Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
What is up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. And if you've been enjoying the show, we love your support. Go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe.
Our guest today is a real cool and fascinating guy. I was really excited to talk to him because I find what he does very interesting. He teaches people how to design and deliver presentations. He also coaches strategic corporate storytelling and influential communication. So really it's about how to be an effective communicator, speaker, presenter, manager, leader, whatever your role is at the time, and how to be really persuasive, creating the most persuasive impact in whatever message you're trying to get across.
He does this through applying the principles of behavioral science, behavioral economics, nudge theory, and persuasion theory. Now, if you don't know, behavioral economics, nudge theory, corporate storytelling are all extremely hot and trending fields of study right now. So I want to understand more about it and who better to kick that off than this man. Now, in the beginning, you're going to hear some background construction noise because my neighbors were renovating, but that noise goes away completely about 12 minutes into the conversation. So no worries there.
This guy trains some of the biggest companies in the world, and it was such a great time talking to him. So without further ado, please give it up for Troy Andrews.
The guard on time
It is a Chinese thing, right? It's like China thing. You get used to it. But you don't. It's never ending. And it's everywhere. I just don't know how they schedule it. Because it's like when one stops, then the guy across the hall is like, I can start remodeling my place now. This is the third. This is the third apartment. It just goes from one to the next. This is the third apartment. It was one apartment. And right after was the second apartment. And then immediately after. So it was like one constant. What's up with all these people needing to renovate their homes? Yeah.
I don't know. It might say something about the real estate market, though, because maybe people are buying homes. Maybe these are new owners, and then they come in and they start renovating, maybe. Yeah, well, I guess the problem is always that they don't fur out their walls, right? So in America, you always have drywall and stuff like that. Here, it's just, what is it called? Malpay? Malpay. Malpay, yeah. And then they just, anything you want has to be...
If they want a thing up the wall, they have to chisel it all the way up. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Nightmare. Now, the worst is, I don't know if you had this happen around your home, but on the street, like street construction at night, at like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock at night. Oh, yeah. 10 o'clock at night. My neighbors get that all the time, yeah. Right down the street. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck? I have the worst. I think it's because they're building that stadium over there.
There's a huge construction project going on right there. Because I know they're doing big construction in general for things like 5G and cameras and all this technology stuff. Do you think the US was like this during the Industrial Revolution, though? When everything was being built, all the skyscrapers were being built. They had unions, though, right? To get people to work all night, it's extra pay.
I guess. But I heard, I even asked, is it against the law to be doing that in the middle of the night? But I guess if you're the government doing it, I guess it's okay. Well, here, the government, anything is okay for the government. Okay. Let's not go down that road. Let's not go down that road. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming on the show, Troy. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. This is so nice. Ooh.
You broke out the good stuff for me. Thank you. You know, East Coast got to represent, man. Thank you, East Coast. East Coast. Do we have a symbol for the East Coast? The East Coast sign, the gang sign. We're drinking the Balvenie 25. Yeah, it's good. Oh, yeah, and if you're hearing the drilling in the background, that's because our neighbors are renovating. Hopefully it will stop.
as we get into the conversation. So just try to block that out. Real China. Yeah, true, true. So how you been, Troy? Doing good, doing good. Thanks for having me on this. Appreciate it. So I'm going to try to keep up with you in this conversation. Oh, no, no, no. Because...
because I think the, the kind of, um, subjects you're, you're involved with and that you study is, is extremely interesting because, uh, you know, obviously we've had like psychologists here before and, you know, we, we've delved, uh,
We dipped our toes into the idea of behavioral science, a little bit of neuroscience, a little bit of these things, but we never really fully plunged in. So what you do, as far as I understand, is you kind of coach people in terms of creating presentations, but with the idea of using behavioral economics? Yeah.
Yeah, basically. Is that what it is? Like behavioral science and behavioral economics? Yeah. So can you just explain that and kind of introduce yourself a little bit? Sure. So I've been here since 2008. So I've been training the whole time. So I started basically just doing business communication, things like that, and then got solely into presentations. But what I found is a lot of people have that kind of the public speaking persona, which
which is they would stand straight and speak in a certain way. And they focused all about the mechanics of it, but the content...
was not there. And so they were getting the body language and the voice control and all these things, but not the content. So I started getting into behavioral science, which is very interesting to me, and then behavioral economics, which is, they're almost the same thing. It's just kind of a little split in there. But basically, it's about how people don't make decisions rationally is the bottom line. So the...
Traditional models that they had in psychology before that, or mainly economics, was that supply and demand and things like that, which were very obvious to see. There's not a lot of something. If you have a 25-year-old Balvenie, it's going to be more expensive. And that's traditional. But this talks about the emotional side of it. So thousands of years ago, Aristotle kind of came up with this book, Rhetoric, which was about the art of oration.
So he kind of found, he made this pie chart kind of thing where it's like 65% of the presentation should be emotional.
And then 25% should be kind of facts and logic and data. But then that 10% is just credibility. So proving that you're an expert or you should listen to me. So 65% is a big chunk. But when we look at advertising and things like that, it makes sense because you see that all the time, right? They're just trying to push the buttons of colors and sounds and hit all your senses and storytelling. And that's really what...
people. So I tried to apply that towards presentations. So if I want to have a pitch, if I want to get buy-in or increase trust, we're not just actually talking about the normal public speaking things. This is more like
how you create your content in a way that hits the right buttons. Like the strategy behind the content and not like the kind of performance of it, right? Yeah, it's a lot of people, especially here in China, I see they kind of see some of these visionaries speak and they say, I want to speak like him and be charismatic. They'll wear like a black turtleneck and try to be like Steve Jobs. Right, right, right. But they're not Steve Jobs, so it doesn't work because he had a whole persona
that he played into and people bought into. Yeah. Interesting. Behavioral economics basically is a, so there's like behavioral science. It's a branch of behavioral science, right? It's a subcategory of behavioral science because behavioral science is a much larger umbrella of a lot of things. Yeah. Right. Very general. But then underneath you have behavioral economics where,
which is kind of runs in parallel with regular classic classical economics. Right. So, um, from what I understand based off of the references you gave me, um, yeah, I tried to do some research. Um, so like you have classical economics, right. And there are certain laws of economics which hold true on much larger scales. So when you say that, um, if you, you know, on a general level, if you drop the price of something, the demand for it will go up because people can buy more of it. Right.
These are standard classical laws of economics, but economics doesn't explain a lot of the irrational behaviors that humans make based off of impulse, emotion, jealousy, you know, whatever it is, right, that drives them.
And a lot of these laws of economics don't hold true. And this is when you have to go to behavioral economics to try to explain human behavior and decision-making. Is that correct? Yeah, no, that's great. Okay. So it kind of came from... You did your research. Good student. My brain was like working on an overdrive. Like all the steam engines were burning. They were shoveling coal into the furnace. I saw smoke rising up over his head. We need more power! Yeah.
He did well. He did well. So, yeah, it came about like late, maybe early 70s. Two scientists, Dan Kahneman, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Daniel Kahneman is still very famous now. He wrote that book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have that on Audible. I just haven't started it yet. It's a very good entry level thing to go into because he kind of sets up the whole system one, system two thinking. Hmm.
I don't know if you've heard of those different modes. System 1 is like the slow brain. Oh, no, the fast brain. Fungal. Yeah, the fast brain. And then system 2 is the slow brain. And the slow brain usually takes a lot more effort to kind of think through and process, right? Yeah, so most of our decisions are just swept away with system 1, right? Yeah. Do you want ice with that or not? I know from habit I don't, so I just say no.
Even though, you know, maybe sometimes you'll feel like it, but most of the times you'll just go with habit. You'll go with a past experience. It's like instinct. It's more instinctive and trained instinct. Is that a word? Would impulse be a more accurate term for it, though? Yeah, it could be because it's more emotional. All the emotional things come from there. When things get kicked over to system two, it's kind of like, okay, now I have to sit down and think or figure out or plan or strategize. Yeah.
but all the quick answers is system one. So he kind of pioneered that kind of idea. But even before that in the early 70s, he was coming up with like,
talking about heuristics, which are the mental shortcuts that we take. That's more kind of system one stuff. So heuristics are those things and just cognitive bias, which is all the lenses that we look at things through and it clouds our judgment. So how do you apply all this stuff in your work?
Those those that part of it is very hard because you don't know what is Motivating people's decisions or influencing their decisions. So at some point it's kind of like you're watching patterns You're finding out about people. So okay if I start to get into to my system that I have so I have a system ABC and so when someone is starting with a presentation they should start with C which is for change and
So when you want to change, say I'm giving a presentation to you, I would say, okay, what do I want to do? Do I want to sell? Do I want to have you buy something? Do I want to impress you? Do I want to motivate you or encourage you? First, I figured that out. So that's the purpose. And the other P is for perception. What perception do I want you to have of me?
that I'm organized, that I'm a team player, that I'm a team leader. And I kind of get that very clear. And now everything I say, everything I do is kind of funneling you into that conclusion. So if I say I want to be organized, I'm going to make sure that my presentation has a clear structure. I might even use the word organized many times or organization, things like that. So just little things you pepper in between to get someone there.
Then you go to A. So that's a C. You go to A. A is for audience analysis. And that's where you really get into like a deep dive into your audience. So this is a long way to answer your question. No, go ahead. We have all day. That's where it's going. Yeah, so how do you apply these things? First, you have to know your audience. So each person is going to be different. Each audience is going to be different. You should never really give the same presentation twice.
If you have a sales pitch, you shouldn't just walk through it because it's going to be different with every person. So the more you get to know the person, their qualities, what they like, what they don't like, you can start to get patterns and then you can start to guess what works.
Maybe they have a neurosis. What they want to see, yeah. Yeah, what they want to see and definitely what they don't want to see is sometimes equally important. So that's that part. And then the B stands for two things, barriers and bridges. So barriers is the things that would stop them.
So you're like, here's where I want them to be. Here's where they are. What would stop them from coming over with me? So it could be many things. It could be personal things, could be professional, their experience or their position or their background, their education. Could be psychological things like cognitive bias. So at some point, it is a guessing game. You do as much as you can. You study your audience and then you
Throw a few things in there that you think will work and then maybe they do, maybe they don't. You improve that until you kind of nail it. Are there any barriers that you see that come up time and time again?
Yeah, well, there's the obvious barriers, which are cost, manpower, time, trouble. So you'll always see those things. That's where the bridges come in. So the bridges, if someone brings up cost, you have to reframe that.
in a way that it's not cost, it's an investment. And here's why, because, and then you kind of walk them through some process. So this is like the framing effect, right? Framing is a big thing. So that's where the bridges are, are, are very important. How you kind of, um, frame a topic in the first place will really affect how people view it going in. Hmm.
Yeah. And one of the links you sent, they were giving examples of the framing effect and they were being like, you know, and obviously like marketers and retailers use this probably in the most often. And how we even maybe like in your commercials, I don't know if this ever comes up in the commercials that you shoot, but
Like they were giving examples, like what would someone rather eat? Like a steak that's advertised as like 75% fat free or 25% fat, right? It's the same thing. Or let's say a bill was trying to get passed into law
And it was named like Improve Our Schools Act, right, versus Raise Our Taxes Act or bill or something like that, right? Like it's the same thing, but it's just named and framed very differently. And that kind of persuades or nudges people. Now we're maybe going to nudge theory, but persuades people to make certain decisions, right, based on, I guess, how you frame things.
Yeah, and they do that with the medical field too. So this vaccine has a 90% survival rate versus this vaccine has a 10% mortality rate. And then people – it's the same exact thing numerically, but people just – one sounds terrible and the other one sounds better. And if you offer that, they'll say, I'll take that one. And you're like, they're actually the same drug. You're like, but that's just framing, yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting, this whole subject, because –
It really plays, I mean, I guess when you boil it down, I mean, to simplify it, I guess, it really just boils down to like the psychology of humans, but like put into like economical terms, like where they're, I guess, maybe weighing cost and risk or something like that. Yeah. Benefit and risk. Yeah. The difference between behavioral science and behavioral economics is tiny. The other day I put out a post on LinkedIn, just putting out to all my friends who are in the field. And I have many connections and friends,
Some of them are the leading people in it, and nobody really wanted to touch the topic of what the difference is. But then I just quoted a bunch of people like Robert Cialdini. He's the one who wrote the book Influence and Persuasion. Some other ones, and nobody commented on it. Why is that, though? I think it's just a question of semantics. So I think...
To define it, I'm sure there are technical terms that define it. If you go on Wikipedia, you can see there's slight variations on it. Behavioral economics came from economics, but Daniel Kahneman was not an economist at the time that he came up with this. But he won the Nobel Prize for it. Richard Thaler, who wrote the book Nudge, also got a Nobel Prize for economics, but he's not in economics per se.
So it's kind of like this weird thing, like it touches on economics because a lot of it leans towards business and how people make purchasing and investment situations or decisions. But the behavioral science is more vast. It covers everything. So one's kind of pigeonholed. But the problem is when you get into nudge theory, which is mainly on the behavioral economic side, a lot of it has nothing to do with economics.
It's really just psychology at that point. Yeah. And it really depends how you define economics. So years ago, I think this is the book that really got me into the idea of it was Freakonomics. Yeah. And when you read about that, it's not really about economics per se as you're reading it. You're just like, okay, this is a lot of anecdotal stories that kind of show people will make a decision this way, but if you do it this way, they won't.
So that's kind of what nudge theory, behavioral economics, it's all kind of in the same pot. Like you mentioned semantics before. So like what would be, I mean, I guess the question is,
or maybe one of the elephants in the room, there are several right now, but one of them might be like, what's the difference between persuasion versus manipulation, right? All right, because that's kind of what we're talking about at the end of the day is kind of influencing people's decision-making, whether it's nudge theory or even game theory or behavioral economics, like,
You're talking about like, how are you kind of influencing the decision people are making without like directly kind of influencing them, like forcing them to do so. Without a gun to the head. So where do you draw the line? Like how far does it go where persuasion turns into manipulation? Or maybe they're just one and the same.
I've thought a lot about this and I just had a post on this recently too because that's such a question that comes up a lot and sometimes people will come to me and they're like, okay, so you work with persuasion. I want to do this or that. I'm like, yeah, I don't do that kind of stuff. And they're like, well, that's persuasion. I'm like, no, that's manipulation. So yeah, the difference is, yeah, I had one company I worked with. They wanted me to talk about persuasion and the boss was very intent on this idea of packaging.
And packaging is maybe another way to say framing or something like that. So they had some, what was it, like a team, what's it where they all have fun? Team building. Team building, yeah. Thank you. What's it where they have fun? That thing they do. They had this big team building exercise planned, but then the budget got changed, so they decided to kill it.
But they didn't blame it on that. They blamed it on the resort and said, we can't, they won't let us book it. Nothing's open. And what they were doing is planning to just keep putting it off until everyone forgot about it.
I'm just like, that's not packaging. That's just lying. It's just like, I do not recommend that at all. He kept saying packaging. I'm like, no, I don't think you understand. I don't think you understand what packaging is. I asked this question of all my connections on LinkedIn. And also I interviewed a few people on LinkedIn just to find out what their idea was. And again, like the...
The big guys like Robert Cialdini. I got a guy from the School of Business in Spain, IESE. He also gave me... Connor O'Neill, very cool guy. He also gave his definition of it. Basically, everyone kind of agrees it comes down to intent, which is...
I'm not happy with that definition because it's impossible to know what someone's intent is. And sometimes we don't even know what our real intent is. Like sometimes we do things, oh, I'm doing it to be nice. And you're like, no, you want something. Yeah. So it's a little unfortunate for that. But I think most people know when they're doing something for themselves or whether they're doing something for a mutual interest. Any selling is really important.
you know, for your own interest for the most part. But if I can sell you something that I think is going to help you really, and I feel strongly about that's different. Yeah. You know, for instance, like I sell my services of helping people to do this. Yeah. I'm going to try to sell it, but I really actually feel it has value. So is it manipulative? No, I don't think so. Yeah. Well, as long as they're like, maybe the line I'm just guessing here, but like maybe the line can be drawn as like, as long as you're always, um, you're not hiding the truth. Um,
and you're not lying or presenting false facts or whatever, then that's on one side and persuasion, I guess. But I think once you're deceitful, and deceit can come in many forms, right? Then that's manipulation. I mean, I don't know. The problem is sometimes people will say, well, I'm lying, but it's for a good purpose.
Or the white lie. But that's still being manipulative. Yeah, well, yeah, technically under that it falls under. Well, as far as the intent definition, it would be okay because your intent is something good. Yeah, so that's why I don't like the intent. I don't like it either. That's what I'm saying. Because you can never put your finger on it. You can't define what is good. That's why I agree with you. Yeah, exactly. I don't think intent is a good way to, is a good guideline to use to kind of like...
decide or to define it's a good it's a good working definition um it's not an exhaustive definition but it's a good working definition to to tell someone like look you know if you're being a jerk then stop like but for for for an actual like you you want a definition that really rings true on every level it's it's very hard so i i kind of looked at it like you know if you had like a graph right and you had kind of um
benevolent, right? Or philanthropic here. Like, I don't want to say selfless because again, nothing's, you know. Nothing's truly selfless. And then selfish down here, which definitely you're self-serving. And then you had like, deliberate or just kind of like incidental. Like, because...
And I think influence is a word that I use that kind of a blanket that covers all of that because all of that is influence. Alcohol can influence you. There's no good or bad with influence. Yeah. If you see someone cool walking down the street and they're wearing something or doing something, it's like, oh, I want to do that too. And they don't even know they're – and we have nothing to do with their intent. It's neutral. Neutral, yeah. So that's just kind of influence. But then persuasion is like a deliberate act of trying to get someone to –
Think, feel, or do something. Next to that, I would put convincing. Convincing is a little stronger because you're actually kind of changing people's mind. This is not the... If you look at the definition, they're kind of synonymous sometimes. But when you think of convincing someone, they actually leave and go, oh, yeah, you're right. Persuading, you can go, okay, I'll go. Or, yeah, I'll do it. But they might not agree or... Convincing sounds more aggressive, right? A little bit? Yeah.
I mean, that's a perception, yeah. Not to me. It sounds more cerebral because you're actually hitting them with some kind of fact that actually when they leave, they are actually a believer that they're going to go on to persuade or convince someone else. Mm-hmm.
Whereas I can say, oh, let's go to this concert. And you're like, I don't really like that band. Oh, come on, it'll be fun. You're like, okay, I'll go. But you're not. But you're coming with me to the other concert next time. Yeah, exactly. So you're not a believer. You're not going to preach this to the next person. So, yeah. So I guess it's no surprise. I mean, you study this stuff because you work with presentations and stuff like that. And I guess at the end of the day, like,
in like the work in the business environment, like what are presentations for? Presentations are all the present, every single presentation I've seen is trying to convince you of something, right? I mean, there's no presentation that's not trying to convince you one way or the other. Is there? Well, yeah, there is. And then here's why, because I deal a lot with this and this is why I kind of came up with that ABC because I found just people had no direction and no focus. And a lot of times, especially here in China, people will just be giving progress reports. Hmm.
It went up, it went down, and here's what happened. And maybe their boss, because it's not so egalitarian, it's not that flat, maybe their boss says, I don't want your opinion. I don't want your suggestion. Just tell me the facts. So then they're in the situation like, well, I can just give the thing, the details, doesn't want my opinion. What's the point? What's the change? There's no change.
And that's when I say, okay, well, here's where you do the perception. How do you want him to view you or her, right? And you go, oh, well, I want them to think I'm a team leader because I want to get a promotion or I want to think that I can do this other job or that I'm organized. So then you have to say, what about that person, that boss? What kind of things are they looking for? How can I have them perceive me as those things? Right.
So then you would actually look at your slide deck and you'd say, okay, is this PowerPoint? Did I put this in because it was cute or funny or cool? Or am I really trying to get that perception of what they need to see? Is this like a McKinsey file or something like that? Like, so, yeah. So I under, most...
Every presentation should have a change. And that's the point that I try to, to hit. Um, but I do see a lot that just, it's just information sharing. Hmm. Interesting. So, uh, who are the type of people that you typically work with? Uh, I work with mainly multinational corporations. I don't, haven't really worked with any local Chinese. Um, it's mainly, um, Chinese who, who speak a high level of English cause my Chinese is not good. Um, um,
And who are, a lot of them have lived abroad and have a good working knowledge of the language and culture. So are these like the executives and like managers? Usually with executives, it's more one-on-one. But when I do workshops, it's a mix. Oh, wow. So these are just business professionals that are in need of upping their game.
Interesting. Cause I'm listening to this right now. Cause I do proposals all the time, like nonstop, but in my job, it's all creative, right? It's just like, you know, my vision on, you know, how to do something or whatever. And I'm trying to, I'm listening to this right now. I'm applying to myself. I'm like,
shit, I really should think about that. Like change my perspective. I'm like being like Hulk smash. Like this is a fucking good creative. You fucking buy the shit, you know? Yeah. Because you give treatments, like we're talking on our last episode, like you give treatments all the time and the treatment in many ways is sort of like a pitch, right? Yeah. Yeah. In a way. Have you ever heard of the future?
uh the design group yeah uh yeah okay that sounds right up your alley he's very good with with with kind of um designing pitches and negotiating price and for creatives yeah i've seen a couple of videos chris doe yeah he's he's awesome yeah he's pretty cool so like with so i guess part of your work is and i guess you said this before it was really first number one trying to
get to know the people you're actually working with, like what drives them, what do they want to achieve out of it? What do they want to get out of it? How do they want to make themselves come up, come across or what kind of point do they want to make? Right. Right. And I, yeah, it's, I guess it's, you know, and because behavioral, when I was reading about the behavioral economics stuff, they kept stressing that it's like, it's really hard to put your finger on it because it's such an individual thing. Right. Like, like everyone is going to react and behave differently. And so,
And that's where like the laws, a lot of like the main laws of let's say economics start breaking down. And they were giving really good examples of that. They were saying, there was one example that they were giving about like the ice cream, right? They were saying like, okay, like based on, if we were just to follow the classical laws of economics, if an ice cream shop was,
was to lower drastically the price of one of their flavors, then the demand for it should go up. Everyone should be buying that ice cream based on the classical laws of economics.
But in reality, that's not what they see happens. What they see happens is when you discount the price of one flavor and not the rest, people emotionally think, oh, there must be something wrong with that flavor. Discount rack. Yeah, it must be bad or it must taste awful and no one wants it. So then no one ends up buying it. So that's where the laws of economics break down at like the micro level, right? At the individual level.
And they were even saying like it applies to like even physics, right? Like when you talk about gravity, right? The laws of physics, you know, can explain gravity and the effects of gravity. You can calculate it. But at the quantum level, gravity completely breaks down, right? It can't explain the movement of like electrons, right? Mm-hmm.
So they were using that as an analogy to kind of like, be like, that's basically what behavioral economics is, is the dive into like individual human decision-making and behavior and trying to find the patterns in there. Yeah.
- Yeah, and that's where it comes back to heuristics because that's a perceived value. So if you all of a sudden charge double for your ice cream, people are going, "Oh, that must be good. "That must be so good." - Well, that's what the luxury brands do, right? You look at all these luxury clothing brands or bag brands, I mean, yeah, they're better quality, but they're not that much better quality
It doesn't follow this, you know, like the increase in price is not the same increase in quality that you're getting, you know? And I think that's the game a lot of the retailers use. I think the most obvious examples are in the retail. Like whether we're talking nudge theory, we're talking behavioral economics, pricing biases or whatever, pricing psychology, et cetera.
at the retail level, that's where you really see it in person on a day-to-day basis. Like even the way retailers, like where they put things on the sales floor, right? Like if you walk in the main floor and you walk into the main doors and you see like the big layout, like the layout there, they have models and like mannequins and they have all these things displayed there.
I mean, versus something that's like in the back, right? Or on the side. Right. There's a, that's not by like, that's not random. Right. It's all planned and strategized and determined based on, I guess, nudge theory. Or like IKEA that traps you in the maze for hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So the retailers have adopted this science, I guess. A surprising amount of people have looked into behavioral science. Even Obama administration hired on behavioral scientist. UK now has a nudge unit. A nudge unit? They do, yeah. It's called nudge unit? It's called the nudge unit. Nudge unit. Exactly. Exactly. Nudge unit.
Well, what does the nudge unit do? I don't know what that represents. I'm not going to ask. It's like 50 cents. Okay. Okay. You guys are hip hop guys. Not really. We just, that's all we know about hip hop. Okay. Um,
Yeah, so Nudge Unit, well, they go into a lot of public health, public safety issues. They'll kind of say, how can we, because Nudge, the book Nudge, where it kind of started, it's all about what they call choice architecture. It's basically about how do you present choices, in which order, in which fashion, small being large, you know, no one's going to buy the small.
Right. So, yeah, you add a... There's a reason medium or the middle price thing always sells the best and... Now, if you add this giant one, people are like, well, that's too much, but now this large one looks better. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it's like that's all... Or if you're trying to increase health, like...
I was just working at Duke University in Kunshan. And the first time I went there, right when you came in the dining room, they had all like, you know, Pepsi and Coke and different things like that you could buy. But then they put that thing in the back. They put a salad bar in the front and water. And what they found is people started eating healthier. Yeah.
Just because it was more visible, more accessible. It was convenient probably, right? Or it's probably displayed even nicer than... It's availability heuristic, which is it's there. So you just, it's the first thing you think about. You don't have to change your mind. You just go, oh, I should eat a salad. If you say, oh, I should eat a salad, but it's over there. And then you see this, it's easier. It's cheaper. It's yeah. Yeah.
Is that the same reason why you see a lot of retailers pricing their stuff at $4.99 instead of just $5? Yeah, I don't know a lot about pricing, but yeah, it all comes down to that same thing. A nudge, like one of the foremost nudges, I don't know if you've heard this one or not, but it's to me the most interesting, especially here in China. In the men's bathroom, in front of the urinal, you'll always see a sign that says...
Like one small step is like one huge step for like humanity. Yeah, like we're going to the moon, right? But it doesn't work as we've seen over and over. It does not work. So in the Netherlands, in the airport, they started putting these little fly stickers on the urinal. And what they found is it reduced spillage by 70%. Because they're trying to hit it. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's what, do you notice now there's a lot of the urinals have the little soccer ball? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more and more now. Oh, I'm always playing soccer. Yeah. I am like Ronaldo when I play. So all the guys listening, you know what we're talking about. Well, so that's what I love about it because nudge theory is different than a lot of the other ones because a lot of the other ones kind of people know what you're doing.
So when you get into like the six principles of influence, one of them is scarcity. So the second you say, hey, one day only, or this is the last three, right? When you go on a website and you're trying to buy a ticket and they're like, there's two tickets and five people are looking at it. Mm-hmm.
You feel that, you know, that little sweat. And you're just like, okay, I got to decide. It's like a bidding war all of a sudden. And you know what they're doing. And you know it's probably not true. But you still fall for it. But you kind of despise them a little bit for it. Yeah. Because you're like, what if though? Well, like, Ctrip does this. Hotels.com does this. Basically, like, all like the hotel booking sites and like, you know, like ticket booking sites. They all do this. Yeah. And I get exactly what you mean. Because it works. But we know it.
We know they're doing it. I'm almost like it's bullshit because like I've gone back before and like I was still able to get it like days later when like a few days earlier it was like two tickets left. I'm like, okay, this is bullshit. You can't chance it. You beat the system, Justin. You beat the system. But then the next time I bet you fell for it again. Well, I think this ties into... I do, I do. I think this ties into the idea of, you know, the idea of like...
like the loss diversion, right? Loss diversion theory, right? Because a loss is always more painful than a gain is pleasurable, right? And people have done many studies showing this, that people are much more adverse or feel much more pain when they lose something versus when they gain something.
So, I mean, that must play really big into the decisions we make, right? Just like what you're saying. Even though we know it's probably the bullshit with saying three tickets are left, but we don't want to chance it because the pain of missing out on that. FOMO, yeah. It's so great. It's a powerful drug. It overpowers us where we actually end up making sometimes irrational decisions because of it.
Most of the time. Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So that scarcity theory, that's one of the six principles of influence. That one is one of the most commonly seen and used. And when you're using that in a presentation, you can do it instead of our usual pitch is all the things they're going to gain. But...
Yeah, if you go to a company and say, if you don't do this, here's what your competition's going to do. They're going to do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're going to do it first, so they're going to get that market share. That usually is a lot more motivating for people. And if you put a time limit on it,
you know, compounds that. - Just keep adding. Matter of fact, that other company contacted me yesterday. No, it's gotta be true, but yeah, yeah, yeah. For instance, yeah. - Well, there was a study done, right, where they did a study on these workers in the company, right? And they split the workers into three groups. And one group, they told them, they didn't give them any bonuses at all. So that was like the control group.
The second group, they were like, okay, you're gonna work and we'll give you a bonus at the end of the year. And then the third group, they gave them the bonus upfront in the beginning and said, if you underperform, you're gonna have to pay back. We're gonna take the bonus away from you. And the study showed that the first two groups pretty much performed about the same. But the third group who got the bonus upfront and was threatened with it having taken away, which is like loss, right?
outperform the other two groups by like a mile, right? So it's this idea of like losing is so painful that we...
like the idea of like gaining something right in the same they didn't let study uh again in the same video like um at a grocery store they were trying to encourage people to use like plastic bags or bring their own bags right right um you know trying to be environmentally friendly and to bring their own bags so in the beginning they were offering uh customers who brought their own bags to the grocery store a five cent bonus and they realized they found out like no one no one was like bringing their own bags everyone was still using plastic bags no one no one gave a shit
But once they said, okay, they took away the five cent bonus and they said that if you don't bring your own bags, there'll be a five cent tax on your bill, on your grocery store bill. Then everyone started bringing their own bags. So the pain of losing that five cents was so much greater than the potential joy of getting five cents, right? Yeah, yeah. But there's always the human element side of it. So-
That works, but what's going to happen is those people who felt like the company was always about to take their money away, what kind of relationship did they have with the company? It's not very trust-building. It's not very relationship-building. So I remember in Freakonomics, they had an example where there was a school. It was a daycare, and it was very high-level clients that they had. So these were lawyers and doctors who had money. These people would always come late to pick up the kids.
And then the teachers had to wait. No one could go home until these people came, and they were always finishing up something important. So they said, okay, what should we do? They had a little meeting. Let's charge an extra, what, $50 an hour, $100 an hour? And for every hour they're late. So they put that in effect, and the next week everything doubled. It was twice as bad.
Because then the people said, well, I make $300 an hour or whatever. I'm a lawyer. It's in my benefit. I'll just have them daycare for a little longer. And they're like, that didn't work. Right? So they were losing, but it wasn't palpable for them. So what they did was the next time they came home or to pick up their kids, they said, hey, can we talk for a minute? And like,
Little Johnny keeps asking us why all the other parents picked up their kids and you didn't. And we don't know what to tell them. What should we tell them? And then they said after they started doing that, just those little two-second little powwows, the problem almost went away. So there is a human element that always can counterbalance things, or you can always go an emotional level that is not just fear.
So that's why like, yeah, when you're trying to, that 65% that Aristotle was talking about, fear is also one of them. So like I deal a lot with like storytelling. So if you're storytelling, sometimes you can tell a story that evokes fear and that builds up your cortisol, which is stress hormone, and then also your adrenaline, which is like fight or flight, you know, fear. That can be useful, but you don't want to just,
throw that on the fire every time because it can have negative repercussions. Or people can see that every time I leave, I feel negative after your presentation or something like that. So you want to stoke a little bit, but not too much. Just enough to get them out. A healthy amount, yeah. So how does that play into the work you do? You said storytelling is a big part of what you do. How does that play in? Well, this is something that's very hot right now is corporate storytelling. So we have traditional storytelling, which is just
Hey, guess what I did yesterday? Could have no point, no pattern, no structure. And then we have like movie storytelling, book storytelling, which is the traditional. I listened to one of the, you had a podcast with some people who were into storytelling and
Oh, yeah. Dr. Stephen Jacoby and Bosch? Yeah, yeah. But that's more of a literary. So they have like, you know, The Hero's Journey? You've heard of that? So The Hero's Journey is like this story about this person who normal everyday life, then they go into some problem. They don't want to do it, but then they meet a mentor. The mentor helps them. They kind of...
Kill the monster, come back, they get the girl, they get the money back. There's a formula to it. Yeah, and then they come back. That's good for Hollywood stories or, you know, Matrix follows that. Harry Potter follows that. Star Wars. Literally every story follows that, right? Yeah, Karate Kid. It's all that. Mr. Miyagi, the mentor. Yoda's the mentor. Neo. You have this everywhere. And that's good for that. But for corporate, it doesn't always do that much.
So with corporate storytelling, you want to find out, again, what your change is. What do I want to do? Do I want to have them feel a little bit of what could happen if they don't, a little fear? Or do I want to raise up some like,
bonding, emotional thing where it's like oxytocin. You've heard of oxytocin. Um, they call it the love drug or the cuddle drug, but yeah, which makes them feel good. Uh, do we want that? Do we want to inspire them? So you kind of figure out what you want to do and then you find a story that fits into that narrative. Interesting. Uh, because, uh,
Before even what I'm doing now, it was also in the agency world. And obviously in that world, it's also constant presentations, right? Yeah. And one thing that I used to always say that I... Because I never studied anything about presentations. I come from a filmmaking background solely. And I remember when creating these creative presentations...
I was thinking and talking to my coworkers and stuff like that. I was thinking, you know, we should lay this out like a story, you know, and it should feel like, you know, don't just throw like,
500 words on a page with an image and explain everything, break that up into 10 pages and build it up and make it feel like it's like a story and then you have the climax and you have the ups and downs and stuff like that. And I used to relate it to storytelling because that's what I studied, filmmaking. And I found that technique work. I just didn't know that it was really a thing. Yeah, so maybe an easier way to...
to remember that whole situation is there's an acronym short, like short story. So each letter stands for a different part. So S stands for the situation. Um,
And there's also a word that begins with a C for each one. That if you remember those, that's actually the most important part, but it's hard to remember. So situation, that's more the context. So... Like lay it out first. 12 years ago, I was in Maui. And you start off, we know the context, we know what's happening. Then we have H, hero, which is character. And we kind of know, okay...
We tell something about yourself, where you are in life, what you were thinking, how you were feeling at the time, what was going on. Then we get into ordeal, O, which is the conflict phase.
The challenge that we have to face. So the bad guy, the problem, the disease, whatever happened that you had to overcome, the economic crisis, the COVID, whatever it is. And then we get into, where am I? R. R is resolution.
So that's the conclusion. That's how you solve the problem. You killed the dragon. You got the girl back. You got the money. You got your name and respect back, whatever it was. And then the last one is actually usually the most important T, transformation. That's how that hero in the beginning is different than he was at the end. Yeah, and that's really the change.
You know, that's what people, and that makes a very motivational story. So I think a great example of that is like Steve Jobs. When he gave his commencement speech, he said, I was in college. I was kind of lost. I didn't have a hope. I was kind of aimless. I would come in, sit in classes, watch. If I liked it, I stayed. If I didn't, I left. Had no goals.
Kind of met Wozniak, started up this thing in his garage. It started to go good. He got kicked out of the company. That's your conflict. What am I going to do? He started to wonder, should I go back to college? Maybe I wasn't made for business. Maybe I should do something else. Then he says, okay, no, I'm going to start Pixar and next. That's the resolution. And then transformation, he's like,
Here I am giving a commencement speech in front of Harvard. I'm Steve motherfucking Jobs. And they're handing me an honorary degree. So it's basically that's kind of the story that people want. And Steve Jobs, when you read his book, he wasn't a very nice guy. He wasn't very likable. But because he gave that vulnerability, that conflict, and how he had grit and character and overcame it, there's a respect, a props kind of thing there.
Whereas like if you have a – I'm not talking politics. I'm just saying if you have a Donald Trump kind of guy who starts off rich and famous –
and just got more rich and famous, we go, where's the story? Yeah, where's the ordeal? Where's the adversity you had to overcome, right? Yeah, and he even, I think he knew that. At one point he says, no, no, I got a modest loan of a million dollars. I had to struggle. And everyone's like, you don't get it. A modest loan. You don't get it, yeah. My hairline. Well, that's...
I never really thought about it that way when you're talking about the Steve Jobs commencement speech because that's a speech, like, that's one of my all-time favorite videos to watch on YouTube. Oh, nice.
But do you think Steve Jobs knew, like, we're talking about the storytelling and breaking it down, you know, chapter and chapter and how it progresses. Do you think he wrote that speech that way, knowing that about storytelling? Or do you think it just happened to be that way? I mean, I didn't know him personally, but Pixar is all about that hero's journey. And so that whole...
If you look into, he knew exactly what he was doing with that speech. Whether, whether it was learned or innate, we don't know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But, but just putting things into that kind of story sometimes works. So I'll give you an example. I was working with a president of a company here and it's like a,
multinational company. They're all over the place. And so he was going to do this interview where they would ask him a few canned preselected questions and he would answer them and he would introduce himself to all the branches around the world. So it was like tens of thousands of people would see this. This was a chance for him to move up within his company to maybe be, you know, the CEO somewhere else.
So it was a big deal for him how he came across. And he's a real nice guy, but he kind of just had a demeanor. Like his brow kind of came down like this and he just always looked upset. And he had a dry sense of humor. So when he joked around, he would just have the same dry face. And the Chinese people would be like... They didn't know if he was joking. Yeah, they just want to poke him like, yeah, is this a joke or not? So he had a little trouble with the way he came across. So one of the questions was, what's one thing that happened to you in your life that has really changed you the most?
I was young, my dad died, and I decided then time is valuable. So I don't waste time. I don't let anyone on my team waste time. I don't take bull and I don't let anyone get away with it. And I was like, okay, okay. So we were doing that ABC method that I do. And I said, when we talked about perception, what was the perception you wanted? He said, I wanted people to see me as a leader that people wanted to follow.
I said, good, good, good. Now let's think about what you just did. And he goes, yeah.
I just made people like follow me by fear. Intimidation. Intimidation. So he's just like, okay, how do we do it? So all we did is I just took his story and put it in the short story formula. And just like, I was 18. I just graduated. I had this awesome girlfriend who's now my wife. Things were going good. Got my first job, my first car. And he goes kind of like context and who he was. I was on top of the world. Everything was great. Then, oh, ordeal.
Then I got a phone call. My dad's got two weeks to live. A little pause, dramatic pause. And then he's just like, it's like a rug just got pulled out from under me. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to, everything. I started questioning everything. But after that, when I got my wits back, I realized that life is short. We have to treasure everything. And I realized that my family came first. And I realized that my work, the people I work with, they're also my family.
And then it became like this, you wanted the music going in the background. Yeah. People like wiping their tears from their face, right? Yeah. Huge difference. Doing like the slow clap, the stand up slow clap that gradually builds. And then it was like every relationship, every colleague is my family. And I treasure my relationship with them and the time I have with them.
And that, yeah. So that, yeah, that's, that's how you take just some facts and you just kind of rearrange them, add a little drama. Put some glamour, yeah. Well, this is gold. This is gold right now. Yeah. In terms of communication and how to like talk to people and get people to kind of like, you know, get on board with what you want. Can I ask if this guy was, was he Chinese? No, he was South African.
Because I feel like, I mean, I hate generalizing, but I can't help it. I mean, I find there are a lot of especially highly intelligent or powerful local Chinese people that tend to go, they're almost like a machine. You know what I mean? It's like when they speak or when they're sharing their ideas, it's almost mechanical and it's purely based on logic.
And so, for example, when you were just sharing that idea, I can see or hear a picture. I can see someone like that. I see it. And then...
The way you just changed that story. Like, even me, like, in that one second, I was like, oh, really? Yeah. Oh, shit. You know? Like, I was into it. As opposed to before, I'm like, yeah, I've heard this. Yeah, okay, I get it. Yeah. You're a hard ass and you have no emotion. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. It's pretty amazing what you can do. But what does that go to say about, like, how malleable, like, we all are? Like, how susceptible to, like...
influence and persuasion and even manipulation that we all are where like, even though intellectually we can break something down and know something's happening, but something as simple as what we're talking about can kind of completely change the way you absorb that information or you view that information or how you emotionally feel about it. And we can't help ourselves. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, like you, like we talked about, you know, someone's doing it on purpose, but you still do some mental accounting. You're like, well,
I'm not going to say goodbye to this friend because they're manipulating me right now, or I'm not going to lose this business deal because they're, I could tell what they're trying to make me do. It's not always evil intent. It's just people sometimes, like you said, innately know, and then sometimes they, they deviously know what they're doing, but we still kind of weigh things. Is it worth it or not to do it when, when those tickets are on sale and you know, there's probably going to be there tomorrow, you'll still go through the, the, the probability of,
And say, you know what? I don't mind spending the extra money right now. Or I was going to buy those tickets anyway. You'll start to rationalize and why wait till tomorrow? You'll be done. Then I can sleep tonight. I don't have to worry about it. Justify it. You'll justify it. And then tomorrow you're fine. So most of the stuff is not a life or death situation.
But I feel like the general public all across the world are non-cognizant of this. And so, like, this whole behavioral science, right? And so they're purely reacting off of their instinct or what they think is their own, you know, control. And...
you know, they're, they're, they're okay with that because they're not thinking too much about it. You know what I mean? It's not until we have conversations like this or if one is exposed to this type of ideology that, and especially if the personality fits it, they would be like, well, okay, I got to think about this or, or, or maybe, or maybe change around and like, okay, well, that's a weapon. I mean, that's,
You know what I mean? Like I can use that. It makes you more cognizant of, of what's going on. You kind of just take a step back, you know, in a conversation and say, what's going on here? And you can look at the world, even the way the news is and the way politics work. The fact, the minute that you understand that human beings are, are easily programmable, I mean, in a certain way, right? Then you realize that people in power are,
use that against the people. Can I say that? No, definitely. Definitely. I mean, in the political world, it's nonstop. There's a book called Words That Work. I think it's Frank Luntz. And he worked for a lot of different administrations or campaigns, I should say, not administrations. And they would do these little focus groups and they'd, let's try this word and let's try this word or let's try this scenario. And he would find which words had more persuasive power in different situations. Yeah.
And you can't always just say, oh, this word is strong. I'm always going to use it. It's a different situation. So it's a process that's very interesting because it's constantly changing. And it's all around us. That's what's like...
Now, like after this conversation, like, you know, you go outside and you walk around and you're like, you're going to start looking at everything differently. I mean, we already started that doing that, like with media. I mean, like media these days is completely out of hand, right? Like every news outlet has their own spin and it's like so clear what their agenda is, right? Yeah.
So it's like, they're already kind of doing that, I guess. But like, that's just us like talking to you today. Like Troy, like what, like, do you walk through like the world? Like just like looking around everything like, oh, this is all bullshit, man. This is all bullshit. Like, are you just like one like paranoid mess, you know, like when you walk down the street, you know? I think I was like that before I got into this. I know all of your trickery. You can't get me. Yeah.
No, I mean, there's a, like I said, there's the human element to it too. So most of the time it's not a big deal. And there's times when people, you see what people are doing, especially being a foreign here, here in China, especially when I first came, it, it always, you know, you always felt like you were getting ripped off somehow. And, and now when I deal with like my landlord and I remember a while ago, I had to get the showerhead changed.
And they were coming in, they were speaking in Shanghainese, so I couldn't understand what they were saying. But I could tell it was something about money. And it was like a half hour. I was like, I got stuff to do. So I asked my landlord, I'm like, how much are we talking about? He's like, shu kuai, ten kuai. I'm like, I got it out of my pocket. He's like, no, no, I can't take it from you. I'm like, my time is worth more than ten kuai. Exactly. And so now if I walk down the street and someone...
Ask a crazy price. I'm not going to get ripped off, but I'm not going to fight over little stuff, even though I know the next person that walked down the street that's Chinese would get a cheaper price. It's not that big a deal to me. Yeah, so I guess to answer your question, again, in a long way, you balance it out. Is it worth it? Is my happiness, my sanity, my, you know? Well, I mean, convenience must have, like the principles of convenience must,
kind of play a role I guess at the end of the day right like we all kind of want to just get things done get things over with and usually if like something gets stuck and it's you know threatening to be like this big you know like a bigger issue than it needs to be like we'd rather okay we'll just pay more or we'll sacrifice in another way just to get it over with right yeah there's always competing things that are going on so and that is going
going back to that guy that was fixing your lamp knew that you're a behavioral scientist and was like, if I just take my time, he knows that this 10 kuai is not worth his time. He'll give me that money. Oh, he's the mastermind. He's the real mastermind. He's the real puppet master. You got played. Yeah, that guy was the real puppet master behind this. Walking down the street with 10 kuai. You got played. Like a month later, you see him doing a TED Talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like persuading me. Yeah.
Sorry, sometimes we go off. Our imagination just goes off. That's good. But Troy, how do you, like, was there something that started you on this journey to explore, you know, go down this path with behavioral economics, behavioral science and kind of the art of like persuasion?
Yeah, it was just a natural interest. I think it was that book, Freakonomics, that got me interested in like, oh, wow, presenting something two different ways can have a giant difference. Like the exact same thing two different ways, right? Yeah, well, the same situation, but just come at it from a different angle. Another example from that book I think that was great was they had an area of the park where dogs were just going to the bathroom and no one would pick it up.
So then New York said, okay, let's have this like $100 fine if you don't pick up.
But what happened was the people would go, they'd look around, see no one there and just walk away. Or the police would see it and they go, I'm a New York cop. I have bigger fish to fry than this. This is humiliating for me to have to give and then argue with someone over this. And they're not going to be cool about 100 bucks. And it's just, you know, just a dog. So it's like didn't work. But then they had this campaign about like being a good neighbor.
And then they found out that that actually got results. And it was costless. You didn't have to have enforcement. It was just, yeah, and that's where like nudge theory is that invisible thing
You know, well, how much does that because yeah, go like talking about nudge theory, like how much does guilt then play a role in persuading people to do certain things? Like, you know, I think the being in a good neighbor thing, I think, I guess you can boil that down to guilt, right? How many times have like, Oh, do I want to be a bad neighbor? Yeah. Right. And parents do it all the time. Right. Like knowingly or unknowingly. Yeah. So like, I guess like, is, is that like a big, like motivating force guilt just by itself?
Yeah, it is. And your peers' perception of you is in that too. So yeah, they had a... Robert Cialdini did a big study on... I forget what it was called, but you probably remember. I'm older than you guys, so I'm trying to see if you know this commercial, but... Are you sure about that? You're older than us? We'll talk later, yeah. Okay. You might be surprised. They had this old Indian guy and people were throwing trash and...
And like, you know, he was like native Indian, you know, he was in this canoe and he'd seen the water, there was trash and he'd come up and land and some car drove by and they threw trash and it like landed at his feet. And you just see this like tough Indian guy and he's like, yeah, single tier. Right. And when you watched it, you're like, oh man, that's a touching commercial. But what they found out was that, and they did a lot of tests on things like that, they found out that it's actually did the reverse of
Because what happens is people do what other people do. So there's something called social proof, which is another one of the principles of persuasion. If you say 9 out of 10 doctors recommend, if you say 90% of the people do something, most people say, oh, okay. If they do it, I'll do it. So if other people even litter, they're like, well, I guess it's not that bad.
It's not that big a deal. I feel sorry for the one Indian guy that doesn't like it. But everyone does it, so. He did it so nonchalantly. Yeah, so they found out better thing is to say most people don't do this. Oh, wow. Because I remember that campaign that you were talking about with that advertisement with the Native American crying. Wait, so that actually doubled the amount of litter people? According to his studies, yeah. Wow. Of course, his studies are probably somewhat biased, but yeah.
Well, like if we talk about more like current events, I mean, there's a lot of debate going on with the, especially like in America, not really anywhere else, but in America with the idea of wearing masks, right? During COVID, right? So, I mean, that's a shining example, I think, of behavioral science right there, where why are people like so defensive against wearing a simple mask during an outbreak, right?
You know, and I've heard different ideas, and I think the most plausible one is just because people want to feel that they're in control of their own decisions. Even if that choice is something they might have made anyway, even if you didn't tell them. Like, they might have worn a mask even if you didn't tell them to. But the fact that you told them to wear a mask, then they're like, oh, I don't like being told what to do. Like, I'm in control of myself. Don't tell me what to do. Then they don't wear the mask. Right. Like, what's your take on that?
Yeah, I mean, at the beginning of any, you know, any thing that you're taking part of to change people, you have to say, what do I want to accomplish and what don't I want to accomplish? So sometimes you can get what you want, but then the other consequences that come with it are even worse. So you can get people to wear masks, but maybe for the wrong reasons. So then maybe they do other things that spread the disease in other situations. So
In this situation, you'd really want education. You want a clear message. And then you could use nudge aspects of talking about what kind of mask is best, not should you or should you not wear it. And then you put it in that light.
Yeah, I remember a while ago, I was in, it was many years ago, I was in Seattle and they have many coffee shops and there was like two main coffee shops in town and everyone was saying like, so which one are you? Would you like this kind or that kind? And everyone was taking sides. And then later I found out it was the same guy who owned both of them. And I was just like, that's genius. That's genius. And they would have t-shirts, I'm with this, I'm with that. And I'm just like,
I'm just like, wow. You nailed it. That is genius. You nailed it. That is genius. Look at your face, Howie. That is genius. That is genius. We should do that. We should. Oh my God. Let's just like open two things at once. Let's like do two podcasts. I want royalties. No one knows it's us, right? We're just like competing. We'll just talk shit about the other one. Meanwhile, it's us.
But yeah, that's the thing. If you frame the conversation differently, not should you or should you not, if it's what kind do you think is better? And then you can have two camps of people arguing over what kind they're going to wear, but then you're like, okay, at least everyone's wearing it. But that's just pure... That's behavioral science, right? That's part of it, right? Human nature to want to be part of a group, to...
To feel like you belong. And by choosing a side, I am part of that group. Yeah, and a lot of nudge theory is about not presenting a choice.
Yeah, like not giving an ultimatum, right? But just like, because once you give someone an ultimatum, then they feel like they're backed up against the corner, right? Their back's up against the wall. And then they get defensive about it. They feel out of control. But instead, you give them options, right? You don't give them ultimatum, but you give them options. Then all of a sudden, they feel like, oh, I have the freedom and choice to choose here. I'm the one in control. Meanwhile, like the options you give are all like, you know, you've decided which options you're going to give them.
Yeah, like there was a study that I always think is interesting. It was in Stanford University, the study where they had two groups of people, A and B, and they separate them. And they said, we're going to give you each a hypothetical situation. We want you to talk as a group and come up with an answer. So they had group A, and they said, okay, group A, they said, the city of Addison.
hypothetical city, has a crime problem. Crime is like a beast going through the city. Here's a list of possible choices of ways to handle it. What do you think we should do? Group B, crime in Addison is like a virus spreading through the city. What do you think we should do about it? And what they found out, like they did this over and over again, they found group A would always pick things that were very reactive. So, you know, punish, arrest, put him in a cage, prison, things like that.
things like that. Group execute sometimes. Group B was always like prevention, protection, education, things like that. And all they did was change the word. Just that word changed it. And it was very interesting to me because that alone is amazing that time and time again, this group would pick that and this group would pick that. But when they told them about it, only like 3% of the people said, oh, that might have changed my mind.
Other people say, no, I would have picked the same thing anyway. Like we've done this test a hundred times. Like you wouldn't. Yeah. So it's amazing. And what I thought was interesting is when I read that, I read some other studies from the same group and they had this idea of, because this is a big problem in America too, police, are you a guardian or are you a warrior? Right.
And just that terminology, warrior, then they're like in black, can't see their face, ready for battle. Guardian, hey, son, how's it going? Oh, here's your ball. It's like kind of neighborhood guardian. It changes the way they, the role that they take on. So, I mean, obviously, it's not just the word, but
the implications of the word. Yeah. Yeah. It's like something so small can like reframe everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's so crazy. Like the fact that we're in China though, and that you're working here and you're working with companies here, um, in this society, um, because we're talking about like influencing people, persuading decision-making things like that. And before we were talking about like, Oh, maybe guilt is, you know, I was saying like, well, maybe guilt is something very powerful. Um,
The whole face and mianzi thing here, like that's got to play a big role into your work. It's bigger here than the West. Yeah, because it's very big here. So everyone wants to like have mianzi, right? Have face, whether it's in front of their boss or the boss in front of their employees, right? So it's like, it's always at play. So I would have to imagine that that would be a big tool for you to use in your line of work.
Yeah. Like playing to that, like playing towards people's idea of mianzi. Honestly, a lot of the people that I deal with are giving presentations abroad. So they're either giving presentations virtually or to their team or to...
or to people here that are foreigners. So yeah, 'cause that, man, that's a whole can of worms. And then the Zhong Yong, like the golden means. So all of that is in play and people don't wanna go too far either way. Or I have to do my obligations first and then I can get into what I wanna do later.
It's complicated. I was listening to one of your podcasts with Gabor. Oh, Gabor. Gabor, yeah. I don't know him, but yeah, I always see his name. Gabor Holtz, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But very interesting. Very interesting. He is an awesome, awesome guy. I love him to death. In my work, I've touched on the cultural aspects of things, but it's such a minefield that I've decided to steer clear of it. But he kind of spent his life navigating through it. Yeah, yeah. He's walking on both sides of that fence. He's one of the few who is very...
He can do that. He's got authority to put his sense in. Yeah, because the culture is just so different. And you kind of have to change these certain ideologies to fit it. Yeah, because people think differently here. Yeah, because we keep talking about how psychology has a role to play in all this.
And so you have to take the local mentality of psychology into account. And, you know, something like face means is like very, very big. Even the show with Ben Cavender, we're talking about retailers and stores that came to China to open up shop and failing because they thought that by bringing our, because we're successful in the West, we're going to bring that way of working and our brand imaging to China.
to China and it's just gonna, we're just gonna make, make some money, you know, but no, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. Yeah. It completely backfires. Just culturally different. Yeah. So, um, so what's next for you, Troy? Is there like, um, do you have anything, uh, any other events or, uh, talking engagements down the, down the road? Um,
I just did a big one that I think I told you about before. Yeah, what was that one again? That was Nudge Stock. Okay, yeah, yeah. Nudge Stock? That sounds like an awesome name. Yeah, so that's... But they're big, right? It's very big, yeah. Ogilvy Advertising puts it on every year, and it was kind of a... Kind of a...
Like they go to this little seaside town in England every year and do it. And it costs a lot of money to fly there to attend. It is very small. Uh, but this year, cause of COVID it, it went international and online online. So, um, I was fortunate enough to be invited to it to speak a little bit and, and,
Yeah. So that was great. And that got me a lot of exposure that I wouldn't have had. So yeah, now I'm getting, I'm starting to get podcast invitations. This is my first one. So thank you. Welcome. And yeah, so that's moving on. But really what I'm trying to work on now is I'm writing a book. Oh, great. So this is a book. It's going to be called Bridges. It's going to be based on that ABC formula that I talked about. Is there a timeline for that book?
I have a writing coach and he really wants one, but I'm not... So you're just beginning, you're just starting? I'm probably about halfway. So what I'm trying to do is, because I lived a long time in Brooklyn, I'm trying to mix storytelling in with kind of like a...
you know, self-help book on presentation. So it's, I'm trying to do both and kind of make it interesting. We'll see how it turns out. I'm looking forward to that book. Yeah, same here. We got to have you back on when you have that book out. Oh, that'd be great. We can talk about it. Yeah, right. When you're ready to publish that book, we'll have you back on. We can talk about that book too. Fantastic. That'd be awesome.
But, um, I guess, you know, we'll, uh, we won't, won't take up any more of your time, Troy. I know, uh, you got some, some other engagements after this, but, uh, thank you. Thanks a lot for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. Um, I think there was a lot of gems in this conversation. Like the whole conversation is something like, like now, like my brain is like kind of like rolling now where I'm just like, kind of like thinking about all these things and I can't engage the world the same way anymore. But, uh,
This is life-changing, Troy. Oh, good, good. If you ever have any questions, just give me a call. But thanks again for coming on the show, man. My pleasure. And let's do this again sometime. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks, guys. All right, guys. I'm Justin. And I'm Howie. That was Troy. And see you guys next time. Love you. Peace. See you.
Bye.