437. The Science of Immersion: Transforming Business with Dr. Paul Zak

Welcome to episode 437 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Paul Zach. 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, Malik 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 Dr. Paul Zak. Paul is Distinguished University professor at Claremont Graduate University and is in the top 3% of most cited scientists. Paul's two decades of research extending the boundaries of behavioral neuroscience have taken him from the pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. He has authored many top articles and books including Trust Factor and the Moral Molecule. His most recent book is Immersion the Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness. Besides his academic appointment, he is a four time tech entrepreneur. In 2017, he founded Immersion Neuroscience, a software platform that allows anyone to measure what the brain loves in real time that that's used to improve outcomes in entertainment, education, advertising and emotional health. He is a regular TED speaker and has appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, Fox and Friends, ABC Evening News and his work has been reported in the New York Times, the Wall Street.

Journal, USA Today, Time, the Economist, Scientific.

American, Fast Company, Forbes and many others.

I am so excited for this one.

I'm sure you are too.

And just really quickly before we get into the conversation, I, I want to.

Be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to connect with Paul and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com437 now let's jump right in. Dr. Paul Zach, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you so much, Melina.

Yes, well, I, I'm guessing there are a lot of people listening that do know your name. But for those who don't yet know you, can you please share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Oh, I'm a professional nerd.

Yeah.

Like all your guests, I'm a professor at Claremont Graduate University. I run a fairly big behavioral neuroscience lab and founded a company in 2017 called Immersion Neuroscience, which is the first neuroscience as a service software platform that anybody measure what the brain loves in real time by applying algorithms to smartwatches. That's infur. Brain activity.

Absolutely. I really enjoyed reading some of the articles that you had sent over in. In advance of our interview. And I hadn't seen neuroscience as a service, really, that framework so much. So it's exciting to see that that's getting some. Some traction. Do we pronounce that? Is that nos? Is that.

Yeah, exactly. So, again, you don't want to have to talk. You know, when we started doing this work, custom, you know, consulting work in neuroscience, you know, really solving business problems, I kind of realized, like, all the people around us are PhDs. We're all nerds. You know, we. You know, I've started four businesses, so I have some business experience. But you don't want to talk to me. What you really want is a platform that just says, is this thing good or bad? And how to make it better. I mean, ultimately, that's what you really want to know. And so it took me a long time to get through my thick skull that actually simple is better. And for the people who are very nerdy or data scientists, they can download the data and look at the details.

Yeah. Well, I am super excited to talk about the NOS of it all. And let's start with some additional background on the work that you've done in. I guess we can. We'll start with the. How did you get into neuroscience and storytelling? And I'll let you just sort of tell your own story from the. From the beginning and some cool discoveries that you made.

So, like you, Melina, I'm super interested in these odd species called humans. I find them fascinating. And in the early 2000s, started doing a lot of work looking at why people are ever good. Like, the bad behavior gets all the press, actually. It's easy to study in laboratory. It's easier to make people scared. But, like, why are people nice when no one's looking? That seems like a really fundamentally important question. So did that work for years and years and was the first scientist to really show the profound behavioral effects of oxytocin on human social behaviors. As we did that work, we began to think about how to influence people's behaviors. So what are the underlying factors that lead people to act on a communication, say, an ad or. Or an experience, you know, have a wow experience at a retail store or restaurant? And what's that? Like, what does it do in the brain? And if we understand those brain mechanisms, then we can look at factors that promote or inhibit it. So I'm always a mechanism guy. I want to find that mechanism So I really understand what drives the behavior. And when we looked at ways to influence behavior to not shock anybody, we found that first of all, these pathways in the brain require that that experience is sufficiently valuable to you. So for listeners, the brain's super energy hungry. And we evolved to just modulate that big overhead cost by essentially idling our brains most of the time. So these default responses in the brain, they're very efficient. And that's why we have habits that sometimes drive the people around us crazy. That's why coaching is important for executives, because those habits get kind of locked in. They can be changed, but they require effort, metabolic cost. Anyway, what we found was this social emotional evaluation mechanism that I've called immersion. It's a one second frequency data stream coming out of your brain that's associated with the action of two core neurochemicals, dopamine and oxytocin. So when this immersion data stream was high enough, a peak immersion moment, it's like the brain going, holy crap, this is super important. So if we have this testbed now to assess whether communication, marketing, speech, any of that produces high enough immersion, then we have very high likelihood that it will influence behavior. And so again, as a nerd or a Martian, you know, can pick your term, I'm really interested to understand why people do what they do. And in experiments we've run, we ask people, well, why did you do A instead of B? And they're like, I don't know, seem like, you know, so as we started doing this, we really had to kind of dig in and get into this unconscious response. And that requires measurement tools. And so it's been a really wonderful journey. This work, I should say, was largely funded initially by the US taxpayers. So we were funded by US Department of Defense and other agencies that might have three letters to identify those signals in the brain that would accurately and consistently predict what people would do after a message or an experience. So they wanted to give soldiers this new superpower called persuasion. That's awesome. Let's use words rather than weapons on a first cut wherever you are, Afghanistan, Iraq, that's great. But you can see the application immediately towards marketing, towards leadership. Right? It becomes very clear. So that's why we launched the company.

And so just to put a fine point on it too, for like you said, you talked about oxytocin, of course, and dopamine. And knowing that, you know, you have another one of your books called the Trust Molecule, right? And that in oxytocin being this, you don't have to be Physically with a person, even coming up in video, you know, as far as, like, why we enjoy movies and in your book, immersion, you know, talking about, you know, watching Million Dollar Baby or rewatching La La Land and still feeling, even the second or 18th time we watch something, it can still, you know, hit you in the feels, as we might say. Right. So what is it about storytelling that brings forward that trust? And I know you were. When we think about, I guess, some of the, whether it's video or otherwise, as far as for brands as they're trying to increase immersion, you know, what are a couple things for them to keep in mind as they go to build that out?

Yeah, great question. So as we discovered this valuation network for social emotional experiences, it is metabolically costly. Your brain's investing a lot of resources when it evaluates this message or experience as important to you as an organism. So then the question is, what would sustain high levels of immersion? When is the brain really going to expand those metabolic resources for more than a couple seconds, which is what? Again, the brain's working on millisecond frequency, so it really wants to return to that baseline. And just almost through happenstance, as you mentioned, I watched Million Dollar Baby on an airplane and lost my mind and was crying and then people wanted to help me. Like, I have daughters. It's father daughter story, daughter, you know, the girl dies at the end. Right, sorry, spoiler alert. 20 year old movie.

Oh, no.

Girl dies. Oh, it's worse than that. But anyway, and so, yeah, so I took that back to my lab. I'm like, oh, man, I had this crazy experience yesterday on the airplane. And. And one of the psychologists in my lab goes, oh yeah, psychologists do this all the time to manipulate people's emotions. I said, oh, we should look into videos as a way to look at how to have these peak immersion moments. And the ones we found that sustained immersion for a long period of time had a narrative arc. And then again you go, duh, like, you know, English 101. How did I not know that humans have been doing this for 2,500 years? At least. Longer, of course. I mean, Aristotle was 2,500 years ago, who wrote about it. So, yes, we started looking at storytelling as one of the most effective ways to influence people's behavior because it often, if it's well structured and delivered, will generate, generate these peak immersion moments. Okay, so lots of science. Let's get back to business now. So if I want to communicate, say, the value of my product or service or create an amazing customer Experience. If I can measure immersion and I can tweak that experience, so that produces the high immersion moments. These neurochemicals I identified as valuing these experiences tag this experience as important to the organism. And those highly valued experiences are saved in the brain in a very particular way. And they're like your sweet little grandmother poking you in the head. Melina, Melina, Melina. Do this thing, do this thing, do this thing. So now when you've had seen a great ad and you go into the store and you see the end cap with the same logo and you go, oh, holy crap, this is a wonderful thing. So again, these systems are very blunt in the brain. There's kind of a halo effect where you give me a great experience and not only do I enjoy it in the moment and that's awesome, but it also provokes this desire to repeat the experience or do more in that realm. And that's where my religion comes into play. So my religion is CLV customer lifetime value. If I want to really delight customers and I want to drive up customer lifetime value, so I have these raving fans, then not only use my product or service, but we'll talk about it. And to do that, prior to having our platform it was guess and verify. Well, let's try this thing and see if it increases customer lifetime value. But now you actually have a test bed where you can actually try out these marketing materials or compare. Recently, a subscriber is a very high end restaurant chain. I won't mention the name, but they, they are expanding and they have some restaurants that are just killing it and they have some restaurants that are not doing so well. The question is why? Right. Get all the data. But also ultimately you want to know what is that customer experience? Like what is the manager in Newport Beach, California doing that the manager in Philadelphia is not doing? Right. That's the kind of the core question. And so if I know that the immersion in Newport beach is higher, then I actually want to then dive in as a leader and go, okay, what, what's going on here? So when I went to this restaurant, just as an example, can very high end, you walk up, they hand you a glass of champagne. So before you give me your hey, I have a reservation. My name's Paul. Great. Here's a glass of champagne for you and the rest of your party. Your table will be ready in a couple of minutes. Oh, I'm already happy. That's fabulous. Right now. They didn't do a lot of things well when we measured immersion in studies in this restaurant. But that's a great start, right? So I think one of the other things we found, Molina, is this peak end rule that we know from psychology or behavioral economics. People tend to remember the emotional peaks of experiences at the end of experiences. So if you can engineer a peak at the end of the experience, you get the double whammy. So for this restaurant chain, I was there. I, you know, had an open check. So I was like a secret shopper. They didn't know I was coming. I brought a couple people and I spent almost $300 for lunch. That's a lot of money. I'm a cheap guy. I don't, you know, if I didn't have an open check, I wouldn't do that. And the whole experience was great until the last. I was over, like two hours, last half an hour, never saw the waiter send me off. No photo, no loyalty, no. A little gift, a chocolate something. There was no peak end rule on it at all. And, like, huge missing opportunity to send you out with. Spent a lot of money for lunch, but, oh, my God, it was amazing. I started with champagne. They ended with this wonderful little chocolate truffle. Or with. I'm like, hey, you're in la. Where's the. Where's the big banner with the name of your restaurant? Like, hey, let's take a picture. You can post this right on Instagram, like, why the hell is the waiter not doing that? Right? So it's those little things that allow us to think about how to really drive up that clv.

Definitely. And I know, I'm sure everybody that's listening and hearing the, you know, customer lifetime value and saying, yes, please, please. And if you didn't have that moment, it's a good thing to be looking at, for sure. It's not just about this one moment, this one time, like you said, right. And we think about the. If you can have that great experience, that's going to leave that marker in the brain that I now have a positive association with this particular, this brand, this moment, this thing I still have. It was interesting to. To in reading your book and you talk about, you know, the band where they randomly bring out someone to do a duet. And I always talk about. I went to a. So both a Tom Petty concert that I went to where they brought out both Stevie Nicks and Eddie Vedder, which was super awesome. And when I saw Paul McCartney and they brought out the two remaining members of Nirvana being in Seattle, right? You get that piece. And they did Helter Skelter with like eight guitars and three drum kits. And it was this whole just super epic setup. And those are always, when we talk about concerts, I always talk about those two things that happened because of that unexpected nature in them. Right. And also a restaurant where I have celiac disease, I can't eat bread or any of the things. And often people will say, oh, here's for everybody. You can't have it. Like, yes, I'm, I'm aware.

Thank you.

And I know that I can't thank you very much and bring you something else. They did, they brought me this, like, little. It was almonds. Like, you know, maybe it cost them a dollar or two, right, to be able to drop them off. They said, oh, we have these on our appetizer menu. And I feel like everyone should have a little something to snack on. So I just wanted to bring these out for you, you know, on the house. And I always talk about and recommend that restaurant to people because of the little almonds that I got at the beginning.

So beautiful examples. So two kind of takeaways from that. One is that it's the humans that increase immersion. So for every experience we've had, when you add in this social layer, whether it's online or in person, immersion is going to be higher rather than just a self service. So number one, and number two, the brain loves pattern breaks, right? So everyone's getting bread. You got almonds. Oh, now, hey, we're going to talk about that, right? It's not just, you're going to get this benefit or like, oh, yeah, they kind of love me, they know about me. And now my table's talking about what a great place, right? We're generating that buzz. And so we see this a lot, or I see this a lot because I've seen bazillions. So as you know from the book, we've got over 50,000 brain observations and growing because every day people are collecting data. So I've seen just way too many ads and neurologic data. And good ads will do that. Pattern break, right? Something, something, something, something, something. Hold. Oh, something else is happening, right? And so really for listeners, think about that unexpected surprise, that pattern break, something that people don't expect, like this restaurant. Like, if you're in the Southern California region, you have people who are so interested in how they look and make it in movies or whatever. And everyone's wondering if we have separation from the movie industry in Southern California. Taking the Instagram photo, like, that would be a lock in for me. Like, I can't imagine why they are not Doing that, especially at a nice restaurant where you're probably celebrating something anyway, right? So, you know, I just think, you know, that would be so cool. Again, you can say no if you're a customer. Like, I don't really care or I don't have an account. Great, but. Great, we'll take a picture. Do you mind if we post your picture on our Instagram? People say, whatever, right? So all of a sudden you have this buzz, and then whoever follows you on Instagram goes, oh, yeah, I'm just gonna say the name of the restaurant, but I'll just suppress it. I might be NDA'd. But you went to Blah blah Restaurant. Holy crap, is that a good place, right? So now you have that buzz. Now we reinforce how exciting this experience was. So I think there's, you know, the. The view now is this ongoing relationship with a customer is very important, and that can be done with technology online, Right? Once you have some way to contact them, their phone number, a loyalty program, email, whatever that is, talk to them, tell them what's going on, they can choose to unsubscribe. But I think at least for some core group of customers who love it, who are your superfans, they want to spread the word. It's a big part of their life. Holy crap. I went to a $300 lunch. It was fricking amazing. Let me tell you about it a year down the road, right?

Well, and I think what's really key for people, too, on that pattern break piece is to understand the context, this experience in general, and how you can break that. So as you talked about the champagne right at the very beginning, we've all been to restaurants many times, and we have an expectation of what it's like when you first walk in and you're kind of a hassle. And at the nice restaurant, maybe the, you know, the receptionist or whomever's taking your information is maybe kind of rude, and they don't really care about you, and they're busy, and you just have to go sit over there until we've deemed you worthy to focus on, right? And so when you come in and you're kind of. You have an expectation that this is going to be maybe not awesome until I get to sit down and they say, here's this champagne, and I know I don't have to pay for it. And it puts it on this whole, like, ooh, like, what a. This is different, right? And then we're talking about what a great place this is and how nice and, oh, this is a Great champagne to set the bar. That they've already broken that pattern that, you know, there's. And maybe we're going to order other drinks. Reciprocity's coming in because they gave us this gift. And it's all from that initial investment at the beginning that broke that pattern.

Yeah. And I think it's not hard to do if you think about it from a value perspective. Right. I want to create as much value for this customer as possible. Honestly, it wasn't great champagne, but it was such a wonderful surprise. And I was there with my daughter, who was. Who was 21, named Carter. Just handed her a glass of champagne. I guess she looks older. And it was just like, you know, your table's almost ready. Have a seat. And it was so warm. They used my name. So here's my pet peeve. Melina, Starbucks. I'm in their loyalty program. Rather than saying, hi, what do you want? When you go up there, they should say, are you paying with the app? Let's scan it right now. And then my last three orders should come up. Oh, would you like the bagel and a black coffee again? And they should use my name. Oh, hi, Mr. Zach. Welcome back.

Whoa.

You haven't been here in a couple months. Wow, we've missed you. Amazing how easy that would do with technology. It would take an extra 10 seconds, but actually would ultimately save them time because I'll probably just order the same crap I ordered before. Right. So if I order on other apps, Chick Fil, a Panera. Let's go through all the places that you. Dad, they have my last couple orders. Do you want the same thing? Yeah, I do. I've optimized what I want.

Your. Your usual, right?

Yeah. Why are they asking my name? Why they ask me what I want? It's insane.

Yeah.

And so it makes it an impersonal relationship. And so. Sorry, One more thought, if I may.

Yeah. Yeah.

This social emotional evaluation network that I've called Immersion also activates when we are around loved ones, when we pet our dogs, when we cry at movies, like I do, apparently on airplanes. And so it's the same mechanism. It's really love or connection, I don't care. It's all those, you know, it's all this kind of similar pathways in the brain. So how do you love your customer? Right. Ultimately, how do you show them love? And as you say, with reciprocity, if you show them love, you're like, oh, my God, they're so wonderful. You know, think how loyal I would be to Starbucks if they knew my name, they knew my order. I'm pretty loyal to Chick Fil A because they kind of take care of me. I get good rewards all the time. Reward programs are really nice. So I think Chick Fil A's got pretty darn good app and they communicate with me and they'll send me a message once in a while like, oh, you, you know, you got a free milkshake, you know, come in the next month and grab it or birthday. I got a free meal on my birthday. How costly is that? If I'm a regular Chick Fil A customer?

Chick Fil A, well, and you got a free meal, but then are you going to take the whole family and then you're paying for all of them, right? That you get to go in and do that. That's. I. I think Starbucks does a lot of things really well. I've done a whole episode on it and what I. But, but I have some qualms with their loyalty app as well in. So I think they do a great job with the star rewards and the bonuses and things that you can get. They do have a. Like repeat my order for mobile. But if I'm going to go stand in the line, like you said, I don't have that experience. And it is very interesting. Like you were saying, I always hate that they will ask me for my name when I'm paying for the app and it has my name, you know, and so, like, why are you. Even if you didn't ask, I wouldn't be annoyed that you didn't know. But now that you've asked, you've now set this weird expectation that you should know. You try to make it feel like you know me.

Right.

And then when you don't, it feels annoying. Right where I wouldn't have expected it before. So I think that's a real key thing for people and brands when they're thinking about setting up these loyalty programs and wanting it to feel like you know somebody. But what are the things that you're not thinking about? So as I mentioned, having celiac disease, I'm not going to order sandwiches and cookies and bagels and other things that will make me very, very ill. And they will do the reward promotions for me. If you just get a sandwich, if you try this one thing this week, then you'll get 100 bonus stars or something. It's like, well, thanks for not knowing me and offering a thing that I can never take advantage of.

Right?

That's.

But they have your history. You never ordered a sandwich. They should know that, so it's a tech thing. So what we found in, you know, published scientific research is that humans, because we're such social creatures, right, we're super aware, again, largely unconsciously, of people's social behaviors and intentions, that it's almost better not to be inauthentic. Inauthentic. We pick that up and it produces this big stress response in people, like, you're full of crap, you know, and so it's better just to be like, I don't know you and let's just be nice to each other, than I halfway know you and I'm pretending like a Starbucks. So, for example, we did a study, you know, it's, I'm just fascinated by human behavior in the brain, but we did a study on something that even the most ardent capitalist enjoys, which is that CEO that's involved in some fraud or whatever, and they do the perp walk with them and you're like, oh, what a jerk. So I was going to use a different word anyway, so we looked at CEO apologies and we said, hey, can you guess? Actually, we'll pay you if you guess properly whether the thing they're apologizing for was fixed in the next six months or not. So these are all historical. They're all on video. People, you know, we paid them to be an experiment. They could bet their money they can't tell. They, they, they can't say if they're sincere or not. But guess what? Their brain knows. So when people are insincere, and that is the CEO saying, oh, we're going to fix this tomorrow, it doesn't get fixed. Your brain knows, right? With high accuracy, actually. And it produces this kind of stress response or arousal response. So even if we don't know immediately, consciously, over time we learn like, oh, these people are just faking it. They don't really care about me as a customer. So I think that customer care really requires training, requires hiring the right people, but really training them to be truly concerned about the welfare of that individual as opposed to selling more junk to them. So, for example, I've worked with the Container Store for people that know the Container Store, based in Texas. It's a really nice, expensive containers basically for all your stuff and really wonderful store. So their average turnover is less than 10% a year for their staff, and average US and retail is about 66%. So why are they, why do they have less turnover? They train their employees extensively. I've forgotten the exact numbers. It's one of my books. But I think the first year there's like 60 hours of training your first year on the job. The next year it's like 40 hours. Like they really train them, but they train them to ask open ended questions about the problem that customers want to solve. So I come in, I'm saying, well, I'm looking for a hook for my bathroom to hang my robe on. Great. I can walk. Hooks are on IOF 7. That's bad customer service. And say, okay, great. What's your bathroom like? Well, it's really small. Well, you know what, we have these closet organizers and we have people who can read, blah, blah, blah. So let's talk about the larger problem you have. So that we would call that an upsell. But it's really thinking about having that customer have an extraordinary experience as opposed to buying a $3 hook. What would really make your bathroom fabulous for you or your closet or whatever we're talking about. And so I think, you know, that requires training. It's not really natural to kind of dig in a little bit and go, okay, what, what's the real problem you're having? You don't have enough space in this room. A hook might help that. But how about rearranging the room or changing the space or changing the shelving? And we have all those and we have people that just do that. And so I can introduce you to Bob, who's our closet guy and he'll just go through some ideas with you. It's free, you don't have to do it, you know.

Right.

I think it's important too that they invest so much in training. It's not just saying ask open ended questions like, okay, right, and like what, what do you even mean by that and what type? Because if you were to, to somebody.

Well, what's your real problem?

If somebody says, oh, I want a hook for the, for the bathrobe so it's not getting wet or something, you say, oh, but, but what's your real problem? You know, I don't know, just give me a hook.

Right.

Like that feels so different.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And by the way, everyone's getting this, this word, right? So I have a Walmart neighborhood market near me. This is a kind of a small footprint grocery store. Fine price, prices are great. When I ask where's the whatever flower? That person's just like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, they stop what they're doing and they walk me to that. Not just say aisle seven. They walk me to exactly the place it is. So if Walmart has understood that customer lifetime value is Important. Everybody else should.

Right.

And just being able to invest that little bit more because saying, oh, it's over there, then I might get lost or distracted or, you know, if there's another question on the way, there just may be something else. And understanding, like you said, carrying in the person and the answer they're trying to give. I would expect that for something like the Container Store and to be building the. So knowing that with the oxytocin piece, where it triggers that someone is trust to trustworthy, and it makes me want to be trustworthy in response.

Right.

It's this building sort of experience. And so in this case, where the representative says, well, tell me about your. Your bathroom. You know, that we're. We're looking at here. Their answer could be that it has to do with the size. It could be that it's going to be about the, the fixtures that they have. It can be the, oh, we're doing a remodel. I'm so excited. You know, you can get something based on the answer about the direction you're going to take them in, but if you were genuinely interested and feel like you solved that person's problem, there becomes more intrinsic motivation for those employees to feel like, I help people.

Right.

Look at this amazing thing that I do. It becomes about more than just buying and selling, that it's a really reciprocal value for the rep, the company, the customer. It all just comes together.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I should have said that. You were exactly right. Yeah. And so now you have this positive feedback loop, which is, hey, we had a great day. So what the Container Store does is they do before the store opens, they do a huddle and they talk about what their plans are today. And then they do at the end of the store day, everyone gets together. What was your best customer experience? What didn't go well? Just celebrate that we're in the service business, that all of us in business are in the service business. Right. All humans are in the service business. Right. You know, I've been married 30 years. I'm sure trying to be nice to my wife. So she still wants to be married to me. Right. You know, that's service. I got to be service to her. Otherwise, like this guy's always taking, taking, taking. So I think, you know, the old days, when you go to a headquarters of some office in New York City and they had the stock tick or the stock price up there, man, that is the worst. That is just the wrong metric. Or the question is, are you loved? Do you have that high clv? Are Your customers excited about what you do? And as you said, are the employees excited about being of service to other people? And are you proud of that? Can I go tell my. At the baseball game, you know, hey, what do you do? Oh, I'm. I'm in. I do this thing. Oh, awesome. What's that job like? You know, we got a great culture. And by the way, it happens everywhere. I think, you know, one thing that I've been obsessed about, Molina, is the below replacement fertility rates in the entire world. With a couple exceptions. Africa has got some problems in South America, but everywhere else, fertility is below replacement. So we're shrinking with humans. So the people who are working are valuable, and we should treat them as valued partners in this endeavor of service to the world. So, as you know, I'm at Claremont Graduate University, and one of famous management gurus of the 20th century, Peter Drucker, was there. And we overlapped for about 10 years before Peter died. And Peter Drucker wrote, I think, in the 1960s or early 70s that businesses treat employees like nonprofits treat volunteers. Volunteers show up for no pay because they are passionate about whatever this nonprofit's doing. We should have the same thing with employees. We should hire people and train them and motivate them so that they're passionate about this service they're providing to individuals and therefore to society. And if you don't have that passion, I don't know, it's maybe not the place for you. You should work somewhere else.

It is just so great to think about the motivation that can exist in knowing that the stories we choose to tell, like giving those employees, those teams, those customers, people, the space to share great stories, can help that the thing that resonates with me on that day and telling a great thing that happened and what I'm going to focus on tomorrow and whatnot, then someone else on the team can hear and go, wow, that's really great. That's a cool question. I'm going to ask someone that question tomorrow. And we get to just the thing that motivates me and can be my why doesn't have to be exactly the same as your why or my boss's why. But that. But giving the space to feel that why every day can really show up in. In powerful ways.

Yeah, I call that an organization's transcendent purpose. Like, why do you even exist? So again, Drucker would say, because you're improving people's lives in some way for profit. Nonprofit doesn't matter. Government. And so let's have that lived Transcendent purpose be on our lips. So as an example, I was at LinkedIn some years ago visiting a bunch of different groups, and every group, I enter the room at LinkedIn literally like a mantra. The LinkedIn employee said, At LinkedIn, our purpose is to make our members more successful and more productive. Guess what? They can measure that. At least they can measure successful because they have all your data on your jobs. Right. So they use that as a screen. But I like that everyone said it. It's a lived purpose. We know why we exist. And when I go to businesses and talk to employees, and I'd love your opinion on this as well, I don't know. 80% cannot tell me why their business exists. They'll say to make money, to make a better product sometimes. But it's not human focused, it's not customer focused. Like we solve this problem for our customers. Have you had the same experience?

Yeah, definitely. And I think just taking that time. So every episode of the brainy business ends with be thoughtful. Right. And so taking a little bit more time up front to consider, you know, if we're only going to be about one thing, that's this is what I tell my customers or, sorry, my clients all the time and on the show and everything is, if you only get one thing from this, this moment of engagement, from what customers are going to think about you, from the video, from the ad, from the post, from the email, if from the meeting you have with somebody, do you even know what the one thing is? And if you don't, they definitely don't know. And they wouldn't be able to say it and share it and whatnot. And so, you know, you need to be repeating whatever it is.

Enough.

Like you said that mantra. I always say too, when you feel like you've said it too many times, you still probably haven't said it enough in a way that we think like Target employees are probably pretty sick of the color red, maybe, but they're not going to just start randomly having green or blue around, right? Because it's how you remember that brand, that red on white in the concentric circle. Like that's, that's Target and you need a lot of red in that space.

So, yeah, I'm really concerned about the employee because adding that neurologic immersion. So we did a study at Zappos years ago in which we took blood. We measured brain activity while they're doing tasks. I mean, very detailed study. So we camped out in one of the apartments that Tony Hsieh owned, the former CEO sadly, passed away recently. Anyway, so employees would come, we're paying them, but they would come based on their off time. And I noticed. So we ran the study, I don't know, for five days or something. So we're there a long time that they would show up on their off hours in Zappos wear. And so I started asking them after the study was over, as I was checking them out, hey, what's the deal with wearing all these Zappos T shirts and sweatshirts? They said, first of all, we're a clothing company. We get a lot of swag. We have a lot of giveaways. But he said, also many of them said, I see my personality as a Zappos person. It's part of who I am. Oh, now that's the key, right? These are really passionate employees. So, as you know, we launched this new app to measure emotional wellness. And I think that's been the missing component of really high performance employees is are they not only physically functioning, safe, healthy, getting enough sleep, but are they emotionally healthy and by able to think about cultures that promote emotional wellness. It's really important. So we as a company decided to make this app free for everybody. There's a premium version if you want more features. But we want. Where I want my modest, modest goal, molina, is that 1 billion people in three years use our app called Six. So we've shown in published research, you need six of these peak immersion moments per day to build your emotional fitness. So just like working out builds your physical fitness, now we have a way to continuously and objectively measure are you emotionally healthy? And if not, it'll give you suggestions on things to do and links to your calendar so you can go, oh, I love doing A, B and C. So here's the wild part about this in work by my other colleague who also just passed away, Mike J. Guy, one of the founders of positive psychology, invented the word flow and that idea. He found that people get more flow experiences, not exactly immersion, but similar at work than they do at leisure. Because at work, I have goals, I have stuff I have to do. I'm turned on. So remember, immersion is metabolically costly. So when I have these amazing emotional experiences, I generate this ability to really have satisfaction from doing something hard but important. My brain's put a lot of energy into it. I really value it. That's when we see emotional health improving. And so I think having this ability to give this as a benefit to employees, to say, hey, we not only want to pay you well and give you a job that you're proud of and you're helping other people. But we want to make sure you're emotionally healthy. And we're going to give you a tool so that you can measure, manage privately your emotional health. And then the company has aggregated anonymized data to say, are we creating a emotionally healthy workplace? So just to finish that thought, in late 2022, Australia passed legislation requiring that businesses show that they are emotionally safe workplaces. So how are you going to do that? I'm going to survey my employees every day. I mean, it's just insanity. So we have a lot of uptake of this technology in Australia because of that. But I think, again, because we're below replacement fertility, these valuable, valuable employees need to be cared for and nurtured and given the tools to really thrive as human beings. Not just. My least favorite phrase is human capital. Don't say that around me. I'll freak out. You're not human capital. You're a human being. You have good days and bad days. You have emotions. You care about things deeply, and other things drive you nuts. You're gonna have good days and bad days. That's okay, right?

Definitely. Well, and I was getting ready to transition into six, so I'm glad that you took the initiative to do that here because I want to make sure we have plenty of time to talk about it. I started using the app from when we were communicating and having my watch send me notifications. And it was interesting where. So I was watching a video on Instagram and I got a. The first ping I got from my watch from the app that said, hey, like, your. Your brain is seeming, like, really, like, annoyed or irritated, like something's going on.

In your brain right now.

Like, what. What are you doing? You got to check something out. And it's. It made me think a lot because I really like. I think I like them at least. I don't know. It was very intriguing to see, like, what's going on here there. It's people cleaning rugs or any of that, like, satisfying behavior of, like, something was really dirty and then somebody's going to clean the thing, right? And so the app, Reddit, I guess, you know, or my watch and the. Whatever's going on in my body of saying, like, you are really irritated. But it's like, was I irritated because, like, they didn't clean the thing fast enough, or was I just, like, so focused on what was happening on the screen, like, what's going on with my brain when I was watching this that it triggered my watch to say, hmm, something's not quite right. I had a. I was then walking to the gym later that day and I got a notification that said, hey, like, you had kind of a peak, you know, a good thing happened. You've, you've seemed very engaged at this moment. Do you want to make a note to say what you were doing at this particular moment so that you can remember next time, you know, that you might, might like that. But it, I don't necessarily know that this was great or not, but the watch can tell me and that it's saying, make a note that about the thing you wouldn't have known and you won't care enough about in 10 minutes or an hour from now when you get back from the gym. I wouldn't remember that, that I got that notification or that I felt that way. So it was cool to get that real time ping and notification that made me stop and do something or just think about it a little bit differently to say, you know, do I want to still watch this video if my brain's annoyed? Like, I thought it was satisfying, but maybe I'm irritated. I didn't even realize it.

Yeah, these are unconscious emotional responses that, again, capture the value that we get from experiences. And so wouldn't it be great to create a workplace place where employees are getting these peak experiences regularly every day? And think of the, the feedback loop that creates like, oh, yeah, I really had this terrible customer and then I turned them around and now they just love us because they were just cranky. They're having a bad day. So, you know, I think it's all about connection. And so we think about connection and being of service. It's great. And the app, I think you haven't connected your years to your calendar yet, but it'll actually connect your calendar and then just automatically categorize for you. Here's the best three best times or six best times you had per day. So I'm having a pretty good time right now. This is the upgraded version, so I'm at 70, very comfortable having a nice time talking with you. And yeah, so it's all in the cloud and we don't care what wearable you have. So, yeah, I just think all of my professional life has been developing knowledge and technologies to help people live longer, happier, healthier lives. And so to me, this is the pinnacle of that free app measure what makes you really happy, what generates that sense of satisfaction, and just do more of that. Right. And maybe do less of the stuff that irritates you.

Yes, for sure. And I think that's a good point. Point to make sure people know it's not that you would have your entire team having constant dings to make notes in their calendar. So, of course, like the setup that it's not that we're going to have a really distracted workforce in that case, because that's no good either. But being able to. To see and to know, like you said, we've got a lot of people where people are getting irritated at this certain time of day or an experience or a meeting or something that we can maybe. Let's do less of that. Right. If they are getting that aggregated, anonymized data on the team to be able to see if the things you think are adding value actually are. Or, you know, where you might be able to free up some space and time.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also think about how good you feel when you've had an amazing day at work and now you go home and you get to share that. So what we're seeing now is this positive feedback loop from having these peak immersion moments at work to really building your emotional fitness. So you're just nicer at home. Think of the opposite, right? When you're really beat up at work, which we've all been, you come home and you're just not in a good mood. And you know, you're like, this is the worst. So we've built in six. The ability to form groups of friends to help you support each other in this journey towards greater happiness. And so for your friends, you'll just see if they're red or green. Like, red, they're not doing so well. Green, they're doing awesome. And you can send them an emoji, a heart, a thumbs up, like, hey, Melina, I'm thinking about you. I don't know your data. I just know you're kind of struggling right now. So I care about you. You know, hang in there. That enough is alone. That alone is enough to kind of bounce people sometimes out of that. Oh, yeah, someone actually cares that I'm on the planet and thinks I'm okay and thinks I'm awesome or whatever. That's wonderful. So anyway, my simple rule because I work in the attachment love space is try to tell one person every day that you love them. And that could be family, friends, but also could be for people I know well, like my coworkers. I have three PhDs out of my lab or work for my company. I love them. They know that in the Philly sense, right? So I'll tell them that Occasionally, you know, like, I love you. You know that. And they're like, I know, I love you too. They're like, I have to tell them I love them. But you know what I mean? I really deeply care about them. And that means I'm invested in them as human beings, not as human capital. And for a lot of people who've worked with me, not for me, but with me, they've, you know, are ready to move on. Like, hey, I really want to move into the tech sector or whatever. I'm like, you should do it, you're awesome. Why would I do that? Because I'm a sweetheart. And no, that's, hopefully that's true too. But now they get a job at Google. I got a guy at Google I can call up, right? Maybe we do a project there. So, yeah, I want them to spread their wings and have great careers and great lives. And whether they do that with me or do that with somebody else, it's okay because I'm invested in them as human beings because they're these rare, rare high performer, wonderful human beings.

Right. And they'll go on to talk about how amazing it is to work for you. When someone asks, oh, should I go this, this Paul's at guy, is that like immersion? Do I want to do that thing? Say, oh, for sure. Like definitely hire that person. They're invested in you in that same, in that same way.

For sure.

And I really enjoyed in the research too, that, the predictability piece where, you know, when the research that you did at some of the like retirement communities and whatnot, I think in 2022 or 2021, maybe that was looking at being able to even say, you know, two days from now you may be having a lull that's going to come up, right? So you can prepare because you, your, you know, chemistry saying something's going to be off tomorrow. And so if you, you know that's coming because of all the, which is fascinating and so cool and like you said, then the app can say, hey, Molina, you might want to check in on, on Paul because he's tomorrow he's set up to not have the best day. So if you want to check in, just send him a, send him a note, help, you know, lift that lull before it even comes in. That's such a cool thing to be able to ping for our, for aging parents, for friends we haven't talked to in a long time. And you can just say, hey, I was thinking about you and hope you're doing, doing great. I remember this time we did this and just wanted to say you matter to me. Right. Takes almost no time. And if something like this can nudge me to let me know that someone I care about might have a less than stellar day and I have an opportunity to help it not even come up, you know, how cool is that?

Melina, I'm going to call out how awesome you are that you prepared so well. You actually remember all these scientific papers I sent to you. That's right. Really impressive. So, yeah. We showed in this 2022 publication that we can predict with 96% accuracy if in two days you'll be happy or sad. Freaking crazy cool. With these data because they're so, so rich. And so for six, we've now trained a large language model that would give you advice so that you. Yeah, you can be happier. And just plain language like here's. Here's something you might think about doing. Whether you do it or not, it's up to you. But yeah, you have a really great grasp. You kind of stalked me. I think this is scary.

You're welcome. I care about you. I care about you. I care about your work.

You're my favorite person ever.

Oh, well, thank you. Same. Well, for everyone who hopefully too is so excited to go learn more about you and the work and six and immersion, what's their best path to. To go.

To do so, to learn more.

Thank you for asking. They can go to your six.com six which is the number six y o u r number six dot com and if you're listening and you have additional questions, if you're a fan of Molina's like I am, email me on that site. I'm happy to engage more with people.

Oh, thank you so much. And we will of course put links in the show notes to make it easy for everyone to. To check that out, to check out your books and more of your research because I know that the audience will, will want to for sure. So thank you again, Paul, for joining me on the show. It was really delightful to chat with you today.

It was. Thank you.

Thank you again to Dr. Paul Zach for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation for me, I was so delighted to get to chat with Paul today.

I'm a huge, huge fan of his.

Work and the discoveries from those brain chemicals that help us to understand communication better so we can have better and stronger businesses and relationships. To know that it isn't just nice to have stories but that they actually build trust when you're a thoughtful storyteller. And the oxytocin created makes people want to be more trustworthy in their interactions back with you. It's all so positive and fantastic. I also love the anchor points and experiences and how we can focus on the peak end rule and other opportunities to create some delight and become memorable. Something so important in business because if people don't remember you, then they won't.

Talk about you or come back again.

To work with you. Thoughtful implementation, Whether it's the glass of champagne when you enter the restaurant or thoughtful open ended questions like at the Container Store can help your business build trust and loyal raving fans from your customers. And who doesn't want that? As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes which include links to my top related past episodes and books including Immersion and Trust Factor. Ways to get in touch with Paul and myself. Especially if you're interested in learning about.

Your six and how it can help your company, I'd be happy to make.

An introduction for you. If it helps, send me an email melinathebrainybusiness.com it's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com437 and thank you again to Dr. Paul Zach 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.