415. Behavioral Finance and Wealth Confidence w/ Anthony Damtsis of TD Wealth

Welcome to episode 415 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Anthony Damsis, Deputy Head of Behavioral Finance at TD Wealth. 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. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Anthony Damsis. Anthony is currently the Deputy Head of Behavioral Finance at TD wealth, where he develops tools to help advisors integrate behavioral finance principles into their practice. Before arriving at td, he led the behavioral science practice at Discover Card in Chicago and completed graduate degrees in economics and Behavioral science. I met Anthony recently at the CBO Summit in Toronto, which is where I also met Malena Vinsky who was here last week. And there are some other amazing people you're going to hear in the coming weeks from that event as well. Shout out to Dilip Soman and Jez Groom for putting on that amazing event. It was so inspiring and I'm honored to have been included in this conversation about the future of behavioral science. Really quickly, before we get into our conversation mine with Anthony today, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for everything, including related past episodes, links to articles and books, ways to connect to Anthony and and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 415. Now let's jump right in. Anthony Damsis, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Wonderful to be here with you.

Yes, excited. And we met for the first time very recently when I was in your neck of the woods in Toronto for the season CBO Summit at the beautiful campus there at Rotman. And like I said, you know, I traveled many miles to get there and you can see the building we were in from your office.

Yeah, it was an arduous bike ride for three minutes and.

Nice. Well, for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about your background and the work that you do?

Of course. Yeah. So I'm currently the deputy head of Behavioral Finance at TD wealth and TD wealth is the advice line of business for TD bank, which is one of the largest Canadian banks and there is also a presence in the northeast of the US And I've been at TD for about three and a half years now and it's been a really fun journey applying behavioral science in a wealth management context and exploring the how and why people make the financial decisions they make. You know, before I was at td, I was working down in Chicago at Discover Card and that was a, a great team and it was a really fun work that we got to do. But my time in Chicago was cut short by the pandemic so I ended up moving back to Toronto for this job at td. So it's sad to cut it short, but it was a great time. And you know, my back, my intro to behavioral science generally came a bit of a circuitous route, I would say. I was always passionate about economics and I thought I was going to become an economist and you know, be a macro forecaster until I was in my master's degree and I realized macro wasn't my vibe. Not for me. I really enjoyed the micro aspect, understanding how individuals and firms behave in the market. But I mean, when you're in a traditional master's program for economics, breaking the rule of rationality isn't so popular. Right. And so I ended up working for a couple research firms, think tanks, lobby groups, that kind of thing. And I eventually did another master's degree in behavioral science at the London School of Economics which was, you know, shameless plug to lsc. It was a fantastic program and it was a great time and really kick started my career in behavioral science. And so I took a bit of a journey around. My backstory wasn't exactly chronological, but I think my experience, 10 years working in the financial services industry combined with behavioral science really put me in a place where I could actually do some really cool things and apply what my, apply my accumulated knowledge in this role. So it's been, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good job. I really like it.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I think that one of the coolest things I would say about behavioral economics, behavioral science is that no one has a straight line path into the field because it is so new relative to other fields, like you're saying. And so, so many people were so passionate about something that didn't exist yet and then they found it and jumped all the way in and then we're fine, you know, where it's like, oh, background was in engineering and then I realized that actually I was interested in human behavior and then we figured out how to be applying it. And you know, my background was in marketing and that, but there's just this understanding of like, but. But why? Right? Like asking really interesting questions and not taking the thing at face value. You know, how it was said. Would you say that have you always been a curious person by nature and that kind of contributed or not so much?

Totally. I've always been. I was that. But why kind of person my whole life.

Yeah, I see that. I don't know you. I have known you that long, but I see that and I love it.

I think actually that broad base of experience and maybe non traditional behavioral or psychological or economic paths can be such a massive benefit in applied behavioral science that I think we often don't talk too much about. I have, I have colleagues who have degrees in English literature in addition to behavioral science degrees and they are some of the most incredible language craft crafters I've ever met. And it's again, it's not a straight line, but that broad base of experience really brings a powerful lens into applied work, whether it's in banking, in public policy or other private sectors. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, well, and I think with, you know, just like English literature or anything that has to do with fiction writing, right. That understanding a character to the depth that you can actually be writing any sort of story and how people work together and these interaction points in a way that is believable and yet surprising and interesting is a whole other level I have such respect for. Anybody can even begin to be in that space. You think about, you know, writing movies or you know, the screenplay stories, whatever, that that depth of storytelling and understanding of human dynamics is, I would say so integral to behavioral science even if we don't study it formally.

I completely agree. And I think it allows us to empathize with our, our audience, you know, whether that's people who we are trying to influence with our interventions or selling the power of behavioral science to people who want to buy our services. I think it's such a powerful tool and I think where behavioral science helps is around creating a structure. We can put language to some of those empathized feelings and we can have this system of understanding. Well, sometimes when people feel this way or are doing this thing, we can back trace it and create more optimal solutions that work with people and not against people.

Yeah, definitely. So I'm curious as we think about. So can you share a little bit about the team of behavioral science folks that you have at td, how you know, when you think about those roles that you have and what it is that you're doing within the organization? Do you have any key, you know, differentiators Amongst team members, like people that are doing different sort of aspects of behavioral science. Who do you have there?

So we're a small team. Right now. It's just two people. Me. Yeah. And, and my colleague is, I mean, you know, Bing, she's an incredible behavioral scientist. And I think we bring two sides of, of the, of the story to our, our work. I got a lot more experience in financial services and working in industry. And Bing brings an incredible amount of rigor and problem solving ability that was built from Bayer, the Behavioral Economics Institute at Raman. And I think we have a really good dynamic and we're able to strategize and think about problems in the most abstract ways. But then we're a team that also has to execute. So we don't have a team where we can delegate tasks. If there's a problem that's got to be solved that our executives are asking about, we have to also be the ones to solve it. And we have to leverage our colleagues skill set across the advice organization to ensure that we can in fact push our project over the finish line. I mean, so it's, it's, it's. Maybe it's a bit of an unorthodox team. I don't know. I've only met a few behavioral science science teams at the CBO conference and they all sound much bigger than ours. So, you know, good learnings and good things to strive for. But we're still at the point where we have our research, but we're also doing a lot of applied work that's mostly internal facing.

Yeah, well, I know that there are many people that are just thinking, how do I get just even like the one person to start doing behavioral stuff. And as you said, there are some that have some larger teams. It's an interesting space and it's like anything else. Right. Of you know, proving that value, which I know you're definitely doing with a lot of the work that you have there. And there's a lot that can be done with a few really dedicated and strong team members. And so we should never underestimate small teams. There's great value that comes from them, for sure. So as you said with the research and applied. One thing that I, I know too, a lot of companies, it is hard to get any actual research project done that you're able to make that happen and make those cases because they take a lot of time and investment, but there's so much value that can come from them. And so I think it's actually super cool that you have this Balance of that research arm or approach as well as some applied stuff. Can you share a little bit about, you shared a, you know, a research project with me in advance of this. Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing in some of that research, what you've done and I guess your approach to that research side. We'll talk about that first, then we'll talk about applied stuff.

Of course. So our applied research is like very much applied. I think where we are able to get traction with our research is in its ability to take a problem that the business is facing and it enables us to challenge some old assumptions and find solutions within, within the insights that we're gathering. We work with financial advisors, financial advisors maybe have maybe between 100 and 250 households they, they work with who are in their geographic region for the most part. And our research looks at Canadians across the country and we're able to find themes and patterns that an individual advisor may not be able to see it pick up on just because the nature of the sample they're working with. And I think the power in our research and where we've been able to get a lot of traction is in taking those insights from, in these pieces, macro patterns that are happening within wealth management industry or financial health or well being stress, all those types of things. And we're then able to channel that research and insights and practical application of what to do about those problems or opportunities to individ to advisors, to individuals. And I think that's where we've, we've had a lot of success. And to your point, running a 2000 plus person study is no small feat. We rely heavily on our partners, third party partners to draft and execute the surveys on the panels. Like I mean we draft all the questions and we do all the analysis ourselves in house, but we don't program the survey ourselves. Right. We have to rely on partners and I think because we've been able to show that our research has applicable steps for advisors, it shows value over time and we've been able to secure funding in the past and we've, you know, and to the, to our executives credit they've given us a lot of freedom in choosing the headline themes. Right. But again it always comes back to what are the things that we can do within the business to move things forward.

Yeah, I really appreciate it in the, that research paper that you shared that it ends with like and here are a couple things you can go do right now based on what's here. Right. So we've got the not even so, of course, you know, there's kind of executive summary of like this is the highlights. But then at the end like you as an advisor go do this, ask this question, find this thing out of a couple things that you can be using that versus just saying, well thanks, that was a nice paper. And so what? Right, so the, the value is very clear there and it's backed in interesting research in this case. You know, a little bit of like how we perceive whether we're wealthy or not.

Our latest publication is all about this idea called wealth confidence. And it takes in or rather borrows from subjective financial well being literature. But because we're in a wealth management space, we also need to figure out, well how does that might, how might that apply differently to people who use financial advisors than people who don't? Are there any differences there? And we do see that there is some differences. And the power in the way we've deconstructed wealth confidence is that I think it can apply across income and asset levels. But I think it captures this idea of feeling wealthy unlike maybe other areas of the literature have, have explored. And it's, it's, it's also been able to show that there's, it's, it's basically a metric for understanding the value of different aspects of wealth management. Unlike in traditional asset management where you know, the more money you have just means you feel wealthier, right? It, we've been using this objective measure of wealth as a proxy for feeling wealthy. And what our study uncovered was that that's not necessarily the case. Having a lot of money can make, can, you know, gives us a higher likelihood of feeling wealthy. But that's not the only thing. And in fact I think one of the most interesting parts of our research is that at around the three and a half million dollar Canadian mark, the more money we have, the less wealthy we feel. Which is a really weird thing if you're a fan of economics. But if you're a fan of behavioral science, which I'm sure many of your listeners are, that might actually make perfect sense. And when we break down this idea of wealth confidence into the three factors, right this, there's this an intertemporal piece of, you know, do we feel like we're on the right path to accumulating wealth? Do we feel like we are wealthier than our friends? Is there's a social component as well. And then the last piece is this sort of purpose and pleasure aspect of feeling wealthy because how happy, purposeful we feel in our everyday life relates to how purposeful and happy we feel in our financial lives. Right. We're of one mind. It's not like we're two different people.

Right.

And so back to this idea of wealth confidence declining as our assets go up. Now, three and a half million dollars. That's a lot of money. I mean, there's no. There's no doubt about that. But it starts to go down at that point in our research, and it bottoms out at around seven million. Seven and a half million dollars Canadian. Right. That's the lowest point. Now, I couldn't help but think of a quote from. I think it was succession, the show.

Yay. I was so delighted to read that because I love the. That moment in. In the show. I'll let you continue, but I was glad to see it in there.

All right. Great show. There's. I. I forget the character's name.

Connor.

That's right. He kind of goes on this monologue around how having $5 million is the worst. It's not worth it to work, but you can't really fully retire. You can fly first class. You'll never own the jet. And, you know, to someone like me, that's an incredible amount of money. Right. If I think to most people, that's an incredible amount of money. Would love to have $5 million, but it's hard for us to relate to that monologue. But when we look at the research and when we start to think more deeply about what's actually going on and what we discover is that it's all relative. So in our. In our three components of wealth confidence, we actually can see that in the data, we see that this social comparisons piece starts to decline very steeply and again, bottoms out at that $7 million mark, which is equivalent to about $5 million in US currency. And, you know, you can construct a narrative around that. It makes perfect sense. You can think of the executive who has worked her entire career developing her skills. She gets successive promotions, but she's still living in the same house, Right. She's always lived in. She still has the same group of friends. She doesn't yet belong to the private members clubs. And all of a sudden, you know, in her. In her 40s, she may reach that point where she's now the CEO and she's making the big bucks. She moves to a more affluent neighborhood. Her German cars that she always drove. Now instead of being the nicest of her friend group, now she's comparing to her neighbors who are perhaps have been wealthy for generations. And instead of driving German cars, maybe they're driving Italian cars. I don't know. You can just sort of make up this story, but it makes perfect sense. Right. The Joneses have a massive influence on. On how wealthy we feel. And so that old adage, you know, comparison is the thief of joy holds true for wealthy people, but it also holds true for everybody else.

Right. And it is so interesting because when you're. When we're not, when we don't have the luxury to be at, of course, like succession level wealthy, or any of these, you know, kind of differences along the way, you would think, you know, as if you're struggling financially and you say, if I just had, like, oh, if I won the lottery or whatever it is. Right. But then we see people that don't necessarily feel that level of wealthy because you have new points of comparison, like you said, keeping up with Kardashians being its own sort of mental approach. And as we see social media and those, the hurting, the social proof, the all those aspects of behavioral science that are so impactful, I forget what the exact number was. And I know I told you I wasn't going to ask you for specific numbers, but it was something like 13%. I want to say of people that if you ask them if they feel wealthy, like if they would consider themselves to be wealthy, that only 13% of people said yes. And even then it was somewhat trepidatiously and that it's not where you would say, like, like you said, once you hit a certain amount of income or disposable income, or that it continues like everyone beyond that point feels this way. Right. So that's just really interesting too.

Yeah. And. And I do actually know that set off the top of my head, so happy to dive into that. So it was 13% of millionaires consider themselves wealthy, which I think is a really powerful statistic. But you consider that in the global scheme of things, you know, they're approaching the top 1% of wealth. If we look at our data and we think and we look at people who consider themselves wealthy and people who don't consider themselves wealthy. And now this is a study of Canadians, you know, from 18 to 100, basically. So it includes retirees and people of all different sorts. When you ask people, well, you know, do you feel wealthy? And they say yes, their average assets in, again, in Canadian dollar terms, it's about $950,000. When you ask people the same question who say, I don't feel that wealthy, you know, the answer is virtually the same. Statistically, that's the same. It's about. It's about $875,000. It's very, very close. And to me, I think someone looking from the outside and looking at that data, well, that's virtually the same what's really going on here. And I think it again, speaks to this idea that an objective level of wealth at a certain point stops making a difference. We have to always recognize that moving from, let's say, $50,000 in assets to having enough to retire on is going to make a big difference in, in, in your wealth comp. It is. There's no doubt about that. But at a certain point, it changes. And I think we have to just move away from this idea that how much money we have is somehow reflective of how wealthy we are. It's mostly true. Okay, I don't want to speak here, but there are so many other things that we can do to make us feel wealthy that doesn't include getting more money.

Right.

And one of my favorite things to. To show for that is giving to charity. Even planning to give to charity has a massive impact on how wealthy we feel. And it doesn't matter how much money you have. The research is pretty clear on how gratifying it is to give to charity. And I think that that's something that perhaps some of us know notionally, but it's, it's so clear in our data. It is one of the most efficient ways of boosting wealth confidence.

So in the research, because I too, I'm glad you brought it up. It was. My next question was to talk about the philanthropy piece. Is it a reciprocity piece? Is it in an aspect like, so when I give to others, it helps me to feel like a part of this community boosting. Do we feel like I have enough that I can be giving away? And then it helps signal this feeling of, of wealth. Is it out like you're saying, outside of money to say, like, I'm, I'm wealthy in life and, you know, contributing and whatnot? Like, I'm sure it's an aspect of all of those things, but what, what did you find in kind of the. The key as to why that signals this feeling of wealthiness?

I think it's a few different things and I. And it's. It could be any or all of the things I'm about to say. It could definitely be the reciprocity effect. Right? Like putting positive energy out. Out there. You'll receive positive positivity back. I think it could also be around this idea of purpose. If there is a specific charity or cause that people are passionate about. I think when they reframe the idea of wealth rather than being for their own gain, but also. But in fact, for the gain of something bigger than themselves, I think that's a very powerful element. You know, to your point that you said around, you know, I have enough money, I can. I can do it now. I think it could be. But what we see that's really quite interesting in the data is that for people who give to charity, as their assets go up, they just continue to get, you know, more confident about their wealth. But at a certain point, something happens to those who don't give to charity as their assets go up, it starts to go down again. Right. We. We get to a certain point, and then it starts to decline. That's really weird to me. So that story that I've sort of constructed around social comparison pieces and charitable giving, you know, still kind of makes sense. Right. But it's not. Then. I don't think the mechanism is that because I have more, I can give more, and that's why I'm happier. I think the mechanism is, I think, more internal. I think it's deeper. I think it speaks more to this idea of purpose than anything else.

Yeah, I love that. I think that's really important, too. And just even as we look at the importance, like we were saying, of understanding the problem of asking the right question, of thinking about word choice. Right. So by focusing on wealth and wealth confidence and what does wealth even mean? And how do we think about this holistically in life of, you know, is a different question than if you're just talking about finance. Right. Like financial. Right. It's totally different. And I think that's really important for people as they consider projects and that the direction you go in, you could be in a very different place if you would have started with a different word other than wealth.

Yeah, and that's a really good point, because what we see is that the word wealthy doesn't resonate with people, and that can turn them off quite a bit. And so we. We need to think about ways in which to talk about, say, our goals and achieving the things that we want to achieve financially in our lives without labeling it wealth. We. We did some testing, and that word did not resonate at all. It's quite, quite funny.

It's fascinating, I think, too, because, I mean, just when you consider, like you say we're only 13% of the millionaires would say that they feel wealthy. And so is it this, like, resentment or it's like putting up the mirror of the thing. I feel like I can never be in this level of aspiration that. But it could be emulating something else of well being or security or. Right. Like what is it we're trying to achieve with this and how we're going to be communicating. But to draw people in may be different than once they're working with us and we're knowing as an advisor that we can be talking with them about this idea of overall wealth in life in the way that they're going to be thinking about how they're going to be investing and helping to feel happier, you know, and that, that has this aspect of feeling, you know, secure and whatnot.

I think Malia, that's, that's totally right. I think that we can focus on so many different things and we're getting a little bit into the, into the more philosophical side of things. I love it. We can achieve a level of wealth confidence that isn't tied solely to how much money we have. And I think that's a really important finding from our work because it enables us to think more broadly about what we can do and what financial advisors can do to help their clients. And also, you know, we can take it on as individual investors if there are things that we can do, like for example, getting a will, setting up a power of attorney, those types of things that make us feel more secure because we know things are going to be taken care of. Those are really powerful things that anyone can, can learn from. Doesn't just have to be these people in the top 1% because it applies to, applies to everybody in the day.

Definitely. Well, let's take that out of say I always get into the philosophical stuff. So we'll and love to start there so people can think about their problems in a more robust way that they're going to be working on projects and things as they bring that together. So as look for that applied side. You know, we've talked a bit about the research and thinking about our problem that we're going to be working on. Can you give an example of something where you've been able to apply this across your work?

Yeah. So one of the, a couple examples I can draw on. The first is this idea of doing a financial plan. This is something that anyone and everyone ought to do because it's so it's hard to overstate how valuable setting up a financial plan is. And when we look at our financial planning business, what we discovered in our research is that, you know, a lot of Canadians didn't actually know what a Financial plan was, most of them don't know, despite the fact that they probably already have one from their financial planner. They didn't really know. And you know, one of our goals as a, as a business, I would, I could think, I could say is that we want to get people more financial plans because there is this recognition of how valuable they are to our well being, our financial health, our wealth, confidence, all these things. And so what we discovered in our research, some, some different research that we did that was internally facing was that, you know, not only did Canadians not know what a financial plan was, that they couldn't really articulate the value of what that is because, you know, they didn't really know. And so what we did is we did some testing around how might we phrase the value of financial plan in a way that resonates with our clients. And we did a pretty cool experiment where we looked at two, we looked at 10 different reasons to believe 10 different value propositions. And we took a, you know, the idea of regulatory focus, of approach versus avoidance language, and we took those 10 reasons to believe and we tested both the, the approach versus, you know, avoidance language. And what we saw is when we, we rank the value of each One of those 10 items, is that the way they rank differs depending on how you frame them up? Approach or avoid language. And what we did is we took that re that those the top five basically across both the approach and avoid, and we combined it into this one, you know, basically pitch for our financial planners to explain to clients the value of a financial plan. These are things that you can listen, these messages are going to resonate with, with clients in a way that they see the value and are going to want to take you up on your offer to create a financial plan for them. And we did a cross Canada roadshow, let's call it, talking about our findings. We prepared some fun brochures to get the word out. And we can't take credit for all of the changes that occurred because there were some other structural things that happened. But we basically saw our plan creation rate after we did our song and dance, let's call it, increased by 10 times basically. Now again, we're not taking all the credit for that and this is like sort of a natural experiment kind of methodology here. But you know, we felt pretty good about that. Feedback that we got from all of our colleagues across the country was very positive. And so sometimes this small changes in the way we say things or position the value of a financial plan or even anything really, as your audience knows Has a massive impact. And we were surprised at how much of an impact it was, frankly, as well.

Yeah. I mean, 10 times is not a nothing of a result, that's for sure.

And again, we don't take credit for it.

It's not all. I appreciate it's not all you. I mean, even just when we think about incentives, right. And the idea of focusing conversation on something to where people get a little bit and we get to see all the aspects of so you going out and doing the roadshow, even the message that, that shows to the importance of this thing that you're talking about, I think is so much in whether people decide to embrace it and move forward or not. Right. And hearing about the different points and feeling some confidence in testing something and the social proof of everybody else is going to be doing this. I don't want to be left behind. Right. There's a lot of aspects that come into that approach and being given some language that they can lean to. I'm curious, was it so like you said, if you had the top five, you know, the, or the top items, whether they were approach or avoidance type of language. So did you intermix and say that there was like a script that had both approach and avoidance language in it, but they were just the top messages and this is how you can talk about it, or was it more. These are the top on this way. These are the top on this way. Pick which one works for you and test it.

So we, we took the top five strongest performers. Things like avoiding taxes I think resonates with everybody. No one wants to pay tax. Right. And a financial plan can offer you a way in which to optimize your. Your tax commitments so that, that resonates with a lot of people. And so when we combined everything together, we, we didn't just leave it there. We still wanted to test our own thinking. So we went out again and we did a bit of a qualitative exercise and we asked people to respond to some of the language that we, we chose. And the one I think that I found really quite funny and surprising because it's very common to, to say things like a holistic plan. Right. The word holistic, we use it all the time at cd and we thought it, it worked well, but in fact it didn't. The overwhelming result was that people thought of holistic medicine. And it's a completely different thing than your financial situation. And so what we see is that it didn't really work. Right. So we thought maybe. Okay, well, comprehensive is probably a better word. And again, it still astonishes me how much small change of the language can change how something resonates in the minds of our audience. And so basically part of our song and dance was to encourage our colleagues to take what we'd written. And here's the research, but you got to put it into your own words because I think what we don't often talk about is the authenticity in delivering the message. Right. So the messenger effect is so important, and if the people delivering the message don't believe in it and it's not delivered in a way that is normal for them, no matter how much you tweak the words, it's not going to matter in this case. So I think that really helped sell the idea of using what we had put together for our financial planners because it enabled them to still have autonomy. I think that's a really important aspect that we always have to be thinking about when we're delivering behavioral interventions. I mean, in our, in our line of work, right, we influence clients through advisors, and advisors are the ultimate delivery of a lot of our, A lot.

Of our work, for sure. And like you said that autonomy is so important. And if, if someone's having to look up the language and fumbling through it to say, oh, there was something I'm supposed to say, I have no confidence, confidence in you as my potential advisor. Right. So like you said, helping them to understand why it matters, give them the explanation for even if it's something that you have been saying that we show is not super successful. Here's some other language, a very similar word that if you just try to. If you've been saying holistic, we recommend you don't and try the word comprehensive for the next month and like, see what happens. Right. It's a, a tiny change. There's a reason for why clearly, of course, your advisors have some incentive to have their clients do well and take these things as well. So it's should be an easy enough sell, but it's not saying here's 50 things and go dig through this to find what's going to work for you. Right. You're giving specific insights that are going to help them and help the clients and help everyone in a really positive way, which I think helped, of course, lead to the amazing results that you've seen on this and I'm sure many other applied aspects that you've already done and into the future. So thanks for sharing at least just a little taste of it with us here today.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Nice. So for everyone who does want to learn more from you and connect and follow you and whatnot. You know what's their best path to do.

So I think the best way is to follow me on LinkedIn and feel free to connect with me. Happy to answer questions and dive deeper into some of the research that we've done.

That's great. Yeah, we will definitely put the link to your LinkedIn there in the show notes for everyone who is excited to learn more and to connect and see what you're up to. So thank you again, Anthony for joining me today. It was delightful to chat with you.

Thanks Melina.

Thank you again to Anthony Damsis for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I really love talking about specific word choices and seeing how it can unlock something different in the brain from a slightly different word or phrase. Seeing how the word wealthy can be useful in many contexts. And it's also key to know where it is, isn't resonating and how it lines up for people. This is really key when realizing that a word that you love and that resonates with you isn't necessarily going to have that same impact for your customers or clients or team members, which is why thoughtful testing is so important. I was also reminded of a concept that I haven't done a dedicated episode on yet for the show, but which felt really, really relevant in the conversation of whether or not someone feels wealthy and that desire to keep up with the increasingly richer Joneses. It's called the Diderot Effect, and it got its name from the French philosopher who lived almost his entire life in poverty, but came into some funds later in life and got a new scarlet robe. It was so beautiful that he realized it was completely out of place amongst all his other, more common possessions. He felt the desire and urge to buy new things to match the beauty of his new robe. A new rug, sculptures, a table, a leather chair and a new mirror. Those reactive purchases are what's now known as the Diderot Effect. He was happy with what he had, but once he got one new thing, he found himself in a spiral of consumption which made him feel that need to get more new stuff. Things that his old self never needed to be happy or fulfilled. This is why I love that the research about feeling wealthy that Anthony shared today showed things that aren't necessarily about how much money or stuff you have, that giving to others and being more philanthropic can make you feel wealthy. That's amazing and an insight that might not have come up if they were asking about someone say financial security. Which is why, again, word choice matters. Knowing what you're trying to figure out and asking the right questions to shape your research can make a huge difference. What insights would be valuable for your team? As we close out the show, don't forget about the show notes, which include links to my top related past episodes and books, ways to connect with myself and Anthony and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 415 and thank you again to Anthony Damsis 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 won't want to 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 SAM.