← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
575. The Art and Science of Behavior Change
00:42:01
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- [00:01]
A
Hey there, Melina here. If you've been feeling like things are changing faster than you can keep up, you're not alone. I hear it all the time. Smart people doing good work but feeling unsure of where to focus next, it tends to show up in places like your pricing, sales, conversations, messaging, competing priorities, even the experience you're creating for your team and customers. Your brain wants clarity, but when it doesn't have it, everything feels heavier than it should. And that kind of uncertainty keeps businesses stuck and you don't want to be left behind. So if you've been craving a bit of a reset, a way to step back, get clear, and feel confident in what you should be doing next, I'd love to help. I work with two to three clients each month, from solopreneurs to global teams, to translate behavioral science into practical, usable strategies you can apply right away. So customers buy and employees buy in. If that sounds like what you need, head to the brainy business.com contact and book a discovery call to start the conversation. Again, that's the brainy business.com contact. I can't wait to hear from you and hopefully work together. And when you're ready, let's start the show. Welcome to episode 575 of the Brainy Business, Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Bree Williams. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:32]
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 friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:48]
A
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast. One of the biggest misconceptions about behavioral science is that once you know the principles, the hard part is over. But of course, as with so many things, that's not really how it works. Knowing about framing, scarcity, loss aversion, social proof, and all the rest is helpful, of course, but there's a reason we call those our foundations. The real magic is when you combine the science with some art, that experimentation and testing and really digging into these concepts in action so you know when to use what, how ideas fit together and how to make what you're trying to say or do easier for someone to actually understand and act on. That's where this stuff can really shine. And that's where so many people get stuck. People tend to want the silver bullet, the one perfect tactic or the simple answer that works every time. I of course understand how their wiring will make this the case so it isn't too much of a surprise. But deciding that this matters enough to put in the effort into creating this sort of behavioral experimentation Habit is key if you want to get continued impact from this in your business. Because real behavioral change is not about grabbing a random concept off the shelf and hoping it works. It's about clarity. You need to ask consistent questions. Some of my favorites that I use with my clients are who are you talking to? What do you want them to do? What are they doing instead? And and how do you make your message resonate in a way that feels useful, memorable, and easy to act on? As we dig into Applying Behavioral Economics today, I'm joined by Bri Williams. She's a behavioral strategist, speaker, consultant, and author whose work helps individuals and organizations apply behavioral science in practical, creative, and effective ways. In today's conversation, we talk about her book and the many models, frameworks, and visual tools she's developed over the years to help make behavioral science easier to access and use in the real world. As you listen, consider some of the areas where you would like to have the most impact in your business. Where would it be worth it to start applying behavioral science next? Having that in mind as you hear a bit about the models can help shape your thinking and get you that much closer to application 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.com 575. Now let's jump right in. Bri Williams welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [04:21]
B
Absolute pleasure to be with you, Melina. Yay.
- [04:24]
A
Well, so we just met in person. I'm sure I mentioned this a little bit in the intro, but so we just met in person in your neck of the woods in Australia when I was down there for an amazing event and had this opportunity to say like, we have known of each other for a very long time and I can't believe we hadn't ever actually talked, even in like email or like, you know, LinkedIn chats or whatever really before this event. So I'm so glad that we now know each other in real life and otherwise.
- [05:01]
B
It's been a long time coming and yes, we have lots to talk about because I think our careers have possibly shared a lot in what we've discovered and what we're putting out into the world. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to what we have to kick around here.
- [05:18]
A
Yes. And you have been on my list of the like I should reach out to her about being on the show forever. I most actively remember. So you spoke at Nudge stock. Was it in 2021 or 2020? Maybe 20.
- [05:32]
B
Okay. Well, I think it could have been 2020. It certainly was the first virtual one that they did due to Covid then it was 2020.
- [05:40]
A
Oh, so you were supposed to be. But so how, how is that then? So if you were supposed to be at the one that would have been like the small thing and then it's like, just kidding, like 300,000 people are going to watch this. Like, did that end up being like a win or.
- [05:57]
B
Sadly, I don't think I was going to be on the main stage. It was more a question of Ogilvy having to go, oh, how are we going to recalibrate in this virtual world? We now have to fill out a program, speak to whoever is around in our circle. So. And what I loved about that I had the opportunity because of time zones to pre record mine. So that actually played into my favor because it meant that I had a 10 minute slot, but I could pre record and I could edit. I mean, I look back at the presentation now and think how terrible it was in terms of the clumsy edits. But that just is a marker of. I think progress has been made in the last six years. But yeah, I think I really, I had some fun with it and I think that really resonated with people because I was wearing silly hats and you know, I started the presentation with a bit of a funny, funny device. I won't tell people what it is because hopefully will pique their interest. But it really, yeah, people seem to really enjoy it and I love the combination when I'm an audience member, let alone as a presenter, of combining fun or entertainment with the education. I don't think, particularly with a topic like behavioral science, we have to be dry. We don't have to be up and down and serious. Although the science is serious. How it is used in our lives doesn't have to necessarily be.
- [07:28]
A
Yeah, I mean humans like fun, right? And games and things. I feel like I will always appreciate, appreciate that. It's like so Cass Sunstein adding, instead of like just east and saying like, we need feast, like let's have the fun element come into these things, right? Like people like the, the whimsy and silliness and it helps us to remember things and to actually be engaged. And there's a lot of boring stuff in the world. Like who. Why should we have to be part of it?
- [08:03]
B
Well, my background, actually, I studied accountancy. Right.
- [08:07]
A
So I. I have to talk about boring. No, I'm just kidding. I know we have plenty of accountants that listen to the show.
- [08:13]
B
That was the segue, because it's. I studied psychology and accountancy as a double degree, but certainly accountancy had this reputation of being completely dull. And I go to a lot of conferences as an accountant and later as a presenter of behavioral science to accountants. And my frustration is, if you think your topic's boring, guess what? People will find your topic boring. And accounting doesn't have to be boring. No topic has to be boring. And you're absolutely right. First and foremost, people want to be entertained. And particularly these days when it's harder to cut through with our communications, whether we're doing a TikTok or whether we're crafting a marketing campaign or whether we're trying to pitch for new clients or talk to our internal customers, people fundamentally want to be entertained and we need to keep that in mind. And I actually recently looked up the definition of entertainment because whilst I thought it was about sort of the superficial, keeping people light and entertained in that sense, to entertain, I've forgotten the particulars of the definition, but it was keeping people in the right frame of mind. And I think if we take that as our lesson, it's like to entertain someone is to frame it in a way that emotionally resonates and gets them in the right frame of mind to hear our message.
- [09:45]
A
Oh, yeah, okay. I will be looking that up after this and I'm sure everyone listening is going to go check that out as well to find that official definition. Maybe I'll. I'll have it in the outro. We'll see. But with. With that, it's. It's not what you. I think for anyone that doesn't work in that space, it's not the definition we would come up with, but it's such an important one. So many of these go back and look up the different, like, what it actually meant, like the definition of culture. And when you get into, like cultivating and like that has definitely been lost quite a bit when in internal employee culture, it's like a word that just got attached to it at some point and isn't thinking about that. Nurturing, cultivating in so many places. I think people are trying to bring it back into their spaces, thank goodness. But the idea kind of lost its way For a long time.
- [10:45]
B
I love that. Yeah. Going back to the. The derivation of the. The word I love. I'd not heard of culture being from cultivate. And it makes so much sense, doesn't it, when we. When we think about it. And sometimes it, you know, when you're trying to brainstorm or come up with a new idea, or if you're feeling a bit flat about a particular topic, as funny as it sounds, going back to those basics, as you've just illustrated, can open up a whole array of new meaning and, you know, new levers that you can. You can pull. So I think, yeah, that's a nice little tip.
- [11:24]
A
Absolutely. And I think just in the framing piece, I know you love framing, too. It's one of my very favorite aspects and concepts from the field. And I. I tell people, as you're looking to find, you know, when you're thinking about using priming or you're thinking about how you want to show up and thinking about that experience. Experience that right. Frame of mind. Say you're doing a pitch, whether it's internally or to customer facing stuff, whatever that is. Like, you think about the word that it might be, and then you go do an image search and see what comes up when you type that thing in. And it might not be what you think it's going to be, right? And so I like to use the example of trust, right? So if you search for trust, like, what does trust actually look like? It can be so many different things, right? And so in one case, it's, you know, like a person throwing a kid in the air, and then it's like trust falls, or it's like jumping out of the plane, or it was like ants walking across, like, stretching on something. Like, so many different things. It's like, yeah, trust can be all those things. But if I don't know what you're thinking about, like, and you don't know how I'm thinking about it, like, we have totally different perspectives on what that might mean. And, like, if you think that trust is like a fabric, right? So for one person, it might be fuzzy fleece, and the next, because it's, like, warm, and I feel, like, safe in that. And the next person says it's like lace, because you can, like, you pull one thread and it comes apart. And someone says it's mesh because you can see through it. And someone else says, it's like a wetsuit, because I can go to the depths and I have full trust, right? But if you talk in, like, lace terms to a wetsuit person, it's like not going to match. Right. So even defining the words that we think we know. But if I'm going to use that metaphor in some of my internal or external communication, say, you know, for us, you know, it's like it's this building this trust and it's like a wetsuit. We can go to the depths together. Like even if you're naturally a mesh or a fleece person, you get it and you can be on board with my metaphor. But I had to do the work to understand what I want you to think and then put that into the way I'm going to talk about it and have the right visuals and the right lead ups and all of that. Like the magic being in the edit of making that happen. So we're all on that same page.
- [13:42]
B
Yeah. And I think what you're talking about is such an important technique because often you would have talked a lot about the difference between say and do so the intention gap and that one of the frustrations when we're trying to understand other people so whether it's our internal or external customers is we have a bias towards listing. So we want to ask them questions and listen to their answers. And certainly my background in product management, we did this all the time. We did commissioned focus groups and different forms of market research in that way and we listened to our customers and what they told us didn't prove to be true. But what you've talked about there, whether it's called a card sort or some other similar technique, but having images that you get people to talk about and you extract the, the deeper metaphor or meaning, that's where you can actually have very interesting and meaningful discussions with customers or your market. So that you're getting to the, the core psychology of what they're trying to articulate as opposed to just a question and answer or a focus group where it's tell me, what would make you buy this more? What products and what features are you looking for? Why did you buy that in the past? Where you're getting a constructed memory or you're getting a justification or a rationalization when you're doing things like using visuals to extract meaning, that is very, very rich as a form of understanding other people.
- [15:26]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And just knowing that all the why underneath, like and like how we're thinking, all of those aspects are so important when it comes to applying and thinking about these things. And so knowing, like knowing the concepts is an important piece of the puzzle. Right. But then I've always really loved the like in the greater behavioral sciences, whether specifically behavioral economics or whatever else, where it's this mix of art and science. Right. In the application, it's not just enough to know what scarcity is. Right. Or to know that loss aversion exists, but like those things can work together and how might we frame it? And what if we try this and should we throw in an anchor and like, you start to understand and like, but what are we trying to actually do and who are we talking to? Like the context make such an impact there? And you know, in general, people tend to kind of look for the like. But can you just tell me what to do? And where's the. If I, I pull this lever or I push that button that it will give me the same result every time. And you know, as with most things in life, you know, behavioral science messaging just doesn't really work that way either. Yeah.
- [16:42]
B
I find that you've hit upon something really interesting that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is, and particularly I find it in small business and I can understand it. People want immediate answers and they want simple answers. And when you as a someone in behavioral science says, oh well, it depends, there's a bit of frustration about that. And so getting to that deeper why. And in my work it's always, and yours is probably similar, but no, what's the behavioral objective? What, what behavior are we seeking to drive? Let's start from there because oftentimes we don't. It's like, well, that's an exciting laundry list of behavioral principles. So how can I plot, how can I use, for instance, scarcity? Well, you're already, you see it all around the place in retail, you know, it's the, the carpet store is closing down, you know, or that's a limited offer. So we see all of these principles floating around all the time in market, but then it's about how do you integrate them or coalesce them around what you're trying to achieve. And I know it sounds simple, but oftentimes we skip that very question, which is what do we actually want them to do?
- [17:58]
A
Right. Yes. And you know, it is a funny. Like you said, we do a lot of similar work with clients and things. And it's when I say, you know, but like, so who are you talking to? What do you want them to do? Let's start there, right? And it seems like surface level, you're like, oh, we know that this is silly. And then it's like, so write it down. Like, no, I don't want to. I want to write it down. Yeah but then we can dig in and there's a lot of value that comes when you do identify those and get specific. And so what I think is so interesting is so often whether it's organizations or consultants, whatever aspect you try to come up with like your framework the one thing like you know, comb or east and that it's like we can always use this thing and like I have my. It's not about the cookie framework what have you like stuff that you can do that you can look to like the one thing that gets to be something that you can use more often than not. And we don't try to have so many things. You have a main one and then went like gangbusters on it's like it breeze, you know,705 frameworks. No, not quite but share a little bit about. I. I was impressed beyond words and fascinated and all the like naming all of them and making I. I think most of us come come up with a few because like my goodness, like how long it would take to make, you know, 50 as. As you have. And so, you know, first giant kudos. And then can you share a little bit about why you felt the need to do more than, you know, one or three or five or whatever.
- [19:53]
B
I'm going to take you way behind the scenes of the book because how it started I. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a book in the market called oh God, it's Decision Strategy now I've now forgotten the title but I picked it up in an airport and it was let's say 50. If there were that many models using, for instance the SWOT analysis or Porter's five forces. So it was, it was from, you know, all of these models across all of these different authors and it was a repository of those and it became invested and I was looking at it going this seems to me pretty perfunctory. I've seen a lot of these models and I'm surprised that just having them in one book has made it an international bestseller. But I was looking at it and thinking there's something obviously that resonates with people about this. What would it look like if I did the same for behavioral science? Because I had probably, I don't know, half a dozen models that I had developed through my public speaking, through my client work and what have you mainly as a way to understand myself, behavioural science and how I can articulate it to others. And so I set myself a task of writing the book and I didn't necessarily have 50 in mind, but the closer I got to 50, it just became a number, it became an anchor point. It's like, oh, well that would be a nice, a nice marketing angle to have 50 models. So I would say if you pressed me a lot, some of them aren't models, they're more philosophies. So one of them is, for instance, carry your customers bags, or the Porter principle I call it. But for instance, with your clients, carry their bags for them. That's a way of saying the harder you make it for them to work with you, the less likely they're going to be to work with you. So how can you make their light their load lighter by carrying their bags? Now what do I mean by that? Well, it's making sure that you're providing them the information they need rather than them having to ask you. So when you know it's a, whether it's a procurement process and you have to provide supplier information or whether it's sound bites that they can use with their stakeholders to make sure that people are buying into the program that you're trying to sell or whether it's pre recording a little welcome video so that their stakeholders again can see what you're all about. It's trying to anticipate their needs and carry their bag. So not all of the models are I guess, quadrants or triangles or all those sorts of sophisticated, more sophisticated models. Some of them are principles. But that's really where I was going. I don't use all of them in my work. They, a lot of them have come through my writing and so. But just because I don't use them doesn't mean that they won't have use. For someone coming at behavioral science from a different perspective, I mean, I've been doing this since 2011, so I've more experienced than someone necessarily that might pick up the book and go, I, you know, I just want an understanding of how I might think about this problem. And, and you know, there's a thought starter in there for them. And the other thing I wanted to do in the book is make sure that it's sort of just the starter. So they're only two, each model only has, you know, two or three or four pages. It's very, very short and sweet because I just want people to dive in and get a feel for it and then be able to, to use it in their work.
- [23:43]
A
Right. And where a full like tell the background and all the definitions of the whole world for each of 50 would be quite a Different book. Indeed. And so that, like, scannable aspect of it, like, I can see it, I get how I might use it. I understand a quick application of what that might be and a couple of things to keep in mind. And then I can check out the next one. And you can. It's got a good, like, flip ability to it. And even like, hey, I'm. I'm actually more interested in customer stuff versus internal stuff. So I mean, the choice architecture aspect of that, of how to sort these, you know, 50 items as you put them together into groupings. So it's not something like, you know, if they had been in alphabetical order, that would not be useful to anybody when they don't know, you know, the names and how they come into play. So how did you go about grouping, you know, and sorting those into categories? Did you start with, you know, these are five areas that I think most people tend to need and apply, or as you were making them, it's like, these are kind of fitting together or how'd that come about?
- [24:54]
B
Yeah, that was part of the trauma of writing the book, Melina, because it was like, how am I going to now group, group these? It became. It was a very organic process, let's say. I didn't necessarily sit down and go, okay, I'm going to have 10 in this category and two in another. It was very much about, what do I have, what areas have I covered and what do I think would have application? So, yes, there's internal communications, because most people will be interested in that. There's external customer focus. There's influencing behavior more generally because, as you know, with the work that we do, the tricky thing is that everything is about behavior change. So all roads lead back to how are you going to influence behavior to be different than how it is at the moment. And that can be through communications or it could be environmental design. But everything leads back to the same point, which is why then trying to subcategorize makes did become quite a tricky process. But there's a lot of cross references between the categories because it's like, well, you might be thinking about your internal customer for this scenario, but guess what? You could apply it in a different context. But I'm making it sound trickier than it. Than it is really. It's. It's all my thinking around influence and a way that I hope a reader can access that.
- [26:31]
A
One of the things I really appreciate too is that the table of contents shows a little mock up of each one, which is really nice when we think about how we remember Things, right. And to say like, oh, it was like shaped like a Z, but I don't remember. I mean, that one, you know, it's the Zorro technique. So I mean, maybe you would remember that one. But like you're able to go flip it just in the table of contents and say, oh, yeah, it's that one. Right. And I don't necessarily remember what you named it, but I, I know what to. I'm looking for the, you know, one that was, I guess, this like frog with the lily pad as another one or whatever. Right. So I'm. I'm flipping through and kind of looking at it on my screen here as we go to see some of those. But that I think is really, really helpful. And so having that visual reference in all together is really nice.
- [27:25]
B
You've struck up on something that I haven't actually, I haven't mentioned in terms of the design of the book and this. I worked as a publisher before. I have my own consultancy, so I was a publisher of human resource books. And we had a very strong accounting market and we had a less strong human resources resources market. So I came in as the HR publisher and at the time everything was designed around writing in the same way, whether someone was an accountant or a human resources practitioner. And what I tried to do, whether it will assist successful or not, was to say not everyone absorbs or interacts with information in the same way. And so whilst the accounting resources were very linear and very heavily and very text dense text, I thought, well, is the common human resources practitioner going to find that sort of style of book as interesting? And my hypothesis at the time was no. And I know left brain and right brain is very clumsy, but just as a metaphor, what I ended up doing in some of our resources for our human resources market was introduce much more visual design. And so using metaphor within the texts. I had this almost a little poster that people would pull out of the book and it would. It was a bridge with a river under it and it sort of described the human resources book in terms of this metaphor. So that visual learners or people that tended to process information in that way were going to be more likely to access this particular book over a different one that a competitor might have, which looked like an accounting book. And so I've always thought about how can I introduce new ways of people accessing content? And so very much the driver of this book was to use visual elements. So the models are, yes, they're there, but they're visual for a reason, which is to say many of Us absorb information in a different way. And there's nothing in the market that sort of strikes them as visual. In fact, the first working title of the book was Sketchy Behavior, because I was going to. And I might still do a series called Sketchy Behavior, but it was very much about if we had to sketch behavior, what would it look like? And so that's why it was. It's so visual.
- [30:17]
A
Amazing. Well, as we are, believe it or not, we're. We're almost ready to close out the conversation as, like, you know, we know we could talk forever. But if you were going to pick, you know, maybe just like, high level, you already talked about that Porter principle. But do you have a couple others that you might want to share that you either you use a lot or that you think are useful for people to give them a little sampler?
- [30:42]
B
Well, you've mentioned the Zorro technique. That's one that really resonates very strongly with people. So the Zorro technique is again, when you are in discussion with customers, whether it's internal or external customers, or you can do this work yourself. But it's four questions in a particular way, and you follow the shape of the letter Z or Z. Starting with question one is very much about what's good, you know, what's good about now, so why shouldn't we change what we're doing? Question number two is, well, what's not so great about now? So why should we change? And by asking those two questions, you're getting both. Why people might resist change because they're feeling comfortable about it. But also you start to build an appetite in them to see there might be cracks. Not everything is great about how we do what we're doing. And then questions three and four are very much about imagining the new world so what the change might look like. So question three is really about, well, if we did change what we're doing, what concerns might you have? Because that will then allow you as a leader to mitigate those concerns. And we leave them on a high point, which is the lowest point of the Z. But it's number four, which is, if we were to change what we're doing, what's the benefit of that? And so that really gets people to start thinking about the new world and how great it would be. And so the Zorro technique, I use a lot in workshops to set an appetite for what we're going to learn about behavioral science. But, you know, insert topic, you can use the same sort of model. So that's a really popular one that I'D recommend.
- [32:31]
A
Yeah, I love that. And I also really like. And you. You touched on this. But that it so often people kind of jump into the like, well what's broken and let's go to fix it. And we're just like attacking with getting. Trying to get people to change but in understanding that we do have that affinity for the status quo and there is a bit of like celebrate what's going well and like lowering the defensiveness and maybe some version of like a psychological reactance, but not quite that comes with like if you just start with what's bad that people might not be as open. Whereas if it's like let's get all the good stuff out first and we're like yeah, yes, we have good things and. And now let's add in some of this other side feels like people will be more open to participate. When it started with that like easing into it a bit.
- [33:19]
B
Yeah, very much. And that reminds me of one of the other models that I talk about which is oftentimes we think about people moving towards something so we want them to move towards a new process or a new procedure when in actual fact most of the work that we have to do is. Is getting them to move away from what they're doing. So it's. And even in our personal lives, if we want to try a new behavior, so an exercise behavior or what have you, we have to first try and move away from our current behaviors of for instance, sitting on the couch. And so it's always remembering that we need to play both sides of that equation. So it's not only talking about, for instance, the benefits of a great new product, it's sometimes talking about the downsides of the old way of doing things and making sure that, you know, for instance, rather than just talking about how great our new software is talking about, well, the old software might be bug, might have bugs or isn't keeping up with how your competitors are engaging the market or what have you. So yeah. Making sure that it's not always move towards something, it's moving away from something that we have to as behavior change experts in our work make sure that we're concentrating on.
- [34:38]
A
Yeah, well. And knowing it's so easy to forget that other side. Right. And that to do anything, we have to typically stop doing at least one other thing and say no to 75 more things to do just the one thing you're talking about. And we. You. You don't want to overcomplicate it with too much. But if you can, you know, help to Understand that context. That's again the art piece. Right. And so in that way, when you can define like for one person it might be the sitting on the couch. Right. Like sitting on the couch to do the healthy exercise thing that I want to do. And so the way that you would communicate to and influence me and think about my behavior is different from the person who is staying late at work and not getting out to taking the break to exercise even when they had the time set aside. Or someone who is ordering out instead of learning how to cook the healthy meals. Like they're the all the different people with the different challenge of the thing they need to undo to start doing what the new thing is that may or may not line up with what you're actually trying to sell. So then identifying, well, we're not thinking about prepping healthy meals, so we don't want to talk to that person. But like busy professionals that don't have time and like stuck on the couch watching TikTok. Those are two people that we can resonate with and we would have different campaigns for both. And this is what they might look like, right?
- [36:06]
B
Yes. Perfect. I think. Yeah, you've articulated it beautifully. In my work we touched on one of the questions being what do you want them to do? So being your behavioral objective, my follow up question to that is what are they doing instead?
- [36:21]
A
Yeah.
- [36:21]
B
Which really does unearth. Then what's the delta? What do we have to move them from to. And you mentioned the particular question of who are we trying to influence? The very interesting thing about that, and you would have discovered this in your work when you start the conversation about who are we trying to influence? It might be customers. It's always more you probe about what do you want them to do and what are they doing instead. That's when you say, well actually it's not all customers. It's customers who are busy staying late at work and they don't have time to do a particular thing. And so it really these questions, I know for people listening the questions will sound simple and the answers to a degree might even be simple. But they're so important in order to get clarity around what then are we going to do in order to shift that behavior? And that's where you get those economies and efficiencies in for instance, your campaign. Because now guess what, you're not targeting everyone, you're targeting a very select group. And that's where you're really going to get the best bang for your buck in your business with behavior and behavioral science.
- [37:43]
A
Yeah. In that way, I was imagining someone in the. Like we are talking to everyone and we want them to do everything and nothing that they are doing now. Like that's, that's the target. And we want to spend no money, but we want to be everywhere and we want to be a household name.
- [38:01]
B
And it can just be simple. We just want the silver bullet. Yeah, absolutely. But I think both of us share the perspective and the theme has come through our conversation where it doesn't have to be complicated. In actual fact, a lot of the work we do is to make it less complicated. It doesn't mean. But it's about asking, I suppose, the right questions and then being clear on what we're not doing. So it's almost that negative space. If you think about an artistic work, we can get very excited about putting the paint on the canvas, but it's the negative space, which means that your message really pops. And it's what we don't. For instance, even in an email, it's not what, not only what we write, it's what we don't write because we don't want to bulk it out or in a presentation. And this is one of the things that I find most difficult. We can. My presentations could be hours long, but the work for me is about curating it so that I'm not overwhelming people. And I think in business that's the general message. It's about clarity of what you're trying to drive and doing. Less rather than more.
- [39:15]
A
Yeah, yep, absolutely. Well, in the spirit of less rather than more, we shall leave it here. But you and I could talk for ages and we'll have more side conversations later. But for everyone who is so excited now to follow you and learn more and get the book and all the things, we'll of course have links in the show notes, but what are the best paths for them to do?
- [39:38]
B
So just. I shouldn't say just. Brewilliams.com is my website, so please I invite you to pop on there. I do a free three times a week newsletter and through that you can also access free office hours with me. So worth doing that. And I am prolific, relatively prolific on LinkedIn. But Brawilliams.com is where you will find all things. Bri.
- [40:07]
A
Amazing. Well, like I said, we'll have links in the show notes so people can check that out and connect and follow you and all the things. So thank you again, Bri, for joining me on the show. It was delightful to chat with you today.
- [40:19]
B
Overdue and an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Melina.
- [40:22]
A
Thank you again to Bree Williams for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation for me, as you might have been able to tell Bri and I are such kindred spirits, we've really ponded over helping people in all sorts of businesses to truly apply behavioral economics in a consistent way, to get past the biases like the intention action gap or even just our bias for the status quo and start using this stuff regularly and enjoying all the benefits it can provide. So many people get caught up in the collection of concepts. It's a sort of bike shedding, productive procrastination to want to keep learning more and more and more and more and more before really devoting the time to using this stuff. But that's just your subconscious brain trying to keep you safe in the familiar. At some point you need to break free from that mental block and start applying it. And that's why here at the Brainy Business, I work with clients on something we call Find you'd five. I work with you and your team to understand your goals, some key upcoming projects, background, etc. And then identify the five key concepts that are most useful for you to start applying and mastering in your work right now. Whether you work at a global corporation or a solopreneur or anything in between, I teach you your best concepts and some ways to start applying them and can even walk beside you as you start applying via project or test or all sorts of things. It's one of my favorite things to do with clients. And if that kind of jump start sounds like something you could use to start being more brainy in your business, I'd love to work with you. Visit the brainy business.com contact to set up a time to chat and we can see if we're a fit for each other. I can't wait to hear from you. So what about you? What stood out for you most in this conversation? Whatever it is, come share it with me on social media. You're going to find me in the show as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and I am 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, ways to get in touch and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthebrainybusiness.com 575 and thank you again to Bri Williams for joining me on the show today. It was 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.
- [42:57]
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 the Brainy Business.com.
- [43:17]
A
Hey, before you go, quick reminder that we do have a couple spots open right now for that brainy reset. If you've been feeling stuck or just want to move forward with more clarity and confidence, I'd love to talk. Head to the brainy business.com contact to get started, even if you're on the fence. No pressure. It's just a conversation with me. Thanks so much for listening. I appreciate you. What do you think? Another episode.