405. How to Outthink and Outperform in Marketing w/ Roger Hurni

Welcome to episode 405 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why people Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Roger Hernie, author of Outthink, Outperform.

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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. In today's conversation, I am joined by Roger Hernie. Roger is an innovative entrepreneur, highly regarded behavior strategist and renowned branding expert. As the founder of both Off Madison Avenue and Lighthouse, Penn, Roger has established a unique niche for himself, providing a distinct perspective on organizational challenges and opportunities. Roger's work in behavioral marketing has made it possible for him to achieve outstanding results for his clients by deciphering human behavior and transforming insights into actionable strategies. Roger's career includes collaborations with iconic brands like DoubleTree Hotels, Nike, PF, Changs, PetSmart, Safeway, Starwood Hotels, WD40 and more. Roger's first book, outthink, outperform. Transform your organization through behavior marketing, which we're discussing today, provides valuable insights and strategies to further empower organizations in harnessing behavioral marketing's potential. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the.

Show, notes for my top related past.

Episodes and and books, ways to connect with Roger and more.

It's all within the app you're listening.

To and at the brainy business.com 405 now let's jump right in. Roger Herney, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you very much Meline for having me on. Actually, I'm quite honored to be on because I've been a fan of yours for quite a while.

Well, I am honored and delighted to hear it and so glad to have you here with us all here today.

So for those who don't yet know.

You, can you please share a little.

Bit about your background and the work that you do?

I'm happy to do that. I feel like I need to go back quite a ways because I'm going to look a lot older on paper than I actually am. I got my first job in the business at 17 years old like right out of high school. But my first real agency was was at like 19 years old. And so I had jumped into a very well known regional agency in the creative role as an art director at the ripe old age of 19. And my career fortunately took off rather rapidly because I ended up on the team that took two brands from their infancy. One was Doubletree Hotels and one was petsmart, wasn't even called petsmart at the time, and helped grow them into national chains. That in turn got me to McCann Worldwide. And I had worked on some fairly storied brands at that point and turned that into some freelance. For a few years, I helped build another agency, all in the creative role, moving from art director to copywriter, back to art director to creative director all along. Persuading or changing people's behaviors. What I found interesting through that entire time, before even starting my own company 25 years ago, was that when people asked me what I did, I never told them I was an art director. I never told them I was a writer. I just said my job is to change people's behavior. The thing. And I go up to this in my book. I didn't really know how I did that. I pulled stuff out of the ether and it worked. I had won industry major awards and clients had made lots of money and was very successful. And I'm not saying I didn't have a failure campaign here and there, but for the most part, it really worked. And during the time I owned my agency, I was fortunate enough to get introduced to Dr. BJ Fogg. Ended up working with him and going through his course. And it was funny, it was about 20 minutes into it, I turned to a colleague of mine and I said, wow, I've been using his models all wrong for the last two years. Is this epiphany moment where I'm like, I'm doing this all wrong? I mean, the creative work was all right, but the tools, the way to explain it, the way to apply it for people who didn't understand creative or what made for successful campaigns. I was doing that all wrong. But it was, it was a great lesson. And that led me to becoming a behavior strategist. And then really consciously over the next last 10 years, introducing a way of using his models in a behavioral marketing aspect to really shift customer behavior and sometimes with clients, their own employees behavior and changing what's happening inside an organization internally, they have their own set of objectives and aspirations that they have to hit. And so it's been a. A long winding path, but it's been a really good one. And I, I really appreciated every moment where I changed hats. And I look back on all of those experiences fondly and they've collectively helped me get to this point.

Fascinating. So any insight into, like, why or how you got to be an art director at just 19 that you lucked.

Or stumbled into that?

So my. Now I'm going to have to go back to when I was. I used to doodle a lot. Honestly, I was a kid who just drew a lot. And my stepfather, his son was an art director for this small company called ExxonMobil. Now it was Exxon back then in New York. And when I was like nine or 10 years old, he was over the house and saw some of my drawings and my doodles. And he just offhandedly is like, you know, you can get paid for that. I'm like, what? He goes, that's a job. I'm like, get out. I'm like, I'm doing this for a living. And so, you know, he gave me a little bit of guidance. But I knew from basically the age of 11 or 12 that I wanted to be an art director for an ad agency. And I was fortunate enough again in high school that there was a. One of my art teachers used to be an ad for an ad agency. And when I was a junior, he taught me how to spec type, which was a thing at one point before computers, how to do layouts, how to do paste of production, like all these manual things that, that we take for granted now because of the computer. But it set me up and got me into. Into the. My first job as an agency, you know, as a. As an art director at an agency. It was a pivotal moment. And I've had a few of those in my career where, like working on DoubleTree and Petsmart or there's a very famous agency, Chia Day, that took my career to an entirely different level because they used to do this thing called the Carson Roberts creative course. And they'd get 5 or 600 portfolios, but they'd take only 15 art directors, only 15 copywriters, and they would go through this creative course with them that was really intense for like eight weeks. And I was fortunate enough to get accepted and that changed my career again. So a little bit of a robot, long winded answer, but I feel like this has just always been a part of me and in front of me. And I've been very fortunate to be around the right people at the right time to help propel me to the next stage.

Yeah, I love that. And I think it's cool when, like, for you, you knew what you wanted to do from a young age, like you said, and had people around you to help make that Possible. But, you know, there's a lot, a lot of hard work and dedication that went into making that happen. Right. And, and asking good questions and. Yeah, yeah.

I, I tell people all the time that hard work trumps talent all the time. I, I, in all honesty, I was never the most talented art director. I might not have never been the most talented copywriter. My value came and I had a CD tell me this one time. He goes, we hire you when we need to pitch an account or save an account. We need you to do your creative strategy stuff. And we'll have people make it look better. We'll have people maybe write the headline a little bit better. Just give us some thumbnails on what we need to do and we'll just make that happen. And so I always had all these other people around me who are far more talented than I was in the actual art part of it and crafting creative part of it to help me push those ideas to the best possible way they could.

I was going to say, it's also interesting from having worked inside of an agency before and run a marketing department and worked with all sorts of different creatives over the years, knowing that often you have art and you have copy and the never the tween shall meet. Right? Like, they kind of sit on their own sides. Like, so there's strategy, there's the design piece and then the copywriting. And I've had plenty of designers I've worked with over the years that don't, won't even read the copy, refuse. That's like, I'll make it look as nice as I can when it comes to me, but I won't even take the time to, like, proofread or see if the words fall in the right spot. So I do find it interesting that you have kind of all of those aspects in the skill space.

I recognize it's a little bit of a unicorn, but I've been, again, I've been fortunate that I've had great creative partners that were also able to do both those things. My, I mentioned my, my, my best friend Kirk, who had worked at Apple and as a global creative director for new product launches. And I mentioned him in the book as well. And he's my best friend and we used to joke all the time that a good creative partnership is seamless. Like, you should be able to walk into the room and not know who the art director is and not know who the copywriter is. And there were things that I had him, like, coloring in comps sometimes when I had to Write lines for something. And people would walk into our office that we shared at McCann and they'd be like, wait, wait, what? I thought you were the. And it was. We would freak people out that way. But a great copywriter thinks visually, a great art director is able to write a headline.

Love it. And finding that. That balance. Right. And understanding the bigger picture, for sure.

Absolutely.

And I, of course, see that a lot throughout your book of understanding humans. And like you said from. From early on, just having. And when you wouldn't say you were a creative, you know, an art director or a copywriter, but, you know, you were in understanding human behavior and helping solve people's problems and whatnot.

Can you share a little bit about.

I guess, that perspective? I guess, is that sort of developed or.

Well, I'll share the Doubletree chocolate chip cookie story, which actually kicks off the book, because it really was my first entree into really thinking about human behavior very differently. And over the years, I met lots of people who are like, I came up with that idea. And I'm like, no, you didn't. I was actually in the room at 19 years old with the guy who actually did. So there's a gentleman. His name is Joe Salumbi. Wonderful, wonderful man. He led the Doubletree account. And what had happened was Doubletree, at that time, in the late 80s, was stumped on how do we carve a position for ourselves. And if you. For those who don't know or don't know the history or weren't born, then there weren't a lot of choices for hotels. You had, like, very high end, you know, luxury hotels. You had some cheap, like, family Holiday Inn kind of a thing. There are certainly some independence here and there, but there really wasn't a true business person's hotel. People who had to travel all the time. It became the like, oh, I'm on the road. I just. I go to Motel 6. If my budget can afford it, I'll upgrade to a Hilton or something. But I didn't really cater to businessmen. And Joe recognized that the hotel that Doubletree needed to become was be the home away from home. And how do we make people feel like this is the place that is their second home? And how do we stack the deck and own that position? He had this idea of, like, look, nothing says home more than a chocolate chip cookie. Like, you walk into the house and someone's baking chocolate chip cookies. It just smells wonderful. It just. It feels like home. It. It can bring up for every individual some memory the smell will trigger, some memory of you as a kid or spending time with family, and that's what we need. And that was his solution that when you walked into the Doubletree for us to provide that on your bed pillow, if you had that aroma in the lobby, this could be your home away from home. And when you're not on business, it gives you an opportunity to bring you back with your family. When he and I chatted about it afterwards, I asked him, I said, it doesn't seem like an ad campaign, and I know I'm just a kid. He's like, you have to understand what you need to do is tap into people's feelings and motivations with why they do things. And when you can do that effectively, you will be able to. He used the word persuade back then, but you'll be able to persuade them that we're the best option. And it was a very unique insight because it wasn't rooms at 1:59 a night or we have fax machines in a business center for you, all those things were just. They were bullet points somewhere. They weren't what you lead with. And I think that's a good lesson for today. I think too many people market their products on functionality and features as opposed to the job it can do or what it means to people and the values that, that you get out of it. And so that was my big lesson. I'm not sure if I answered your question because I felt like I talked for a lot, but was I clear?

Yes. And I'm always about, you know, it's one of those key lessons you learn in pr, Right? You can answer the question the way that you want to answer it, regardless of the exact words that were asked of you. Right?

So whether or not that was.

I don't even remember exactly the question that I asked. And I enjoyed your answer.

And so I think we're good, right?

Like, that's.

I have, I have something of value because you, you, you said something there, like in pr. Like, you answer the question with what your talking point is, and it's a good PR tactic. I was media trained by some people that were very good at some very global PR agencies a couple of times. But one of them said to me, you need to follow Henry Kissinger's advice. And I'm like, okay, what's Henry Kissinger's advice? He goes, in the 1970s, he walked up in front of a room full of reporters, and he started off the press conference this way. All right, everyone who's got questions for my answers, Everybody listening, feel free to Steal that. Because I've used it with so many clients with why is media training so important? I'll be like, here's the Henry Kissinger story. And I would just pull it out.

Yeah, definitely. And I think that it's important to know too just Stephen, in the way that our brains work. We don't even remember exactly the question we asked. It's a whole. We don't. I haven't done an episode on Satisficing before, but I think it can be an interesting one one of these days. It'll so keep an eye out for IT world. So you had mentioned. Well, actually I'm going to go this way. I was debating how to ask the question keeping with hotels but going to a different chain. I really liked. You know, you. You went from Doubletree to then talk about this experience you had with the Four Seasons. And what I think is so wonderful about this particular example, which I will of course have you share, is how it is using technology. And I like that you have various examples that use tech within the book. But so often it feels like technology is going to dehumanize but being able to show how you can make it.

To where it feels like a more.

Personalized experience in a way that someone feels really seen and understood when technology is done properly and it can be leveraged really well. And I think that the, you know, the Four Seasons example is one that at least started that conversation in a really interesting way. Can you share about that example from the book?

Absolutely, I'd be happy to. I've had people actually ask me about the Doubletree story and it's like, well, that was then that it's a different world now. And in true it is a different world. But that connection to memories or feelings or feeling important, having a human to human connection, that's universal marketing or not marketing time. 30 years ago, not 30 years ago. That is a universal trait. The equivalent to the Doubletree story in today's terms is my wife and I had a speaking opportunity in Hong Kong and we had gone to Beijing afterwards. And what was interesting is my wife came to me and said, hey, there's a Four Seasons hotel in Beijing I'd like to go to. And it's only like $285 a night. And if anyone's been to a Four Seasons, that's ridiculously low price because it's usually like three or four times that. And I was like, it's four f o u r right? And I'm like, let's go to the UWIT United States Four Seasons corporate site and see if we can get to that address. And we did. It was legit. And the whole deal. I couldn't believe it was that price. And thank you for a strong dollar. Anyway, I'm not a Four Seasons member. I'd stayed at one once at one point. And when we arrived, I did arrange for a car to pick us up. And we're going to the hotel. And when we get to the hotel, the manager on duty was there with a dozen roses for my wife. There was a bell porter there, like, ready to get our bags and help with anything that we needed. Anyway, the manager on Duty said, Mr. And Mrs. Hernia, I'd like to welcome you to the Four Seasons Beijing. We've already checked you in. We have a room assigned to you. I will walk you up to it and escort you through because we'll take care of all your bags. And by the way, there's no tipping in in China, so you don't have to worry about any of that. Just all the things that people are concerned about when they travel Takes us to this beautiful hotel. Points out a few little things as, like, a little bit of a tour takes us to the room. Of course, there's, you know, rose petals on the bed and swan towels that have been made by, you know, some origami person. And it was one of the. The best entries into a hotel experience I. I had ever had. And of course, I had to stop her. I said, look, I said, this is, this is wonderful. I'm like, I'm not a, like a Four Seasons member, really. I don't, I don't really go here. Like, is this typical? And they said, yes, it is typical. I'm like, like, as a marketing person, please, like, can you tell me how you, how you pull this off? I'm kind of very curious from an operations standpoint. She said, well, you downloaded our app and you did sign in and create an account, but it gives us information. But we geofence the airport, and when you break that geofence, we know that not only you arrived, but based on time of day, we calculate that it'll take you X amount of time to get to the hotel. A mile out from the hotel, we do another geofence. And she said, instead of sending you anything, we get a text message saying that you'll be here. We check you in and we start to tell the staff that you'll be here within this time frame. When you break in the parking lot, we grab the flowers and we cue everybody to stand inside the lobby, and when the car pulls up, we walk out. And technology here allowed to have that human, human connection. And it wasn't. It was behind the scenes orchestrating all of that. And I think a lot of brands make the mistake of just because you can communicate with a customer doesn't mean you should. They didn't communicate to me at all. But behaviorally, they prompted everybody inside the Four Seasons at every single stage to provide a customer experience that was unsurpassed. And that's what we can do today through technology, whether it's generative AI or any other kind of AI, or just using data properly, behavioral data properly, we can do that and technology doesn't have to get in the way. And I think that's the real lesson here for sure.

And when you consider this as well, and you think about the efficiency that is gained by the Four Seasons in that process, because they're able to know what's going to be happening in advance of when it's going to happen. You have the process that's set up of when this, then this, and we'll get an alert about this, and then we do that, and then someone does this. And it's not this question of when in the world are people going to get here. We have no idea what's going to be happening. And the uncertainty of it makes it to where you can't prepare. And it's easy to just say, oh, well, like we don't. That's not our problem. Or we'll figure it out when they get here. Sort of an approach. Right. But I also just really love that so often, you know, with something like an app, like you're saying, it's just. Even when you think about the behavioral problem, which is of course, why this is featured as, you know, one of many amazing stories in your book. But it's so easy as the company to look at this and look at a way that someone can now have to do this, take care of things themselves. Right. We can make it so we don't have to have team members or it's about the customer having to do all this extra work now or going to give them information because they want to do it, but sometimes they. They don't want to do it. And what can you be, if you consider just those human elements and that surprise and delight that comes in, in this experience and how it can get to be so someone feels special. And like you said, I. I think just looking at the problem from all these different angles of being able to.

Say, sure, we could use this to.

Notify the customer that they have now a task to do.

Or we could say, hey, they just arrived here. Maybe they're stressed.

How can we help this to be a delightful experience instead of just some mundane thing that they're stuck dealing with?

Well, I mean you talk about the surprise and delight factor all the time and I, and I learned a lot from you on it. And quite frankly, I've cited some of your examples with it. The problem I see with today's marketers and brand experts is a lot of them do not think behaviorally. They think tactically and they rely on the tools that they have at hand. They're not analyzing people's motivations and what will guide them to shift behavior. In one of my companies, Lighthouse pe, that four season story is taken automatically where you can use an AI to examine implicit and explicit behaviors and then determine, have that AI determine what the next interaction should be. And sometimes that'll be here's a deal. And you know that surprise and delight, a random offer at a random time or seemingly random time feels really, really special as opposed to the expected 10th cup of coffee, right, that you're going to get every single time. Or you can send a person and you could be a host at a casino and engage with that customer in a very genuine human to human way without ever sending them any kind of communication whatsoever. And if you don't do one of those two things, with technology you can at least really analyze and examine the behavioral data to inform all kinds of other operational and marketing decisions. And people miss the boat on that because they sometimes just, they get the data paralysis. They don't know how to layer in different data sets to kind of figure out what's happening behaviorally. And then they start dividing people sadly into cohorts as opposed to looking at them as individuals. And that's. We're at that moment, I think in history where we will hit, we, we have hit that holy grail of one to one marketing at scale, 99% of people aren't doing it. But the technology is certainly there to make that happen. And people feel much more attached to a brand when you can do that, right?

For sure. As you were talking about some of the leveraging technology and asking good questions, I was reminded of another example I really liked from the book that's talking about the movie theater and popcorn. And so what I'm hoping with this example is that you can talk a little bit too through the process of. I find so often, and I saw this in your Book, of course, too, this people don't know what problem they're solving. And you said something along a similar line in the book. And helping clients to understand the problem is a big piece of what I think we all do in this behavioral space. And so perhaps the movie theater example is one, but maybe it's something else that will come after this. But just this idea of how did you help the client realize maybe some of the data that they even have and how it maybe is not as intuitive as, you know, what they might.

Have thought was the issue with popcorn.

Sales is actually different when you look at sort of the numbers and understand that popcorn consumption to help them understand the problem and the solution.

In the movie theater business, the public thinks that they're in the business of showing movies, and that's far from the truth. And anybody who is in the movie theater business, they will tell you that we're in the soda and popcorn business. And they realize that. Their approach, though, is often very. We're going to have a popcorn rewards club and you're going to get X amount and like, we're going to promote the heck out of that. Or they'll do, you know, sales of popcorn or something every once in a while because there may be some sort of big movie special or. Or they'll give you a free refill when you buy the extra large one that is basically the size of a horse's trough. And most movie theaters will do that. When I was working with this one particular chain, you know, they're like, okay, well, how do we get people to join our loyalty club and. And get more popcorn and want to do the refills? And. And so this really wasn't a marketing problem as much. It was an operational solve. And I said, well, what's the goal here? Is that the goal to get people to sign up? Is the goal to get people just to buy more popcorn? Like, we want people to buy more popcorn. Like, the loyalty thing is good. We get revenue off that, but we want them to buy more popcorn. Like, well, perhaps you should examine why people eat popcorn. And that really became the question that led us down this road. I mean, they're at the movie theater. People eat popcorn at the movie theater. I'm like, I don't think that's really the answer you're looking for. People eat popcorn at the movie theater based on how they're feeling about the movie that they're seeing. And we had to do some studies and some research, but it came down to we eat popcorn in certain amounts and in certain ways, based on the movie we're watching. And what I described when we found out is if you're watching some sort of foreign film that's subtitled and, like, super heavy, you don't sell a lot of popcorn. Because I'm not concerned about eating popcorn. I'm trying to follow the plot line. I'm trying to, like, read the subtext. And so people will buy smaller amounts or like, no popcorn at all because it's a serious film. And if you level up to where it's like, it's a date, it's date night. You know, you don't want to be shoveling handfuls of popcorn into your face with your date, even if it's your spouse. You know, there's a little bit of, like, okay, a couple of kernels here, so you don't buy the larger size. But when you start to go see an action film where there's. The plot just unfolds in front of you without thought, and it's just tons and tons of things happening, like the Marvel films, then everyone's grabbing popcorn and going. Shoveling into their mouth as much as they possibly can. And so for. The trick for movie theaters is if you want to sell popcorn, ratio the movies in a way where people will go to the movies that eat more popcorn.

Now, that's.

That's not necessarily 100% in their control, but that might mean you're going to show this particular film on three screens instead of one or this other film on two screens instead of one. You know that. And so you just have to mix the ratio of movies so that people will. Will do that. It's really under helping clients understand what the true. I don't use the word goals very specifically because you can't measure goals. Or people will say a goal and it's not a measurable goal, and then they get hung up on, well, we didn't hit this. I'm like, well, what you're asking for doesn't really have a measurement to it. And so I do things with clients by defining objectives and aspirations. Objectives I can measure. Right. I can see the bottom line of a spreadsheet. Aspirations. That wouldn't be great to do this. Like, we'd like all of our employees to be happier. Great. We can create a set of behaviors to lead to that. But you're not going to measure that on the bottom line of a spreadsheet. Getting clients to understand what the most valuable thing to their organization is is really the first critical step. And if you'll allow Me, because you said that. There's another example. I worked with a car wash company who was trying to do this geo conquesting of customers. And they did an experiment. It failed. I came in to triage it. And in behavior, time can be a motivator. Time can also be a demotivator because it inhibits someone's ability. I looked at, I said, you're trying to get someone to stop a behavior at a competitor car wash in the 20, 30, 40 minutes that they have to get their car washed and turn around and come to your place of business and then get their car washed. And you're trying to stop a behavior they're in the middle of. Only perform that same behavior when time is pushing down on them because they're doing it over lunch or between errands or what have you, it will never work. And I said, why is this even important to you? Like, well, we want more customers. And I said, is that the most valuable thing? And they're like, no, no, no. Our, our monthly, our monthly car wash club is the most valuable thing. If that's the most valuable thing, then how do we behavior sequence smaller behaviors that will lead people to want to sign up and stay on that car wash plan with a different set of behaviors that mitigate attrition? That changed this business in profound ways, and they grew astronomically over the next three or four years. So in both cases, it's getting to the right question. Sometimes it's a marketing thing, sometimes it's an operations thing. But if you can help clients understand what's happening behaviorally, then you can solve better problems for them.

Definitely. I love that example. And it made, it made me remember the, the piece about the pool. Right. And, and so I think there's a segue here where, you know, you've already mentioned that you did some work with BJ Fogg and learning from his approach, which is of course talked about throughout the, the book and kind of the modeling that you have in there. And so we'll talk, you can talk about motivation and, and everything but the, the pool. And so I talk all the time about how we try to get people just to go from like A to double Z. Right. We're thinking way too big in what, you know, you're trying to get your customer to do. And we need to think in those small steps, those micro moments of what's like, the next little thing that they need on the long journey that we're going on. And I think the example from the pool owners and, you know, the, the bottle of. Of water being a really solid example. And of course, feel free to go back as far as you need to in explaining some of this process to because it will all be fascinating, but that's kind of what it triggered for me.

Well, this has to do again. It's part of behavior sequencing. The MBJ is wonderful and I love BJ to death and he's just been such a good mentor to me. He does. His model says that any behavior being performed, marketing, personal life, whatever, only can happen when three things happen at the same time. You have to have sufficient motivation. You have to have the ability to perform the behavior and it has to be prompted at the exact right moment. All three of those things have to occur at the same moment in order for you to shift behavior. There's models that go into each of those three things. But as a marketer, what I have found is addressing ability generally is the hinge pin to success. I have had media people be amazing at defining audiences and their motivation and it's great. I take a lot of that for granted. And they're really good from a media buy perspective. Figuring out when to prompt them from advertising to customer experiences in person. More times than not, marketers ask people to do something that is too hard, that the their ability is impeded by the complexity or how large the behavior actually is. When I worked with this pool supply company, interesting that the first meeting I went into with them, I said, who's your customer? And they looked at me like I was an idiot for even ask. I got people with pools like duh. And I said, well, let's, let's break that down a little bit. You spend X amount of money every year doing direct mail for people who know how to take care of their pool and are highly motivated to do so. For whatever reason they want to save money. They get pride, whatever, it doesn't really matter. I said, that's great. I said, you have people who don't have a poem. Clearly they're never going to be your audience. You have people who own a pool and I guarantee you no matter how much time and treasure you put against them, you will never get them as a customer. I will tell you, I am one of these people. I used to take care of my own pool. I got to a stage in my life where I'm happy to spend 120 bucks to have someone take care of my pool every month. You can prompt me all day long. You can send me all kinds of deals. You can message me and tell me I'm going to Save X amount of dollars a year. You can tell me only takes 15 minutes of time every two weeks. I don't care. I have zero motivation to take care of my pool. It's a waste of time and money. However, there are people who would like to take care of the pool who lack the ability. And again, this is where marketing really can take hold. If you can increase their ability to be able to take care of the pool themselves, you can behavior sequence or in this case, teach them how to do it. But you can't say, I want you to take care of your pool for the rest of your life. I'm like, I have no idea how my pool works. I have no idea what to do. I'm staring at this hole in the ground with a bunch of water that's looking dirty. What do I do? The very first behavior that we talked about was, everybody can put water in a bottle. And so we'll start with a free pool care test. A free pool water test. And all we're asking people is like, if you have a bottle, you can put it under the water, grab it, bring it into our store. We'll test it, we'll tell you everything that's wrong with it. And we'll do a reciprocal behavior of giving you a free pool care plan. And we'll show you how to put in chlorine or what to do next. And then we'll prompt you to come back in in two weeks for another water test. Right. Over time, you will perform what will become familiar behaviors repeatedly, and we can introduce new ones. Like, if you want to understand how your pool works, set up an appointment. We'll come by, we'll show you all the equipment. We'll show you how it works at a part breach, you know, we can. We'll fix that for free. All you have to do is pay for parts. Like, at some point after the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th behavior, you will find that you're in. You move from individual behaviors to a habit, and now you're taking care of your poor permanently. But you can't ask people to do that right away when they don't know what they're doing. But you can ask them to put water in a bottle and bring it in for a test. That's a simple behavior.

Yeah, that tangible piece of it too. Like you say of like, oh, sure, bottle in the water, Bring it in like that. That's easy to do versus to where you don't even know where to start. If you're not given that very concrete example of a Thing, right.

To say, well, you just should figure.

Like, read a book like, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that.

You tell people to ch balance of water that you think you need a PhD, right?

And like, that sounds like something I'm never going to do.

Right?

That's exactly, exactly.

You're not your audience.

Right.

For sure.

Well, and, and I love that whole mind space. Right. So being able to consider, again, where.

Do we want people to go?

You know, what's this ultimate goal? What's keeping them from doing the behavior now? And what's the first small step? I love. You know, throughout the book there are examples of, you know, I think it was like for a college application and they have to pay a fee and there's a whole bunch of stuff to it. But like, where's the. Do the free pre application, like a little thing so we can know who's interested. Right? The simple form that's like on all the, the top of every single website page that you just put in your email address. And we don't need anything else, but it's like super simple for that, that.

Tiny first step so we even know.

Who'S interested and then we can follow up with the next little thing and the next little thing and the next little thing. But thinking through that easiest first step, understanding the motivators. And there are so many great, you know, tips and things throughout the book of, you know, understanding if the block has to do with money or time or physical effort or, you know, just so much important stuff for people to be able to look at. Applying this themselves while seeing useful examples of saying, oh, yeah, I get that right, I can see what to do.

I'll give everybody a little cheat look. I want you to read out, think, outperform. At the same time, if you don't, if you just ask this one question, you will solve more problems today than you will have ever solved before. How do I make it easier for the customer to make this decision? If you can just figure out how to simplify it or make it easier. Whatever, how, whatever derivative of question you want to ask in the context of whatever you're asking them to do. If you can just do that, you will be steps ahead of everybody else for sure.

And an easy thing for everyone to go do as they can, consider their own work.

We will, of course, make it easy.

Easier for everyone to get their own copy of Outthink outperform by putting links in the show notes and everything for that. For everyone who is excited now to learn more about you and, and connect and follow your work. What is their best path to do?

So pretty easy. Just use my name. You can either Google it or you can go to Roger Herny.com which is H U R N I and Roger has no D and that's also my handle on TikTok as well as Instagram where I do little like one minute behavioral tips that you know, you can, you can learn from.

Very fun. We will of course link to those in the show notes as well because we're all about making it easy around.

Here at the Brainy business. So thank you again so much Roger.

For joining me and for your book. I know that everyone is going to get so much great value out of it and the stories and the tips within.

So yeah, thank you again for joining joining me today.

I appreciate the conversation and, and honestly thank you for, for being a good counselor to me and through your podcast because I've learned a lot through your guest and yourself directly and I appreciate you letting me steal some of your stuff.

Of course it we're, you know, we're a teaching entity and organization here at the Brainy business and love that people can take, take the information and go use it. You know, feel empowered to go do something. That's the, the goal here from, from the Brainy business. So I'm just delighted that you have been able to use any of it. That's the, that's the intent. So steal away my friend.

All right, thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you again to Roger Herney for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I really love the Double Tree chocolate chip cookies example. Surprise, surprise. I know it might be because it comes up so early in the book or my affinity for the scent of the cookies, but it really stuck with me as a different way of thinking of looking at an experience in a bigger way to create a new market with something so simple yet profound. It's one thing to say we're your home away from home. It's another to use that scent of the cookies and a delightful home baked goodness to make someone feel like they're in the comforts of home and in a way that makes them want to bring their family later on to live that same experience and get a little taste. And Doubletree used a similar foundation with a decision they made much later on, using the understanding of habits and a desire for normalcy. Even though, as Roger said, they sold the cookies for years, the recipe was a secret for a long time. So you could only get those cookies at Doubletree when you stayed there, but they made a smart choice in April of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic when people had their habits upended and were no longer able to travel. They might be longing for that sense of normalcy and wanting a little comfort. So Doubletree released the recipe for everyone to find. Now, even if you didn't stay at Doubletree's yourself, you would have likely heard of these fabulous cookies and potentially wanted.

To see what the fuss was about.

By making them yourself. Priming you also to want to stay.

There someday if you really loved these.

Cookies when you made them at home.

Or if you did a bad job and wanted to see what they really taste like. People got really into baking in those early days of the pandemic.

There was a time where you couldn't find flour in any grocery store, and many of those budding bakers might have been inspired by this recipe. This is a great example of staying top of mind and being a comfort to your customers even when things change.

Outside of your control.

It's a really cool case study and one of the many fascinating stories and lessons from Roger's book Outthink, outperform. There is of course a link in the show notes to make it easy.

For you to get your copy of.

That book as well as my other top recommendations from this episode episode, ways to get in touch with Roger and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 405 and thank you again to Roger Herney for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

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.