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n You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast, presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I'm talking to my new friend, Paul Lar. Paul is a media pioneer, author and business strategist with over four decades of experience in broadcasting and brand communication. As a founder of l' Arche Communications Incorporated, he built five radio stations from the ground up and was inducted into the Ontario association of Broadcasters hall of Fame. His latest book, the Dividend why Customers Buy and why they they don't achieved a perfect 10 out of 10 Book Life Prize score and translates cutting edge neuroscience into practical business strategy. Paul, man, thanks so much for taking the time to join me on the show.
C
Well, it's an absolute pleasure, Travis. I'm glad that we're able to catch up.
B
So the Dividend brain. Let's start there.
C
It's the divided brain.
B
Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's. That's 100% my fault.
C
No worries. Divided brain.
B
I kept saying that incorrectly. Apologize to all my dear listeners out there. The divided brain. Why customers buy, why they don't tell me, Tell me why this book. Why now?
C
Well, the defined brain is a metaphor that I use based on several years of experience in media, owning radio stations, owning a couple of advertising agencies. And it was the pitch that we gave to our clients before we actually started showing them creative and some of the ideas that we were working on. And it was really essentially to give them a Reader's digest version of how our brains do work when it comes to just basic human behavior. And once people were able to Understand that, grasp onto it relatively quickly, then the creative process or where we went from there made things a lot easier. And the divided brain metaphor really is. I called it the new brain and the old brain, where the old brain is the old part of our brain that we've had shared with ancestors going back hundreds of millions of years to our reptilian days. The new brain really is our newer software, which is the neocortex. And I position them in the book as two interconnected gears. It's the old brain that really runs the show in our lives. This is, you know, evolutionary software that is very well tuned. It's frankly, you know, a masterpiece that has gotten us this far. But in the world we live in today, it can lead us astray because we're making decisions that are based pretty much on things like reproduction, survival, and that's not what we're facing every day.
D
Yeah, yeah.
B
The challenges of today do not equate to what our brain is evolved to overcome, essentially.
C
Yeah. When you think about it, however you want to call it, sapiens, hominids, we've been around for arguably 100,000 years, depending on who you follow, but 99.97% of that time we were for the most part, hunter gatherers. And so that's, that's how our brain is, is, is tuned. It's, it's tuned very much to things like wanting to make sure that obviously we're in no danger, that we're not being confronted by stuff that we're not familiar with, and that we are always looking for ways to increase our standing in our tribes through things like status. All of these things really brought us to where we are today, but can often lead you astray today, particularly with AI and how these algorithms are getting so sophisticated because they can talk directly to the old brain and bypass what I call our new brain, which is really the only place where you can push the clutch in and actually do a little bit of critical thinking.
B
Yeah. Essentially we're governed by these old school methods that are no longer super applicable today. How do you find that translates into decision making? Is there a point to trying to push back against that? Or we sort of look at how it works and then try to set up systems that allow us to be able to use that operating system more effectively, if that makes sense.
C
The latter of what you said is absolutely correct. We can't fight what's built into us, no matter how we try. And you never will perfect it. But if you can understand and accept that that is the way we're wired that our old brain is looking for things like simplicity. It's looking for immediate gratification. It's resistant to change. It's selfish, but, you know, for all the right reasons, survival reasons, it needs to resolve quickly because again, it's very, very efficient. As long as we start understanding those things and also understanding that our new brain being new software and it still requires a lot of effort, it's a lot slower than our old brain. You know, our old brain is running on, you know, it's running our whole bodies, keeping us alive. Virtually every system that, you know, keeps us alive is being run in the background in our subconscious. The, the old brain is running several parallel processes. But when we want to engage our new brain, we really have to. We sit down and focus and, and, and I talk a lot in the book about what's called metacognition, which is thinking about thinking where you have to. Sometimes when you're looking at a problem or you're being exposed to whatever it may be, it could be a story, a news story. It could be an employee with a conflict or a client that's looking for something. You have to really make sure that if you're going to think about it, that you are going to take the time to push that mental clutch and say, okay, I'm going to really make sure that I'm keeping my old brain at bay here. I know it's going to want to kick in all of the normal biases that come in that kept us alive, like I said, for many years and really use a bit of critical thinking here to look, look this problem through and see where we can go from here.
B
This would be. So just to give a practical example here, this is something that I've given some thought to recently. So fear as a motivator versus reward as a motivator, I think that's fairly clear biologically that fear is a much greater motivator than the potential reward of moving like it's a better be motivated by the fear of losing something than it is the desire to gain something not necessarily better, but that's just how our brain funct functions.
C
So, Travis, there's a good reason for that too. I mean, you're absolutely right and most people don't understand. Well, why would fear motivate us so much? Well, it was the people. Our ancestors who were fearful are the ones that stuck around and were able to pass their genes on to the next generation. The ones that were fearless unfortunately didn't stick around. And again, if people look at it through that prism of understanding that, yeah, it's perfectly natural for us to be very susceptible to fear. And then understanding that you can use that fear sometimes, you know, in nefarious ways for leverage on it could be, you know, anything that comes around you. If you can just say that, okay, we are fearful and we understand that. That's where again, this metacognition of saying, okay, I'm going to put things into perspective, this is not life threatening, or this is not going to ruin my career or whatnot, I can put things into perspective and get a better handle on this.
B
Yeah. And then sort of what we mentioned before, which is to. Instead of bucking up against that desire to avoid losing something or something like that, what are the ways that we can use this to push us to achieving the things that we want to achieve or to live the life that we want to live. And so one of the things that I've found to be helpful for me, and you tell me if I'm thinking about this the incorrect way or correct way, this is the reason why I'm bringing it up.
C
You've been batting a thousand so far.
B
Okay, well, we'll see. We're still early. Yeah. Is that with. With fear in particular, because it is such a good motivator? I find that the majority of people are governed by the fear of rejection, the fear of loss, the fear of embarrassment, the fear of this, like this immediate loss of status in the social structure or something like that, versus when I find that people who are, are, are more successful tend to still be fearful, but they fear regret more than they fear any sort of failure, any sort of risk of loss, any sort of embarrassment or something like that they like. So when, whenever I'm feeling this, I try to position myself as like the rocking chair test from.
C
I don't know if you.
B
I think this is a Tony Robbins thing, but if not, sorry for giving credit to Tony Robbins, whoever came up with this. But the rocking chair test is basically, you know, you sitting on your, your porch on your rocking chair. You're 95 years old, you're looking back on your life. And so when I'm looking at, like, big life decisions, I try to evaluate it from that lens more than the lens of like, well, what if this goes wrong? Or how, how could.
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potentially, you know, mess up my, my position in this, you know, social structure or this hierarchy over here. Instead of thinking like that, I try to think of it as like, will I regret not doing this? Because that is a position that I fear more than just about anything else is being in a position where I'm at the end of my life, I can't do anything about it. And I'm looking back on this moment of I should have done that thing, and I think it's allowed me to take maybe more risk. And sometimes the risk hasn't panned out, to be fair. But I also don't have any regret around making those decisions because I know that I would have regretted not making that decision later on. Does that make sense at all?
C
It makes perfect sense. And again, you're holding your batting average because what you are doing is what I talk about in the book, about engaging that new brain pushing in the clutch. And what you are doing exactly as you said is you're reframing what you're feeling and you're reframing it in a way that is much more logical. Most people, that's just not their de facto or natural way to do things. And this is what brings on fear, anxiety, stress, we just can't let that go. But if you can reframe this, that. Listen, our body is reacting in a way that makes perfect sense, considering our evolution. But maybe what we're facing now with a little bit of practical, creative and critical thinking, looking at it through that lens you just talked about, you know, is there an opportunity here is. Is there an advantage? I can take advantage of, you know, understanding this thing. But you. But are reflecting. You. You mentioned it a couple of times that you. You have to reframe it. And that's exactly what metacognition is all about. But that is not the norm, unfortunately.
B
Yeah, well, it's. It's hard. It's hard to push back against that.
C
Absolutely.
B
Because of the immediate, you know, potential repercussions. It's like there have been times where I've taken a risk, it didn't pan out, and I felt bad about it, or it did affect some sort of interpersonal relationship or something like that. There's also been several times where you take the risk and it does pan out. And, and like I said, regardless, I'm just in a position now where it's like, I would so much prefer the immediate loss against the potential future regret of not having done this thing. And then also realizing that the majority of deathbed regrets are things that people wish they would have done rather than things that people wish they would not have done was sort of like a confirmation of that in my mind. So the divided brain, if you're listening right now, please go pick up a copy of this. I'm fascinated by it. And if you're in marketing, you're in sales, you're in business, you should also be fascinated by human psychology, because that is essentially the one thing that's not going to change. You go to marketing, you go take some classes in marketing. Right now, everything you learn will be completely irrelevant by the time you graduate from the class that you're taking. In terms of the practical lever pulling that you can do, the one thing that will not change, at least in the immediate future, is human psychology. So you owe it to yourself to go pick up a copy of the Divided Brain. I want to change gears a little bit here, Paul.
C
Absolutely.
B
You've been in the communications space, building five radio stations from the ground up, inducted into the Ontario association of Broadcasters hall of Fame. You've been in the attention economy long before anybody referred to it as the attention economy. What. What have you seen in terms of the media landscape that has been maybe, maybe super surprising to you? Being somebody who's been in this, like traditional broadcasting, radio. And now we're talking on a podcast that I'm producing out of my, you know, spare bedroom that I turned into a studio.
C
Like what.
B
What are your overall thoughts on that industry? Where are we headed? What's happening right now?
C
Well, you know, again, I'm old, been through many parts of the evolution of radio. Although 40 years is not very long in radio terms. It's been around for a long, long time. It's kind of called the, you know, the cockroach of traditional media because it just, it just, it's still, it's still very viable today. Whereas a lot of other media have come and gone, particularly on the print side and television that obviously podcasts, I think podcasts. The reason that they're really taking off is a lot of what we've just been talking about is that people are going out and trying to find something that's very specific to them, whereas media can be general. But probably the biggest shift I've seen, particularly when it comes to, if you want to talk about news media, is that they are playing to the old brain. The business models of almost all the major media companies now are going after the old brain. And one of the big things is cognitive biases. And confirmation bias is probably at the top of the list. Most people know what confirmation bias is, but, you know, many companies have really perfected that model so that they, you know, when you, when you think of Fox News or you think of CNN or msnbc, you know, it doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right, but you go there because you're going to get a good dose of confirmation bias. That's going to make you feel good, it's going to release some endorphins, and that's how these companies make great ratings. The more they put contrarian views, no matter what side of the spectrum you're on, that's where they really seem to struggle. And any media now that puts out anything that would be resemble, even balance makes people feel uncomfortable, which is a real shame because they're not putting that metacognition hat on and saying, hey, listen, maybe it is good to listen to two sides of a story. And maybe, you know, between those two sides, if they're not too opinionated, there might be some actual truth to what they're talking about. So that's one way the media has really changed. When radio started in my day, particularly in Canada, we had the regulations we followed. We had to be pretty neutral in what we could do or say on the news newspapers, they became very either right or left early on because they didn't follow onto those same regulations. But now and it's the same thing with podcasts. I mean, some of the big podcasts are very, very politically polarized to a certain area because they're the business model of confirmation bias is paying the bills.
B
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately.
C
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah.
B
From an insider's perspective, what do you think are. What do you think some of the dangers are of allowing yourself to exist in these silos?
C
Well, again, the biggest one is that you're just not seeing, you're not, you're not exposing yourself or trying to expose yourself to the truth in any shape, way or form. You're just going to go along with what you feel is true. And again, for 90% of the population, that they're perfectly content to do that. But that unfortunately is going to lead them astray in certain areas, not all areas, because again, that old this episode
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C
Brain is it's amazing what it can do and most of the time our intuition is right. It's just not all the time. But when you consider when you go with your quote unquote gut instinct all the time, then you may be putting yourself in a position where you're not going to be skeptical enough to maybe consider there might be an alternate way to look at this and all again. Again, these biases, these logical fallacies that we fall into. The way the brain works, it can really make it easy for it to create mental grooves and very hard for people to get out of. The more entrenched you are in it, the more difficult it is to Kind of create some balance. The old brain does this thing called inference, and it. It fills in the blanks a lot on information that it's not. Not 100% sure of, but it will always fill in those blanks with what it thinks is true, and often that just isn't true. You know, we're great. We're great at seeing patterns. That's one of the things, again, that kept us alive. And today we look for patterns where there is none, and we will make them up. It's called patternicity, and it happens all the time. And this will lead you to things like conspiracy theories and crazy thoughts because you just can't let go of the fact that there has to be a pattern there, even though it doesn't necessarily mean there is one.
B
You will not allow yourself to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty and accept that as a possible reality. You know what I mean? You have to piece it together and come up with something that gives you the answer, even when the answer is, at least now, with our current technology, unknowable, which.
C
The other thing that works against us today is that our, Our old brain is terrible at any type of abstract, abstract concepts, anything that is counterintuitive. And that's, that's why we don't, you know, a lot of people don't like mathematics or probability theories or statistics or, you know, a lot of people don't even follow, you know, scientific principles because that feels very uncomfortable for our old brain that just wants to thrive, survive and reproduce. That's kind of the concept of the new brain. But it's really that understanding that some of these counterintuitive abstract concepts are really what's going to get you to learn the way the world really works. And I mean, all of our advancement to this point, and it's amazing how we've evolved to the point that we are today, has all been through that understanding of abstract concepts that. That doesn't come naturally.
B
Yeah. I had a friend a few years ago, we went to, like, this magic show, and I always, like. I always, you know, liked watching magicians or, you know, or mentalists, you know, things like that.
C
Absolutely.
B
Things that are just like, oh, how
C
do they do that?
B
You know, you start thinking about it, and I just had this one friend who, like, could not handle the idea that he didn't know what happened. And so he would just, like, he would just come up with these ideas, like, and then. And then just. And speak them as fact, you know. So, like, the magician would do this trick and then afterwards we talk about it was like, man, how did he do that? He was like, well, clearly it was because that this thing was over here. And you know what I mean? Like, clearly there was, there was a fax machine in that other thing that they sent a fax to that, you know, like, how else would they do it? There's no other way to do it. There's clearly, you know, it's like, but, but I don't even think a fax machine would fit there. Like, what? Like you, you are so not okay with, with the, the, the uncertainty or at least like the wonder to, to sit back and appreciate and just respect what just happened that you have to come up with this whole thing even though odds are you're probably wrong. You know what I mean? Like, you're probably incorrect. There was probably something else that they did, but you're not even okay with questioning. Like, it was just a perfect example of what you were just talking about, filling in gaps with knowledge that you don't have any proof exists and then just sticking to that story because that's the only thing that could possibly make sense to you.
C
There is a scientific term, psychology term to this. It's called confabulation. And people do it without even realizing they do it. Often they don't believe that they're lying or making things up. It just the way that the brain, again working so quickly, especially the old brain on heuristics and rules of thumb in filling in those gaps will just, you're going to feel totally comfortable that what you're talking about is, you know, your, your interpretation of it is absolutely correct and it could not be, you know, considered to be maybe incorrect. And lawyers, particularly criminal lawyers, know this very well. They. I have a couple of lawyer friends and they talk about how at law school they talked about confabulation because they say that the worst person that you can use as a witness is a, is an eyewitness. Because they honestly will sit there on the stand and they're not, you know, they're under oath. They're not, they don't think they're lying, but they'll start saying things that they saw or heard or viewed that when eventually some confirmation comes out of it, either a video or other people that may have seen it find out that that was totally untrue. And these people are usually baffled. They say, I totally thought that it was red, but it was blue.
D
Right?
C
And they're not lying. That's just the way the brain works.
B
That's funny. You brought up the example of the courtroom because that was exactly where my mind was going next. I want to say I read this fascinating study and I want to say it was in the book Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. I could be misquoting that. I'm not 100 sure, but the example of the courtroom came up to me because they were talking about that in the light of eyewitnesses. And then when I read that and it sort of struck me on because this is such a micro scale like we're talking about two sides to the story with two eyewitnesses who witness the same event and are telling two completely different stories about the same objective event when neither one of them have any stake in what happens to the, you know, the situation at hand. They're completely third party objective observers and they're still both giving opposing stories or narrations to what happened. It was like, man, if that's the case in this micro setting when we're talking about news and the media and power dynamics and political powers that be making big moves, you're telling me that they're not going to purposefully engineer that to happen when this is accidentally happening on a micro scale with no ramifications at all. It's just impossible. There's no way that these people are doing this from a completely objective third party perspective that's just trying to get good information out there. There might be some, but overwhelmingly it's going to be a lot of players who have the, who have this exact knowledge, who know that they can influence an entire segment population by just telling the story a little bit of a different way than the other person's telling the same story.
C
No, no, you're bang on there. And the biggest, the biggest hopefully aha moment that people can take out of our conversation here is that they realize that if you can just realize it then you can again push in that mental clutch. I talk a lot about this in the book. I have a chapter just on how to critical thinking. A lot of people think, oh, you're just a skeptic. It's not really that at all. It's just understanding that you have to accept that we have these two gears, these two parts of our brain, how they work and understanding that you can through Medica, put the brakes on a little bit and reflect and say, listen, am I maybe, you know, falling into some of the biases or some of the fallacies that the old brain is so good at? Am I maybe cherry picking some data to really, you know, push my story forward and you know, are My sources all just confirming what I want to hear through confirmation bias. When you start looking at the world and thinking of the world that way on a more consistent basis, then you will become more, you know, stoic, whatever, however you, whatever term you want to use to be a little bit more reflective. And I think that's the only thing that's going to help us, particularly in this world with AI, because AI is so adept at going right past our new brain, right to the old brain, and talking to it. Like your new brain never even comes into play because it's being played. You know, I hate to use that word, but often it is.
B
Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. And up to you to decide whether or not it's being played for good reasons or bad reasons or whatever. It's just a matter of understand that it's happening.
C
And a lot of time it's benign. But, you know, sometimes it's. Sometimes it's getting you to buy something. And in that, at the end of the day, could be a good thing or a bad thing, but you just have to just be aware of it. And I think that what I'm trying to do here, and, you know, this started as understanding how people can do a brand and, and do their marketing by understanding how we connect to the old brain. But I turned this book more into a thing of awareness. And I think it's really important today with, with the world that we're in and the way information is coming to us 24 7, you know, virtually through, you know, our. Now it's our watches, you know, it's just amazing. Yeah.
B
I read something recently that said that we see it like thousands, like six or seven thousand marketing messages on a daily basis now, which is wild to think about. And the majority, vast majority of them lean toward negativity bias. They. They are meant to stir something inside of you that makes you feel less than that makes you feel like you're missing something. And then we walk around, walk around wondering why we're all anxious and depressed and have all these mental issues. It's like. Well, because all the messages that you see, whether consciously or subconsciously, are telling you that you're not and that you need this thing or this new gadget or this new tool or that you need this new belief or you need this new policy or this new politician to help you solve your problems. And it's sort of like the awareness that those things are happening can at least allow you to build your own system through which you can make better decisions on a daily basis. Paul, this has been a fascinating conversation. Genuinely appreciate you coming on the show. The Divided Brain, not the Dividend brain. This was bad.
C
That might be my next book.
B
Yeah, bad mistake of my podcast host part. But. The Divided Brain by Paul Larsh. Go check out the Divided Brain. If you're in business, you owe it to yourself to know these principles. You owe it to yourself to know.
D
It's.
B
It's not even. I think some people look at it like, oh, this is just mass market manipulation. It's like. It's not manipulation a lot of times. Like our marketing. If you genuinely believe that you have a product or service that's built to help people solve a problem in their lives, then your marketing should just be a. A case study for why somebody should care enough to be. To finally be willing to solve that problem, if that makes sense. So you can.
C
Absolutely. And thanks for this opportunity. I just want to mention too, that people can go to my website@paullarsch.com there's some PDFs there you can download that kind of encapsulate a lot of what we're talking about, even if you don't buy the book. Because I think this, again, this is just really important information to get across. And I always tell people the first thing you gotta do is check your ego and understand that we are blind sometimes and to what's going on around us. And you, sometimes you just have to have a little of that humility to say, listen, I'm gonna, I wanna understand logical reasoning a little bit more and I'm gonna take a few steps to do it. And this is one of the ways you can.
B
Paullarche.com L A R C H E Paullarsch.com Go check out a couple of these PDFs that Paul's put out there and then pick up a copy of his book, the Divided Brain. Like I said, if you're. You're in business, you owe yourself. Owe it to yourself, to your business, to the people around you, to know and familiarize yourself with these principles. Paul, appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. Don't take that for granted. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.
Guest: Paul Larche (media pioneer, author of The Divided Brain)
Host: Travis Chappell
Date: March 5, 2026
This episode dives into the core of why customers buy, with Travis Chappell interviewing Paul Larche, a veteran in broadcasting, advertising, and brand communication. Paul discusses insights from his latest book, The Divided Brain: Why Customers Buy and Why They Don’t, focusing on the neuroscience behind human decision-making and how understanding our evolutionary wiring can be leveraged in business, marketing, and personal choices.
Old vs. New Brain:
Impact on Customer Decisions:
Quote:
“The old brain is looking for things like simplicity. It’s looking for immediate gratification. It’s resistant to change. It's selfish, but for the right reasons—survival reasons.”
—Paul Larche (05:15)
Quote:
“People who are more successful tend to still be fearful, but they fear regret more than they fear any sort of failure or embarrassment.”
—Travis Chappell (08:55)
Quote:
“The business models of almost all the major media companies now are going after the old brain… confirmation bias is probably at the top of the list.”
—Paul Larche (18:21)
Quote:
“The more entrenched you are in it, the more difficult it is to kind of create some balance.”
—Paul Larche (24:26)
Marketing That Targets the Old Brain:
Manipulation vs. Persuasion:
“There is a psychology term to this. It's called confabulation. People do it without even realizing. They don't think they're lying...”
—Paul Larche (27:23)
“The first thing you gotta do is check your ego and understand that we are blind sometimes to what’s going on around us. You just have to have a little humility.”
—Paul Larche (34:26)
This episode offers a fresh lens on customer psychology—by understanding our evolutionary wiring, both individuals and businesses can make smarter decisions, foster self-awareness, and counteract biases in a world increasingly designed to hijack our attention. Paul and Travis deliver actionable insights with practical relevance for marketers, entrepreneurs, and anyone seeking to understand (or hack!) the buying brain.
For more resources and to download Paul’s free PDFs:
Visit paullarche.com
Main Takeaway:
"Money only solves your money problems—but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank." – Travis Chappell (35:04)