The Business & Marketing Scoop
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The Business & Marketing Scoop
Ep 27 - Using Human Biology to Create Powerful Content - With Guest Fergus Ryan
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In this episode of The Digital Marketing Scoop Mark and Jen discuss how biology can impact content creation with guest expert Fergus Ryan.
This episode of The Digital Marketing Scoop is brought to you by Cliq Media and Marketing.
This week on the digital marketing scoop. We're talking with Fergus Ryan about using biology to create powerful content.
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 1Fergus, thanks very much for joining us on the podcast today.
Speaker 3No problem. Thanks for having me, Mark and Jen , lovely to be here with you.
Speaker 1Very welcome. Very welcome. So , um, would you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
Speaker 3Yeah, so I would have started in a more traditional marketing background with an insurance company. It was actually the full management arm of a, of an insurance company. And so it was doing a lot of traditional marketing press releases, Mayo shots. I'm turning a boat around the country , um , presenting. Um, and I , I suppose my transparent to digital, I was, I was trying to basically get out of the car and not have to drive all over the country. So we started doing more focused email marketing and webinars. Now, webinars might sound like a big deal today cause everyone's doing them . But this was like 2009, 2010 before webinars are what they are now. So that kind of peaked my interest , uh , in digital. And in 2014 I got the chance to leave Aviva and jump into digital full time. So I took on a grasp with both hands. Um , I freelance for a couple of years and then I joined Wolfgang digital , uh , and more recently now I'm going to join the Travelport digital content team. Um , I also briefly flirted with sports media. I was covering mixed martial arts for uh , places like air sport 98 FM and independent data. You no longer doing that? It's all just digital now.
Speaker 1Cool. Very good. Fantastic. Now you're in a very specific niche I would say of digital , um , that you are in terms of the content creation side , you focus a lot on, you know, how human biology and human psychology affects content creation. Um, so could you tell us a bit about that?
Speaker 3Yeah. This, I suppose to the Genesis for this, if you like, was the Simon Sinek Ted talk and where he was talking about stuff, you know , how emotion was required to make a connection. And if you started with the why rather than the water, the how. If you start with the Y , you're more likely to build a connection. And that kind of, I remember when I watched that first I thought, Oh this is just the usual marketing mumbo jumbo, but haven't thought about it. Read a little bit around the subject, read his book a obviously watched his Ted talk numerous times. Just started to think about it. Yeah. Like there , there has to be more to it than just the words. Um , like if you ever do any kind of research on, okay, so what is good content? Or how do we get more people to our website? Google will say things to you like, well, if you make great content that your audience loves, you know, that's how you get people to your website . So that's fine. But what is great content and how do we know the audience loves it? And like the best example I could give as is the guilty pleasure, right? So we all have the type of music that we like, but we all have guilty pleasures in music that isn't, you know, what, we isn't typical to the other stuff we like, but we just really dig this tune . Um , like I would be very much guitar based , guitar, solo rage against the machine at Pearl jam, all that good stuff. But I do love crowded house and near the fit . And , and I , I have not missed a near the fin gig in , in, in Ireland in about 20 years, you know, but those two John was of music yet like are , are very , um, opposing end to the spectrum. So how do you cater for that? How do you create content that you know or hope that your audience is gonna love? Um, and if you just think about just from a words, like if you just do your SEO keyword research, you're falling into the trap of just creating content for robots. Yes, you're going to , uh , maybe rank well for a period cause you're ticking all the boxes SEO wise. But then if people jump in and bounce straight out of the content or don't read it , uh, you're eventually going to fall down the ranks . So now you're back to square one. You know, where do I get this content on my readers and gone to, to love. So it's basically, it could be summed up as just focusing on the message rather than the medium. Um , so yeah, it's Simon Sinek was the Genesis for it and , um, I've just read , I just found it a fascinating topic just to understand like why do people like what they like?
Speaker 1So is that in terms of, in the content you create, you want to try and create that, that emotional connection with, with the user, that it's not just laying out the information and it's actually connecting with them, that they're gonna have more of a connection with the contents basically.
Speaker 3Yeah. So if you just look at it from the words point of view, like you can have the most comprehensive technical spec or you can have, you know, all the list of , um, features of the product and the latest technology. But if people don't understand how that impacts their life, they might make the connection that Oh yeah, that's, that's really cool. That's why I need that. Um , it's like one of the best examples, I think Simon Sinek might use it. If you go back to the marketing of the, the iPod in the mid two thousands. So it's a device, it's tiny and it has like, I think they had one gig of memory at the time and that was cool cause nothing this small ever had one gig of memory, but like to the ordinary guy walking in the street. What, what's a gig of memory? Like what does that do for me? So if you say to people, look at the size of this thing, you could fit in your pocket, you can go running with it. A won't skip. And it's gonna save a thousand songs on this little small thing. Now you've got a connection. Now you think, Oh hold on a sec. I've got 250 CD . So that's like maybe a 2000 songs. So I can put loads of these onto my iPod and go jogging and go to the gym, you know, have them on the community. And now we've got a connection. So the words and the technical spec and the accuracy of the words and their relevance to maybe search volume or or ranking and that kind of cool stuff for digital marketing, that's one aspect of it. But if the person reading it or consuming the content does not understand the benefit or they can make a connection with this content, it's maybe not going to be much use. Um , this is , this isn't a new phenomena. So there was a guy called [inaudible] who wrote on marketing I think in the 1960s, and he basically knew at that point , uh , like whatever, 60 odd years ago, the people don't buy a quarter inch drill bit. They're buying a quarter inch hole, like the tungsten and the grooves and the swirl and the drill . But that's all great. But that's not what I'm buying it for. I'm buying it for, it's going to make a quarter inch hole and now I can hang my picture or my flat screen TV or like, you know, whatever it is you want to do, you're not buying the tungsten and the engineering and the trail. You're buying the thing that that does , which is the hole which is going to make your room, which better or your life much better. And that's the whole point. So it's trying to find the thing that gets the reader going that might be, or that is more than just the words. It's not, it's not just the words you need, it's the emotion you're trying to evoke. It are the people from the words.
Speaker 1Yeah. It kind of, I suppose it's in that case it's almost like a, you know, sounds the benefits and uh , the results as opposed to the features and the a Andy iPod example that you gave there. [inaudible]
Speaker 3yeah, exactly. Um, because, so if you, like, if you, if you go really complex into say , uh, a B2B heavy industrial type company, so they're selling really complicated machinery. Perhaps the takes, you know, could have a sales cycle of maybe two years. Uh , it's a significant vestment of money. Um, so the information you are going to give, you know, you can give out the technical spec, but like is that going to get the guy up out of a C to pick up the phone to pop , to place the order to go to the C FO's office to place the order. You need to be able to tell them like why your machine is such a much better fit for their business. Maybe you need to tell it, tell them about the technology and how it's developed, but you have to make some kind of connection that this, this guy can't do without this because it's going to do this for his life and his customer's life and therefore this is the thing he needed. And there's a grace , a English marker called Rory Sutherland and he works for Oglivie and I don't know if it's his line, but he frequently uses the line. No one gets fired for buying IBM. And what that basically I think is , is basically saying there is like it's not a risk to buy IBM. Like if something goes wrong and you can blame IBM and it's ah , it's , you know, it doesn't happen that often. IBM are so reliable. If you buy the smaller Neesha thing and it goes wrong, but then you might have a problem. So if you're not IBM, you have to come up with really cool ways to market your product because if you just go on ahead to head with technical specs, you may be the same, but because you're not IBM, you're going to lose. So if you need, if you, if you can go beyond the technical spec and talk about how this product is going to do this for your customers and their lives are going to be so much better and it's gonna free up so much more time to do the other things that they really want to do. If you get into that aspect of it , in some ways it might be like talking about the product without talking about the product, but just, just listing off the technical spec. Like chances are, unless you're IBM, you're just not going to be good enough. You need to go deeper than that. And I'm really speak to the people who are buying the products.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's definitely that kind of concept of selling, selling the problem, not the, not the products really. And [inaudible] have been so good at doing that for years. I mean, I remember the same thing with the iPods, don't they? I think the tagline at the time was a thousand songs in your pocket. Yeah. And that was that. That connection is the Apple dude . They always do it really good. I mean just one look at their website and you want everything. Yeah. You see that come up with it . The new one which has a new camera. You don't really hear about the megapixels or the after. You actually just see what people created with it and that's, that's what creates that, that that connection, that emotional connection I guess.
Speaker 3Yeah. Apple is such a great case. I try , I try. I try not to use Apple all the time, but it's hard because they're just so good at it. And if you, if you, like I've gone into, so I have an iPhone, an I pad, a Apple TV I-pads . Uh , most of my tech is Apple except for laptops because I re I really struggled to see how they can be three times more expensive than a normal. So for example, the thing I have here is a Lenovo and I spent a a thousand Euro , which is a lot for a laptop. But I went into a couple of shops and I talked to the Apple guys and they said, give me one, one good reason why an Apple laptop is better than an ordinary windows laptop. And honestly, the only thing people would say to me is, Oh, they're just cool to just, ah , they're just, they're just cool. Um, and then I went into the , where I ultimately bought, bought this laptop. I went into the guy and I said, I'm really having an arm wrestling about whether to buy a Mac or a, just a windows. Cause I'd always been windows and laptops up to this, but I was thinking when everything else is Apple, so I might as well just get an Apple Mac , but it was like three times the price and you're the guy in the shop said, look, I'll sell you an Apple if you want or you give me a tie , wasn't Euro and I will build you a laptop better than the Apple. And I said, really like genuine , it'd be better . And he went in, then he started to get into the technical spec and say, look, this is going to be better. Like have an Intel core I seven, I don't know what that is but this is better than the one in the Apple apparently. Um, and he's just waiting . You just went down through the , Oh this is going to be about, I'm going to, this will be faster, this will be better than me . And he goes, I'm honest to God because you keep 2000 Euro, give me 1000 Euro and I give you a better machine at that . That was kind of the, if you like, the content that sold it to me, the emotional bit that sold it to me. Um , if you T if you look at , if you look at Apple, the iOS operating system is about 20% of the world's machines. So laptops, tablets, phones, 20% of those machines run on iOS. So 80% there . They're the S not the smallest part of the market, but they are a fraction of the market. They're one fifth of the operating systems or devices around yet they are so much more profitable than Samsung who are Android who sell more phones . If you ask people what's the best mobile phone, it's typically maybe a Samsung or a WowWay eye. iPhones are cool, but they're not the best phone. But you have to , they sell billions of them at the door. Like they are they the most profit and instead of what you were saying, Jan , they just have the marketing side of it nailed.
Speaker 4Yeah, I'm totally sucked into the ecosystem. I can't even lie about it. I recently was thinking about switching to Android and I actually, I just can't because I'll have to get a new laptop, I'll have to get new it . I'd have to completely export my life. I just can't, I can't even even the headache of it. And then I just know that Apple will bring out something pretty and I'll be jealous of that again. So why would I sit you over?
Speaker 3There's no Dropbox solution big enough to handle the change over the [inaudible] you'd need to do to go from Apple to Android. Yeah.
Speaker 4Yeah .
Speaker 1So Fergus, if, if somebody listening to this and thinking, okay, how do I get into the mindset maybe of, okay, I've , I'm writing blog posts, let's say at the moment I want to try and get the mindset of, of how to write these in such a way that, you know, we hear it all the time. And you mentioned that earlier, you know, essentially people kind of writing for Google writing for the robots. Do you have any kind of tips or any way if people can try and get into the mindset of writing for their customer in such a way that they're going to connect with the content?
Speaker 3Yeah. So just to that , that's a brilliant question marker . Just to take a step back from that to kind of build up to that. Um, I think, and this is what led to me reading a lot of books around this subject, is to basically understand at what level of the brain or where we're trying to appeal to people. So without getting too technical though, I'm, I'm very much an amateur biologist or a , like I , I don't have the academic qualifications to back this stuff up. This is all coming from the books I read. So I'm not pretending this is original research or anything, but there's basically three levels of our brain. There's our original lizard brain, if you like, which is basically where all our habits live. So you can without any conscious decision, you can get along fine with just your lizard brain and the basal ganglia like Alzheimer patients , um, have been able to live reasonably, I won't say normalize but function because habits have created, been created in this area of their brain that allows them go out for a walk around their block without getting into trouble or getting lost. Cause they do it so often it becomes muscle memory and that's your lizard brain. Then above that then is your monkey brain. So as we evolved into, into apes , then our monkey brain, our limbic brain started to take over. And this is very much the emotional epicenter of us. Um, it's where flight, fight or flight lives. So when you're in a tense situation, you decide what I'm going for it or I'm getting out of here. That's all happens in your limbic brain. And keep thinking about this limbic brain is it can't process language. This is before we started talking to each other , uh, in, in proper words and language. This is what the point, this brain, real , the body and , and our latest brain is the, where the neocortex live . It's called our human brain. This is where language is processed. And this is where kind of , uh , immediate decisions are made. Yes, no . Um, will I drive or will I get the boss? Am I staying for another pint or am I going home? I want jeans or I want chords . It's those kinds of functional decisions , uh , operate in the, in the neocortex. So the limbic brain is ultimately what content marketers need to appeal to because that's where all the fields are, if you like. And if you appeal to the limbic brain, you're going to generate a pin called oxytocin. And oxytocin allows us feel empathy. So once you get that flowing, you've now made the connection. So there was a great study, there's a great Ted talk by URI Hassan , um , who hooked people up to FMRs and FMRs are so the MRI's , the thing you slide into and you get a big kind of picture of the brain and FM awry gives you a heat map of your brain. So it tells you what part and when that part fires up at in reaction to a stimulus. So you already had sanded these tests where we had five people in a room all hooked up to MRIs. There were all kinds of talk and brains were firing at different points in that , uh , in different people at different times. And then he introduced a six person. So there was five people in the room. He introduced the six person and the person walked in and started telling a story. And then what they noticed was literally everyone got on the same wavelength after awhile . So the area of the brain and the time that it fired up, everyone was in perfect sync. And when they did a further analysis of this, it was down to basically the , the release of the oxytocin allows you , you feel empathy. So it's as if the listener is going through exactly the same emotions as either the person in the story or the story themselves. So this is, this is the crux of that . This is the most important part of this talk is you have to get your readers of your content, of your consumers or your content to make that connection. If you want to actually have an impact on their, on their life, on their buying habits, on their , uh , whatever it is you're trying to do, that's what you need to get the oxytocin flowing . So just having words and the technical spec and then hoping that they get it or make the leap, but the connection isn't going to be good enough. You need to actually tell them, right, here's the problem. You need to create a stressor. Oxytocin is released when people feel stress . You need to create a stressor and the story. So, you know , um, like the, the guy who sold me this laptop was saying like, basically if you buy Apple, you're going to waste 2000 Euro. Do you want to waste 2000 Euro? No, you give me one tires and put 2000 Euro in your back pocket and I'll get you a great laptop. Like, that's the kind of stuff . So I , you know, I was kinda thinking of Jesus. Yeah, I could save myself two grand here if I listened to this guy and I've done podcasts for, for B to B clients. And one of them was a five episode series on HR and the most popular episode was how to deal with tricky staff. And if you just think of it , how stressful you might be if you're an HR professional, listen to that. Are a small business owner thinking about dealing with those tricky stoves that you know, and that's ultimately a, I'm guessing why that is the more popular episode because the oxytocin was probably flowing. Um , so very roundabout way and I hope that answered the question Mark, but I think you need to think on those levels not on, okay, what are the three things I have to say about this product? It's not, it's what is the what? How am I going to generate this feeling in the reader that's gonna make them want to find out more about this product or ultimately buy it, but find out more so in a convoluted way. How do I create stress in someone's life so that they're going to listen to,
Speaker 4you can really see why video is so powerful now in that sense is I'll just kind of to really engage someone in that way. They can really visualize and get and get that feeling, I guess put themselves in the, in that, in the person in that position. Yeah. I think virtual reality will really take that concept that you're talking about to a very different level as well. Yeah ,
Speaker 3it certainly could. It certainly has the potential to, I mean , um, like, like if you think about a couple of years ago, video was going to take over the internet and , and it kind of has , um, bought , that doesn't just mean video for video's sake. Uh, it has to still then, you know, you know , um, if you like one of the best quotes you could summarize all of this is the Maya Angelou quote about you don't, you'll forget what people say. Forget Pete , where you met people, but you'll never forget how people made you feel. And so if you can do that through words, through audio, through video, it doesn't really matter. Just you have to make people feel something and that's it . That's how they'll remember. I've butchered that quote. But it's generally, you know, people will remember how you have , you feel how you made them feel.
Speaker 1No, it is, it is very, very true. And you can see it either in video or in written waiting when you do, if you're reading that article and you know, if you're smiling or you're a, there's a tear coming down your eye or Y w if it creates that kind of connection or emotion, you just have so much more of a connection to that, the writer, the content, the product, whatever it might be within us . Um , as you say, it makes the next step of either the purchase or further research or whatever it might be. So such, so much more easier. I'm more likely to happen as well.
Speaker 4Yeah, I saw a , I do a really good job of that. Recently they did a video, I don't know, was it a series or just one or two? I saw, but they did ,
Speaker 1um, a huge amount of really personalized video content around women with postpartum depression and how their services help them with it . I, I've nearly bowling watching it. Like it was just when you, when, when companies managed to get that powerful emotion across, it really, really, really does impact on how people will interact with them.
Speaker 3Yeah. That's like all this stuff that we're learning about the brain and neuroscience. This is only like 30 years old. And even if you think about things like behavioral economics, they're only 30, maybe 40 years old. Before that we used to rely on an economic scenario. Like it was kind of, there are a number of outcomes and it will be one of those and your pick , and we typically went, Oh , whatever the best scenario is this one. So that's the one we're going to back. But that's, it's such a fallacy because it assumes that the best scenario was always going to be the most popular one or the one that's going to actually turn out. And we know from economics that , um , they can't forecast anything accurately in economics because there's always something different. So they go , Oh, it was a black Swan event. Like they're always black Swan events because there always will be black one events because we can't predict everything. And if it was just down to being the best, well then Apple would have gone out of business years ago. And we've, you know, we've already extolled the virtues of that company , um , and their own likely to go to the business to go out of business. So it doesn't have to be about the best it has, you know , that that's why we have jobs as marketers. If it was about the best, it'd be simple. Here's this product. It's much better than everyone else. No , go on , buy it. But it's not because we tell, we tell stories and we , we get people connected to their Apple devices like Jan and they'll just, they won't buy anything else then
Speaker 1forevermore. So first I suppose in terms of the actual structure, then we'd say of of creating content to beginning the middle and the end, we'll say you don't basically telling the story. Um, do you have any kind of suggestions there in terms of, you know, is there a kind of templates that people could follow in terms of setting a scene? How, how, how they could structure their content to be, to be more emotive I suppose.
Speaker 3Yup . So the number one thing you have to do, you absolutely have to do if you want to get better as a content marketer, is talk to your customers whether they're go , what do they have good things to say about you or, but especially if they have bad things to say because you're more likely to hear the bad things because that's somebody who's invested in your product and wants you to get better. And we're not great at , uh, going back to people and telling them that was absolutely brilliant. Like some of us will do, most of us won't. Um , we're not even that good at telling people what went wrong. But if somebody takes the time to tell you what went wrong, you have got someone who's really invested in your product or venue or whatever it was, and they want you to do better because they've just told you how to keep them as a lifelong customer essentially. So before you put pen to paper or even start thinking about ideas, go and talk to your customers in a PR . Prior to digital marketing, my previous life, I worked not , not in a , I worked with another large financial company when I was in , uh , Aveva and they would actively ensure that none of the exercises we were ever involved in had to end up with them communicating with the customer. They , they just would not do it. Um, and that's it . That's so like how, so how are you going to sell more products to your target market if you're not asking them what they want or what, like Jen said earlier, what are the problems in your life and how do we solve it? Um , so some of the most powerful content you'll ever put on your website is a case study and you can't do a case study without talking to your clients. And then from that you're going to get ideas about, okay , he , you know , that person mentioned this thing. If I could just do that a little better or just do more of that or just make that a bigger , uh, focus of the , the marketing. Now you're getting places and it's informed by ultimately, like in Facebook marketing, you have this thing called lookalike audiences, which you know, if you, if you, if you had an audience of your own customer, you can create a lookalike of those. So you're basically trying to find likeminded people who might also want to buy your product. Exact same with a case study and content marketing dedicated study. Um, and what you're going to do with that when you broadcast it is try to appeal to like minded individuals. So like if your product has any way attraction , um , someone has bought it, chances are, does someone like that person who also needs that , uh , problem solved. And now you have a chance to get in them because you're going to talk to them in the same language as the customer who bought your product. Um, so first and foremost, before you even put pen to paper or looking at, you need to talk to your customers. If you don't have customers, if you're a startup , you need to talk to people who you're trying to reach , um , because they're the ones who are going to tell you if you're on the right track or not. Um, more recently in Wolfgang, we were doing a project for a large retailer and they came to us with a hypothesis. We want to reach these people because they are X, Y, and Zed. And then we thought, okay, let's, let's test that. Let's prove it. Let's, you know , see if that is the actual case. And when we went to talk to these people, they weren't, it was a total distraction . What they had taught these people are , it was a total distraction. There was actually something else going on behind it. So 100%, you have to talk to your customers or your target audience. The people you're trying to reach. Once you do that, then you need to set up your normal phone on your awareness content, your interest and your action content. Your action content is probably the easiest here. You're going to lean on the features and because if they've got to the , the, the action bit, the conversion stage, they know about all that good stuff earlier on in the phone . So now you can hit them with the features and tell them why, you know, cause it's, it's, it's, it's this or it's that or it's better, it's cheaper, it's faster or it's going to do the thing that you wanted to do. Um, in the , uh, awareness that you're obviously talking about the problem as Jen was talking about earlier on. So people know they have a problem, but they may, might not be aware of what the solution is. So you talk about the problem, five reasons why this thing is a pain in the ass. A five reasons how your life would be better if you didn't have to deal with X . um, you know, address the issues that you're solving. Maybe drop yourself in at the end as to being a potential solution linked to the next level of content, which is your interest of three reasons why this product is the best for solving this problem. Five reasons why you know, that kind of stuff. Get into the problem now and place yourself as not the hero, but if you like, you're going to be the force to Luke Skywalker being the hero in the star Wars movie . So you're the forest and Luke Skywalker is the customer. You want to empower him to be able to go off and save the day. Um , which brings me, so that's the photo you need to have your , your, your, your phone them uptown . And if you're Dan struggling to actually write something that you feel is going to be emotive , you can, this is maybe what you were hinting at towards Americans , the , the Pixar model, the beginning, middle and end. And just how they set up all their films and their stories. So their beginning is once upon a time, set the scene. This happens every day. These people do these type of things. Um , and life is fine. And then one day something awful happens. There's a tipping point is a problem. There's a virus in the computer, whatever it is, there's a problem and now life is all open. A tizzy at the middle of it then is now you're , you're , you're into your interest level if you like. Because of that, all this bad stuff happens because of that. We couldn't do this because of that. We couldn't reach these people. And then at the end you're swooping in to save the day until one day insert solution here on life was just fantastic after that. And everyone lived happily ever after. So your beginning is, this is what life is like and then a problem occurred. Your middle is , and because of that problem, all of this bad stuff happened and he at the end then you're like, and then the solution came along and now we're able to do all this fantastic stuff. And like I, I, I won't claim I've seen any or all of the Pixar movies, I couldn't even tell you what, which Pixar movies they've made, but this apparently is, that is their formula . They use for the story telling. And so that's been incredibly effective for them. And you know, I , I don't see why it wouldn't be for marketers as well.
Speaker 1100%. Yeah, you could. I mean, my God, their movies talk about creating emotion and what to tell your story. Just even take you out. My heart is reaching [inaudible] it's not getting old like Ty story , toy story four , I IVUS straight to the cinema, like I was seven years old, you know what I mean? It was , it's , it's the same concept on repeat, but I'm still like, wow, you know,
Speaker 3and, and, and what wasn't the first toy story in like 1995 or 96 or something like that, you know?
Speaker 1Yeah. And that's the thing, like it doesn't the story ages fantastically. Maybe the graphics are the , the animation has come a long way, but , and it's the same with , with video and we're content, as you say, it's the, it's the story, it's the emotion that's going to grab people and then kind of can last forever, I guess. Um , so Fergus, I suppose just just to kinda wrap up, if somebody is more interested in getting deeper into the, into this side of things, is there any particular books or blogs or podcasts you, you think that the, that they'd like to listen to or read?
Speaker 3Yeah. Well , I'd share kind of my journey through this , this subject, as I said at the start, I think it , another thing, it definitely did start with the Simon Sinek Ted talk. I saw that around 2011 ish, 2012 and I did dismiss it. Artists just marketing mumbo jumbo. It's, if you haven't seen it, it's funny . Have you guys seen it by any chance?
Speaker 4I have, yeah. Yeah, it's very good. Um, does a few Ted talks I marketing that I'd have bookmarked. All right . And just , I need to go back to them again and just kind of jot down notes with them. Do you know that kind of way for time? Yeah.
Speaker 1I haven't seen that one. One that always jumped out at me. I don't know if you know , um, Dan Arielli , uh, he did a predictably irrational.
Speaker 4Oh yes, yes, yes. That's a very good design . Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3That's always one that , that jumps out at me as well. Yeah. The , the , there's so many good ones that this was my one, they feel like they , like that was my kind of realization that there's something more to this. And I didn't actually read this book down until about 2017 or, or one of his books start with why he came out in about 2017 and it's essentially like, if you didn't want to read the book, the Ted talk is essentially start with the why. But it , it , it's brilliant. Uh , another good one I read , um, actually before I saw that video but didn't connect it to this topic was outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. And that's a fantastic insight into success and the idea that some people are born with, you know, born with greatness and how that's such a myth. Um, and I really breaks that down. And then there's a couple of books that deal with the how to get better, I suppose. So the power of habit by Charles Duhigg is phenomenal rate. It's , I would, this is a book that I think I will be reading for the rest of my life. I've only read that the one son , the guy who put me onto it and said , Oh wait, you read this, it's going to change your life. It hasn't yet, but I'm pretty sure it will. I'm going to reread that again and take notes and actually try and do the stuff that's recommended and, and two great books then that are more just sort of background information on how the brain works are incognito. The secret lives of your brain by David Eagleman. That is fascinating. And the talent code by Dan Coyle , which both of those books absolutely dispel the myth that some people are better than another because they're born with certain stuff like , um, in, in, in Cognito there's a section where they go into the debate about nature versus nurture. So, you know, so can you, if you're a good kid, but you're in a bad neighborhood, you know, is it more likely that you're going to turn into a bad kid because of the environment? And there's actually a biological reason why you won't. Uh, there's, it's not part of your DNA, but it's, it's, it's a , it's a called the longer Lele . And if you have this longer Lele , you're less susceptible to your environment. So for example, I don't know if this is true, but I'm guessing LeBron James present probably has longer layers because his home life , if you like, was horrific, but yet became the biggest, probably most successful and probably best basketball player , uh , ever. Now there's obviously a few other things going for him . Um, not just the longer Leo bought , let's say if he had become more susceptible to the environment, he might not have made it out and he might not have ever picked up a basketball. So it gets into that kind of thing , really dispels all the myths you had about, Oh, you'll never be good as good as that guy because that guy was born with greatness. You know , that's absolute, I don't want to curse.
Speaker 1Oh that's know what I'm trying to say. Apple doesn't like [inaudible] .
Speaker 3Yeah. Yeah. So there's the , there are two good ones on just the kind of there , the background during the understanding incognito and the talent code. Um, there's another, there's another book that I've picked up twice , uh , and just haven't been able to get through cause it's really heavy going. But in all of these other books it's mentioned that and that's thinking fast and thinking slow by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. This is , I think this is the book. If you're into this stuff, it is the definitive guide maybe and has all the best studies and research. I just find it so heavy. Go on. I've picked it up twice. I've gotten nearly halfway through both times and I've just walked away from it. I will finish it at some point, but that's another one. If people are really looking for a deep dive into the topic.
Speaker 1Yeah, it took back my Amazon shopping lesson . We'll get a little longer today. Fergus, that's fantastic. Um, if people want to find out more about yourself or why part you do, because they're a place particularly they can go to, to have a look.
Speaker 3Yeah. I'm probably on Twitter most just looking around at the Brexit and Trump related news for entertainment, for the laws. Um , so at act goes Ryan, 100 on Twitter. Um, I'm on LinkedIn probably next. Um, or that's probably my next favorite topic. Just Fargus Ryan or Gus Ryan , 100. If you search for that profile , um, yeah, send me a message or drop as a tweet. Yeah .
Speaker 1Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thanks a million.
Speaker 3Thanks a million Mark. Jen . Brilliant.
Speaker 2[inaudible] .