350. The Art of Captivating Marketing: Unleashing the Power of Hype - Michael Schein (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 350 of the Brainy Business. Understanding the Psychology of why People buy. Today's episode is all about Hype with Michael F. Shine. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is, as you may have noticed, a milestone 350 episodes of the show.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

It's amazing how quickly these come up now that we're doing two episodes a week. I, of course know how math works, so it should be obvious that if we kicked off the year with 250, we were gonna end the year just over 350. But it didn' really strike me as to what a cool milestone it was until we got here. This year has had other amazing milestones as well. Way back in September, we surpassed a million downloads of the show. How cool is that? Thank you all for downloading, subscribing, sharing, rating and leaving reviews of the show. We wouldn't have any of this if it wasn't for you, and I never forget that.

So thank you.

And what makes things catch on in a way that gets others excited? What makes people inspired to buy tickets, tickets to an event or listen to a band, or check out a book or a podcast or a restaurant they haven't tried before? One thing, as you're going to hear about from today's guest is what he calls hype. Now, I know that many of you may have a bit of a visceral reaction to that word, but know that Michael shares it in the most loving way. Hype is a good thing, especially for your business. Michael is going to tell you all about why hype is good, and we dive into some of his top tips for creating it from his book, the Hype Handbook in today's episode, which originally aired in March of 2021. This is so critical for all businesses. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one. Don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, books and articles, all waiting for you in the show Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 350. All right, let's talk about hype. Michael F. Shine, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

I am so happy to be here.

Melina oh, great. Well, I'm so excited to have you and so excited that we got serendipitously connected at the right time at the end of 2020, I think. So if you can tell the audience a little bit about you, we'd love to learn about your background and how you got into doing the work that you do.

Well, sort of the brief version of the story, if I can speak briefly, which is hard for me to do, but I own a company called Micro Fame Media and what we do in the thumbnail is we work with idea driven businesses. So any kind of business that as you would think, has an idea behind it, but meaning we wouldn't be great to market a raw materials company or a ball bearing company, but if, you know, consultancies and publishing houses that have media products, any certain tech startups, we're really good at finding a niche that's out there. Figuring out like a contrarian point of view, what does this company or the people behind the company or the person behind the company have to say that is sort of not what everyone else is saying? And didn't do a whole flood of activity that gets them known in that arena for certain goals. And while we're a marketing agency, I don't like to think of it that way. I think of us as a hype agency because I learned how to do this stuff in a very sort of weird way. I played in punk bands and I did like mischief and that sort of thing. And we can talk about that. And I figured out that a lot of the strategies and tactics used by mischief makers, both benevolent mischief makers and otherwise, are a lot more effective than your typical social media. How many Instagram followers? Whereas can you get HubSpot, whatever, Those are all tools. But a lot of times people focus on that stuff. They don't focus on the actual mass psychology that gets people to buy stuff. So before I did any of that, and since I was five years old, I wanted to be a writer. And I was a writer my whole life, I wrote fiction, I wrote articles, I still do. And so I recently wrote a book about these concepts called the Hype Handbook, where I look at propaganda artists and cult leaders and rock and hip hop managers and pranksters and I say, are there principles and strategies we can extract from these people and reapply ethically to get what we want out of life? And that's been a really, really fun project that speaks to my heart. And fortunately some people are reading it and liking it.

Well, I'm one of those people to be sure. And I appreciate in it. I love any book or documentary or something you would watch where it weaves together so many stories that seem like they don't have anything in common and they're from all sorts of eras and backgrounds and just anything possible, but finding the thread that helps them to make sense and putting together, you know, this is from the 13th century monk, and then this is from Alice Cooper, like, and this is how they come together or whatever. Right. Which I know that those. I don't think those ones actually went together, but, you know, so I like that because it helps to show that. That love of the research and the learning and it. I think it just goes to show how much went into creating a book or a story when you have such a vast array of examples to pull from. It tells the story in a way too, where if I don't relate to a particular example, the next one is right there and just kind of keep going and jump right in.

Thank you for the compliment. One of the reasons I did that was for the reasons you said that I like doing that kind of research. It's a fun read when you have those kind of stories. But there's another reason as well, and it's that people, throughout history, certain people have been really effective, more effective than others at getting large numbers of people into a transcendent state and then getting them to do what they want. And I think sometimes we think, we say, oh, you know, it's the social media era and it's the Internet era and we have to learn landing pages, and that's going to change everything. But I guess I was trying to make the point through all those examples that whether you were Augustus commissioning the aeneid to legitimize your rule, or Richard Branson flying a hot air balloon, or a modern tech guru playing with certain dynamics on social media, the underlying psychological principles are ancient and people forget that they think too much about the tools. It's like focusing on getting the right hammers and chainsaws, but not getting an architect.

Right, right. Yeah, for sure. That's the. I've always enjoyed the quote. It's. Which sort of applies here, but the. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of that going on now. Yeah.

Right. So if all you're looking at is social. And I think that there is a really great lesson in. One of the big problems that I've always seen is when you go to look for kind of that silver bullet and like, how'd they get their million followers, and then I'm gonna do exactly what they did. But what they did has been done now. And so it, while it was innovative and different and stood out when they did it. Like, if I go wear a meat dress now, it doesn't have the same significance as, you know, when Lady Gaga went out in the meat dress.

That's why you need to learn principles instead of tactics, you know, strategies instead of tactics. Like, I'll see these books, and they're useful. I'm not like, don't get me wrong, technology is important, but you'll see these things. You know, I remember I read a book once when I was really new at this. It was like Google, you know, and it was basically like, how to use Google. It's tied to the search engine, so it's everything, and it's going to make your marketing dreams come true. And I sort of bought into it at that time because I was new and Google doesn't even exist anymore. Right. So it's, it's, you know. Yeah, but if you know how humans work in groups and how their brains inefficiently process information, then you can feel really secure that you'll find your own version of the meat dress or your own version of Google, because you know, what drives human beings on a more fundamental level.

Yeah, yeah. Good news for every listener of the brainy business, because that's what we do here, understanding what the brain does so we can, you know, better communicate, market and all the things. So I do think, one, before we jump into some of those principles of the hype handbook, I do think that some people may, for better or worse, and in your case, potentially this is a good thing. But some people may rebel a little bit against the concept or the word of hype to where it feels like hype is empty. Or maybe someone would say it feels kind of sleazy, which I know it's not, and that's not what's included here in the book. But why do you choose that particular term and what does it mean for you and the work that you do?

Well, first of all, a lot of hype artists are sleazy. Right? I mean, there are people who apply. I mean, I have examples of people in the book who are scumbags, but they're really effective at affecting large numbers of people and they use some of the same underlying strategies that really good people do. So you have to say to yourself, you have two choices. You can say, I wish the world were different, and I'm not going to Understand how humans are. Or you can say, I'm a good person, or at least I try to be, and I'm trying to sell good products and good services and good art and whatever. What if I learned from those other people and try to reapply what they do ethically? But why did I use that word? So I want to sort of take it back, you know, I mean, for so long, it's been considered a negative word. But, you know, there's one community that has never considered hype a negative word, and it's the hip hop community. Because in hip hop, hype was what you had to do to get your music out there. No one was helping you up. I mean, helping you out. Hip hop originally comes from very poor neighborhoods, neighborhoods where the people, the main practitioners, did not have advantages. So it's very easy when, you know, you're on a sort of. The word now is privileged. Right? When you're on a privileged career track, it's easy to say, this is how you waggle your finger and say, this is how you should do things. But in hip hop, there were never those kind of pretensions. There was always a hype man in a rap group who was responsible for hyping up the crowd, hyping up the street teams, hyping up whoever was involved. And I just like that aesthetic. We're all in disadvantaged circumstances at some point in our lives, some more than others. But we're all in periods of our lives where, to more or less of an extent, we need to think creatively. And as long as you're not lying and deceiving people and selling them stuff that they don't need, I'm all for hyping things up.

Absolutely. And I know you do talk about this in the book, but because we're a herding species, being able to see where someone is being energetic and excited, and then you get some more people that are energetic and excited and they're doing the, you know, clap along with us sort of thing, and everybody kind of follows suit, is, you know, there's some mirror neurons in there. That instinct to herd is a big reason why something like that works. It definitely got me thinking about one of my very favorite TED Talks, talks about how to start a movement.

Is that the Derek Sivers one or who.

Yeah, yeah.

One person is dancing and. Yeah. Yes.

And so I've talked about it on the show before. It's the. There's the one. If you're just the only person and everyone can't be a leader and he Talks about not underestimating the value of that first follower and the person who believes in you and supports it and talks about you really early on, that takes you from being the lone weirdo to the beginning of a movement when you have someone else kind of behind you and supporting you. And I think in a lot of ways that's part of what the hype man does.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I think sometimes I'm interested in various types of artwork, whether it's art proper or literature or music. And, you know, we think of art movements as just these steady things, like things are good or they're bad. But when abstract art, Cubism or Dadaism, when that first came out, it got people so agitated and worked up that there were riots. And now it's so blase abstract art that it's used by interior decorators. You know what I mean? Like, you don't see an interior decorator put up a Norman Rockwell thing anymore. It's always like a bunch of squiggles and a cube and it's like wallpaper. That's how normal and boring Cubism is. Right? And it's the same art. So, like context and what you're saying, it's like the first person who. If there was only one person who was drawing cubes and squares 150 years ago, they would have been in a mental institution or just a weirdo on the street. Once there were five, it was a bunch of bohemians, and once it was 50 million. It's wallpaper, right?

Definitely the ebb and flow or the life cycle of anything. And it's important to know where you are, to kind of interject and get that sort of controversial point and whatnot that you can come up with, which I know is. I believe it's the hype tactic. Number one. Is that controversial, or at least you talk about it in the intro to the book. So I don't know if you want to start there. I am not expecting we will talk about all 12 today. So I want also for you, if you have a favorite tactic you want to start with or when you don't get to talk about very much, would always love to bring those out into the mix.

Well, I think we should talk about the first type strategy, which is called Make War Not Love, because in some ways it's not an accident that it was chapter one. It is in many ways the strategy that all of the rest of the strategies are built on. So because you have a sciency crowd, I'm going to go into Some of the deep science that I don't always go into, but there was an anthropologist quite a few years ago now who did some really cool research, an anthropologist and an archaeologist who worked together. And they found this alcove in South Africa on like the southwest coast of Africa that they found evidence that there was a very dense source of shellfish like a hundred thousand years ago. I'm probably getting the numbers wrong, but back when we were hunter gatherers and by looking at sort of the climactic data and whatever they found out there was a climate change event at that time that almost made Homo sapiens go extinct. Like basically our species was reduced to this very, very, very small number of people who retreated from the savanna to the southwest coast of Africa. And they have a very strong data backed hypothesis right now that this tribe, everyone on earth, including you and me and every listener, is descended from this small group of people, a handful of tribes. And they didn't have to hunt and they didn't have to gather because they had this dense calorie source, this shellfish. And so the only thing keeping them from this food was other tribes. And there were only a small number of tribes. So basically it's selected for traits. If you were really good at cooperating with people that you artificially deemed to be like you, you had a certain name of the tribe, certain, I mean the physical features obviously wouldn't be that different because it was, you know, one group of people. But whatever, some artificial designation, you cooperated like crazy with people like that and really hated people who weren't like that. That was selected for, those were the people who survived. And so every human on earth, whether we like it or not, has this dynamic. We fight it, but we all have it in different ways. So we're all wired very strongly to like people we perceive as being us and ideas we perceive as being us and disliking very strongly ideas and people who aren't like us. And actually oxytocin, which is the cuddle chemical which we consider the thing that makes us love our children and love our long term partners, is the same chemical that behind racism. It's the same brain chemical that makes us hate people. So why is this significant? Because as much as you want to fight it people, and that includes you listener are more attracted to their tribalism and being against stuff as they are being forced up. Like you'll see these very like, you know, vegan lovey dovey liberals and they'll have on their online dating profiles if you're a trump Fan. Do not approach me. You know, do not contact me. Because, yeah, we feel how we feel about Trump, et cetera, et cetera, but that's a strong reaction for a political party. So how do you play with this without being a jerk? Position yourself against an idea. Right. So ask yourself. Let's say you're in a business field. I mean, it could be any field, but let's say you're in some kind of business. What is a point of view commonly spouted in your industry that you're. That everyone kind of just like, preaches as gospel and you disagree with, you think is wrong? Put yourself up as the crusader against that point of view if you really feel that way. And I assure you, there are other people who feel the same way as you who don't have. It's that follower principle. They don't have the first person to speak up yet. But you become the guy waggling your hands or the lady waggling your hands. You're that first dancer. And then all those other people now have a leader to create a new tribe around. And I'm telling you, we can go through examples, but it is probably the most powerful thing you can do to build energy around whatever you're out there doing.

Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and jump into at least one example to help people, to see how that could work for them, and tips, maybe.

Well, I'll give an example from the business world that's not at all about people, that's not at all personal. And I like those examples because it's almost easy to demonize a human being and make a scapegoat. But. Scapegoat. But that's where, while it's effective, you can get in really tricky territory doing that. Right. Ethically.

Yeah.

So not. I think there's a time and place for that, actually. If people are saying things that you disagree with, you can call them out. But an example that I like is Basecamp, which is a project management software, which for a lot of people would be considered about as milquetoast and boring of a field you could possibly think of. But they did a cool thing with it, the founders. So essentially the MO in the project management space before them was that you built as many features into your project management tool as you could. Now, a project management tool, for those of you who don't know, it's what it would seem like. It's a piece of software that everyone on a team uses to do the different parts of a project that are necessary to happen at the same time to execute something which can get complicated. So the idea was clients would ask for different features and the company would build them in and then give them to everybody else. Because why not have more stuff? I mean, why have something do 20 things if you can have them do 30 things? Right? So what the founders of this tool, Basecamp did, they created a project management tool which does like, don't quote me on this, but like five things really well. It's really stripped down, but they didn't go out and say, our tool is simple so it's easy to use. That's what most people would do. What they did was they kind of. They wrote books and blog posts and this and that. A crusade around inefficiency and stupid workaholism. So their whole thing was, if you're working seven day weeks, that's not because you're a hard worker. It's because you are over complicating things. And that's the sign of a cluttered mind. They would say, fire your workaholics. So they turned this project management thing, a piece of technology, into this crusade. So instead of selling a tool, they created this tribe against overwork culture. But you need something to help you with it. So of course you're gonna use their software. Right?

Right. Yeah.

And they're just. They've done insanely well. And it's the kind of product where someone gets Salesforce. It's like, I'm using Salesforce. Cause it's the best tool someone gets Basecamp. And it's like, I love Basecamp. I love Jason Fried and dmm, the founders. I read Rework five times, the book they wrote. So it's like this religion thing and they just use that adversarial dynamic that we're talking about to make that happen in a very ethical way. I mean, it's a great tool.

Well, and there are people who still love project management software and use other systems.

Of course.

Of course there are. And sometimes you need a more complex system. I mean, you know.

Yeah. But for most businesses, you look at that and go, ugh, that looks terrible. I definitely. So I've got notes here to link to the episode on the overwhelmed brain and what it does for decision making. So that's in the notes as well as some other things we've talked about so far as, you know, our personal biases towards ourselves as well as other groups dose brain chemicals. It'll all be linked in the show notes along with lots of other things that we don't necessarily call out in the discussion, picking something that you know in your heart of hearts you passionately disagree with, that is important too. Which I know brings up to one of the other principles which might be four or five, but it's the, you know, in the dressing the for the right part and really having to live the whatever it is and not be inauthentic essentially or it has to do with the packaging I think was the way that you, you phrased it. But you know, that I think really ties in with. You can't just pick something that you think would be controversial if you don't agree or live that.

Yeah, no, exactly, I see people do. So there's a quote by these guys, Elliot Aronson and Anthony Prat Khanis, who if you haven't mentioned them, I don't know, they're really interesting social scientists. They're the foremost kind of students on propaganda. You know, not students, but really masters, you know, professors of propaganda and group psychology. And they have this quote that says the. Let me get it right. It's the essence of propaganda is a well designed package. And I think people go wrong in two ways. On one hand, they're very cynical and they say I'm going to try to pick fights and be a rabble rouser just for the sake of it. And that's just trolling. People can sense that a mile away. Just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk can a get you in trouble. But it doesn't usually work. People just get annoyed with exceptions. But you know, but I think what, what other people do is they think about their packaging or their quote unquote branding in this very surface level way, you know, or piece me away. So they, you know, they redesign their website, they get a hip new logo when they go to a tech conference instead of wearing a tie, which they would have done 15 years ago, they wear expensive sneakers and a blazer over a black T shirt because that's hip, right? But if you look at the real masters of what I call hype, but you could call them gurus or figures, thought leaders or celebrities in their niche, whatever, they have a public Persona that is almost a caricature version of who they are at their core. And they never let it down. It is woven through everything they are in everything they do. So how do you do that? How do you make that happen? Well, the trick is, and I do talk about this in the book, is don't start with your obvious strengths because let's say you're a really assertive and efficient person and you're in business. Well, there are probably millions of other assertive and efficient people. That's like table stakes, right? But imagine if you're absent minded, meek, and that gives you a whole lot of angst and that gives you a whole lot of insecurity. Well, can you find a strength buried in that weakness? Because that's where your uniqueness is. So let me give you an example. This isn't the business world, but this person happened to be a very good business person as well as a good artist. But it was Andy Warhol. You know, he always could draw well and paint well. But he was in the 40s, which is when he was a kid. He was gay, which was illegal, and he was quite obviously gay. Like, he wasn't able to hide it very well. He was insanely shy to social anxiety levels. That's what they would call it now. He had a receding hairline at a very early age. And before him, the artists that were popular were the abstract expressionists, which were very manly men, like Jackson Pollock. It was like these tough kind of guys. So he could have tried to hide all of that. People before him had, but what did he do? He accentuated his shyness and his sort of the feminine side of himself. So like when people, when the press would say to him, why are you painting cans of soup? Artists before him would have gone into this whole diatribe about what they meant and what they were going for. And he would say, I like soup and people, what did he mean? And they would just pick it apart forever. Or he wore this garish silver wig that he's now famous for. He was balding at an early age. Now, he could have worn a toupee or he could have had just the balding hair, but he just was like, I'm gonna wear this obvious ridiculous wig. So that's what we know him for. And he was such a good business person. He created the factory, he created the modern artist that had a team of people mass producing artwork. Right. But he was the opposite of what you would think of as a good traditional business person. So find your insecurity and be real honest with yourself, because that's what you're going to be able to be consistent with. Not something that you're faking, right?

Yeah. You want to have something that you can just really live to be in integrity with yourself, for one thing. But it just makes it. People can pick up on. I know you said something about confidence in the book, which I talk about a lot, and it being a priming Thing often I'll talk about it when we're looking at pricing strategy. And so if you are telling someone how much it costs and you are not confident in that price, whatever it is, or what people are going to get or what your value proposition is, people can smell that lack of confidence in the same way that, you know, dogs smell fear, sort of a thing.

What you're saying is 100% true. Speaking with authority and confidence is true. And there's a wrinkle to that. Like in everything else in life, there's a paradox. If you try to be confident in a way that isn't natural, it will fail. So, for example, a lot of times when people hear be confident, they look at naturally confident people who have a brash, assertive confidence. And if that's you, you should do that. But if that's not, you see if you can embrace a different kind of confidence. So I'll give you an example. So I'm kind of a people pleaser by nature. You know, I, I don't know why. And I used to dislike that about myself because I, I looked at a lot of the entrepreneur type people that I admired, and they tended to be very direct and this sort of thing. And I was like, oh, gosh. And I would try to do that and whenever I would try to, like, speak directly and, you know, this and this, it was quite obvious I would overcompensate. I couldn't really hold it for too long, you know, but when I started to embrace that other part of who I was. So there's a part of being a people pleaser, especially the kind I am more powerful. People tend to really want to take me under their wing and help me out. So I found that strength in what we do, and I use it all the time. So, like, for example, I'll talk to you. I hyped you up, but in a way that helps both of us, right? I said to you, you, I wrote you a very Mike Shine email, you know, that basically said, I have an article coming out, which I only put people on the list that I thought were the best podcast because I wanted to be on their podcast. I want to be on the best podcast. But I said, I have, you know, an article coming out and I would love to have a conversation with you about whether you would be a good fit for this best podcast psychology podcast for business people. You know, article I'm doing on psychology. Oh, by the way, I'm, you know, I have a book coming out. Maybe you'd think about it for Your podcast. And then we got on the phone and we hit it off. But I'm good at hitting it off with people, you know. So in other words, now that I know I can be that guy, I'm extremely confident in that Persona. But if I have to be the, like, screaming and yelling, hammering people, I just can't do it. So I don't know. I guess what I'm saying here is it's a paradox. The only way to be confident is to get confident in your natural state.

Yeah, that makes sense definitely to me. And I think there is a lot of owning whatever it is about you instead of. I want to link to the episode on survivorship bias, where when we look at, in this case, articles that say all the successful people get up at 5am or 3am or whatever it is now, everyone who's successful does this. All the billionaires dropped out of college and whatever. When you only look at that small sample and what they think is what got them there is not necessarily what it is. Hindsight is not 20 20. Actually, hindsight is super messed up in what we think happened and why it all went together. And so you say, oh, it must be because I get up at 5am every day and that's why I'm successful. And you get 10 other people that say, oh, yeah, I get up at 5am too. Confirmation bias in there. Of course, as well as we're looking for people who get up early and then are successful. But what about all the successful people that don't get up at 5am? What about all the people who get up at 5am and are not successful?

And are not successful?

Yeah, all those people you're not looking at. And so knowing that just because you don't see whatever it is that makes you powerful out in the powerful people that you're seeing present doesn't mean that it can't work. And actually, if it's not uber present like you were talking about and Make War Not Love is, then you can be the first one, which makes it more likely to be something that starts your snowball and can all go together.

And this brings up another point. I love what you're saying about the survivorship bias, because you have to understand that a lot of the people, the gurus, the success people who are really successful are successful because they hype themselves up. Everyone from Tony Robbins to Ryan Holiday to Elon Musk to, you know, I don't know, Brene Brown to Oprah. Right. So they're all creating the best ones. The only survivorship Bias is to realize that they're all creating caricature versions of themselves. So when I. Do you guys know who Ryan Holiday is in this kind of universe? I mean, is that because in the marketing world he's a pretty popular.

I think it's fair to say that some people don't. So if you want to.

So, so he, he's this guy who, you know, he was a 21 year old head of marketing at American Apparel. He really talented, moved on to becoming this sort of apostle of stoicism, writing a book called the Obstacle is the Way, which was a big book, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he writes these articles with such authority on like you need to do this, you need to do that, read lots of books, read them this way, take notes and there's a lot of great wisdom in them. I happen to like his stuff. However, it's no accident that he's a marketer. Does he always follow these rules? In other words, even if getting up at five in the morning is a better thing to do, which it isn't always, you have to ask yourself, are these people really the perfect version of what they're putting out there or are they presenting a version of themselves that's going to get you in a peak state or a transcendent state or a bought in state so you'll buy their product? Sometimes I think it's better to watch what they're doing to get you to buy from them versus following their advice, especially the self help people. Because it's a business.

Yes. That's going to conferences or looking at, you know, I sign up for so many people's lead magnets and email lists and whatever just to see what's out there and what's working for people. And it's, it's when you go into it looking for those insights and tips, it's amazing what you can really pick up on. And some of it maybe you want to emulate, some of it you go, oh, I wouldn't want to do that. And that's great. You know, we all get to pick our own paths for that.

But it's better to do what you're doing and create a swipe file of the things they're using to persuade you than it is to read their articles and follow their advice because their ultimate goal is to sell you more stuff like Tony. Another hype strategy is theater and drama. And you can do that on a small scale or a big scale, but there's theatrical elements, you know, whether it's lights and sound or framing on your zoom screen. Staging and framing. But Tony Robbins, everyone follows his advice. They say, I'm gonna be a superstar and a business guru, and I'm gonna follow all of his things that he tells me to do. But what they're not thinking about is that Tony Robbins gets a bunch of people in a room, bombards them with lights and sounds and. And positive aphorisms and this and that. And by the time you left, you've signed up to three more seminars. So why isn't everybody who's following his advice as rich as Tony Robbins? If you really want to be rich, break down how he's bombarding your senses in the room to get you to open your wallet again. Because he's the one living in a castle, not you, right?

Definitely. So just as we look at this here, so of the 12 hype strategies we've talked about, make war, not love, perfect. Your packaging we've talked about, embrace theater and drama, I would love. So we didn't dig in too much on it, but I think this is something that fits for this group for sure as we kind of wrap up our conversation, since we don't get you for all 12, but would say, I think make it scientific is one that applies for this group. It's people who love the learning. And those tactics, I think are interesting for these people of how you can use facts and figures in a way that is not boring, but can give some authority to somebody sharing that in a really positive way.

When doing the research for this book, I really had an insight that I found interesting. If you're trying to put across an idea that's truly, truly new or a product or a concept or a service, you want to make it as simple and stripped down as possible. Because human beings don't like change. And to the point where we actually release hormones when there's too much change, that's too sudden. So if you're truly doing something new, people are going to reject it unless you not only state it simply, but introduce it in stages. Just give them a little bit at a time. However, if you're in a field that's overcrowded, even if your stuff is good. But let's say you're a life coach, right? And you're a really good life coach. When you're working with somebody, you're going to get good results. However, there are thousands and thousands of life coaches, and even though your stuff works, you're not really breaking any new ground. Effective isn't the same as new. You're Just effective. Well, in that case, you need to show that you're an extra special authority. You need to do the visual and verbal equivalent of the doctor's white coat. Because our brains, and you've talked about this, our brains are not set up to parse and digest the billions of bits of stimuli that we receive all the time. If you had to make real decisions about everything, your head would blow off your shoulders. I mean, you couldn't do it. So what we do is we're evolved to use heuristics. We see something a couple times that's an indicator of authority or of competence. And when we see that same symbol again, our brain subconsciously trusts that that person is competent. So what's an example of that scientific lingo? So you're seeing five different life coaches, right? And one life coach is saying, oh, you know, I go with the spirits and the vibes and the thing, okay, that appeals to some people, but what if another one talks about the oxytocin that is, or the, not the neuroepinephrine that bonds you and makes you more focused than the, you know, in this chart and this grid, if you have a 4, you know, a 416 box grid with different codes and numbers, that's each of your personality qualities. That's the way a scientist talks, that's the way a psychologist talks. And suddenly that person becomes an expert, right? And we see this all the time. I talk about, you know, consultants do this. Think about the consulting industry. I mean, the biggest consulting firms, right, like McKinsey and Big and BCG and all of this, they do good work. At the same time. You're basically getting a 23 year old kid from Wharton to tell someone who's been doing their job for 45 years how to do their job better. So when you listen to consultants talk behind the scenes, they call it eye candy. They'll say the most simple thing in the world, use digital technology. And they'll do it in a 45 page deck that they charge $100,000 for, which is a heuristic in itself because if you're paying that much money, it must be valuable. And they have statistical breakdowns and charts and figures and grids. And at the end it's like, use digital technology, you know, use digital marketing. And they get paid. So eye candy, ear candy, scientific lingo. Using those heuristics is, if you're in a crowded space, it's almost vital if you want to set yourself apart and get people to buy in. Now, it should be true. Yes, but common sense isn't always that well accepted.

Right. Well, and as you said on the where that first principle of worn out love and picking something that you're a little bit different. So for me, while the information that I share is very scientific, but looking at the field of behavioral economics, especially when I was coming in and wanting to be doing the podcast and everything, my controversial piece was being able to say everything sounds like a lecture and is very weighted in P values and variance and statistical significance that an average person in business does not want or need. And so I can share this in a way that is making that relatable and usable. And in a marketing space. I'm scientific for most behavioral economists, I'm not in the way that I talk about the field.

But what you did is even though we're used to behavioral economics now, it's the newest branch of economics, you don't study it in econ one or two people still dispute it. So it's cutting edge stuff. So what you've done is taken forward thinking stuff that a lot of people aren't ready to accept. There are still classical economists who don't believe in it. You know, you've boiled it down into simple, almost sloganistic language that the common. I don't mean like common person in a negative way that people who aren't PhDs understand. So you've used the first tactic.

Right.

But if you're a life coach, which it's like an professional advice giver with. No, it's just they can be the most helpful people in the world and it can be someone who thinks they're smart or in tune with the spirits. It's the most crowded space ever and there's no rigor to it as a field at that point, you need to put rigor on top of it. Does that mean that. That's a, that's a delicate distinction, but.

Right.

I would say you're in the first group where you're dealing with complexity and things that most human beings don't intuitively understand because it's new.

Right. Well, and that's where I was saying that the. If you're in a space where academia and science is all there is.

Right.

You can break out by being different, by not. But if you're in a space like you said, life coaches or whatever, and you, everyone around you is. I know sometimes people say woo, woo. Right. And you don't want to be that.

Yeah.

Right. Then you can. If you have the science piece and you have an interest in it, which I'm Guessing. If you're a listener, you do that. It can be a really good strength. You shouldn't feel like you have to hide it because not everyone else in your field does it. It's actually something that can really help you stand out and attract the people you want to be working with.

And life coaching is one example. But I mean, an example that I've talked about a lot is Simon Sinek, right? I mean, he's this extremely successful sort of like professional speaker kind of guy. And he wrote a book and did a TED talk called Start with why. And it's perfectly good. But if you think about it, that's something that your dad might say to you. It's like, listen, kid, you know, if you're gonna get a job and start a business, start with why you're doing it. What do you really want? You know, it's not groundbreaking. It's good advice. And the way that this guy carries himself, he wears little glasses and he speaks in this kind of half British accent and like this and that. So I thought he was a social scientist. I just assumed because he's always talking about the neural pathways and the hormones and the thing and how the brain responds and he uses all this. All. He. He's an ad man. Like. Yeah, he literally was a professional advertising executive. So he knew. He's in this kind of world of like business gurus, which is like life coaches. It's. They're useful, you know, I'm a bit of one myself, but, like, it can be anything. I mean, there are books out there, like how to Be a Leader, you know, and what he did was he took common sense stuff that would have been common sense that you wouldn't pay your dad 50 cents for. And he put all this scientific rigor, and he gets paid 150 grand for a talk.

I was so glad when I saw Simon Sinek mentioned in the book. And, you know, he really shows, I think the confidence piece, which I know we talked about already, the way he's framing his message is different than when everybody else does. He's picking these very great storytelling examples. He has some of the science impacts with it, but he's also a master of. And I know we didn't talk about this, but it is in the book of the repetitiveness and the quick grabs where, like, you can see people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Right? He does that like, 86.

I choose to be an optimist. I choose to be an optimist. I choose to be an optimist, you know?

Yeah, yeah. In the start with why he says that.

Yeah.

85 times. But you love it every single time you hear it.

And so love slogans. I mean, it's. Yeah, he's, he's, he's such a master at that. I mean, I remember the thing that just blew me away with the confidence piece he did that video that just everybody loved where he talked about, like, in his kind way, how horrible millennials are, you know, and he basically was like, parents, I'm not going to get this right. But it's like parents gave their millennial children participation trophies. Brains form in this. In this way when there's no struggle and no qualifying words, they do this. This happens. And I was like. And everyone was like, oh, it's so true. All millennials, really, Right. No millennial from Compton got participation trophies. And, you know, it has nothing to do with the economy, the fact that there's no post war boom. Could that have something to do with, like, the level of certitude that helicopter parenting was the sole factor for all the struggles that millennials are having? I'm not saying he's right or wrong and it is a factor, but he just knows he could. Like a different kind of speaker who probably wouldn't get as many people to follow him or pay money to him, would have said, in certain circumstances, a certain percentage of people born between this year and this year were raised by parents who were reacting against how their parents raised them. But you also have to consider the sociological factors, socioeconomic factors, and that would have been an academic book that 14 people would have read, blah, blah, blah. But it's more accurate. It's more accurate.

Yeah. The framing of that is so impactful, where you say essentially the same thing, but one is quotable and interesting, and the other, you're kind of going asleep before.

And confident. Right to your point. People love certainty. That's another heuristic. Most people are under the impression that if you're saying something with extreme certitude, that you must know what you're talking about, right?

Yes, definitely. Definitely. While I want to be respectful of your time, and I'm so thankful I could talk to you for hours and hours, for sure. And we will definitely have a link to the book in the show notes. And in addition, what's the best way for people to find out about you, to connect, for everyone who wants to learn more, which I'm sure they will.

What they.

The best way. Yeah.

I mean, thank you for that opportunity to. And I Had so much fun too. It's so great to talk to someone who you can go really deep with because, you know, you have such an understanding of sort of this, this general field that we're both, you know, in. Yeah, I mean, I think for your listeners who are, who are kind of a knowledge seeking bunch, I do this thing called the Hype Book club. So it's hypereads.com and so I'm always reading these books, you know, both for the research of this book, but also everything that led up to this that caused me to read this book on not so much the Simon Sinek's and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, although there's value in all of that stuff. But I'm reading biographies of cult leaders and weird social psychology books and you know, things like that. And I started sharing those books, book recommendations with people and they weren't getting them from other places. So it's become a pretty fun, popular thing that I send out and a good way to keep in touch. So it's hypereeds.com and my company is Micro Fame Media. So that's microfamemedia.com if you want to check out what we do.

Perfect.

We will have links for both of those in the show notes. I know that I'm intrigued by the Hype reads and just something different. It makes it kind of fun. And like you said, there's something to be learned in all areas if you're curious and looking for it. And I think the Hype Handbook does a really great job of showcasing how that can be applied. So thank you again so much for joining me on the show and look forward to talking to you again soon.

It was my pleasure.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about Hype today For me, as you heard, I love when books weave together lots of stories and case studies and examples from incredibly diverse backgrounds and show how they come together to make a point. I love that I'm learning new and little tidbits all along the way. Like even if I fundamentally knew the advice, the stories are so captivating I can't help but keep reading. And as you know from the many episodes of the show I've done on storytelling, stories connect with our brains in a different way so it can make it so we're more likely to remember and use what we learned, which is so valuable. One of those episodes that I've linked to in the show notes, which wasn't out when this one originally aired, is my conversation with David Paul, who among other things, is a Tedx speaker coach, as he shared in that episode, which I believe is advice from the creator of TED Talk. The magic is in the edit, weaving stories together like Michael has done in his book, finding how they fit together. And the point you're making is a way, way harder way to write a book than just throwing your main ideas together. It takes a level of thoughtfulness that shows you really dug in on the concept and I've considered it on a deeper level and I love that. It just has a real halo effect on the entire book and the work someone's doing, in my opinion. And while it ended up being the perfect episode to refresh for episode 350 Anyway, the reason I chose to revisit this episode with Michael today is because of my guest on this upcoming Friday's episode, Ben Gutman. He is a friend of Michael's. Thank you for the connection there. And he also, Mike also made the introduction to Megan Lurch who was a guest on the show a couple months ago. So again, thank you. He's a master of connection and it's so appreciated. You are going to love Ben's episode, by the way. His book, Simply Put, is simply fantastic. We are going to talk about why simple messages win, what it means to be simple, and most importantly, how to do it yourself in a way that's compelling to the person you're sending the message to. I'm so excited for this one. If you aren't already subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now's a great time to do so to make sure you don't miss that or any other episode. To make it easy, there's a link in the show Notes, of course, along with links to related past episodes, books, a timestamp summary of the episode, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 350 and just like that, episode 350 on the hype Handbook with Michael F. Shine is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Ben Gutman discussing his new book. Simply put, it's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.