for the night.

[Perry]

Yeah, that's fair enough, I think to the live thing. I've done a lot of ad hoc in my life. I'm a spontaneous guy, right. I notice for the most part, good or bad.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

But we do these things when we do events. We always do a thing at the end called unplugged. And every as everybody's breaking down the room, we sit up front and we just take any question you take it and we'll run with it.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

I think those are popular largely for why people like to learn live. They know that if you're willing to stand up in front of a bunch of people, live and teach a thing, you probably know what the hell you're doing. Because it's. If you don't, you look like shit quick. I mean, you really got to be good.

[David]

We've seen it.

[Perry]

But you don't see a lot of low level, entry level, poor marketers, poor teachers, poor gurus do live because they can't, you know, if you, you gotta, you gotta be pretty doggone sharp about your topic. Just like you gotta be shar. Be a great re requested podcast guest. You know, if you're going to be on podcast, you're going to be a lot of podcast. Podcast guests are chosen by podcast producers who have seen podcast guests on other podcasts, right? For the most part.

[David]

Right.

[Perry]

And they know, wow, I'm going to get that guy on my podcast or that girl on my podcast so she really knows what she's talking about. Where a podcast isn't a pre recorded event, you know, where you can just get stumped, you know, right now we're in a presidential thing and I know this is dated, but one of the candidates has been criticized for not taking a lot of live appearances because it's a lot easier to trip up.

[Cathy]

Right?

[Perry]

So I think that. That. That's part of it. I think part of it is involvement. I have mastermind groups and other business groups that I host that I have members in. I always let all my members come to these things for free.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

It's part of the deliverable.

[Emily]

Right?

[Perry]

And because a large portion of the audience are already, you know, Swifty. I need a name for Swifty fans, right? Belchy fans. They're already Belchy fans. So they're. They're already sense. That helps to. To create an environment where, you know, you may have never seen Taylor Swift before and not know any of her music, but you go into one of her concerts, you're going to fall into that more quickly because there's all those fans there. I think that helps. But there's a lot of reasons probably why it works. I don't know why it just that it does.

[Brian]

Right now I'm also curious about, like, things, because you're really good about seeing where the puck's going, right? Like seeing the trends that are happening or responding to those and anticipating what's coming next. I'm curious if you have, like, some ideas on drug marketing.

[David]

What's coming next? What's coming next? Because we know, you know, you were talking about AI five years before AI was a thing. And then you were talking about robotics when AI came out. You described Mind Pal to me three years ago in your living room. What's coming, Perry?

[Perry]

You know what? For the first time, it's harder for me to tell. I don't think. I think anybody that tells you they know what's going to happen with AI and robotics is full of shit. Because.

[David]

Or direct response or.

[Perry]

Well, or everything. Or everything. I can tell you, you know me. Where am I putting money right now?

[David]

Okay, that's a better way of asking, where are you putting money right now?

[Perry]

Where am I putting money right now? I'm investing in septic tank trucks, paving companies, digital publishing companies still. Because digital publishing, I think, is still a thing that hasn't quite matured yet. You know, I'm putting money in places that are going to be least affected by AI. I think that influencers, while I shit all over influencers for the longest time, is the dumbest thing ever. I think influencers are going to continue to be bigger and bigger and bigger because the more selection that you have, right, the greater decision fatigue becomes, because decision Fatigue is a real thing. I mean, when you're trying to buy a car now, it's harder than ever to make a car buying decision because you can go on and analyze every aspect. The heat seeder warmers and the. You know, I was in your car the other day and I was amazed at how cool it had. Much better heat sealer warmers than my German car had or whatever.

[David]

So it's not my fault I have a better car than you.

[Perry]

Yeah, it's not, it's just true. So, but, but the point is it takes longer to make those decisions. So sometimes you people just want to be told what to do. They really do.

[David]

I make a lot of money because of that.

[Perry]

I know you do. And I know I call them a lot of times with the dumbest shit. And I know a lot of times you just pick one. I know you don't have a lot of intelligence in that decision.

[David]

That's not actually true. The way my brain works, I don't just pick one. I don't. I actually, I think, I think of consequences. You don't know that word because your consequences come to me. But I think of consequences and then I think what am I going to do if I end up with this consequence? And which is the least.

[Perry]

Well, I know because you've got to deal with the consequences. But I used to work with a company that was big in the astrology business and they did low end astrology products. But the way they made money was referring those customers off to the Miss Cleo fortune telling phone lines. A piece of data that blew my mind was if one of these people that calls a fortune telling line calls twice, ever calls the same fortune teller twice, they'll spend an average of $8,400 in the first year for advice from a storyteller and from a, from a storyteller. From a. For well, from a story the first time. But they're like, hey, I'm at the store, should I get the crunchy or the smooth peanut butter? And all they have to go is the crunchy. Definitely the crunchy. Oh, thanks.

[Brian]

They just, the cards say the crunchy.

[Perry]

Well, our, our. The amount of decisions we have to make in a day now scene are so much more than they used to be. Yeah, this is off top, a little off topic, but not really. I did a study one year. I usually used to spend a whole year studying a subculture of people and I studied this whole subculture of weird, like, for lack of a better term, sexual behaviors.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

And this lady wrote an article for Rolling Stone that she was a entertainment attorney that that represented high end entertainers and sports figures, made millions of dollars a year and she lived her life as a slave. She was in a slave master relationship and she said that if she got out of it, she would look for a new master tomorrow. Because by the time she got home, I've even seen you do it. Because I know you make decisions all day long and I've been in your house and you're like, get food. I don't care what it is, just pick. I don't want to decide.

[David]

Nobody wants to.

[Perry]

Right? I don't want to pick the food.

[David]

I don't want to pick $2 million decisions all day.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[David]

Like all day.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[David]

Why am I picking what we're eating?

[Perry]

That's why you need to be in a slave master relationship. That's it. That was the lesson of the podcast today, folks. Thanks for playing along, but no, no, kid. It's really weird. Like people just don't want to make mistakes.

[David]

I might conform to that. Just to not have to pick what's for dinner.

[Perry]

Right.

[David]

What kind of soap should we buy? What kind of floor?

[Perry]

I'm exactly the same. I'm exactly the same way. I hate min. I hate minuscule decisions I absolutely detest.

[David]

Absolutely. Absolutely. But I'll make all the big ones.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[David]

Comfortably.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Perry]

I think helping people to make decisions.

[David]

Right.

[Perry]

Helping them to overcome their fears of rejection and failure. Yeah. I think, I think that's where that you're going to see. I think you're going to see a great breakaway. I think you're going to see the like I talked about, the more almost narcissistic, the more charismatic leaders that can really inspire people. You're going to see the gap between them and the information people. The information people are going to largely fall off or they're going to make a living. And you're going to see, weirdly enough, the Grant Cardone's of the world and the Gary Vees of the world and hopefully the me's of the world break away into a different strata.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Perry]

Where they're, because you look now like Tony Robbins business, I don't know, is probably doing 100, 100 million or more Grant's business. He's raised over a billion dollars in real estate funds, I think. And like them or hate them, it doesn't matter. The point is they're, they're breaking away from the pack. Alex Hermosi's broken away from the pack. You got people that are breaking away from the Pack. And I think you're going to see those people consolidate fortunes, right. While everyone else kind of fights over the scraps. And they'll still always be an industry out there. It just won't be, you know, because information. As more people adopt, you only have adoption. I really only has considerable adoption of about 5% of the population that know they're using AI, right. Maybe 5% of the population, as that hits it around 30%, it'll hit a tipping point and then nobody. You go perplexity and ask them anything.

[David]

You know, I plan. You had me plan my whole trip all day long. I didn't have time to plan a trip. And you said go to. I planned an entire four day trip where we were going, what we were going to see, where to fly in, where to fly out, where to stay. Like literally.

[Perry]

And that can only have one effect on information. It renders it valueless. You know, just like Spotify rendered record albums or CDs or whatever, valueless. It's going to render that stuff valueless. So. But you still go to concerts and you still want to meet Taylor. But look at what's happened though, in the, in the concert space. Like, I love this guy, Dale Watson, he's country singer out of Austin. I love him. And we're moving back to Austin right now. So I'm looking at concerts. We're going to go to all these concerts and that.

[David]

You're never going to go to.

[Perry]

They. No, I will. You're wrong.

[David]

We'll see.

[Perry]

But my friend called me the other night and he said, do you want to go to the Eagles concert?

[David]

Much younger back. I got so much older now.

[Perry]

I got. I'm going. We're going to the Eagles. Do you want to go with us? We're gonna see the Eagles tonight. I said, I don't know. He said, we got tickets. We got, we got great tickets. They're only 600 each. And I'm like, aren't they dead? You know, and. But get this. So the next day, no, they're your age. My driver, I can't flip her off on camera. So they're driving me. My driver's driving the airport at 4 o' clock in the morning to come here. And he was talking. He'd been busy all night running people from the Eagles concert. 18,000 of people paid $600 average a ticket to go see the Eagles. Dale Watson is playing in green for 15 bucks. And I would argue that he is at his state right now a far superior musician.

[Emily]

Right.

[Perry]

But it's just Amazing that there's that. And I think you're going to see that not just in direct response. I think you're going to see it in. In every industry pretty much.

[Cathy]

I don't differentiate really between operations and sales. It's like, I only like the top half of my baby. I don't like the left side. It's only the right eye of the baby that I like. You love the whole baby. And so with business, operations and marketing should be connected to each other. If you can't fulfill upon it, you should not sell it. And the better you can fulfill upon it, the easier the thing is to sell. I mean, this seems to make sense, but a lot of people miss that point because they think marketing is. We get people excited if we sell them, and then that's the end of the story. And then whatever happens after that, whatever. They don't even think that far ahead. What I love about risk reversal as a marketing strategy is if you grab 100 pitches selling the same product essentially like this brand, brand A has their version, brand B has their version, all the way to brand Z. They all emphasize the game. You buy this product and this positive thing will happen to you. And they ignore the risk that anybody would take to purchase the product and use the three risks. There's a money risk, there's a time risk, and there's an energy risk. The money risk is the least important. So people are like, oh my God, if I buy this and I'll lose money. And marketers think I got to make them feel like I'm not going to lose money. They emphasize any of risk reduction is on the money side. But money is the most easily replaceable thing. And if they ain't going to spend it with you, they're going to, like, buy some stupid thing that they forget they buy the next day, right? They're like, oh, yeah, I got a Candy crush bonus. Here's five bucks. And then they don't even remember ever spending it. So money's there, but it's not that important. Time is more important because if I buy a $1 product, but I spe 100 hours on it, that's a worse investment than if I buy a $10,000 product and I spend one minute on it and I get a result. And so people really, the risk of time to buy your product and implement it is a more serious concern. Time isn't equal. So If I spend 10 minutes on a spreadsheet, I want to kill myself. But if I spend a million hours talking about persuasion, I'm like I'm just getting warmed up, you know, like, bring it on. So it's the energy that's the biggest risk. And the energy for a lot of people buying a lot of products is, what if this doesn't work? What do people think about me if. What do I think about myself if I fail? What if I try this and then I quit? Am I a quitter? And the energetic risk is the most important risk in any offer. So all these brands, they go out there and sell this product, they talk about all the benefits, they ignore the risk as if they don't exist or they barely address them. Instead, when we do selling, we say, how do we minimize the risk as much as possible? We're willing to even cap the upside. So instead of, hey, this thing could do all these things, it can only do this one thing. But it's almost 100% certain that if you do this, you'll get that result. So we can take away so much of the upside, but we remove even more of the downside and we sell more. And that's where I focus on the strategy though. As you know, if we can't support that, if I make the claim that we're going to do A, B and C for you to reduce that risk because we have to take on their risk for them. If we can't operationally support that, we're screwed.

[Brian]

When you say take on the risk and you're also talking about like changing or transforming the energy, is that one of the ways that you do that or what does that look like specifically?

[Cathy]

Yeah. So you know, like on a micro level, a close that I'll use is like, if I have to pick you up, kicking, dragging and screaming and carry you across the finish line on my shoulder, then dammit, I will do that. Because you losing upsets me more than it upsets you. So I'm not going to let you have that happen. Right?

[David]

That's so good.

[Cathy]

Yeah, it's a great close. It works even better if you can actually fulfill audit. So I teach this to clients and they think, oh, I just mimic the words, that's good enough and it's good enough point of sale. Right. But it's not good enough on the fulfillment.

[David]

A lot of people forget that the sales process includes delivery. It's the sales to delivery process, 100%.

[Cathy]

And so it's like, how do we make good on that promise then? What are the actual fulfillables that would be the equivalent up to picking them up? Are we going to have somebody that's tracking their progress and then are we going to have them put pressure on them when they're falling behind? Are we going to reward them when they're getting ahead? Right. Are we going to bring in coaches? So one of the things that we do for risk reduction is this. Like if you're selling an offer where a coach would help enhance that offer, then the user would have to go and find a coach and then pay the coach. That's risky. So if you can say, I'm going to bring the coach to you and have the coach, I'm going to hand select the coach and give you the coach, that's less risky. But the problem with that is good coaching is expensive. Bad coaching is even more expensive, by the way. It's not in the price you pay, it's in the advice you get. Right.

[David]

The bad advice.

[Cathy]

So how do we give them a good coach that we pay for without eating our margins apart? And one of the ways that we do this is with conditional coaching. So we'll say, you know, we're going to give you six coaching sessions with a coach, that's 300 bucks an hour. So if you get all succession, that's $1,800, and we'll give you $1,800 worth of coaching retail value on a $500 product. I mean, this is a killer offer right now. If they fulfilled on all of those coaching sessions, I would go broke. So I say, how do I create conditions that they meet? Condition A, unlock the first coaching program.

[Emily]

Right.

[Cathy]

Knowing full well through attrition that not everybody's going to do it. That's not my problem, by the way. It's not my problem if I cook you the meal and you choose not to. Right. Like, I can only do so much. And anybody in marketing, you can only do so much. And so knowing the fact that only a certain amount of your clients are going to implement, you can make a calculated risk to say, okay, I can essentially underwrite this coaching. So the winners get the most coaching, they get the best deal, and the losers finance that, which is brilliant.

[David]

Brilliant, yeah, absolutely brilliant.

[Cathy]

But they have to meet a certain level first before they unlock the coaching. And then I'd be happy if they can get all of the coaching sessions.

[Brian]

Or they're the fast actors, so they're the ones who are actually going to execute on it and get the results anyway. Yeah, it's like you can't have. You can't have dessert without eating your vegetables.

[Cathy]

True, true, true. And, and so then on an operational side, we got to make sure the math works. Like, what's the take rate on the coaching? Is the coaching worth it? If we pay this much for the coaching, is the coach actually fulfilling on their end? Because a good coach isn't always a good coach. He might be a good coach yesterday, and then his wife leaves him for the yoga trainer and then he shows up and he's drunk on the next coaching session. Right.

[Brian]

I don't think that might have happened before.

[Cathy]

I mean, I mean, I have had coaches. The worst coach becomes the best coach. Best coach becomes the worst coach overnight, right?

[David]

Yeah, happens all the time.

[Cathy]

It's like rich dad, poor dad, same dad, only with coach instead. Right. So you have to have somebody operationally supporting that and you have to bake that into the margins when, when you're putting that in place. And so it's not impossible. It's very possible. You just have to measure that. And a lot of people when they're marketing, they forget that element. They just say, okay, we'll give them this over the top offer and then cross our fingers, everything will go good. Or they'll say, this seems like too much to me, so I'm not even going to attempt to do that. You need a good operational person to have your back and keep you accountable and to also excel at the thing that you are not good at. Because typically if good at marketing, you're not good at ops, and if you're good at ops, you're not very good at marketing. Sometimes you can cross that bridge and work really hard at both, but almost always it's better to bring in the thing you're not good at and then even when you don't like it, tolerate it because it will be to your your best benefit.