Tim Ash 7:20
Well, I guess you could say I’ve really come full circle, I came out originally to San Diego to go to the University of California, I studied Computer Engineering and cognitive science, those were my two undergrad majors. And then I stayed here for graduate school and almost finished my PhD in what would now be called artificial intelligence or neural networks. But after seven years, I got the entrepreneurial itch. And so I quit the PhD. program and started my first company. And so I’ve had been in digital marketing ever since that.
Rolando Rosas 7:53
And you know, I remember the first time I heard you speak, you talked about you broke down the landing page. And how this protecting several actually I remember this was at the PROSPER show. And you broke down several different websites for different entrepreneurs that were in the room. And I was amazed at some of the stuff that you were able to analyze and say, Hey, this, this probably should be placed better here. And this is what happens here. And this is how the journey happens. And I was like, Man, this guy’s got into into some insights that I had not heard before. And this primal brain thing is certainly more of that. And you’ve got a book that’s easy to read and easy to follow. I’ve read I’ve read portions of the book myself, and I want to go through and ask you a few things that you bring up in this book. But before we go to that, and we go to the tips and tricks that you’ve learned, I want you to check out this little video, and then we’ll talk about it on the other side. Go ahead, Ori.
Guest Speaker 8:50
Hello, ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady centered body wash and switched to Old Spice he could smell like he’s me. Look down, back up. Where are you on a boat with the man your man could smell? What’s in your head back at me? I haven’t. It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love look again. But tickets on now diamond. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.
Rolando Rosas 9:20
I’m not on a horse but I’m gonna sitting in a chair.
Tim Ash 9:24
Well, you’re an equally good looking man. And I say that, you know, sexuality.
Rolando Rosas 9:31
I’m confident I’m confident don’t worry about it. I’m pretty confident myself. But tell me that there’s been classic MBA style case studies done around this. Why was this so effective? And turn really an established brand like Old Spice and bring it to a new generation completely outside their demographics. And really, it doubled their sales after the launch of this campaign. Talk about what What, what resonated with people from this type of marketing? Well, I
Tim Ash 10:04
Well, I think that the number one imperative of all life on Earth is to reproduce. And so that’s a very high stakes event, one of the chapters in my book, Unleash Your Primal Brain is about gender differences and sexuality in to throw our genes into the next generation. That’s it, everything else is a warm up, I mean, surviving eating food dominance. Those are, that’s all for play, so to speak, in order to be able to reproduce. And so whenever we touch on those kinds of high stakes events, what you find is that people, especially men become much more risk taking, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get in the game, so to speak. And so that’s a very, very powerful primal motivation right there. By the way, women don’t take bigger risks, men do. It’s really interesting. And when
Rolando Rosas 10:56
you say bigger risk, what exactly do you mean by bigger risks? Is it like, you know, a being a daredevil, Evel Knievel type stuff? Or are we talking something else?
Tim Ash 11:05
Yeah, actually, it’s it is along those lines, your judgment goes out the window, you’re willing to do things you wouldn’t normally do. And they’re basically what women are looking for in men grossly speaking is access to power because we need to, they need their children supported over a long period of time, or we develop very slowly. And so
Rolando Rosas 11:29
developers sorry, you’re saying that men are slow and developing?
Tim Ash 11:32
Yeah, we’re a little slow period. But one of the so either look for people that already have power, or those willing to do what it takes to get power. So usually, you’ll find earlier in life, women will be attracted sometimes to the bad boy, right? The
Rolando Rosas 11:47
ones are just generalizations are these like, because I can I can hear some women virtually think what you talked about Tim.
Tim Ash 11:56
again, earlier in life, let’s just put it that way. And so the firefighter, the stock trader, the Daredevil like you’re, and these are people that are willing to take risks to get power and dominance later in life. But if that path doesn’t materialize, the woman will abandon him. That’s why there aren’t too many women dating bad boys and middle age. They want somewhere to establish they’re not going to place bets and spend years hoping that you’re going to turn out to be anything but a useless piece of crap.
Rolando Rosas 12:24
Oh, my. Okay.
Dave Kelly 12:27
So within. So with this old that first time, are you familiar? You’re familiar with the that Old Spice ad that we just showed you?
Tim Ash 12:35
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw it when it ran originally. So yep.
Dave Kelly 12:39
So so they kind of communicating? What is that primal message that they are communicating? Because it’s what I think is interesting is they’re talking to the female audience. It’s a man’s product, but they’re talking to the female audience.
Tim Ash 12:54
Actually, they’re not they’re talking to the male audience. They are saying, in order to be attractive to women, you either have to have good genes and risk taking or trappings of power. And like, he’s got diamonds, he’s got physical prowess, he’s got a good physique. It’s like the total package. Why choose just one you know, so you have power, and the ability to get power by showing risk taking behavior. So it’s really new to the man this is what it takes to get the woman I mean, let’s okay used about that,
Dave Kelly 13:24
Because he’s because it sounded like he was calling for the women. He was trying to get the women’s attention within that video within that commercial, but maybe at the same time, what he’s doing is summin summin summins summoning summoning Yeah, summoning the male audience to watch it. But I haven’t quite
Tim Ash 13:42
Put it this way. I mean, there’s some things that women do buy and influence the buying decisions of but then the owner isn’t one of them. So it’s the man to the store and actually pick up that Old Spice so they’re definitely talking to the man but they’re refracting that through the prism of what’s going to be attracted to the woman works.
Dave Kelly 14:00
So now that’s within a health care, beauty type, product and marketplace. Can you uh, can you can you apply some of those same principles to more conservative type solutions, you know, something like, you know, communication devices, you know, hardware, you know, software, things like that. Is it appropriate to kind of trigger that primal brain in that fashion?
Tim Ash 14:23
Well, absolutely, they will. That’s, that’s just one tactic. What do we prize inmates, you know, but basically, you can apply other strategies. So one of them is risk taking and the fact that we respond a lot more to negative stuff. We’re wired to look for survival threats, and that’s I give you an example day. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Dave Kelly 14:47
And pistachio?
Tim Ash 14:48
Alright, pistachio, okay, here’s a nice bowl of pistachio ice cream. But before I give it to you, Dave, can I just whacked the back of your hand with a hammer as you reach for it? What do you say? No. Not so I know what’s gonna motivate you more of pain avoidance or pleasure seeking. Pain avoidance is about twice as powerful a motivation. And one of the things that many companies have missed make a mistake on, especially in tech is that they start talking about their features, we have 37 gigaflops of throughput compared to worrying right? Say, look, your network goes down, you’re screwed, your whole business is going to suffer, you’re going to lose money, clients are going to hate you that reputation stink will follow you for years, and all because he achieved out on the server hardware. That’s how you sell anything, you sell it with downside, you sell it with rubbing salt into the roof. That’s a very powerful evolutionary adaptation that you should take.
Rolando Rosas 15:49
Are you trying to say that we should scare customers into buying a solution
Tim Ash 15:54
Absolutely everywhere. Let’s go back to the personal health example. Let’s just say you’re selling tooth whitening. Most people would say well have a great white smile. And I would sell it like this. Are you afraid to open your mouth and reveal those yellow great your do people think that you have resting bastard face or you’re never gonna get a date is the way that they’re gonna find you dead in your apartment is because your cat is meowing after eating parts of you. And that’s how you sell tooth whitening. You don’t sell the pretty smile, you sell the full implications of going down the current path.
Rolando Rosas 16:35
It sounds like you’re talking about emotional connection or even consequences that you would have as a result of not taking rational actions. And I know that in the In your book you have a lot to say about rational decision making because you know what, like you’re saying your bastard face maybe I don’t have a bastard face. Wait
Tim Ash 16:59
a bastard right one face. Yeah, so
Rolando Rosas 17:03
but maybe there’s something to why? Maybe you make me question myself about that. And maybe I’m not so secure anymore. Maybe I do. Need to check that out. Ah, he picked you apart. fascinate. Yeah. Now now I’m coming self confident about what you just said, I gotta rely on the mirror and take a look.
Tim Ash 17:23
Yeah, there’s like all those insecurities are being brought up. Sorry. What can I tell you? No, but I put it this way. You talked about the rational the word rational. There are no rational decisions. And I mean, literally
Rolando Rosas 17:40
Hold up a second. Now have you stumbled into a pro tip Ori? I’d like you to get ready if you haven’t, so that we can rewind for a few seconds what Tim is about to talk about, because I believe this is a pro tip, go for it. Alright. Tip numero uno, take it away, Tim.
Tim Ash 18:01
There are no rational decisions. I mean, that literally, when people make decisions that these are an automatic or an emotional component to them. And when you ask them about why they made the decision, then other parts of the brain light up to explain it. So in the famous words of science fiction author Robert Heinlein, man is not a rational animal. He’s a rationalizing animal. So why do we make the decision has nothing to do with the alibi we come up with after the fact. And you literally cannot make a decision without an emotional component.
Rolando Rosas 18:35
And so it should be part of if you’re looking at it from a business perspective, the emotional component to whatever you’re marketing, whether it’s a super boring thing, or a super exciting thing, there has to be an emotional component or it’s going to fall really flat, right?
Tim Ash 18:52
Yes, absolutely. So talking to me about numbers and savings and won’t be you can prepay for a year instead of paying monthly and you save 20% That’s like snore city, nobody’s being influenced by that emotionally. So you really have to understand the values, the importance of it, the risk taking that’s involved, the consequences at stake emotionally for someone. And this is equally true of business to business as well as business to consumer, for business to consumer decisions. It’s your personal risk for business to business, there’s also the organizational risk, I lose my job, I won’t get a raise, we’ll have this big group grope if we went with the wrong software and our company doesn’t really work well on it. There’s bigger consequences, but it all comes back to emotions.
Rolando Rosas 19:41
Well, let me let me just rephrase is that I looked at your book and you talk about this in terms of the big lie and this is chapter one of your book. And I know that this is kind of how you’re framing it. And this is what you refer to the big lie in terms of us being rational. We make decisions that are we think we’re that that are a customers are making rational decision a one plus two equals three. But sometimes or a lot of the times, other factors come into play like emotional factors instinct. And they influence that in that equation one plus two equals three, maybe one plus two may well, five, and some of that rational stuff that you call the Big Lie is not at play as much as we think. And before you. Before you answer that, I wanted to give a shout out to Fernando, who is watching us from Argentina arriba megusta la carne. They are cantina Fabuloso la carnamah whoring el mundo in Argentina, shout out to you, Fernando. Go ahead, Tim, take it away.
Tim Ash 20:43
Fernando, mucho gusto very nice to meet you.
Rolando Rosas 20:55
So I would say that the again, my train of thought derailed, but we were talking about helped me out here, Rolando, you’re trained to the big lie and rationalizing. And
Tim Ash 20:58
So again, it’s not most of the time, let me say this, literally, we can not make any decisions. With just the rational mind, all it does is present this options, how you prioritize those depends either on automatic instincts, or on past experiences you’ve had with it. So for example, you might like birds until one day one takes a crap right in your face. And then you try to avoid birds after that. So it’s not like birds are inherently good or bad. It depends on your life experience with birds. And so those past memories and the ability to have kind of an evaluation of did that help me survive? Or did that hinder me from surviving? That’s how we prioritize our decisions. So most decisions, the answer is do nothing because it takes energy to do anything consciously or change. But some decisions if they’re pleasurable enough, or, or, I guess, destructive, and dangerous enough, we’ll do something about. So the job of a marketer is to influence you emotionally and to move you off of your comfortable spot.
Rolando Rosas 22:03
Wow, that’s, is there? Or Dave? Were you going to say something? I don’t want to steal your thunder? Yeah,
Dave Kelly 22:09
You know, it’s just, it’s interesting, I think about rational sales proposal. So I’m trying to propose you something. And I think that you’re a rational decision maker. So I’m trying to bring you with facts, I brought you a quote, your quote is half of the current solution that you have, it’s going to save you time and money and energy, it’s going to be better than what you have. But it sounds like that’s those are all the rational things, you know, so tying that into the emotional spectrum so that so that they sign and they want to do business with you. It sounds a lot trickier than just having the best and least expensive and fast this have something to bring to a client.
Tim Ash 22:51
Yeah, absolutely. So the the horrible sales book, but with really good evolutionary psychology principles behind it is called SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham. So yeah, it might be painful to go through. But what he talks about is, a spin is an acronym for a situation. Sorry, situation, then problem, then implication, then need pay off. And so what he’s basically saying, here, you are going along, let me get some facts. That’s the situation, then let me explore some potential problems, and then dig into the full implications of staying on that road. And then let you imagine life without those problems. Now look at what’s psychologically happening. It’s like a car going over a pothole, right? You’re going along, you think everything’s okay, all of a sudden, you know, there’s a bump, you go down and up, right? But basically, that emotional transient, that pothole strike is what determines how much value you place on the solution. If it’s a small problem, you won’t pay a lot to fix it, you may not even bother to fix it. But if it’s a big problem, then you’re going to value the solution a lot more. So what you want to do is create this big difference between the hell scenario taking you down into the bowels of hell, and the heaven, what’s life, like without the problem? So by staying on the same path, and doing nothing is the default of the brain because it’s trying to conserve energy. So you’d have to perturb me if they yank me down and back up. And you haven’t even talked about what your solution is.
Rolando Rosas 24:24
I say, so if you were to paint the scenario, let’s let’s like I like walking through examples and exercises because that’s your what folks are going to take away. You know, I’m some service provider, I’m providing a service to a client, outside, obviously, everybody wants you want to be everybody’s friend, you want to connect with them so that they have trust and confidence in you. But if you are going to promote a particular service, what you want to start off with the problem and maybe even make it a little bit larger than life from what I’m hearing you saying like here’s the consequence of not having backup internet You will lose millions of dollars. I’m exaggerating, but you tell them far off the mark, you’re going to lose millions of dollars, your your business is going to go bankrupt, your customers are going to abandon you and you won’t survive more than a month after that event.
Tim Ash 25:15
Yeah, the way exactly right. So it’s not just the pain that I feel in the moment, it’s actually saying, what’s the lifetime cost of that? In other words, magnify it, you can say, hey, we’re flying in a plane, we’re up at 30,000 feet, and we’re only descending at two feet per minute, well, in 15,000 minutes, we’re gonna hit the frickin ground. Okay, so you want to paint that picture for me? Like it might not be so bad right now. But what are the full implications? And that’s what I mean by rubbing salt into the wound.
Rolando Rosas 25:46
See, well, that’s, that’s interesting. In in, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating, because it almost separates what we consider in sales. And sometimes, you’re like, Well, the important thing is the price that we’re competitive, the important thing is that our product is the best. The important thing is that our product is better than the second second cup and our next competitor, and then even after that, but what you’re saying it turns a lot of that upside down from what I’ve read going to school, and it is not about that, that’s probably on the in terms of priority, when customers or potential customers are looking at a product or service, they’re looking for maybe something that resonated emotionally or made him made him feel a certain way, because I’ve read somewhere in your book that even the intensity around that experience or the emotional connection, is it’s not just the emotion, but the intensity that helps you remember things in a way that just maybe numbers don’t like if I saw a post about this is the greatest product in the world versus like what you’re saying, here’s the consequences, what’s going to happen in about 15,000 minutes.
Tim Ash 26:57
Yeah, and by the way, there’s, you also need to understand your audience. And I can’t overstate this enough, most marketers, in my experience, basically say, Here, here’s our product, all a billion people on the planet needed by it now. And you have the big megaphone, and it’s this inside out approach. And instead, you should say, Hey, who’s out there? What misconceptions do they have what other busy stuff going on in their life, what misinformation, let’s bring them in and help them buy, okay, and help them figure out how we’re going to help them. And that’s very different than most marketing I’ve seen. So it’s really, really important to understand who you’re talking to. And a big problem with many brands is they think of their solutions as generic and needed by everyone. I would rather one of the advice I give to people is hyper target your audience. We had lots of clients in education, lots of different universities, and so on. And one of them had, like single moms that were going back to school, while holding down a job. Now I can talk to that group much more specifically than I can to just like we have student loans, and you’ll get a degree in two years, that’s just very generic. So understand your audience is super critical.
Rolando Rosas 28:15
Down to down to the way you say it, so if we’re talking to so a lot of folks that are watching us today, there may be decision makers, or, or policymakers or marketers that are older, and the the product and or decision maker of a service is generally older, it’s not going to be an intern, right? So if I’m trying to market to, let’s say somebody that is of that demographic, I this is something internally that we’ve been ingesting a lot lately is maybe using imagery of people that are older rather than a teenager or somebody that’s 20 and it says,
Tim Ash 28:52
We’re somebody that’s got blue hair and nipple piercings. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that, okay, that might be your end customer, but like you say, that may not be the financial buyer. So if you want to influence them, they have to feel seen and heard and understood as well. And let me give you a reason why. That’s an example from the book why that’s important, but I can describe an objective reality. And yet, you’re gonna have very different relationship to it based on who you are. So here’s the objective reality we can record this with a video camera ready.
Rolando Rosas 29:24
Okay, hold on a second. Let me see pro tip number two before you start that, give me a number two pro tip numero dos. Take it away, Tim.
Tim Ash 29:37
I love the JAUNTY MUSIC. It’s awesome. So imagine if a record this objective reality. The bullfighter stands in the middle of the arena. The Bulls charges them they definitely sidestep and with a thrust of their sword between the shoulder blades of the bow pierced its heart and kill it and bring it to a full stop and it crumbles at their feet. Okay, now that’s an objective reality I can record. Now, who’s the audience? Let’s say I was talking to someone in Spain that had a long history of bullfighting in their culture. Well, the stories then about man versus nature, about excellence, about courage about all of these positive qualities discipline, if I’m talking to somebody from PETA People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and it’s saying, Well, this is animal torture, and someone’s paying and subsidizing it, and people are gleefully watching the suffering of other living beings, and it’s disgusting and should be stopped immediately. Same objective reality being experienced very differently based on who your target audience is.
Dave Kelly 30:45
It may, you know, in that, that, that makes a lot that makes a lot of sense, it’s the same, it’s the same story, one person is attracted to it, and the other one might be disgusted by that hyper targeting, very interesting, looking to apply that, you know, it can be difficult to hyper target within this tech industry of, you know, just communications, but I can understand why some organizations will focus on vertical markets, specifically for that, for that one reason, so that they can target that message.
Tim Ash 31:17
Yeah, so the way I describe it, a brand is like jam on bread, you spread it too thin, you won’t be even able to taste it after a while. So what you really need to do is think of your marketing campaigns as a series of laser focused understandings of very niche groups. Don’t be generic, generic is death.
Rolando Rosas 31:37
You know, I, I heard something a different marketer, very good. I like I like to follow because he has a lot of nice tips. And he’s really dialed in, especially on the tech side is Gary Vaynerchuk. He talks about this, about this. And he’s explained it a couple of different ways. So that if we were going to do some kind of campaign, and we were targeting, you know, let’s just say Internet services, we may want to do those, even like regionally he like He even talks about trying to mark it down to the block. So that if you know that there’s some internet need in Bedford Stuyvesant, that’s slightly different than over in Silicon Valley, you address the same concern, but maybe you have a small twist. So like, hey, Bedford, Steve residents, are you tired of Verizon? Are you tired of the internet going down? And then the same message turnaround in Silicon Valley? Hey, are you tired of paying a high Silicon Valley customers? Are you tired of paying high prices for your internet connection? Well, that’s it. And he says, that is so effective, and reaches that target audience much better than just one bland commercial, from coast to coast.
Tim Ash 32:43
Yes, and I’ll agree with that. But I’ll take it a step further, when you’re talking about there’s objective demographic information, we can target geofence somebody and know what neighborhood they’re in, and then market to them? Well, that’s great. But I’m talking more about the psychology like the belief systems, the tribal affiliation of the people. So these people might be geographically dispersed, but they all think of the world in a different way. And that is you want to understand their values and their belief systems and what’s important to them in order to emotionally persuade them just knowing they live on a particular block and doing a mass insert of local hated cable company. You know, that’s, that’s a little different.
Rolando Rosas 33:26
So what you’re saying is, know your audience know them intimately. And go ahead and focus on those niches because it has a better payoff a better ROI, than just like what you’re saying geofencing. With that, that may give you some results, but even going more specifically, like using maybe tying the single moms who have a college degree inside Bedford Stuyvesant, that have one kid.
Tim Ash 33:51
Yeah, you mean, you could have some geographic component to where you’re targeting, because that’s also likely to have values associated with a certain tribal or cultural beliefs in that area, or that neighborhood or that state or that country? That’s certainly true. There’s huge differences in culture, based on where you live and the self selected people that choose to live there. Next you but I guess I’m saying is, you really need to understand my, my values, and your story should resonate for that. So let’s take a company like REI, you can make some assumptions about the people that shopped there, they love the outdoors, they care about saving the planet, guess what, they’re probably gonna resonate with global climate crisis concerns and not think that it’s all fake news. You know, so you you’re basically attracting a psychological tribe and saying, I’m the pied piper, follow me. I’m passionate about this. I understand you you’re like me, so that so it’s more of a tribal affiliation again, rather than a geographic one.
Rolando Rosas 34:52
And should brands not have along those lines? So you brought up Rei, let’s say um, I’m not sorry, I haven’t built up a brand around, maybe some a cause. So like the environment? Are there things that brands should adopt whether you’re a small planet a solopreneur, all the way to multinational to help you identify with your target audience?
Tim Ash 35:17
Yes, one of the things that I talk a lot about with my executive marketing consultant clients, usually CEOs or CMOS of ccompanies is what is your origin myth. This is a central construct around which you shouldn’t be building your brand. So for me generally takes the the structure of what’s called the hero’s journey, you know, we’ve had these since the Odyssey and Star Wars as a modern version of it, but the story is okay, life was okay. And then bad stuff happened. And I went on a quest, I had some unexpected allies, some adversity I eventually I slayed the dragon. And then there was a re regreening of the earth. And now my mission is to bring that passionate thing to the world, you know, so what is your origin myth, whether it’s embodied in your, your founders, or in your product, or in your approach to people or whom you serve, you basically, you can’t use the megaphone. Like I said earlier, you need to be a magnet and attract your tribe. And they’re going to be attracted to these passionate causes, not necessarily saving the planet and global warming, not necessarily that big. But, for example, I was, you know, I was in purchasing for rack mounted servers. And I just saw how hard it was for people to order them if they didn’t have a technical background. So I researched how this stuff was sold and how to explain it to people. And what we figured out is this intuitive way of explaining what kind of servers you need to, to the purchasing people instead of relying on the tech people. Okay, so my passionate thing is to help buying servers accessible to non technical people, you see what I mean? It doesn’t have to be some grand cause. But it has to be something that different and then you passionately believe in then people in that target audience are going to be attracted to that story.
Rolando Rosas 37:14
I just so storytelling, I want to come back to that in a moment. But before we keep going on storytelling, I want to remind you, if you’re watching this and you’re watching this live, or during the playback, that if you found this content helpful, or inspirational or motivational in any way, shape, or form, go ahead and bump the like button, because the platform that you’re watching us on will send this video to more people. And the more people that watch this video, the more it helps us in turn. So I want to thank you in advance for doing that. And go ahead and share the message with other folks as well. So, Tim, let’s get back to storytelling, because I find it fascinating how it’s almost like a reeducation of sorts when you’re in marketing. Because there’s a lot of stuff of baggage that you’re carrying when you come out of marketing school or MBA school. And storytelling is it’s a it’s an art, as much as it is a science. But when it connects in it lands well, and it’s executed well. It really does make an impact and the passion around storytelling and the message delivery of that, can you give us some more examples of either brands or, or our clients that you’ve worked with, that have used this narrative of storytelling to effectively communicate with their audience?
Tim Ash 38:41
Well, you should always use stories, I’ll talk about the kind of one of the evolutionary reasons that stories exist, they’re a way of sharing experience without you having a god go through it. So if I, if I, you know, if you tell me the story of that lion that was chasing you, that’s the beginning of the show, I don’t have to actually run away from the lion, I can just hear your story of how you dealt with that lion attack. And that saves me the trouble. And it gives me a survival edge. So stories are a way to pass on the experience that helps us survive. And again, they’re going to be experienced within our tribe based on our cultural norms and our values. But wrapping things up in a story bypasses all of those defenses. So like, we were talking about Dave earlier, like the rational stuff, and here, here’s our three plans by one of our three plans. Okay, that’s that’s trying to talk to the rational brain. And again, that’s not the one in terms of that makes decisions. But if I tell you a story about how this one particular plan helped one of our clients, then is you’re listening and it’s like you’re getting direct experience without having to go through all of the pitfalls and problems that they did. And ultimately, of course, the moral of the story is like they’re way better off now that they found us and our solution but always Tell things in story form and bypasses the logical defenses of the brain.
Rolando Rosas 40:04
Like What? What? No, hold up that slide on sounds like a pro tip. Let’s back that up. I like what you just said, already. Give us pro tip. iMesh give us pro tip numero tres per hour.
Tim Ash 40:22
Don’t put me to sleep with facts and statistics. Tell me a story. It bypasses all of those defenses of logic and goes directly into my brain and I can’t even stop it.
Rolando Rosas 40:35
Ooh, oh, Dave, did you hear that? And I’ve got I know, we’re recording this. But this is great. I love that this is a great pro tip. Because I know we talk about this stuff all the time on our internal meetings. But I like that. So somehow, so there’s a part of our brain, let’s go further. Because I know you are big into the neuro part of the brain, where in our brain, what happens? You’re telling me this story, right? Like you’re saying, Tell me the passion or tell me how it helped me and plan one is what helped another customer, what’s happening in the brain that makes storytelling so powerful versus the plan A will save you 50, Plan B will save you 60. and Plan C will save you 80.
Tim Ash 41:19
Well, the way to think about it is humans can’t survive alone. First of all, we’re mammals and all mammals congregate in groups or herds of various sizes. But we’re the most hyper social of all mammals. By far, our intimate group size is about 100 to 200 people and our brain, the modern part of the brain is actually designed to figure out all of the interactions, like if I do business with you, and then I also, you know, my son’s dating your daughter, what does that mean? Okay to keeping up in real time, all of those social relationships. So the fact is that group identity and group cohesion is the most important thing to our survival. And stories reinforce values, they transmit knowledge, they have increased the cohesion of the group. So again, it’s very important, I understand what group you’re talking to. But the purpose of stories is to keep us tightly bound, and the most cohesive group wins, basically.
Dave Kelly 42:19
So if so humans being hyper social, these past two, two and a half years must have been very, very trying on that need to be hyper social.
Tim Ash 42:31
Yes. And I mean, actually, we’ve seen that there’s a skyrocketing demand for mental health services, suicides or mental health problems, like depression and anxiety, like, I have two teens in the house, I’ve dealt with it on a personal level. And they’ve been really affected by being at a school, especially that kind of 12 to 25 year old cohort, that depends on other people for their social development and self image. They were really the ones that suffered younger kids are a little tuned out, as adults, arguably, we have some mechanisms to compensate for that. But the worst thing you can do to people in general, is social isolation. And so I think it’s like, there’s a case involving Texas right now, where somebody’s been in isolation for 20 years in prison, that is literally going to drive you insane. And I think in the future, we’ll look back on this stuff as cruel and unusual punishment.
Rolando Rosas 43:24
Well, let’s hope so. And then that we are rational, although you are saying that we make a lot of rational decisions. Let’s throw away the key lock them up. And that makes more sense than from times what actually works, right?
Tim Ash 43:41
Yeah, yeah. So you actually have to keep people there is a study of really famous longitudinal study, I believe, has been running for over 70 years where they tracked Harvard kids that started Harvard, and then they’re poor, South Boston, Southie cousins, and over their whole lifetime, they’ve been interviewing him and seeing what basically makes a good life. Number one is strong social supports and contacts. In other words, not having social supports, is the medical equivalent in terms of outcomes of being a two pack a day smoker, kind of thing? Yep. Wow. So go out and seek those friendships, whether it’s stamp collecting or talking about Superbowl commercials. And in the sports bar, you have to have social contacts and a healthy support system. By far the thing that contributes more to your well being and then your satisfaction in life.
Rolando Rosas 44:37
You know, you you mentioned something during the before after we had the podcast, we had a chance to talk about a few things. And you meant some you mentioned something that stuck with me, especially now you’re talking about in this social context, and that is corporate culture. And you’d mentioned to me that there’s an actual percentage that once you reach that threshold will actually affect the entire culture. Not five, not this one. Can you talk about that? Because I thought that was fascinating, especially for right now. There’s companies that are making a big pivot, a lot of companies are changed, because everything has changed every industry in the last two years, and we’re undergoing a major cultural shift in attitudes towards work, and how work should be done, how it should be delivered services, all the rest. Talk a little bit about that. And how a certain amount of people you mentioned this exact percentage, and how then once you reach that threshold, it can actually affect the entire organization.
Tim Ash 45:42
Yeah, Rolando. That’s, that’s a really interesting piece of research that has been done fairly recently. And it was basically talking about how do you get people to change your behavior, and you have these kind of loose influences around you. And then you have, basically, you’re modeling the behavior of people. So you’re not just listening to what they say you’re watching what they do. And it turns out that that tipping point, actually change behavior is having about a quarter of the people around you adopt that new behavior. In other words, you might be at eight 15% 18% 20%, you go look where we’re pushing more people do this and nothing’s happening. And all of a sudden, you hit that 25% critical mass and boom, it switches over. And a lot more people start adopting that behavior. So if you want to see behavior change, you need to do it in a small group, and have that group reach critical mass and take that larger group and merge it with a bigger group and have them get infected. Pardon the viral pun. infected with it, there has to be a certain threshold. So it’s here, here’s a key point, it’s never going to be something that’s influenced by somebody popular. You know, people say, Well, look, Oprah started talking about whatever intermittent fasting and all of a sudden everybody’s doing it. Actually, no, Oprah has an audience to defend. She’s got her listeners to basically adapt to she’s never going to be on the cutting edge, not Oprah in particular, but anybody with a steak and a big audience. So she’s only going to jump on trends once they become popular, and help them hit critical mass. But she’s not going to be the one that steaks her whole persona and brand on kind of pissing into the wind and trying to get people to adapt something new. So influencers are only helpful to your brand. Once there’s already that critical mass, they can help accelerate it, but they’re not going to be the catalyst for behavior change that needs to be a small, dedicated, passionate group inside of the tribe.
Rolando Rosas 47:45
I want you to go back again, this is pro tip numero quatro, because there’s a lot of folks listening to us, including me, I’m listening to you and you’re talking about influencers and their role in the marketing roadmap so to speak, and I think you hit pro tip numero quatro, go for it Ori give us another pro tip for Tim pro tip numero quatro, Tim talk about influencers Please state the importance or lack thereof of them in the role of marketing.
Tim Ash 48:19
If you want people to change your behavior, they have to observe a critical mass about 25% of people around them actually doing that behavior. That’s the tipping point. Influencers aren’t going to help you until that critical mass is hit. They can help accelerate the adoption of it. But they’re not going to stake their brand and reputation pushing against some far out idea that hasn’t been adopted by a lot of people.
Rolando Rosas 48:45
Awesome. Tim, I also want to take this moment to thank Mike Deacon. I know who you are, Mike. We did a lot of work in the past all kinds of stuff we can even talk about on the air. Good stuff. Patriotic stuff, stuff serving the country. Thank you, Mike, I appreciate you watching us. And I haven’t seen you in a while. I love to see you soon, brother Stay well. All right. Thanks, Mike. All right, Tim. We hit Pro Tip number four, I’m gonna let date Dave’s probably got a few other things. Go ahead and jump in Dave.
Dave Kelly 49:19
You know, I just I really liked that approach of reaching in order to in order to change. And in order to change or give people new solutions they need to reach that 25% that critical mass point. I can see how that would work with something as simple as software where you might get a pilot group group of 10-15 people, get them trying out a solution. Get them to like it, give it a thumbs up. So you can go from the pilot to maybe just a little bit larger. So you kind of start spreading out that solution. Get it in the hands of the users for the organization, reach that 25% And now you can get closer with the influencers, to get it over that hump, and then hopefully get your full deployment. Yeah. Yeah, I call it mainstream adoption. Absolutely.
Rolando Rosas 50:13
And, you know, there’s a lot of things that folks watching us today and even watching us into the future that are going to be watching this during the playback, they’re going to take away a lot of things. And oh, there’s a there’s, we could spend another easily Tim, I could spend another hour just picking your brain, about the primal brain, what you’ve written about it, your life story, and how those would be effective uses of marketing tactics for a lot of folks watching us today. But what I’d like you to do is, you know, talk a bit about either your book, or something that’s in there that you really want our audience to resonate with, you want to leave us with so that they can take away back either to their boss, or their team or even for their own selves, that would be very helpful.
Tim Ash 50:56
Yeah, well, thanks, Rolando, I actually want to talk about who the book is for because I wrote it. For three different audiences, the way to think about Unleash Your Primal Brain is that it’s an operating system for all human beings on the planet. So if you want to look at it with a business hat on sales, marketing, persuasion leadership, you can read it and get a lot out of it, if you want to look at it for interpersonal relations is relationships, gender differences, things like that culture, storytelling, you can look at it from that standpoint, or you can look at it from a personal development angle, how do I live a happy life as you know, an ape with these evolutionary things inside of me, that goes to sleep, memory, learning, happiness, drugs and addiction, all of that’s covered too, to basically it’s an operating system for how to be a human being, and uncovers in a very non technical way, our complete evolution as I made a lot of fun, I think you’ll agree you’ve read it. There’s an audiobook version of it that I’ve recorded personally, e books as well.
Rolando Rosas 52:04
I saw your audio booth on your website, which was interesting how you did the audio book and talking about it was like a sound because he can’t breathe and all that
Tim Ash 52:13
stuff. Oh, yeah, I made my own out of moving blankets and PVC pipe made a move to record my audio book stuff in because I live close to San Diego airport and every minute or two and other plane goes by.
Rolando Rosas 52:26
But wow, you know, a side note on the tech side, something that I’ve stumbled across that I’ve found really does a good job of cleaning up audio is descript and I know you you used it or not during your recordings but it does a fascinating job of really good job of, of cleaning up audio even from horrible auto audio source and I know you sat down with a Yeti microphone and I’m sure you could probably well
Tim Ash 52:52
now you have to go a step further because for Amazon or audible you know you have to take out all the breath sounds in between that was a bit of work. It’s nice script does that. Yeah, it’s it’s a pretty technical it took me about three four hours of work to create every hour of final edited audio. Yeah. It’s a lot harder than most people think. But yeah, certainly good tools can help. So by the way, just want to put something out there guys, if you go for if you go to primalbrain.com/book You can pick from the table of contents, any chapter you want, I’ll actually send you the chapter of your choice. So whatever you’re interested in memory learning gender differences, storytelling, our social natures, Pick your chapter, I’ll send it to you.
Rolando Rosas 53:42
Awesome and you heard it here on what the tech with Tim ash but before we leave Tim ash, there’s some questions we get asked him that we ask every guest that comes on to what the tech these are right or wrong answers. Your answers Tim, that our audience wants to know to get to know your brain a little better. All right, so are you ready? What is your favorite musician or musical group?
Tim Ash 54:10
Ah, I love the Eagles I gotta say that dates me a little bit but man those guys had such a long run at the top and made so much good music. For me that’s right up there.
Rolando Rosas 54:23
And there wasn’t a lot of auto tune back then to like you know enhance your voice. You had this actually sing. Although I love you t pain if you’re watching you know, big ups to T pain and his auto tune and and all the other guys that use a ton of auto tune I lose. I do love a lot of the modern music as well. No knock on it because you’ve all done really fabulous job of marketing yourself. favorite app on your phone, Tim?
Tim Ash 54:53
Probably my Samsung health app. It tells me how many steps I’ve taken and all of that It makes me feel good about getting off my lazy butt and doing something.
Dave Kelly 55:06
I use my health app a lot, too. And I do appreciate going back and seeing what I’ve done, or what I haven’t done, and I definitely got a negativity bias. When I’m not doing as much as I did the day before. I feel like I gotta get out there.
Rolando Rosas 55:19
Right, right. I know, it’s just you have it in your face that you didn’t walk those 1000 steps.
Dave Kelly 55:24
Right, right. I mean, 10,000 Right. Oh, 10,000 Oh, there you go. My bad threshold
Tim Ash 55:30
is six. I feel good. If I’ve done 6000 steps. low expectations, then you can achieve them.
Dave Kelly 55:38
Over Under promise over deliver.
Rolando Rosas 55:41
Exactly. Now speaking of deliver you live in San Diego, in on the west coast where there’s fabulous food. I love going out to the West Coast. I love San Diego last time I was there there was a very good Mexican restaurant near downtown. I can’t even remember the name because it’s been a while but I know you have a lot of good food. What is your favorite food when you either go to a restaurant or even take out?
Tim Ash 56:08
Oh it’s sushi? Yeah, me and sushi for the rest of my life, high quality sashimi. Um, there, you got some good stuff out there. By the way, just a little little thing I heard once. That is why you need marketing. It’s the difference between cold dead fish, and sushi. That in a nutshell is why you need marketing.
Rolando Rosas 56:31
There you go to help help us break it down. Understand that better. And when you’re communicating, what’s your favorite method of communication, get a multiple choice here. It’s email, text, a phone call, and or some type of instant message?
Tim Ash 56:45
It’s going on our long walk and talk and hike with somebody.
Rolando Rosas 56:50
And you know, we got to add that into our multiple choice there or a they’re the first guests first guest to actually mention that you want face to face contact.
Tim Ash 57:00
And I’ll tell I’ll go even more skin to skin. It turns out that 20 seconds of skin to skin contact or a hug releases oxytocin and makes you feel like part of the in group makes you feel safe that Mother Child bond, hug people and hold the hugs.
Rolando Rosas 57:17
Oh, interesting. Very interesting. There was this probably research that you know about I am trying to recall it recently that I read. I don’t know if it was on the times. But somebody was saying how even if you face to face, when you have face to face meeting, there’s something about the the chemical exchange that happens and then you’re more likely to create a connection when you do that, that there’s actually some science on the chemistry and chemicals that are happening in your brain in in their brain and that you both start forming ideas collectively as a person or as a group when you start doing that.
Tim Ash 57:55
Yeah well, and then that happens during storytelling they’ve shown on visual imaging in the brain, when somebody tells a story. With a slight delay, the person on the receiving end of the story, this could be even in the stories and translation is essentially syncing up the same parts of the brain. So it’s like mind melding on Star Trek and Mr. Spock.
Rolando Rosas 58:14
My goodness, boy. So if anything today, the takeaway, at least one of them is storytelling. That would mean the word of the day if we were on Sesame Street was this bird. The word of the day, today’s story, the word of today is storytelling, and what it could do for you and your life and your company and everything else. So, Tim, you’ve been a wonderful sport today. I don’t know if there’s anything else that you want to leave us with. before we, before we wrap up?
Tim Ash 58:49
No, I’m easy to find if you need help with digital marketing, consulting, or public speaking, go to TimAsh.com. And anything book related is at primalbrain.com.
Rolando Rosas 58:58
So go ahead and get a hold of Tim, I gotta tell you, he’s a he’s a man of his word. He’s got a lot of experience. You want to have him in your corner. If you’re trying to your startup. I know you’ve worked with startups before, as well as well established brands that maybe need some polish, they need some guidance, they need some direction, maybe get their marketing team with the storytelling and they need a little bit more hand holding. So Tim is the man when it comes to these types of things. So, Tim, I really appreciate you coming on our show today. enlightening us giving us some wisdom sharing with our audience, your your years of wisdom and you’ve boiled it down and you’ve been so good to come on and give us some of your time today. So thank you, Tim. I appreciate that.
Tim Ash 59:47
Oh, gentlemen. It’s been my pleasure. All right.
Rolando Rosas 59:50
Awesome. Thank you. And I also want to remind you, if you enjoyed this interview with Tim, we’ve got some other pieces of information in videos for you to enjoy right here on your screen, where you will find some information that will give you value. Thanks for joining us. I’ll see you in these videos.
Outro 1:00:10
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