Creating Curiosity Gaps: Using Storytelling to Captivate Audiences with Phil Agnew

I notice when you intro a lot of your guests or when you do an intro, you'll include a little snippet at the start of something. Something interesting someone might have said. If you can get that snippet to be, you know, maybe hinting at something, sparking a bit of curiosity, you could perhaps even use the line I'm using now because there is something so interesting that I'm about to tell you that I just will reveal it just after this and then you cut and then you start it. That'll make people more likely to listen.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic Hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger, so that's.

What I'm doing here for you.

Please share and enjoy.

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Sales all right, Phil, it's so awesome to find finally have you here. I feel like we've been chatting for a while now. Hello, brother. On the HubSpot Network podcast network. And gotta give a shout out to Al Elliott for making the connection for us. And man, I love your Nudge podcast. I just gotta give a shout out right off the bat to what you're doing over there, man. Thank you.

Oh, thanks, Jay. And thanks for having me on. Yeah, it was great to be connected with you via the network and I've really been enjoying your show. I mean, as I was telling you beforehand, this show is. Is all I think about in terms of the genre podcast and marketing. That's my nine to five and then every other hour of the day as well. So I'm really excited to talk about that stuff on the show.

Well, I know you're a busy man because you're over at Buffer as well. Right? So talk about nine to five. You're doing a fun balancing act right now. Right? How is that working?

Well, I've got a bit of news actually, Joe. Maybe this will be. This will be news, breaking news for the one person maybe listening who knows anything about me. But hello, you, Mum.

Hopefully Mum's not finding out this way now. I'm. I'm leaving Buffer. So we're, we're talking towards the end of the year, December. I'm leaving Buffer at the end of the year to go full time on the podcast. I'm going full time on Nudge. I've loved my time at Buffer. For those of you who know Buffer, it's a social media management company. Very flexible work, real new age work policy. We do a four day work week and transparent salaries. All these amazing things. It's been an amazing place to work, but the time has come to go full time on the podcast. It's the UK's number one marketing podcast and there's a lot I want to do of it and places I want to take it. So that's going to be my goal for the next year and hopefully beyond.

That's huge. That's huge. That's great news and I'm sure. Well, it's. You've been, you've been working really hard on Nudge and I'm really curious to, you know, hear the backstory. You know, I've heard it in some other. Some interviews and some sessions. You've done. But to be the number one in the UK saying something just by itself right there. And the fact that you did it. Yeah, Working, I guess, four days out of the week. And then I believe you were spending, what, that fifth day, probably other days on. On the Nudge and growing this thing from the ground up.

For me, it's something I started almost five years ago. So April 2019. I started it during the sabbatical. I. And reflecting back on that, I really think sabbaticals are incredible things you can do during your career because they just give you space to really think about your progression, what you want to invest time in, where you want to develop, what skills you need. Because during that sabbatical, I started it with no plan of starting a podcast whatsoever. And then halfway through, I had one and spent. Or have spent the last five years working on it. So that's how it started. It started very sort of as low touch as possible for me. Episode every two weeks.

For the podcast creators in the listener group, I did something quite interesting. So obviously, Joe, you and I record today. We're having a chat. You'll do some editing, of course, maybe you'll cut down a lot of the waffle I'm talking about right now, but you'll do some editing and then you'll put that up there with nudge. I decided to do a different approach. It's called. It's more like narrative discussion, I think, is how it's talked about in the podcast world. But I record my guest. I ask them usually quite a lot of specific questions based on the book they might have written, get a lot of authors on, or just some of their work. And sometimes I even prompt them for the answers I want them to give, especially if they're talking about a certain study, because we cover a lot of studies on Nudge that I want them to reference. I'll even do that. And then I take that audio, cut it down, and write my own script, which I then read over the top, and I cut back and forth between the two. That's quite a different way of doing it. It requires, in a weird way, it requires more and less work from me. So let me explain why. For the podcast, more work in the sense that I'm writing my own script. I'm, you know, spending a lot of time on each episode. I think I'm getting a much better quality show at the end of it for me, because I know, live in conversation, I'm not as good as you are, Joe. But for me, I think I end up with a better episode. So it is a lot more work in that sense. But it's less work in the sense that I can sometimes take an hour recording with say, Rory Sutherland or Nereal or one of these, you know, really fantastic marketing pioneers. And I can take that hour recording and maybe get two episodes, maybe even get three if they're talking about really distinct topics and we frame it in the right way. So I can sometimes get a lot more sort of bang for my buck. And that really helped me when I was starting out and I was doing a full time job five days a week and so often did that. And then classic podcast growth grew very slowly for about two to three years and then was at a decent point of around, I'd say a thousand listeners per episode, but then really stagnated, so just leveled off. And a lot of podcasts have been around for a while will know that you can sort of get growth through word of mouth and then it sort of levels. And that's probably because of a bit of churn and growth, but just sort of levels out. And then in the past year actually since joining Buffer, so since getting a bit more time, I decided to push the podcast up to once a week rather than once every two weeks. Spent a lot more time on trying to improve the quality and get conciseness down and get really good stories and do more research and think about growth a lot more. And all of that has helped the show to, to grow. Now I think we're getting around 10,000 to 15,000 listeners an episode.

Over a million downloads now. Number one marketing podcast in the UK, like I said. So it's been a long old journey as podcasting, but that's how I've got there, man.

That's so from five years ago.

Like, did it start with this same format from the get go or is this something you've evolved into?

You can, you can hear it. So there's a YouTuber I really like called CGP Grey and he's, he ran a very good podcast as well. And he's always talked about with creators, if you go back and watch or listen to their first thing, yeah, you probably will hear something, you know, if they become very good in the end. And I'm not saying I'm there, but you'll hear something which is showcasing that. He says it's rare to look back at a creator who the first thing they created, you know, was completely different. And I think that's sort of the case with me. So you have that same style. It's that Narrative discussion cut down. My script is separate and the guest is edited down, but oh God, it's bad. Don't listen to that person.

I know you never want to listen.

To your first, and that's really. There's good reason to maybe change that. And perhaps I should, because some people do go back and listen, although Apple pushes it less than they used to. But yeah, for me, audio quality for my was bad, but oh my God, my guest was really bad and it was not concise. And I started the podcast with, you know, the classic, hi, my name's Phil and I'm this and I'm that absolute yawn fest for everyone listening. Now I try and start with a story or an example or something just to get people a bit more hooked. But yeah, the format was the same at the start, but took a long time to build a lot of the awareness of what makes a good story and what makes a good episode.

Now, in podcasting, I've found it's such a personable media modality to connect with folks. Some people don't think so, but I feel like when you're in the driver's seat on the microphone camera, and I don't know if you've noticed this, Phil, but when you eventually meet some of these folks in the wild, maybe it's a conference or a meetup locally or just whoever, but someone you don't know prior to, they walk up to you and they just like, seem to know your life story. You know, it's like you're starting to talk about these little nuanced things that you said maybe years ago in an episode, and you're just like, this is blowing my mind, you know, and. And I think that's what I've found at least, you know, because I look at podcasting as a kind of a hub to marketing. It's. It's a way that you can express yourself one time, you know, with a guest or solo. And now if you're doing it right, you know, you're capturing video and audio. And now you can kind of use that as a spiderweb with intention, of course, and use it in all of your marketing attached to your email list, your social and ultimately product service, if that's how you go about things. And have you found similar kind of things with Nudge and. Because I know you're all about persuasion and I just think, like, podcasting is this unique medium that's kind of like sneakily very persuasive in a lot of ways.

Yeah, it is. It definitely is one funny Example is someone back in 2019 was like, oh, I think I'm a big list. I think this is what she said. I think I'm a big listener. Can I have a picture? And I was like, that's B.S. i'd just given a talk. And I was like, I talked about my podcast, but this was so early on, I knew how few people listened. And so I haven't had that. Haven't had that too much. But it is nice when it happens. I think what's interesting about podcasting, and you'll know this, Joe, is that the. The listenership is never going to be incredible. You're never going to get the same numbers that you would get on impressions on a social post or newsletter signups. In terms of email subscribers, definitely not the same as YouTube views or TikTok views. And it can be quite disheartening for a podcaster because you look at it and you think, I'm putting all this effort in. I should have just done YouTube or I should have just done TikTok. I would have got a brand deal by now, that sort of thing. But what I found, and I think what a lot of the listeners will find, is that you can make, because the engagement with the audience who are listening is much stronger. You're in their ear for 20 minutes a week, perhaps even longer, perhaps even more, and they're valuing your opinion. You know, imagine actually spending 20 minutes a week really listening to someone's opinion. We don't do that in life really, other than podcasting. And that means you can probably get, or you can get a lot more value out of that audience. So I was just talking to a colleague at Buffer actually yesterday, and she runs a podcast, wonderful podcast. Quite small compared to perhaps the podcasts we're running, Joe. But she's still able to sell a membership community to her, to her listeners. She says around 2 to 3% subscribe. And you think 2 for 2 to 3%. That's not massive. But these are people who are willing to pay a monthly fee to get access to basically just ad free episodes and a few other things. And that 2 to 3%, you know, that can scale really quickly. And that's. And I think that's the power of podcasting. There's a. I've got quite a funny story about how I tried. I used a bias. We can get into this later, but a bias to grow my, my TikTok following.

Yeah, yeah, I used. I use this. It's called Curiosity Gap, which I think, I think you want to Talk about anyway, Jay.

But I do.

I'll cover that later. But the, the basically end of the story is I got 11,000 followers and I really. I got over half a million views on TikTok. And I did really, really well. I got all this engagement and I had a link. When you get over a thousand followers, I think on TikTok you can add a link in your bio. And I added a chartable link, which is a smart link, which will direct people to then go and listen wherever they want. And that tracks everything. It'll track how many people download the podcast, how many people listen, where to go and listen. 11,000 followers, half a million views. I think I had 40 actual listeners off the back of that.

Just shows that's the example of. It will take me almost half a year to get half a million podcast lessons, but wow, I would have way more engagement than that on TikTok.

Oh, yeah, and that's the. It's. It is this kind of mental. This thing that you got to break as like when you get into it, hey, you gotta have the passion to put something, some expression that you want to put out into the world. And there's so many ways to do it. But yeah, the podcast, at least on the audio side, I think is what you're alluding to. It's like, yeah, those numbers, they're tough to grow and. But when you. The ones that stick, they usually stick for a long time and they have this. They're very impression. Yeah. Like it's. It's something that will bring more value than you believe to your business. It's more quality than quantity. And yeah, it's easy to want to grow this thing through paid means. There's publishers out there that can support that. But let's be honest, it's all about the target listener. Avatar is kind of like what I like to say, really knowing who is that person you want. So ultimately, like you alluded to, if it's a membership site, well, who are the people that you want over here? Whereas the podcast is this kind of. This glue around everything that you put out ultimately that you want to put out into the world and grow that tribe around.

Yeah, great point, Jay, Great point.

Yeah. So, I mean, the curiosity gap is killing me, man. And I think you just used it on me a little bit here. But. Well, how about this? Like, because I think in. I think this is what you're alluding to, but like having a nice story in the beginning, starting off any piece of content and correct me if I'm wrong, But I feel like that's the curiosity gap right there.

I mean, what we talk about, the hook in YouTube, you know, it's. It's like there's what, the title, the thumbnail and then the hook, the big idea. It's basically the first, like, what, 10 seconds, five seconds maybe. So how does that translate to podcasting in your eyes? Being one who's studied persuasion so much in this curiosity gap, I think I've.

Always found it useful to. It's very common for people to talk about medium specific tactics, hooks on YouTube or first one second on TikTok or radio. And it's all of these things are trying to get a human to make a decision. It's actually I find more valuable to go back to the bare basics of, okay, what is the psychology at play here? How is this affecting the brain? And the curiosity gap really goes back to this researcher called Zeigenik. And she was a. She was a researcher from, I think it was almost 100 years ago, or at least 50, 60 years ago in Austria, I believe. And she was at the. At a restaurant with her mates, all who were social psychologists. And they were really impressed with the waiter who was correctly taking down everybody's orders and giving them their orders without ever writing it down. It was really impressive. And these were complex orders of people being fussy and asking for extra mustard or not so much horseradish, whatever it might be. And these were a group of social psychologists, so they're all debating over a beer, how does he do it? How is his memory so strong? And one of them had a theory, because they had experienced this in their own life, that memory is stronger. And engagement in that memory is far stronger when a task is incomplete. So when a task is incomplete, your engagement in your memory and your brain powers is stronger when you're thinking about it. And so to test this idea, what they did is they waited for the waiter to bring over their meals, and he put down the exact meals in front of everybody, just as. Just as he was supposed to. He got everything right. And just as he was about to turn away and leave, they got their napkins out, their handkerchiefs or whatever, and they put them over their plates. So they covered their order and they said, oh, wait, wait, could you please come back? We've just covered our orders. You've just correctly delivered them to Louis, you know, literally five seconds ago. Can you just remind us what we all ordered? And the waiter stood there and was like, I have no idea. I can't remember. I can't remember. A single one. And this was the first finding of what's now known as the zygonic effect, which is this idea that when a task is incomplete, your engagement with it, your memory and your brain power towards it is far stronger. And it links to this curiosity gap. So this is why clickbait articles work so well, because what they were doing is they were giving you an incomplete story. So they're saying, Here are the 10 reasons you should move to Chicago. Number four will surprise you. And that's, yes, it's a hook, yes, it's curiosity, but it's incomplete. You're not getting the full picture. And we think of this as a tactic that BuzzFeed use or a tactic that's, you know, quite modern, quite millennial. It's not. This is a tactic that's as old as the age of time. I mean, Arabian Nights use this famously in their stories, which are thousands of years old. Charles Dickens would use this in each of his stories newsletter, in his newspaper. He'd finish with a little cliffhanger. Shakespeare was the original curious curiosity gap guy because he would take stories. A lot of the stories Shakespeare was writing about were existing tales. Hamlet was an existing tale. The difference is, prior to Shakespeare coming along, it was very common for all of the information about the character to be shared outright at the start of the performance. So they would say, hamlet is this Hamlet is that Hamlet is not crazy, or he's crazy, whatever it might be. And then the play would begin. But Shakespeare hid all of that, so you didn't know if Hamlet was insane or not or is in his right mind or not. And that's what makes you want to keep watching, because the curiosity gap's inspired and it's an incomplete thing. So let me now just take you to my TikTok test, which is taking you from Shakespeare to 2022. And I decided, well, I love testing this stuff out on Nudge. So I love hearing about the, you know, these historical findings and seeing if they work in the real world. So I created, I think it was 20 different TikTok videos, all little snippets from my show. Maybe I created new audio for it, but examples from my show. And I made sure that half of them started with a Curiosity Gap inspired opening. So they would say something along the lines of, you won't believe how effective this productivity hack is. Some. Some rubbish like that. It's not a surprise my TikTok didn't do very well anyway. But the other one would just say this productivity hack. And then I would just go into it. I wouldn't sort of tee it up. I wouldn't inspire any curiosity. And the finding was. I can't remember exactly, but it was something. Something like eight times more engagement and views for those curiosity gap inspired openers. And that partly drove a lot of the growth that I saw on my channel. And it's a great example of how today the curiosity gap still holds. And it's just the case on YouTube. And I think it's definitely the case on podcasting as well. I think. I notice when you intro a lot of your guests or when you do an intro, you'll include a little snippet at the start of something. Something interesting. Someone might have said. If get that snippet to be, you know, maybe hinting at something, sparking a bit of curiosity, you could perhaps even use the line I'm using now because there is something so interesting that I'm about to tell you, but I just will reveal it just after this. And then you cut and then you start it. That'll make people more likely to listen. And yeah, you can play this off as saying, oh, it's BuzzFeed. Oh, it's just boring TikTok clickbait stuff. It's not. If Shakespeare used it, you can use it too.

Oh, yes, I will be swiping that, Phil. So thank you. Because you're exactly right. I mean, that's. I feel like we're in an age of a lot of noise, so our attention span is just becoming a lot more slim. You know, we're goldfish. We're probably worse than goldfish at this point. They don't have a phone in front of them all the time, you know, but this open loop, this curiosity gap that we all naturally have inside of us when set up for it, that is, you know, the hook, the whatever on YouTube. Mr. Beast, I mean, he's amazing at it. And I know you have a whole breakdown on that as well, which was fascinating. I mean, he's the master at it because he's studied this, at least in that space. It's like we can't let it go. You know, our intentions might not be the best, but then, yeah, this open loop thing, it's just like, I gotta close it, you know, I'm gonna drive myself mad without at least clicking and like, consuming 30 seconds more than like the five seconds maybe, or not at all. Click.

It's important in podcasting, but I think just for the podcasters out there, it's probably more important to think about how you can Use Curiosity Gap to inspire people to open the episode. Because once they open it, you'll see this. When you look at your attention, all of us, it's pretty good. I mean, compared to YouTube, it's incredible. Compared to TikTok, it's unbelievable. Retention is pretty good. When people open an episode, they will listen for probably five minutes, and you don't really have to inspire too much curiosity. You know, they'll either enjoy it or they won't. But it's really important to think, well, how are they going to open that episode? What's the title? What's the title? You know, I'm working on an episode, or I've been working on an episode recently, which looks at JFK's speech in Texas where he basically convinced the nation to fly to the moon. It was his. It was the. He convinced every American to spend. I think it was the equivalent of $1,800 a year extra in taxes to fund the moon mission. That's how much it cost.

I didn't know that.

Persuaded them with this one speech. And so I'm thinking, well, I could just call that JFK's speech about the moon or persuasion tips from JFK. But I'm trying to find a title that will really inspire curiosity. You know, the speech that put the man on the moon, or the persuasion technique that took us to the moon. Something like that. And I think it's. It's really. I guess my point is none of those are very good examples, by the way. But my point is it's really worth thinking about your title and really worth thinking about how people will be encouraged to open that. So what you put in your email newsletter to promote it, what you put on social to promote it, there's a good. There's a good theory I've heard, which you should spend 50% of your time creating the content and the other 50% promoting it. Very few of us do that. In fact, I think none of us do, or at least do it effectively. But at least getting to the point where you're spending time, considering that is really important.

Yes. And that's definitely a huge part that I want to note here, because podcasting. Yeah. They don't grow by themselves. And I know you've said this in the past, but I've been also saying it for a while as well. It's like, you got to do the marketing. Luckily, I have the marketing background, so it's like, that's always in my mind. It's like, how does this connect to something else? How do we make this connection. We're doing as you know, with a guest. I mean there's a whole thing that we can do after the podcast is done. Maybe it's not marketing the specific episode, but it could be some other collaboration that happens after this relationship is either starting or it goes a little deeper. You spend 30 minutes an hour with someone, there's a lot of inherent or intangibles, you know, if you're not actually grasping it or thinking about it and then acting on it within a consistent workflow. Doesn't work every single time and can't really predict it all either. But at least you have that intention.

Yeah, it goes into the marketing. It's just have a marketing mindset behind it because you can't trust the algorithms, Spotify, Apple, the other ones to really take it to the moon or anything like that. And that's why I'm curious of like your workflow or the way I guess walk me through how you think of. So you kind of told us about the, the production side of the nudge. How about the marketing side? Because like you mentioned. Yeah you have the title. You also have things like social media posts or any other content. Obviously the description, but that's a little bit under the title at that point. And yeah, walk us through your. Your mindset of how to get attention for an episode once it's launched.

Yeah, I've spent a lot of time working on this is because it's very difficult and I basically spent probably the last two years trying every tactic. I tried TikTok, as we've spoken about already, all the other social platforms growing on email, newsletter, a lot of paid. So I did a lot of Reddit advertising, overcast advertising. They're a podcast player that sell ads, Pocket casts as well advertising on there Google search ads, advertising on other networks. So advertising on a network of podcasts and having an ad read by me appear on other podcasts and then just doing on HubSpot we do as you know, cross promos during the shows and then guest guest swaps and appearing on other shows as well. And it is very clear now in my mind what works for podcasts.

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T R A Marketing Ultimately, what you're trying to do is you're trying to convince somebody to start a behavior. Start listening to my podcasts, that's one thing. But if I'm also trying to convince somebody not just to listen to my podcasts, but to actually listen to podcasts for the first time, people who aren't podcast listeners, that task doesn't probably become twice as difficult, it probably becomes 10 times more difficult. Because the challenge imagine imagine YouTube. If you're on YouTube, you see a video you like, you click it. Really YouTube is very easy to get a views because you're only competing with maybe five other videos in their field of view at that moment, but not very many. So it's quite easy. Imagine you're trying to convince somebody to listen to your podcast who doesn't listen to a podcast. You're then convincing them to download an app to listen to it on, or to load up the ad that the app that they've never been on before to listen to it, to then press your podcast to then actually start listening to it, to hit what the hell are you about? And spend five minutes trying to figure out what it is, maybe even find an episode they like because they might not have a specific episode promised to them. My point is getting non podcast listeners, or even people who just aren't on the podcasting platforms at that moment to listen to your show is extremely difficult. And that's why for me, Reddit advertising, TikTok advertising, Google, LinkedIn, I've tried as well and then lots of promotion on that I've paid to appear on other people's newsletters. I found all of those things to be pretty ineffective compared to putting an ad or appearing on or having a shout out on another podcast. Because if you advertise or appear or promote your show on another podcast like I'm doing now, it's so easy, so easy for your listeners just after this to search for nudge, to add it to their queue, to subscribe to, maybe even just listen straight after this if they have time. That's really easy. Somebody will be on a walk right now and they think, I've got an extra 20 minutes after this, I'll try that out. That's really easy thing to do compared to someone's sitting on the loo scrolling through TikTok and they've got hopefully, hopefully not more than two minutes. They're not going to listen to a 20 minute podcast there. It's impossible. It's a waste of your time being there. So my, my take really is for shows like ours, which are never going to be consumed by millions of people. You know, you're not celebrity, you're not interviewing famous people. We're not the Joe Rogans of this world. It's much, much better to focus all of your attention on advertising and promoting your show to people who are already engaged with, which is podcasts.

Yeah. Yep. And while we're at it right here listening, you're watching. Pause this and go to the nudge and subscribe. Hit subscribe.

Come back.

Yeah, and come back. Yeah. And make sure you're subscribed here as well. Of course. But that's the point is, and you're absolutely right, Phil, podcast listeners listen to podcasts. And that's what I've always found as well is, you know, appearing on. That's why guesting is so powerful. And even if you don't have a podcast like pursue guesting, because I always see it as this virtual stage. Now you're tapped in to a highly engaged audience, like you just said. I mean, for a while I gotta look at the new stats, but like a lot of the average consumption rate of this podcast was around the 70 ish percent, which and some were even much higher. Yeah, it blew my mind when I saw it. I'm like, you look at a video and there's no comparison, especially on YouTube.

20, 20% on average or maybe. But never higher than 40.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. So it's like just with those stats alone, knowing that you have the right person paying attention to your message, why wouldn't you do it? Even if you are just guesting and kind of borrowing that attention, that authority of someone else's virtual stage. So yeah, I mean that's. And I've tried Overcast and some of these other ones and sometimes they work pretty well. But the point is it's a podcast platform, so you're still meeting people where they are and that should be the first thing before you start trying to growth hack, which ironically I was chatting with a pretty big growth hacker just earlier today and that was the very first step. It's like find where your people are. Don't just start doing everything else and doing these tests because you think it's the next best thing or shiny object.

One thing I want to say there is, that's why podcasters are undervalued in terms of brand deals, because I would hazard a guess that that 70% you're getting on your, your podcast retention, which is brilliant, Joe, well done. That's probably higher than most tiktokers who are putting out 10 to 30 second videos and yet they'll get a fairly big brand deal for that. Whereas it's like people aren't even engaging in 10 seconds of their content compared to people, the, you know, vast, vast majority engaging in all of your content. So I think that's a classic example of podcasts being probably a bit undervalued. There's the one thing I will say, and this is something that I'm going to be trying in 2024 and I think there is value in doing is with a podcast. You are spending a lot of time creating content, a good, hopefully a really good bit of content. We're going to work on this show, we're going to cut it down, we're going to end up with something which we think is really valuable. I think it's useful to occasionally try and take that valuable thing and repurpose it. Not everywhere because it can be too difficult, but repurpose it on another medium and customize it for that medium. So I feel quite bullish about taking some nudge episodes, re recording them, re editing them, cutting them right down and putting them on YouTube with video as well. And hopefully finding a way to get an audience on that. I don't think I'll be able to get an audience on YouTube, which I can then bring to the podcast. I don't think that's how it works. Maybe there'll be a chance, but I think there'll be a way to grow a similar level of engaged audience on there and have those two hand in hand and hopefully not achieving the same level of retention like we hope. But I think you can leverage it that way because this is my example of which I shared before, of the 50%. If we're spending all this time creating content, we should find ways to promote it in other areas. And I think YouTube can be that way. I've had a bit of luck recently. I get an editor to add some B roll, pretty bad stock imagery and images to my YouTube videos. Um, you can go search for them. If you want to see some really dodgy stock imagery, go to search for nudge podcast on YouTube. But one of the episodes some out of nowhere got has got 200,000 views and another has got a hundred thousand views. And that just would never happen with a podcast. There is, you know, I think I said at the start, my average is between 10 to 15,000 listeners an episode. My best episode this year was 17,000. So the best is pretty much just above average. Whereas on YouTube, the best is, you know, unbelievable amounts of listening. You know, the amount of. The amount of engagement that you would. You could never see on any other platform because of how the algorithm works now those people aren't coming back. They might never listen to my episodes again and they might never listen to my show again. But if you can get that type of engagement on multiple videos, on multiple shows, you're going to build up a pretty healthy audience. So I think that's. If podcasters have the time and they. And they are bothering to create good quality content like you are, Joe, then it's really worth translating that content for a different medium. And that could be you, YouTube, that could be blogging, it could even be an email newsletter or perhaps even a TikTok. But it's worth doing that.

You're exactly right. And that's something that I'm a big proponent of. It's. Yeah, capturing it one time. I think I might have mentioned this earlier. Capture it with high quality, kind of like what we're using Riverside right now. Or you can use something like SquadCast. You know, if you're doing these kind of remote things. I'm a big fan of Descript as Well, or recording directly, you know, one to one. And you know, what do you know, it can get passed right down to my producer as well. Hey Jacob. Thank you. And you know, he can chop that puppy up into so many different ways. You know, if it's YouTube shorts, that's something that can work really well. Or even, you know, the long form, what I've, I've tested over the years, it kind of had a little gap. But for a while, you know, we were putting the, the longer form on. Not great engagement, you know, for this long hour long or 45 minute thing, but the shorter cheap on YouTube. Yeah, but this was years ago. Things have changed on YouTube because now, yeah, they're elevating podcasts a lot more. I think it's even linking to the audio within the platform.

So I feel like in 2024 it seems like.

And Spotify is also pushing video as well. Yeah. And there's of course certain requirements, but definitely it's starting to change a little bit where the algorithms are starting to sync up with somehow typing, tying the video to audio and you know, leveraging kind of the same benefit that YouTubers were getting, you know, with, with their, their videos. So yeah, I think if, if you're set up for it and in your case it's a little bit more of a re recording process, re engineering. I think you're, you're the nudge is perfect for it because of the shorter form. The fact that yeah you can have maybe it's AI generated stock images rather than some other dodgy things. You can kind of, you know, create your own or have that generated for you. That's custom. But either way I think it's a great experiment for everyone to try.

Now when it comes to, I'm just.

Thinking of persuasion in general. Like because you're feel like you're the persuasion master. Like is there and you know, I'm thinking is more of holistically not maybe not just podcasting, but any type of content that working at buffer. I'm sure you see a lot of this because it's all about putting content out there in the right places. Are there other techniques? Maybe another one that you feel like is a must know strategy or a way to maybe a framework that you can share that sets people up for success rather than starting with a blank page or with no framework.

Yeah, there's an awful lot. We've spent hundreds and hundreds of years understanding how the human brain works. It's really worthwhile. People who are trying to promote something to learn that too because at the end of the day, all you're trying to do is get the brain to do something, which is engage with whatever you're creating. And there's one very interesting bias which pretty much all of us will recognize and have known in our own lives, which is this bias called labor illusion or input bias. And this is the idea that when we see the labor that has gone into something, or maybe we just even presume we've seen it, that's the illusion. We've seen the input that's gone into something. We'll value that thing more. So a great example is a study conducted, I think, by Harvard in 2011, when they took over a restaurant. And in the restaurant, they had these windows by the kitchen. And on some nights, what they would do for the restaurant is on some nights, they would keep the window clear so the diners could always see the chefs cooking their meals. And then on other nights, they would frost over the window so they couldn't see their chefs cooking the meals. And then when the diners left, they would ask them a bunch of questions. How much did you enjoy your meal? Was it value for money? Was the flavor good? Would you come back again? How much of a tip did you leave all of these things? And they measured these all on alternative nights, random control trials. So you're getting accurate results. And what they find is that when people can see the chefs cooking their meal, they value the meal much more. They give a bigger tip. They think the meal is tastier. And this is this basic idea that, you know, when you see the effort that's gone into something, you value it more. There's another very recent study, I think, conducted last year, and this was on tours of companies. So, for example, a brewery tour. Let's say you. You go to Dublin and you go to the Guinness brewery tour. You walk around the tour. Well, they did this study where they interviewed people before they did this tour, people who didn't do the tour and people who did. And they asked them, how likely would you be to buy this product? What do you think of it? Would you engage with it? Unsurprisingly, those who do a behind the scene tour are two times more likely to buy that product and engage with that product and think that product even tastes better as well. So just seeing behind the scenes makes you value it more. And this is something that marketers can use. It's actually something that Steve Jobs used. So I spent weeks looking at Steve Jobs keynotes at Apple because I wanted to see what made them so persuasive and there was one common theme which was really interesting. Almost every time he started his keynote, and definitely during points during his keynotes, he would say something along the lines of, oh, we have spent three years working on this. I can't wait to share it. Or the one where he came back to Apple after his time away. He started with, if you'd been here on weekends over the past month, you will have seen the car parks full, because we've been working night and day, seven days a week to share what we're going to share with you today. And he uses it so regularly you think, well, this can't just be a coincidence. He knows what he's doing. He's using the labor illusion. By sharing the labor that's gone into the thing he's creating, he's making them value it more. So I thought, let's test this. Let's see if I can use this myself. And so I ran a Reddit ad which was really just for the test. I wasn't really going to engage but bring listeners in, but I wanted to compare and see if this worked for me. Worked for driving to people, the podcasts. So I had two ads went out. Both had the same amount of spend behind them. Both targeted people in the UK who engaged with marketing subreddits. And one of the ads I think said, it was my end of year episode, I think maybe two years ago or one year ago, and it said, learn the six best marketing tips of the year, whatever it might have been. That was the episode I created and it had an image of my show. And then the variant, the labor illusion variant, said, I've spent 480 minutes this year listening to marketing experts. Here are the six best tips I heard. So same content, still the six best tips I've heard this year. But that second version hinted at some of the labor I put into it. All true, by the way. That was the amount of time I'd spent recording with these experts. That second one received four times as many clicks as the control. Just by showcasing a bit of labor made people more likely to click. And you can see this with all sorts of social media posts. All these posts that say I've spent the last week analyzing. I did it when I talked about Steve Jobs, I spent a few weeks watching his keynote. That makes people value what I'm saying more. And Joe, it'll be fantastic if you start some of your episodes and say, oh, you know, I spent a month obsessed with this guy or this woman's content and it's Fantastic. And spent so much time researching for this. It's interesting because there's this. We have this common belief that we should almost hide our working. Like it's not valuable. People seeing it like a painter shouldn't show all of the, you know, previous versions they've created just show the final product. That's what we assume. And yet the psychology suggests that actually the opposite can be true. By showing your working, if you see a painting and then see the hundreds of different versions the painter created to get to that version, you'll value that painting more. And this is useful not just for painters, not just for Steve Jobs, but for podcasters and marketers and creators as well. Just by showcasing the effort we've put into something, it'll make people who are consuming that thing value it higher.

Yes, yes, I know. You did this for a MrBeast video as well. Breaking down. I think he spent over 50 hours, you know, consuming all the videos and analyzing and scrutinizing and yes, I mean that's, it's a perfect thing that no matter what level you're at, you could, you could be very experienced or not, you know, and what, you know, putting out content, your business, your marketing, the fact that you can, you know, you invested this much amount of time that someone else now can save because you've condensed it into this whatever it is, video, podcast, social media post case study.

It works in weird ways. You mentioned the MrBeast thing. So for the listeners who don't know, I did a episode on MrBeast where I tried to figure out what made him so successful. This will be interesting for those listening because it is interesting. Think why on Earth is Mr. Beast so successful? He has more subscribers than the population of Russia. What's going on here? How is this kid, 25 year old, making 50 million a year? Oh, is he so successful? And it's, you know, I'm not certain what it is, but if you look back at some of his first viral videos, what you actually see for a lot of them is just pure input. It was just very clear from the videos that he spent a lot of time and effort and occasionally money. Money came a bit later when he would give away lots of money but a lot of time and effort into creating the videos. So some of his first viral videos were things like him saying Logan Paul a hundred thousand times, 24 hours long. That video, everyone was. He would counter to a hundred thousand. One of his first viral videos was him cutting a table in half with a plastic knife. He didn't show the full process. But he cut this up into a two minute video, edited it into a two minute video, but loads of different clips of him on multiple days cutting and cutting and cutting his table. And this is irrational, of course, because who on earth would care about anybody cutting a table in half with a plastic knife? You know, MrBeast, he's fine. He's not a comedian. He's not the most engaging person in the world. And yet this video did very well. And I think one of the reasons why is it's just that classic labor illusion. People are seeing that this person is investing a lot of time and a lot of effort into creating these videos. So they assume and they make the assumption that this must be a good youtuber, this person must be worthwhile watching because they've put in a lot of labor. And I think if you know that, you can then see so many examples of this in the world. It's not just Mr. Beast, it's people like Steve Jobs. It's a hell of a lot of other YouTubers. A lot of the people who are very successful on social, they give the appearance that they're putting a lot of work and a lot of effort into their thing and that makes people value them more.

And that can translate so many ways. So having that bias in, in front and, and when engineering our content, it seems like that's something we can always tack on to the front. It's like not the content itself. Yeah, it's like this, this podcast. That's the beauty of editing in the past or in the future, that is. But you know, like having you can, you can frame things up. That's why YouTubers can go and add that hook in the beginning. And then, yeah, it's, it's get, get people in the door. It's like what you say with podcasting. Get the click start the Listen YouTuber, same thing. It's. Well, it might be title thumbnail, but then it's hook. Boom. Now you got them as much as possible. So great, great feedback. Is there, is there like a number one failure? Oh my God, why, why would you ever do that kind of like no go thing? Because I mean, you've studied so much. What's like the worst mistake someone could be happening? And this could be kind of quicker example, but just something that you find is kind of common, but you're like, oh God, that's cringy.

A common mistake. And this is ironic when you hear it, but a common mistake is to not share your mistakes. And this. So this is quite Interesting. There's this. There's this bias called the pratfall effect. And this was discovered by Elliot Aronson back in the 1960s. He recorded video of an actor. The people who would watch this video wouldn't know he was an actor, but this actor answering quiz questions very accurately, getting 90% of them. Right. What's the population of Russia? Oh, I know exactly what it is, Mr. B. Subscriber level? Well, it wouldn't have been in the 1960s. But anyway, so recorded this quiz contestant, actor, and then at the end of the quiz, the actor takes a sip of coffee and spills it down himself. It's on purpose. Elliot Aronson asked him to do it, but it looked really clumsy. And he spilled this coffee down himself. And then Elliot Aronson, he took this recording of the quiz contestant and he made two versions, one in full, with the questions, answers, and then spilling the coffee, and then one slightly edited, so the questions, the answers, no spilling of the coffee. And he showed the two different videos to two different populations of people, and he asked them at the end a bunch of questions about the actor. But mainly how likable was the actor. Oh, sorry. How likable was the quiz contestant? That's how they knew. And he found a dramatic difference. Those who saw the actor spill the coffee ranked that quiz contestant as being far more likable than when they didn't. Which is very interesting, because why would clumsiness make you more likable? Well, Aronson said this is the Prattful effect. This is the idea that if you showcase a weakness, you'll increase your likability. Jay Sylvester. She took this finding in the early 2000s. She was from a university in Wales. She got a lot of her research assistants to apply to dozens and dozens of different jobs. And then she instructed them when they go for these jobs on half of them, because they were going for dozens of job each. So they could do a comparison on half, only show your strengths, and then on the other half, show your strengths, but actively share a weakness. Say, I'm actually not very good at this, and then keep all of your experience and skills the same. And then she measured how many of them get through to the next round, how many of them get job offers. She finds out when you showcase a weakness, you're far more likely to get through to a next round, far more likely to showcase her to get a job offer. Which, again, is irrational. Why should this be? We don't interview people to find out their weaknesses. But this is, again, the powerful effect at play, it increased trust, increased likability. It makes us more likely to believe that person and engage with them as well. And this is something that we see brands do. So Avis run a campaign called We Try Harder and they've been running that for dozens and dozens of years because it's so successful in the uk. For any Brits listening, we have Marmite who have run the campaign. You either love it or you hate it. They actively tell they mark. They pay to tell people that you might hate it. And they do that because of this prattful effect showcasing weakness, flaunting a flaw really works. And so I decided to try this myself as a bit of a common theme. Joe. But I did a Reddit ad again and I actually did a really? This isn't a very good example of it, but I'll share it anyway because it is kind of interesting. I showed people, I did two ads just like before, but one said, five reasons you should listen to Nudge. I have guests like Rory Sutherland or Richard Shotton. I have X amount of downloads. It's the number one UK marketing podcast, wherever it was. And then the other, which went to the same amount of pay behind it. The other just said, here are five reasons why you shouldn't listen to Nudge. That was tongue in cheek. It was stuff like, you'll gain so much knowledge that you'll realize your marketing degree is worthless. It is jokey and it's hinting at there's some strengths there. But I'm actively telling people not to listen. And the finding was that that second ad got far more clicks, far more engagement than the first one, which simply told people to listen. So it's that same finding again. And the reason I think this is a mistake is because it's getting less so definitely now. But it is quite common to hide our flaws, to not talk about our weaknesses. You know, we see loads of people on LinkedIn saying, oh, I've just hit this amazing milestone. Loads of people on Twitter talking about, oh, I've just hit this milestone. You and I probably will do episodes where we say, oh, we've reached 100 million or a million downloads. We're not going to do an episode where we say, oh, the last one did really poorly. And yet a lot of evidence in psychology suggests that the opposite is true. If we were. If we embraced our weaknesses, if we showcased our flaws, not only would we get more likability, people would probably be more likely to engage with us as well. So it's important to use a weakness and share it yeah.

And it's relatable because everybody has a weakness. The ego or something stops us from sharing it or wanting to present that. Especially when we feel like we should be kept at some kind of caliber or some level or we expect ourselves to be at that level at least. Yeah, it's very interesting. I love that, that, that approach. And yeah, it's like showing the behind the scenes a little bit too. It's just the realness of what you are, your brand, your expression, whatever that looks like. So. Man. All right, so to wrap this up, Phil, I. I feel, I mean, I know you're a wealth of knowledge. I feel like you're encyclopedia for persuasion and I can keep nerding out and this is why the nudge definitely go subscribe, go check it out. Because it's this all the time and very deliberate and intentional. So thank you for your work, seriously. And what are like maybe a must read book handful that we can just leave folks with if they really wanted to dive in or some other resource that you find. Even if it's a website to kind of source some of this material, reports and case studies.

I do think reading is the best way to gain knowledge. I think it's just in a world where we're so heavily addicted to our phones, sitting down and reading a book, wow, that's a wonderful thing to do. And there are three books I would always recommend to folks who want to learn more. One is by Robert Cialdini, who you've had on your show, Joe, which just shows what an incredible podcaster you are.

The Legend.

Robert Cialdini's book Influence is fantastic. He's the godfather of behavioral science. Well worth reading that Richard Shotton's book. Richard Shotton is a British marketer who applies behavioral science. His book the Choice Factory I think is fantastic. And then my Left Field one, which is not a marketing book at all, but it's a book by Luke Burgess called Wanting. And he shares how most of the desires that we have in our life are fueled by what he calls mimetic design. This idea that we're influenced by other people. But a real interesting take on psychology and revealing a different part of psychology, but also why people choose to think things they do. So I'd always recommend those if you want. If listeners have read all of them. Good on you. If you want more, I do have a full reading list with my newsletter. So if you just subscribe to my newsletter, you'll get that full reading list. If you can't find it, just email me and I'll send it over. I do have that.

And how can folks join the mailing list? Because I need to get on your mailing list and get that reading list.

It should be easier, shouldn't it? It's just on my website, so. Nudgepodcast, click newsletter and you sub. You can subscribe there.

Beautiful. All right, Phil, man, you're a wealth of knowledge. I'm so happy we made this happen. Thank you for. For making it happen. And you're. You're a busy man. I'm so excited to see where the nudge goes in 2024 and with the HubSpot Network. I'm just very grateful that we got to meet. So appreciate you, man.

Thanks so much, Jay. Cheers.

All right. All right.

That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if.

You need to do the work.

But, you know, work can be fun, and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth.

So.

So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, and I will see you next time.