← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
568. The Power of Changing Our Perspectives
00:51:17
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to episode 568 of the Brainy Business, Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm joined by Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractible and now Beyond Belief. Ready? Let's get started.
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B
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain free. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [00:37]
A
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. What if the biggest limits you face in your work, your habits, your relationship aren't coming from the outside? What if the real constraint is what you believe? Today's guest is Nir Eyal, a friend of the show and someone I deeply admire for his ability to bring clarity to complex ideas. His books, Hooked and Indistractable have shaped how thousands of businesses think about behavior and design. And he was one of the very first guests here on the show. Such an amazing person and now I'm so excited that he is back with a bold new lens on something many of us overlook, belief. In this episode we talk about how beliefs form, why they stick, and what it takes to change them and why they matter so much more than many of us believe. I adore near and his work and I'm so excited for you to hear this one. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com568 now let's jump right in. Niraal, welcome back to the Brainy Business podcast.
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B
Oh, so great to be here. Thanks for having me.
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A
Yay. I know I mentioned I've been so audience world. I've been talking like pinging near for a few years now saying there has to be another book and whenever it's ready, like you have an open invitation. And so I'm so delighted that we've got a new book and a new topic. Can you share a little bit about your background and kind of how you know what you've done before for those who don't know you yet and you know what you've been up to for these past several years working on the new book?
- [02:28]
B
Yes, I have been feverishly working on my new book, Beyond Belief. And Beyond Belief is really an exploration of how our hidden assumptions dictate what we see, feel and do. And so I spent the past five years digging into what I call these three powers of belief. The power of attention, the power of anticipation, and the power of agency. And let me tell you, this book has done more to shape the way I view the world. I thought I kind of understood a thing or two, having written two previous books. One on how to build habit forming products, the second one indistractable about how to break these bad habits we have with distraction. So I've been pretty deep into this stuff. But wow, this, the research that I went down for this book really changed my life like no other. I do so many things different in my day to day life, and so different in terms of how I advise my clients, my business clients, in terms of how we should lead, how we should build products, how we should live our day to day lives. This has really been a revelation for me.
- [03:33]
A
Oh my goodness. Similarly, as I was going through the book, I was like, whoa, I didn't know that. That's so cool, right? Like so many things that were.
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B
That's a huge comic because I know you read a lot of books in this. What was the most, if you don't mind me asking you, what was the most memorable? Like, oh, I hadn't heard that before, or wow, that I didn't see that.
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A
So one that has really stood out is this. And I will say the thing and then you can talk about it, right? But that, that people are having surgeries without anesthesia and are just using hypnosis and the power of belief, which is crazy bananas. And I feel like I could never, like, I would never trust myself to do that under any circumstances. But. And then even, you know, as it talks, the story that you have in the book I think is a great one. So that can come in. And then, then wait, wait, wait.
- [04:26]
B
Before, before you say the second one. I think people are, are literally going to turn off the podcast if they think that's what the podcast is going to be about. That is not what the podcast is about. I want to catch those people real quick because the reason I talk about that story, and I put it really right up front because it's so shocking, it's so unbelievable and true. And the book is, you know, I'm my target audience. When I was thinking like, okay, who's the demographic for my audience? My audience for this book are what I call productive skeptics. They are people who, who want to be better at work, they want to be better at life. They know that they can, that there's more they can do to grow and, and be better. But they're very skeptical. And so, you know, my, I have a science background. I every, every book I write has 30 pages of peer reviewed studies in the back. You know, I re. And I look at those studies. I used to kind of accept studies. Now I really look at the studies after, you know, the replication crisis we've had in the social sciences. So I'm very, very picky about the science that I will put in my books. And, and this. When I first heard about hypnosudation, I said, no, come on, there's a trick, right? It's definitely some kind of mumbo jumbo woo woo stuff. And it's real, it's people. Thousands of people have gone under surgery. And I talked to the person, many people who did it, but the person in the book, I literally saw the video of his surgery and I talked with his doctors, I talked with the person who trained him on how to do the hypnotherapy. And I didn't put it in the book because I want people to get hypnosudation. I ain't doing hypnosudation. There's no way. Probably not, maybe someday, but no, at this very moment I wouldn't do it. But the reason I put that in the book is because I wanted to show folks that if the mind can do that. Daniel Gisler gets screws removed from his bone. He had an accident in his 50s, he tripped and he fractured a bone in his ankle and he had to get these screws put in that was done with anesthesia. Then about five years later, so he had to have these pins kept in his bone. And then five years later he learns about hypnosudation. He gets interested in it, he gets trained in it himself. And they cut into his skin without general anesthesia, without local anesthetic, nothing. And they take out these screws. It's about an hour operation, 100% without anesthesia. And so what I wanted to really show was this concept of how we live life through a keyhole, this power of attention that we have. The brain takes in about 11 million bits of information per second, but we only process about 50 bits per second. So that contrasts 50 versus 11 million bits of information. That shows us that there is this keyhole of attention that we live our life through, that we only see an itty bitty amount of reality. I mean, right now, for example, like if I asked you to pay attention to my voice and also listen to the hum of the air conditioning in the room and also take in all the things that are around you in your peripheral vision and also pay attention to your breath. You can't do it. It's impossible. You can. You can cycle through those things, kind of like a security system cycles through views of a camera, of a video camera, but you can't pay attention to all those things at the same time. And so what he was able to do and what thousands of people have done through hypnosudation, is to focus their attention so tightly on one source of information that they're actually concocting in their head. He talks about in the book how he does this so that they can tune out the other sensory inputs, and this principally being pain. And so what I wanted to show from that was that we can do this in all kinds of areas of our life, right. That in indistractable. I learned about how time management is pain management, how when we procrastinate, it's really an impulse control issue. When I scroll my phone versus working on that big project or doing whatever, it's because I am escaping discomfort. Well, if Daniel Gissler can have, you know, metal removed from his bones without anesthesia and manage pain that way, wow. What else is possible, right?
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A
What.
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B
What possible pain can we be suffering through in our lives, emotionally, physically, financially stressful, whatever it might be? There's no way that compares to the surgery of that anesthesia. So that's why I told that story. That's not what the entire book is about, but it's. I think it's a. It was pretty shocking to me, at least. But thank you for mentioning that.
- [08:44]
A
Yeah. No, and for me, with that, exactly what you're saying, right? Where it's like, okay, if I feel like I can't do. If there's anything that's like, well, it's just so hard to focus on and to know that, like. Well, but if I really wanted to, like, in the way that the brain can filter these things out. And what I really think stood out to me a lot in that story as well, was that the moment, like, so you talk about how then the doctor says, oh, there's about 10 minutes left to the staff and everything, right. And that brought him out of the hypno sedation enough to where the last stitches was like the most painful part of that procedure for him, Even though that's like the simplest thing, because he. It like his mind focused that. And then all you can focus on is like, oh, my gosh that's going into my leg. Oh, my gosh. That's going into my leg. Or whatever.
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B
Yeah, Right.
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A
And. And so that shift that he experienced, that. It's not like that guy's just super powerful, which potentially, yes, he has a powerful brain and trained for that. But to know that, you know, just that distraction can creep in, and if you're not able. If you're not really knowing what you need to be focused on, and also that that can happen, and it's okay. Right. And then you can, like, bring yourself back when you need to.
- [09:58]
B
Yeah. By the way, folks, this is why you tune in to this podcast right here. You see what she just did? I can't tell you, you know, really, I'm serious. I have to compliment you for a second, because I've been on hundreds of podcasts, and it's amazing to me that, you know, you really put in the time and effort to read the book. You remember the story. Like, that means so much to me as an author. It means a lot to your audience, too. So on behalf of your audience, thank you for doing that. It's awesome.
- [10:23]
A
Thank you. Thank you.
- [10:24]
B
And just to finish the point from that story, what I took away was, you know, the doctor. It was the first time he had performed hypnosudation, and Daniel had to kind of convince the doctor, no, no, no, this is fine, fine. It's going to be okay. But the doctor didn't realize that that was a big no, no, that you're not supposed to have any cue to the patient that the surgery will end soon until it's really, really, really done. Because that's when Daniel started taking himself out of that hypnotic state. And he. You know, he widened the aperture of his attention. His attention went from just his little focus of his dreamland that he creates during this hypnosudation. He. He puts himself on a beach in his mind, and he opened that aperture to involve what was happening in the operating room. And that's when he started feeling the pain. Not the wrenching of metal from bone, but the tiny stitches at the very end. And so he learned from that, to not release himself from that meditative hypnotic state until the very, very, very, very end. But what an incredible demonstration. I mean, if we can do. If our brain. And by the way, this is not one person, tens of thousands of people, they do this. This is not stupid, standard practice. But it's not all that unusual. In France, Belgium, many parts of Europe, they do this hypnosudation. It's becoming more and More popular because it turns out people heal way faster during their procedure. Their vitals are more stable, they don't need the kind of full general anesthetic that other patients do, and they recover much, much quicker. So it's becoming much more popular. But what a lesson for us in terms of how we can focus our attention on one thing and then zoom in and out as we need to, to block out the uncomfortable sensations that aren't serving us.
- [11:59]
A
Yeah, it's like the light. We. We say it's talking about light, like light and shadow side of any concept or thing. Right. So it's like focusing. Illusion can be really bad if all you're thinking about is like, oh, my boss must be staring at, is there a stain on my shirt? They must not like me. Whatever else, but I like to talk to people about. You can use that for good. Right. So if you are training yourself to say, no, my boss thinks I have good ideas, and you're trying to pick up on those signals, you can focus on the. Those positive things where you want to change behavior, looking at those attitudes and things kind of along the way. And if you do go into it saying, like, I'm a terrible public speaker or my boss hates me or whatever it is, you have those beliefs, they're potentially not serving you very well. And so, like, change them, focus on something else, and it can work really well.
- [12:50]
B
That's a great point. There's actually another study that I mentioned in the book, which is a pretty famous one, the scar study, where they put a scar on participants, and they said, we want to test people's reaction to facial disfigurement. We're going to do a study on public reaction. How does the public treat people with a scar? So they put the scar on people's faces, and then they say, you're going to go into a room, and we want you to observe very carefully. Pay attention to how you're treated. How do people talk to you when you have this very visible scar on your face? But before you go real quick, wait, wait, wait, wait. We want to do a quick touch up on your makeup. Let me, let me take. Let me just touch up the scar real quick. And in that process, they actually took the scar off without the participant knowing that the scar had been removed. And so this is in a chapter where I talk about how we invent problems that don't exist. Because what turned out to happen with these participants is when they knew they thought they had a huge scar that secretly had been removed, they started seeing problems and behaviors that didn't exist. They reported by and large that people were rude to me, people weren't treating me equally, people were staring at my scar, they were, you know, they were acting weird around me that, you know, I was being discriminated against. Turns out they didn't have a scar, but they were hyper fixating and they weren't lying. This is not saying that they're lying. They were not making it up because to them their reality based on their beliefs was picking up details in that keyhole of attention. They were focusing on the mannerisms of the person, the tiny intonations of voice. And in their mind they were very clearly seeing that they were being treated differently because of the scar that of course didn't exist.
- [14:32]
A
Yep. Yeah, definitely. And it's just one of those things that when we focus, you know, we're going to feel it. Right. And so sometimes you have a self fulfilling prophecy in there. Sometimes it's just kind of in, in your own illusion that you believe to be there and not illusion in a negative way. But like what your brain is kind of the lens it's putting over stuff. And I think this really leans into talking about how these, the belief I really loved. So I think, you know, from indistractable. I loved a couple things I say to people all the time from, from your book being that you don't know if you can't call something a distraction until you know what it's distracting you from. Right. And then also, you know, the opposite of distraction is traction. And I had told you then like, oh my gosh, I never thought about that. That's. I can't believe I didn't put that together. And you said, well, it took me five years. Right.
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B
You make it all worth it. Thank you.
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A
Yeah, I knew there would be some good little nuggets in this one too. One of those, you know, that beliefs, you know the difference between it being a tool and a truth. Can you talk a little bit about that?
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B
Yes. This, this is really the big takeaway of the book for, for me in writing it was that beliefs are tools, not truths. And boy, oh boy, especially you know, with everything that's happening in the news. So many of our problems today come from the fact that people don't realize this fact because they conflate beliefs with facts. Facts are not beliefs. There's a difference. A fact is an objective truth which is true no matter if you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Doesn't care if you believe in is an objective fact. On the other end of the spectrum is faith. Okay, faith is not fact. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. If I maybe the faith that God rewards people who are good, no way. Evidence can. You don't need evidence for that statement. That is purely faith. Then there's something in the middle that is called a belief. A belief is a strongly held conviction subject to evidence. So beliefs. I think we confuse beliefs and think belief is either faith or belief is a fact. I believe this, I believe that. But a belief is something very, very special. And that's why the book is really called Beyond Belief. It's about going beyond belief, Just our conventional definition of beliefs in order to go to do something that is beyond belief. And when we use those beliefs as convictions, strongly held convictions that are subject to new evidence, we can use them as tools. And that, to me, changed my life. Because what I was realizing is that I was carrying around all these assumptions, all these beliefs, all these lenses of the world that were coloring how I see things in a way that hurt me, that my relationships. You know, there's shocking evidence that we actually don't see people accurately. We don't see people. We see our beliefs about people. You know, I think about in the workplace, oh, Jake, what a jerk, man. That Jake guy, ugh, he's always, you know, he's always saying weird things and he's late and he's this and he's that. What we begin to do. We don't see Jake clearly. Jake's mom, you know, Jake's spouse, doesn't see Jake that way. Clearly, we don't see Jake accurately. We see our beliefs about Jake. And so that really can hurt us because we don't give people a clean slate. We can damage our relationships. We can stay stuck because we don't realize what we're doing with these beliefs. And so using them as tools, not only in interpersonal relationships. That was a big revelation for me. We can talk about the chapter where I talk about my relationship with my mom and how I had to really reassess my own beliefs there, but also, you know, of course, in the workplace in leadership Dynamics. And then big part of it, you know, my background is in product design. Wow. You know, beliefs play a huge, huge role when it comes to how we experience the products that we use every day. So when we. When we realize that beliefs are not statics, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I believe what I believe. That's. That's just the way I am. No, that is not fixed. We can choose these beliefs as tools, not truths.
- [18:46]
A
It's so helpful. Right, and you mentioned the piece with your mom, which I of course loved that segment. It was really useful and interesting and, but, and with that you had a series of like, statements, questions, framings that you kind of walked through and whether you tell it in the story about your mom and lean into it that way and people can think about it from a personal angle or if it's something that you use with people as they would think about, you know, know, something with their boss or a way they think about their work, you know, can you talk about that section a little bit and that series of, you know, questions or statements people can go to with themselves?
- [19:23]
B
Yeah, so I'll, I'll set up the, the story a little bit. So I was living in Singapore, where I am today, moving back to the States, but at the moment I'm in Singapore. And my, I grew up in central Florida and it was my mom's birthday and I had spent a lot of time and effort trying to make sure that she would get beautiful flowers on time for her birthday. And I stayed up late at night here in Singapore so I could call the florist in the United States and get it all figured out. Anyway, I order her some flowers and I call her for her birthday and I say, hey, mom, did you get the flowers? She said, yes, I got the flowers, honey, what'd you think? You know, you should really call them and tell them the flowers are not so great, they're a little dead. And my even telling the story, every time I tell the story, I kind of get goosebumps and I immediately time warp into 15 year old me, right? Like, and the thing that I blurted out was, well, then I won't get you flowers anymore, right? Then forget, what do I buy you flowers for? Not the right thing to say, but, but in the moment, you know, that that's how I felt. Because in my mind, my belief was my mom is too hard to please. That was my belief. And so that belief took over what I saw, right? I saw her not saying a statement of fact, which it was. The flowers were not so great. That is a statement of fact. I took it to mean I'm not great, that I'm failing, that I'm a bad son, right? So it dictated what I saw, what I heard. She said one thing, I heard something completely different. What I felt, I felt awful. I felt angry, I felt discounted. And then of course, what I did, because the words that came out of my Mouth were not the words I intended. And so my wife was right next to me on the call. And after the call, she said, well, that was interesting. You need to do the work. And the work is the work of Byron Katie, who's a counselor, who's been around for many, many years. I think she's in her 80s now. And she developed a methodology that has been adopted for, frankly, millennia, this idea of questioning your beliefs. Aristotle did something very similar. But there's been a long line of people who have developed various techniques that are similar. And the idea is to start with taking that belief, my mother is too hard to please, and running it through a series of questions, starting with, is it true? That's the first question. Is it true? True. So the answer is easy. Of course it's true. Didn't you see what you just. Didn't you hear what I just told you? I ordered my mom flowers. I went through all this effort. Yeah, done. It's true. Okay, next question. Second question is, is it really true? Is it really, really true? Is there even 1% chance that that's not true? Is there any possible interpretation that it's not true? And, you know, there are. I don't want to admit it, but I guess if I really had. Yeah, okay, maybe she's not too hard to please. Like, I don't know, may. Maybe the flowers weren't that great. I mean, maybe. Maybe she wasn't judging me. Maybe she was just saying about the flowers. Okay, fine, fine. I can deal with it. And so you basically work through these series of questions. The next one is, who would you be without that belief? And then at the end of this process, I don't want to give away everything, but essentially, you can go through these. These four questions. Essentially, what you're prompted to do is to assemble what I call. I kind of added onto Byron, Katie's techniques. I want people to develop a portfolio of perspectives. You can keep yours, and yours might be useful, right? That's fine. But you know, many things in life, most things in life, all the decisions we have to make in life, they don't usually sit in the realm of fact and faith. They sit in this belief category. Not an objective truth, not something that doesn't require evidence. It's in this messy middle of a belief, a conviction based on evidence. And so when we realize that, wait a minute, I can change that conviction based on evidence, based on what I'm able to now see clearly, and I can develop that portfolio of perspectives. It can help me. So what. What we do is we do what's called a turnaround. And that turnaround, this again comes from Byron, Katie, I have to give her full credit, is that we want to see the belief from different vantage points. Again, not trying to change our mind. That's not the idea. The idea is to have a deck of cards here that we can choose from. Like a magician says pick a card so that we can pick from that portfolio perspectives to see the one that best serves us. And so what we can do is to do these turnarounds from different perspectives. For example, a turnaround to the self. The belief was my mother is too hard to please. Turn around to the self says I am too hard to please. And that's wow, that hit home. That was hard for me to admit. Why did I have to be the perfect son that delivered perfect flowers? That's not in my control, right. Why do I have this standard that if my mom says anything judgmental, even if it is judgmental, why does that mean that I have to constantly please her or that I need her to, to say thanks in exactly the way I would like her to say thanks. Right. Maybe I'm the one that's hard to please. So anyway, there's a bit of a process here. I don't want to go too, too long on it. But suffice to say my relationship with my family, particularly my mom, has never been better. My relationship with my wife, we've been married now for 25 years. We're about to celebrate 25 years marriage again, never ever been better. My relationship with my 17 year old daughter. We are good, good buddies because now with all these interpersonal relationships, I do this technique, I can do this work and simply collect this portfolio of perspectives and then pluck not what the instinct was, not the reaction, but rather the wise perspective that serves me rather than hurts me.
- [25:21]
A
Absolutely. And you did such a great job explaining, I'm sure there are so many people resonating with this story and whether it is the my mom's impossible to please or my boss is a jerk, you know, we can see or like I'm bad at this thing or whatever it is, right. I'm a terrible public speaker. I'm not confident. Like all those things that feel I'm underqualified. You think you could just see how this can come into job interviews or when you're pitching, you know, for a new client or like any and everything that can be really coming into play or you're going to go ask for a promotion or something. Any of these beliefs and the Thing that one thing someone says you can just, you know, find the way that it can be a tool and the thing that is going to serve you better if you believe it versus like that it's objective truth and fact, like you said. And even if actually something is a fact, that's the other thing. You can choose sometimes to believe something else if it's going to help you make a step forward. Right?
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B
That, that's exactly that last point that you made. I think that that to me is what has changed in my life, that I can choose the belief even if it may not be true.
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A
Right?
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B
Like, like for example, I, I today I'm a public speaker and I, you know, that that's what I do all the time. But I used to have terrible stage fright and telling myself the belief that I'm not good on stage. Or more precisely, and this is something I don't have to tell myself that anymore because now I've had lots of evidence that I am good on stage, but I still have the belief that I have to fight it, that I have to choose a different perspective on of when I feel nervous. That's bad, right? That's just a belief. Who says that feeling nervous is bad? It's just a perspective. It's just a belief. But boy, does that affect what you do. Because when I think getting nervous is bad, I don't perform as well. Or for example, if I have a bad night's sleep. The sleep research is amazing. I talk a little bit about how susceptible sleep is to placebos. So for example, last night, I mean this is very pertinent, last night I did not sleep well. I got up at 1am, I didn't fall back asleep to probably something like 5am and then I woke up at 7:30. I did not have a good night's sleep.
- [27:32]
A
Too excited to talk to me? Is that why I was.
- [27:35]
B
I was actually really excited to talk to you. That was a big part of it. And so my old perspective was, oh man, I did not get enough sleep. That's bad. And that's what. Of course, look at the evidence, look at the studies, look at the facts. Look, you know, that is a truth, isn't it? Is it? Is it? I can choose to believe that I'm not affected by one night of poor sleep, right? It's gonna be fine. And you know what? Even if I mess up, it's a learning opportunity, right? It's just a belief. So even if it is true that yes, you need good sleep to do your best, that that could Be a truth. I can choose the perspective, I can change that belief so that it serves me. And to tell myself I'm not affected by one night of poor sleep or whatever happens, I'm going to learn from it. There's no such thing as mistakes. So you can adopt these beliefs that really do, I think, affect your day to day performance pretty dramatically.
- [28:31]
A
Absolutely. And like you said, just choosing what you're going to focus on and how that comes into play. So I know we specifically talked about the attention. Right. Where we talked about the hypno sedation. Right. And so we also have, you know, anticipation and agency. Can you share a little bit about those and how those come into play as we look at these aspects of belief and you know how you picked these three areas.
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B
Yeah. So attention, the power of attention, the first power of belief affects is about how beliefs change what you see. Like literally what you see in a situation. We know that people who are on a diet see food as larger, that people who are afraid of heights see distances as farther. That's all about the power of belief to change what we literally see through that keyhole of attention. Then there's the power of anticipation. So if the power of attention is in the present moment, the power of anticipation is about what is to come. And so this is the chapter of the book, the section of the book, because there's three chapters there that focuses on, I think in large part to application to business. And so one of my favorite chapters to write was about how products that are well marketed and well designed can truly affect our perception by changing what we anticipate to happen. And so there's almost one of the things that I was really pleasantly surprised to learn was, was how powerful the placebo effect is in marketing. More so that I have come to turn around my perception of marketing, that I used to think that marketing was advertising. Right. Like getting the word out there about a product. Not at all. That is not the goal of marketing. Like advertising is about getting the word out about a product. The goal of marketing is to shape the anticipation of the product experience, to set the stage for how the product is experienced. That's really what it's for. So there's a beautiful study done around wine where they give people two different glasses of wine. They say, this is a $5 bottle of wine. This is a $45 bottle of wine. We want you to try both. And no big surprise, the same wine. And people rate the $45 bottle of wine as much tastier. They say, oh, it has a Smooth taste, finish, and I taste raspberry, blah, blah, blah. You know, all the, all the wine mumbo jumbo that people say, but that's not a big surprise, right? I'm sure the listener heard that coming. What's surprising about that study is that when they did this experiment, they actually put people inside FMRI machines and they looked inside their brains to see what was happening as they were experiencing what they thought was the five dollar bottle of wine or the $45 bottle of wine. And when they said, oh, this bottle of the $45 bottle is much tastier, they weren't lying. Their brains literally had greater amounts of blood flow in their brain regions associated with pleasure when they thought the wine was $45, even though it was the exact same wine. So the surprise here is that they weren't lying. It wasn't just what they were saying. They weren't saying it because they expected the person to hear them say it. They, you know, when they, to the researcher, they literally experienced it differently. They actually believed they, that they tasted the wine differently. It wasn't, it wasn't just the words coming out of their mouth. And so that was truly fascinating. And so I, in that chapter of the book, I talk about this crazy water brand called Liquid Death that makes no sense. You know, Liquid Death, right, Of course, you've seen it. Okay, yeah, it's everywhere. And I mean, the company is, is a rocket ship. It's doing very, very well. And even by the way, you know, by the time you hear this episode, who knows what's going to happen to the company. So this is not, you know, a good degrade type analysis where, you know, oh, this is a company that succeed. It's one product and one product does not a company make. So I don't know what's going to happen to Liquid Death. But to see what has happened. This phenomenon where it's water and the company doesn't say it's anything but water, it's not an energy drink, it's not an alcoholic beverage, it's just water. There's no claims made that it's not water. In fact, when they found the spring for this water, they didn't even look for particularly tasty or clean water. They just wanted a place that could put water in cans, that's all. And so that's why they chose this bottler. But what's so amazing is that one, their sales are phenomenal. But two, the amount of brand loyalty that they engender, I mean, people will put the Liquid Death logo They'll tattoo it on their bodies because they've engendered so much brand loyalty. And people swear that the water is better for whatever. Even though you tell them it's just water, they perceive it differently. And wow, again, you know, another one of these hypnosidation type of things. If we can do that with water, if we can make people pay premium prices for water by branding it differently, what else can we change in terms of consumer perception of our products? And this isn't trickery. This isn't manipulation. This is what people are paying for. Right? The fact that one car costs way, way more than another. If a car costs 10 times more, is it 10 times better? Right. Is a Lamborghini 10 times better than a Hyundai or something? Hard to argue, right? But a lot of that value they're getting is the anticipation. Actually, Lamborghini is a really good example. I actually wrote in a Lamborghini when I was researching this book. And have you ever happened to be in a Lamborghini before?
- [33:58]
A
It feels like I would remember if I had, and I don't, so I'm gonna say no.
- [34:02]
B
Okay? So I did it once and for research purposes. But let me tell you, I definitely didn't buy a Lamborghini. We rented it, but I had the opportunity. It's shocking. You know what the number one most shocking thing about a Lamborghini is? Because we tried very different, you know, different sports cars. It's not that it goes super fast, because how fast can you drive on a highway anyway, right? You've got to follow the speed limit. It's the sound. It's that when you touch the accelerator, when you just tap it, you feel like you are in the mouth of a lion. Just this roar. And something about that roar makes you think you're going real fast, even when you're not, because of that anticipatory response. And so, so much of the. The product experience that we feel when we're using various products and services is about the preconceived notions, the hints, the beliefs that have been set well before we actually use the product experience. And that can help us as marketers, as business people, develop a product that is perceived as better. It can also really hurt us. Another case study I talk about that blew my mind was about how in the 1990s at the NUMMI plant in California, there were two cars that came off the factory line that were identical. There was the Toyota Corolla and there was the GM Geo. Same, like, literally the same car. The only thing that Was different, was pretty much just the hubcaps or, you know, the logos on the car, whatever you call it, the, let's say the brand. Other than that, same build, same make, same look. I mean, if you looked at the cars, they're identical. And yet one car, when they did Consumer Reports about, you know, how people liked their car, the Geo, the GM Geo was ranked 26th. The Corolla was ranked 10th. What, how could that be? Because it turns out that the consumers, when the Geo had a problem, when the clutch was sticky or when there was some kind of issue, GM cars can't trust them, right? They had that preconceived notion. Whereas Toyota, oh, Toyota's quality. Oh, Corolla is a great car, right? And so they had that, that belief in their head which made them anticipate something, made them feel something again. They weren't lying, they weren't making it up. They just became more attuned to it based on their anticipation. And then they, to finish the loop, they confirm that, that what they were feeling by telling others, by taking it to the shop. So that's same loop we see in all sorts of products where we believe something, we anticipate what's going to happen, we feel what we anticipate, then we confirm it to somebody else. That reinforces the belief.
- [36:42]
A
So if we take this and like dig in and we assume so like, GM comes to us and they say, oh no, we have this problem and we can tell because we got 26, then they were 10th, like, what should we do? How do we change the beliefs when people already think something else about us? What sort of advice would you give a brand in that case?
- [37:04]
B
I think it comes down to setting new expectations, right? New anticipatory responses and new beliefs. And so that's why when you see the success of a product like Liquid Death, we need those crazy turns in a product experience to really shake things up. You know, Apple, I think, is a wonderful example of a company that can do this again and again. If you think about it, Apple has never done anything new. Never. I can't think of. Maybe there's an example. I'm sure there's some Apple nerd right now who's like, oh no, there's something new. If you think about, okay, they weren't the first to create the ipod, right? There was tons of companies that had MP3 players before the ipod. They certainly weren't the first people to create a laptop. They weren't the first person to create a PC. They weren't the first people to create a tablet device. They weren't the first people to create what we call the Apple TV device. None of these products were first. What they did was they reset expectations, right? They reset the experience that, that by sending certain signals around the brand about, about the beliefs associated with that brand, they could reset what people expect. I mean, I remember, I'm, I'm old enough to remember When I had MP3s, they were cheap looking. You know, the things that Sony made were kind of like these plasticky nothings. And then Apple comes out and it's made out of aluminum and it's shiny and it actually wasn't even better. It didn't have more memory, it wasn't smaller, it wasn't better in almost any way. The same with the Microsoft Zune. You know, this was like a precursor to the iPhone. Again, like it didn't look premium, it looked very techy. And then Apple comes out and they do something super radical. Right? They make it look way, way different. Just as Liquid Death has this completely different marketing angle. By the way, the secret to why Liquid Death, their branding, people say, well, why would you call water liquid death? It's, it's not as crazy as people think. People think that Liquid Death is about, oh, it's heavy metal. Heavy metal water. No, turns out it's death to plastic. That if you look deeper into the messaging, it's about death to plastic. But, but really what it was they set up in their commercials and their branding, it was about going to a party where people are drinking beer or something alcoholic. You don't really feel like drinking beer. So you hold this can that looks aggressive, that looks crazy, that has this heavy metal logo on it with a bleeding skull on it and it becomes a conversation piece and people would rehearse. When I go to the party, I'm definitely going to get asked about this crazy water. What are you drinking there? Oh, it's water. Why Death to plastic. So it gave them away to blend edginess with virtue, signaling in a way. Right, Right. So there was a story behind it. It wasn't just, oh, heavy metal water. Right. That wasn't the idea. But those who don't know don't know that. But if you did know, it became a funny conversation starter piece. So that I think that's the solution is, is to, is to find a way to rewire those beliefs in a new way that leads to a different anticipatory response.
- [40:07]
A
And like in that case, it was just making me think a lot about identity. Right. And when brands can channel into. There's some, like, social proof in there and like you said, value signaling and whatnot. But with something like Liquid Death, like, so if you do want to be able to be totally different and, and I was thinking of the, the Prius, right? An initial Prius looked very different from other cars. And that's why it, because it was ugly is why it won, right? Because it stood out. And so there's something too about how you can tie into something that people aren't able to really like, showcase or there's those problems that exist and if you can tap into that in a way that's different, that can stand out and they can like, find their people is sort of what's happening with some of those, those brands. Does that feel like a vein for you in that as well?
- [40:57]
B
Absolutely. I think, I think great brands and great companies, internally and externally, have a mythology which is very much a belief. They have some kind of greater mission. We put customers first, right? We try harder, or we're saving the environment or we're building wealth for our clients or whatever that like literally every product or service needs to have a bigger reason for existing rather than money. Money, money, money, right? People, People, people don't want to work with companies that are trying to take advantage of them. It has to be service, right? The way you, you, you succeed in business is that you build things people want. And so. Well, actually, sorry, there's two ways to succeed in business. You can build things people want or you can make them want what you're building.
- [41:44]
A
Ah, yeah.
- [41:44]
B
And successful companies like Liquid Death start with the, the former and then the latter, right? So everybody needs water. We need some kind of liquid hydration to survive. We want that already. But they figured out how to use the power of beliefs to make people want what they're making. And so we start with the former and then we build the latter. So to have that mythology, to have that purpose for being for the company becomes that beacon for our customers and literally changes their experience of the product. But also it's an incredibly powerful tool internally that when we as a company have that, that mythology, have that reason we exist, that purpose that's bigger than ourselves, that becomes why we work here, right? That becomes why people don't leave the company, why they love it here, why we work together as a team, because we are doing something that's very important. But that, again, it's not a fact. It's not faith, it's a belief. It's a tool we choose to use.
- [42:42]
A
Definitely love that and before we wrap up, we know we could talk for ages and ages, but to be thoughtful to your time and whatnot, maybe we get the two minutes about agency, right? So we talked about the attitude, attention agency. Let's talk about that.
- [42:59]
B
Yeah. So agency is all about the power to do what we say. We're going to. Sorry. To do what we believe. And so in that, in that part of the book, I look at different aspects of how our beliefs shape what we actually get done. And so this is, I think, is actually the most pertinent part of the entire book to me. Because in a time of uncertainty, when we don't know whether our jobs will exist, whether our businesses will exist, what AI is going to do to the workforce. Geopolitical everything, the markets, right. In a time of uncertainty, agency is at risk. The ability to do things, the ability to carry out your goals is really at risk. And we know it sounds silly when you think about it, when you say it, but course, the number one reason people fail is because they quit. Whether that's a company, whether that's an individual. When you think about, hey, why don't I achieve my goals? Why didn't the company achieve its goals? The number one reason is not competition, it's not circumstances, it's that we quit, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Quitting sometimes is the right thing to do. Lord knows I've quit all kinds of things in my life. But quitting too soon is sad. That's something you will later regret. Quitting at the right time, good. Quitting when you could have persisted and succeeded, that's terrible. Quitting too soon on a relationship, on a business, on a venture, that's sad. And so what we want to do is to reshape our beliefs when it comes to our agency. And so this is where I go into how important it is to have an internal locus of control. Internal versus an external locus of control. Understanding the things that you can change versus things you can't. What's interesting about this, and a lot of people have heard about internal and external locus of control, I think what we don't oftentimes hear is that there's actually circumstances when we want an external locus of control, that it's not that internal locus is always the right thing to think through or to believe through that. In fact, when it comes to other people, we want to ascribe an external locus of control when it comes to other folks. As opposed to. Margaret was late for that meeting again. She's bad at that, or she's A bad person? No, she probably had some kind of circumstances, right? There was something outside of her control. Maybe it was traffic, maybe, who knows what she's juggling, maybe she had a sick parent, we don't know. So assigning kind of an external locus of control for others, but an internal locus of control for ourselves, focusing on the things that we can actually change. And the phenomenal thing to me was that even when society is stacked against you, even when you've got all kinds of circumstances that you're discriminated against, when you look at, you know, society, societally, socioeconomically, things that are keeping people down, it turns out even when you have all these external circumstances, the people who have an internal locus of control still do better. I think that was a very important takeaway to me that no matter what your situation is, not that we shouldn't fight injustice, not that we shouldn't work for a more equitable society, of course we should do those things. And also we should teach and instill in ourselves this understanding that we always want an internal looks of control. We always want to see what we can do to affect our own sense of agency. And especially when it comes to times of uncertainty like we're experiencing, like we've always experienced actually throughout humankind, refocusing on those beliefs, not expecting things to be perfect. I think a lot of people, I used to certainly live our life thinking, oh, you know, after this current craziness, things will be better right after my kids move out of the house, then I'll be an empty nester and I'll be happy. Or that, you know, after my retirement, I'll be happy after I get married, I'll be happy after whatever, after, after, after. Then when things calm down. That's crazy, right? You're wasting your actual life right now. And we all do this at least I certainly used to do that as opposed to realizing chaos is the point. I love what, what the philosopher Schrodinger once said that he tried to define life like what defines life? And there's all kinds of scientific definitions of life. Schrodinger said that the definition of life is that which fights entropy. The definition of life is that which fights entropy. That blew my mind. Because what that means, therefore, is that this chaos that we all experience, right? The chaos with our families, chaos at work, chaos in the world, that means we're alive. That's what it means. To be alive is to fight chaos, is to fight entropy. The only time we will give up the fight is when we die. And so that really Kind of sparked me to be more agentic, to find more ways that I can affect good in the world. Realizing that that's what it means to be alive is to fight that chaos.
- [47:37]
A
I love that. And I'm reminded of so many amazing things in the book. We've got swimming, rats, which is. I'm just going to leave it there for the world to know. You have to get beyond belief. That's one of a million amazing examples and points that Nir makes throughout the book. I absolutely love this, which I knew that I would. Is it because I believed I would love it, that I did? Is it just amazing? We'll never know.
- [48:02]
B
Either way, I'll take it.
- [48:05]
A
For everyone who is now so excited, of course, to get their copy of Beyond Belief and to follow you and learn more and all the things you know, what are their best paths to do so?
- [48:15]
B
Absolutely. So I blog@nearandfar.com you can always check out my work there. Nirandfar.com and the book is called Beyond Belief and it's available wherever books are sold.
- [48:26]
A
Amazing. And we will of course have links in the show notes to make it easy for everyone to get their copy of the book and to read. Near has amazing blogs and articles and things that near and far, highly, highly recommend to everyone. So thank you again, Nir, for joining me. So delighted to have you on the show again today.
- [48:44]
B
Anytime. Thank you so much for having me.
- [48:47]
A
Thank you again to Nir Eyal for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, it's impossible to choose because I love it all. But one thing that's really sticking with me is that beliefs aren't facts. They feel true because our brains are wired to treat them that way.
- [49:05]
B
But.
- [49:05]
A
But just like habits, beliefs can be built, shaped, updated, questioned, and strategically used to our advantage if we choose to. If we're not careful, we let old stories define what's possible for us. I'm not creative. I'm not a numbers person. I could never lead a team. But if you choose to believe something else and look at those three core ideas outlined in Beyond Belief, to focus on attention or where your mind goes, anticipation, what you expect expect is gonna happen next, and agency, what you believe you can do, really anything becomes possible. And when you start to examine and rebuild what you believe, even just a little, you unlock a different level of possibility. Maybe you aren't gonna go have surgery by hypnosis. I know I'm not signing up for that anytime soon. But if that's possible or what we heard about from placebos and nocebos and all these other amazing things. And there are so many more stories in the book what might be possible for you if you just believe. Come share a belief you're ready to change with me on social media. You're going to find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy, as well as links to my top related past episodes and books including Beyond Belief, Ways to get in Touch, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 56 and thank you again to near Eyal for joining me on the show today. It's always a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me next time for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.
- [50:58]
B
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.