Examples of mental accounting don’t get better than this:

“Me at the airport at 6am after eating my $30 meal, drinking my $12 water, and spending $80 on an Uber…all because I booked a 6am flight to save $50”.

What is mental accounting? Our tendency to weight money differently according to where it’s come from and where it’s going.

The $50 he saved was a win for the “paying for my flight” mental account.

But the money spent getting to...

In 2002, then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld baffled the world with his statement that there are unknown unknowns.

Parodied at the time, his insight wasn’t wrong.

In fact, it’s been turned into the Rumsfeld matrix.

• Known knowns - things we are aware of and understand e.g. using behavioural science everyday to improve interactions
• Known unknowns - things we are aware of but don’t understand e.g. You have heard about behavioural science but don’t know...

The biggest misconception about behavioural science?

That it’s discretionary.

I’ve heard it over the years - people telling me they couldn’t get funding for our project because it was deemed a discretionary expense.

That’s my fault.

I should have been more explicit.

Because what can be more essential than correctly influencing behaviour? 

If you look at the inefficiencies in any organisation, the reasons for frustration and burnout, there’s one...

At the start of the year, I asked ChatGPT what the 5 top emerging issues were for business.

Thing is, they're not emerging at all. Rather than burning issues, they seem, well, blah.

1. Financial management
2. Future planning
3. Economic shifts and inflation
4. Employee communication
5. Staff retention

To my way of thinking, these issues fail to get to the heart of why running a small business (or leading a team) is so challenging.

That's what I reveal in this video, including what to do instead.

...

I forgot to add a teaspoon of baking powder to a cake once.

What a mistake.

The cake failed to rise and had to be thrown out.

It’s remarkable that missing one tiny ingredient can make a huge difference to the outcome.

For over 15 years I was working in corporate roles without the ingredient I didn’t realise I needed. 

Behavioural science.

All those years, me and those around me were wasting time on initiatives that fell flat.

Because we didn’t properly understand...

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Very few are doing it well.

You see, reviewing the work of others is something I do a lot. 

When clients share with me their website, marketing, proposals and internal comms, I get to see what’s happening ‘out there’, across all industries, functions and sizes of organisation. 

I have a front row seat to people’s best work.

And here’s what’s disappointing.

The intent is there. People want to...

A software firm increased email open rates by 20% and sales leads by 31% and a financial services training company increased engagement by 10%. 

How?

If you were one of 400 senior marketers at Intuit Mailchimp’s From Here:To There conference, you already know the answer.

In one case it had to do with adding CEO to the sender’s address and in another, a first name to the subject line.

If you are curious about what else I covered, marketing news site B&T have just...

You cannot NOT influence. 

I talk a lot about influencing skills and how to get customers and colleagues to take action, but here’s the funny thing.

You cannot NOT influence. You're already doing it.

In every interaction – every email, text, phone call, meeting or presentation, you are stimulating a reaction.

You are influencing your audience in some way.

So the question isn’t whether you are influencing, it’s whether you are influencing the desired...

Humans like knowing 2 things:

• What will happen. 
• Why it happened.

Both stem from control. We want to make sense of our world so it doesn’t seem chaotic.

In your business you will wonder:

• What will happen when we send this email out? Release this product? Raise my prices?

And later:

• Why didn’t people open our emails? Buy our products? Pay our prices?

Meanwhile, your customers will be thinking:

• What will happen when I click that button? Take that product...

The hidden secrets to TED talks that their founder, Chris Anderson, doesn't share.

That's what I want to share with you.

If you ever present, either from stage or to colleagues and customers, I think you'll find this helpful.

Chris gave a great TED talk on how to give a TED talk a few years ago. It's now been viewed almost 3 million times.

He seems so effortless in his delivery that I wanted to pull back the curtain and identify exactly what he was doing.

That's what I reveal in this...