Make Them Feel It with Ben Wise & Darren Chiu

Make Them Feel It with Ben Wise & Darren Chiu

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 252 of the Business Development Podcast, and today I'm joined by two absolute legends in the digital marketing and persuasion space. Ben Wise and Darren Chiu, the brilliant minds behind CAPTIVATE and leaders at Google. We're diving deep into the science of influence, the psychology of decision making, and how to actually connect, not just convert.

Stick with us. You don't wanna miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

And broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 252 of the Business Development podcast, and today I bring some absolute rock stars to you. Today we're chatting with Ben Wise and Darren Chiu. Ben and Darren are trailblazers in digital marketing and masters of Persuasion, each bringing a wealth of experience and insight from their leadership roles at Google.

Ben Wise, head of Programmic Media is a 15 year veteran of the advertising industry, known for his strategic acumen in helping Canada's largest brands and agencies harness the power of Programmic advertising to achieve exceptional results beyond his work at Google. Ben is a community leader serving on the board of directors for the Daily Bread food bank, and advising startups on sales and go-to marketing strategies.

As the co-founder of Captivate Ben channels, his passion for psychology and behavioral science to help others unlock the secrets of influence and persuasive communication. Darren Chiu is a strategic lead at Google and is equally formidable with over 12 years of experience driving growth and innovation for global brands, recognized as an emerging leader in advertising and sales by the peak in 2023, Darren is known for his unique ability to blend data-driven strategy with creative storytelling, setting new standards in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.

Outside of his professional achievements, Darren is a storyteller at heart, engaging audiences with his sharp wit and insights through the art of comedic storytelling. Together with Ben, he co-founded Captivate to empower individuals and brands to communicate more effectively and persuasively. These two powerhouses are not just shaping the future of digital marketing.

They're rewriting the rules of engagement with a relentless drive for innovation and a deep understanding of what makes people tick. Ben and Darren are redefining what it means to connect, influence, and inspire in today's digital age. They don't just break down barriers. They build new paths forward, showing us all how the art of science and persuasion can transform the way we lead market and succeed.

Darren and Bennett's, an honor to have you on the show today.

Ben Wise: Wow. That that was the nicest intro we've ever had. Can you come to us with us wherever we go please?

Kelly Kennedy: I will just follow you around and shout great things about you from this point.

Ben Wise: It is so good. I feel like you should persuasion here. Not us, but.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh guys, I am pumped. You guys know this. I talked to you about it before the show. We have done 250 plus episodes at this point for you. We have not done a show on the power of persuasion, and I'm super pumped and I'm really pumped to chat about Captivate Today and the work you guys are doing there, and hopefully get a little one-on-one masterclass on, uh, the power of persuasion.

Well, we'll try our best. Yeah. You know, before we get started though, I love to learn your backstories. I wanna know how you ended up on this path. You guys are both accomplished so much and you know, I know we can't dig too deep into it, but you work at Google, one of like the world powerhouses and haven't just worked there.

You've been there well over a decade, you know, take us back. You know, let's start with you Darren. Yeah. How did you end up on this journey? Who is Darren Chiu?

Yeah, so Captivate, uh, you actually started during the pandemic. Everyone's locked up at home, nothing to do. I don't eat too much bread, so I can't, I can't go on the bread train.

And, um, and I'm just trying to look for ways to really, to be a better seller, better speaker. And I just started going down this path, researching on ways that I could just improve myself. I at the time was reporting to Ben being the incredible mentor manager that he was. He realizes he realizes my growth.

'cause I am an absolute rockstar, obviously. And he realizes that he, he's doing something really cool. But what's more interestingly is without me knowing, he was also going down a very similar path. He was also in the process of researching and how to be a better salary, be negotiator, be a better communicator.

So with without no, like completely unintentional that we just went down a similar path. Uh, and we caught each other using similar tactics on each other, and we're like, wait a minute, hold on a second. You know, the Spider-Man mean that you, that there Spider-Man pointing at each other. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of just started our conversation around, Hey, wait a minute.

We both passionate about this. We are learning so much. Why don't we see where we can take this? So that's sort of, that was the inception of this.

Were you always so like entrepreneurial driven? I think Ben, yes. Yeah.

Darren Chiu: Me. No, I am so like, I, like I need someone to kick my butt into into doing stuff, which is with a, a good manager like Ben comes in.

Uh, I love doing stuff in general. Yeah. But I think it really is up until I met Ben, who is just such a great leader and he provided great direction and vision on what we should do, what we should do, and where we should go. Yeah. And I started picking up, I. Ways that we can really scale this, uh, practice.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the things when I was reading your bio that I was just, I was immediately interested about is tell me about comedic storytelling. How did that happen?

Darren Chiu: So I am outside of Google. I am actually, uh, close to a, the schedule of a full-time comedian.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Darren Chiu: And yeah, so I pretty much out performing four or five nights a week in comedy clubs.

Wow. And in addition to that, I also participate in storytelling events and shows. And I just reading my overall passion. And I love reading. I love writing. I love communicating. I love telling jokes. And I think all of this is just, this kind of really got amplified during Captivate as well, because as you dig deeper into the psychology or persuasion, at the end of the day, it's just learning about the audience.

Psychology. Yes. How you're being perceived by other people. And that's, that could be applied. Storytelling in com, comedian, comedians in comedy, in business. And I think that just kind of got all roped into one giant effort of communication, I suppose.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. And it actually makes so much sense because, you know, when you're on stage, you're trying to read the audience and you're, you are trying to persuade them just in a completely different way.

But I can see how that completely applies to, from a comedy club audience all the way to a boardroom.

Ben Wise: Yeah. We actually did a, a captivate issue that was all about like lessons from improv comedy that you can use to apply to, um, to persuasion in any situation, whether it's work, sales, getting my kids to brush their teeth, anything.

Kelly Kennedy: And I'm pumping. I can't wait to have a little 1 0 1, you know, from the pros themselves today. I'm excited. And first off, you reached out to me and we made this connection, and I just wanna say thank you so much. Like I was immediately intrigued, immediately interested. I love your energy, I love chatting with you, and I'm really excited for this.

So thank you very much, Ben, for reaching out.

Ben Wise: You know what, it was a complete cold call email, so thank you for being so open to it.

Kelly Kennedy: A bsolutely. Take us into it. Who is Ben Wise, how did you end up on this path?

Ben Wise: You know what? Based on what you both have said so far, I'd rather you guys tell the story.

It would come off a lot more flatter. No, so I mean, been at Google, uh, various roles over the last, just past 13 year, uh, marker. But, you know, as Darren said, uh, we were working together very closely. What actually happened was he asked for 15 minutes in our team meeting to present some ideas of things, of specific tactics and techniques that he had been using that he found really effective.

Yeah. It's like, Ben, I think the team will really benefit from this. Sure. Why not? Go for it. And at the end of it, it's like, Darren, you should make a newsletter. 'cause all the sellers here would find us so useful. And then life gets in the way. As he says. He is outta comedy clubs four or five nights a week.

He needs me to give him the kick in the butt. A year or so later. It hasn't happened. We've reorged at the company and Darren no longer reports to me. So any conflict is gone and it's like, okay, well let's do it together. And so we always kind of jam on what are the ideas, what are the, the topics or techniques we wanna go into.

Um, but also I think we also really have complimentary skill sets. I do a lot of the writing. Darren does a lot of design. When we do slides, I do a lot of the research, Darren, that. Know, I, I put ugly words in aerial font onto a blank slide. And then I come back next week and, and we've been complimented on how beautiful the slides are.

And then it's kind of a nice yin and yang on stage where Darren with that comedic background is hilarious. Not I, I'm not, not funny.

I mean, my wife don't ask what she would say, but, um, and then I, you know, we, we, we kind of vibe off each other and have a nice kind of yin yang when we're, when we're up on stage or when we're producing content.

So it's kind of grown from there. And we, people often ask us like, oh, so what, what, what's your plan with Captivate? Where are you going? And honestly, we, we don't know. We started it because we liked the topic. Yeah. It got good feedback. People asked us to start speaking, so we did that. We thought it was fun.

We got good feedback. And so it's just kind of snowballed into different things without any, you know, formal I. You know, 1, 3, 5 year plan. We're just having fun. We love the content, we love the connections we're making. Yep. So we'll just keep going as long as we can.

Kelly Kennedy: That is perfectly fair, man. I love that business plan.

Yeah, I think, you know what, I think more companies would succeed if that was their business plan because it allows you to just enjoy what you're doing and make decisions on the fly. Like that's what we're all doing anyway. We can make all the plans in the world. Making them happen is a completely different ballgame.

So you do what works for you. Absolutely. There you go, Ben. First off, the Daily Bread Food Bank, can we just talk about that for a second? Because, you know, I mean, first off, helping people is a passion of mine and obviously it's a passion of yours as well. And so I just wanna give you a moment to introduce the Daily Bread.

Ben Wise: Yeah. So, um, I've been on the board of Daily Bread for the last seven years. I got one year left as an eight year max term for the board. It is just one of the most impressive and inspiring organizations that I've ever been able to be a part of. You know, I, I joined before COVID, and then when COVID hit, the need went up drastically.

And a lot of things that kind of spiked through COVID and came back down after COVID was inflation and house prices is going up and other things. And so co when we look back at the demand through COVID, it's actually small compared to where we're at now. And there's a, I'm, I'm not gonna go into all the depressing stats of the numbers and the lineups and all that stuff because I think what, what gives me so much hope from being exposed to Daily Bread.

It's just the incredible, the, the leadership, the passion of all the people that work there to rise to the need in Toronto. And Daily Bread is specific to Toronto. They're the biggest one. They're the biggest food bank in Canada. But every city has their own kind of similar versions. And it's an industry that.

Struggling because there's so much need. But it's just staffed by some of the most incredible people. And I was saying like with the leadership team, as strong as we have at Daily Bread, the job of the board as like oversight is exceptionally easy. Because, because we are lucky to have such wonderful staff.

Yep. Checking out Daily bread.ca, make a donation. Come volunteer if you're in Toronto, please.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yeah. Thank you for, thank you for your contribution to that. You know, like the reality is we have a six person family in our house. We are regularly spending probably anywhere between two and $3,000 a month on food at the Kennedy household just to keep everyone going.

And, you know, we're not, we're not fancy, right? Like we're eating just the same as any other Canadian family. And, uh, you know, we feel it every time we go to the grocery store. We feel it. And so we're very fortunate in our family that we have what we need, but there's a lot of people who are not. And I think about that every time I'm going through the checkout and I'm spending a hundred dollars on frankly nothing.

Um, it's that there's a lot of people right now who are struggling and so thank you for helping the food bank. And yes, donate to all your food banks, not just in Toronto, sitting here, local food, bank.

They need it. Absolutely. I just wanted to spend a moment on that. Appreciate that. Because for me, that does, that does hit home.

So thank you. And Ben, you know, what about the passion for psychology, dude? Like where did, where did that come from?

Ben Wise: No, I, I wish it had a better origin story. It's just really interesting, interesting topic. It's applicable in everything. I mean, Darren and I, you know, our day jobs are in sales, obviously applicable when you're trying to sell somebody something.

But like, you know, as you were saying, when you were new to the podcast, you had to convince people to come on the podcast. 'cause they were taking a risk to get a, to get a job to, an internal proposal that you're trying to do of a, of a new idea. Like every, you'll get as I, I joked before, getting my kids to brush their teeth at night.

Everything is a, any human interaction involves persuasion. And when you get into like the psychology and the research behind it, it's just. Endlessly fascinating of the weird quirks in the way the human mind operates and the way that we make decisions because we see it all, all too often. You know, people will come to you and I see so many sales pitches and I've been guilty of this before.

Let me show you some slides with some really compelling data. Yeah. And if you don't like it, I'll come back next week and I'll have twice as many slides with twice as much compelling data. And I'm just going to like logic and reason you to death until you agree with me. And the reality is that's not how the mind works.

That's not how people make decisions. We are inherently emotional, inherently irrational. And I think you know that it's been well documented, well researched of how that manifests in. The ridiculous things that we do. And once you learn about them, you start to see it everywhere of like, and you're, okay, well I can see why despite the facts here, you chose this because there's this emotional background and this is what we think it means to you.

And all of a sudden it totally opens your mind to what's happening on that other side of the table. Um, because yeah, you know, we go in with logic and we go in with reason. That is most of the time gonna be a dead end. You've gotta, you've gotta talk to them as a human, which means appeal to their emotion side.

Kelly Kennedy: I absolutely love that. And I guess one of my questions was going to be, it sounds like it was, it was something that you learned and then started to apply and kinda figured out like, this wasn't working. What are the things I need to do that will work? And it takes me back a little bit. 'cause you know, I mean, I mentioned before the show, I've had the pleasure of interviewing, you know, one of my heroes who is Dr.

Jack Schafer. He, uh, he's. Former FBI, he authored the book, The Like Switch and Truth Detector. And I had him, I had him on and we chatted about both books actually. And he forgotten, hammered me actually mid show with something called a presumptive statement. Even after telling me that he was going to do it or what he was going to do, he did it.

And he basically said something about like, oh, you're, you're from Saskatchewan? I'm like, no, I'm from Alberta. And he's like, ah, ah, gotcha. He's like, the moment you tell somebody something that is untrue, they feel immediately compelled to fill with the right, with the, with the truth. And it just blew my mind because even after telling me about it, even after telling me like, Hey, like this is a thing and then just did it to me and I, it didn't put two and two together.

And what he said was that as humans we have something called a human baseline. And if you stay under the human baseline, we don't even notice that these things are happening. And that's how the FBI elicits information from criminals.

Ben Wise: Yeah, that makes sense. If you want a good FBI book check out, uh, never split the Difference by Chris Voss.

He was an FBI hostage negotiator. Oh. But that's such an interesting example because often we'll go up, we'll do a train, we'll present some of these tactics and techniques. People say like, oh, that's gonna be so obvious they're gonna that's gonna feel so awkward. It was like, try it tomorrow and lemme know how it goes.

And they're like, oh. It felt totally natural. And no one had any idea what was happening.

Kelly Kennedy: And it blew my mind. I honestly, I couldn't even believe it. But when he explained that as humans, we have something called a human baseline. And if you stay under the baseline we'll know it. And he said what happens is, is you can start to feel the spotlight effect is what he called it, which is where it's like we know that we did something.

And so we feel like they must know, but as long as, and we'll give ourselves away ironically, like he kind of said like a good FBI agent can give himself away if he starts to spend too much time in the spotlight. 'cause you start to act awkward because you know that you're doing something you shouldn't be doing.

But, and people pick up on that, not the thing that, that you actually do.

Ben Wise: Yeah. Start sweating profusely, mid. Midway through a contract negotiation. They're like, what is going on here? This isn't...

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, exactly. That's the thing we noticed. It's not, it's not the thing that fell under, you know, the human baseline, but, which is why I totally wanted to talk to you guys today.

'cause I love psychology. I love this stuff. I love the science of persuasion. And you guys are the first people we've had reach out and say, Kelly, like, do you want us to chat about persuasion? And I was like yeah, I absolutely do. And so, you know, let's just get into it. What is persuasion, Darren, do you wanna answer that for me?

Darren Chiu: What? Ooh. What is the definition of persuasion? I don't even, haven't even looked it up. Ask Google really quickly. Yeah, ask Google really quickly. But I think for me, like the sort of the, you guys heard the Donald Trump debate, like, I have concepts of a plan.

So the concept of this persuasion, I think it's just communicate in a way that is very responsive to other people's feeling. Uh, that's really it. If you can talk to someone in a way that you can really address how they're feeling, uh, that for me serves as the baseline persuasion.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, it's emotional.

Yeah. Very emotional.

Yeah. Very, very. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Like I, is it convincing somebody to do something or is it allowing them to come to that decision?

Darren Chiu: Woohoo. Sounds like a true master over here. Yeah. Welcome to the team. 100%. That's exactly it. You have to lose the battle to win the war. Oh, I love that.

I love that. Every debate, every persuasion process in negotiation, like when you talk to people, a lot of people, they just like, they want to win an argument. Even when I talk to a lot of salespeople, they wanna pitch, pitch, pitch. They wanna win the pitch.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Darren Chiu: Or they will argue with you about the fact that you said wrong or argue with the client about what they're investing in correctly and or they wanna correct them if they're being, someone said something that's wrong being said about their pitch, their strategy, but I'm like, dude, no.

You have to lose the battle and win the war. You can't argue away into, uh, winning a negotiation. You have to make them feel that they're winning. Mm-hmm. And it's not even about winning and losing, but you have to make them feel like, because if you think about it, persuasion or negotiation and it's nature, you are trying to take something away from the other person.

I'm trying to take your money. I'm trying to take your time. I'm trying to get you to invest in my business. So maybe you're gonna lose some money temporarily. You might not see the return until later. So I'm trying to take something away from you. Yeah. So you have to do so in a way to make 'em feel like this isn't losing.

You have to make it feel like I am secured, my position is secured even in the process of me dishing out money from my wallet. Yeah. Yeah. And that you have to do it in a way that is actually in some way, almost in the lower position. Yeah. And that you are smarter and because you are smarter, therefore you are doing this with me, as opposed to I'm smarter.

So I'm telling you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It's like that psychology, and I can't remember what book I read it in. I believe it could have been Dale Carnegie's, how to Win Friends and Influence People. But he talks about how people like you more when you ask them for help. Yeah. Right. And it's, it's because you're kind of saying, I don't have the answers and I need you.

And people like being needed. Yeah. People like feeling oh, I can help this situation. And ironically, the more you ask for help. The more liked you are as a human being.

Ben Wise: Yeah. I believe it. And, and not only is it the liking, it's also like if I ask you, Kelly for help with something, you then become more invested in my success.

So you now have like a stake Yeah. In me being successful. And so if you ask lots of people for help, you've got a lot of people in your corner rooting for you to, to succeed with whatever you're trying to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. You know, Ben, I just wanna chat about it. You had highlighted the fact that right now we're facting people to death.

Yeah. And I know we're all facting people to death. I'm guilty. Everybody I know in marketing for the most part is guilty. Talk to me about that. Why are we failing with our facting people to death?

Ben Wise: I, I think people don't like the reality that we make irrational emotional decisions. And it, I, I can remember, you know, being out at a, at a pub with some buddies' and over a few drinks and I was, I was telling somebody that.

That exact thing that like, no, it's not a rational decision. Like you don't choose that phone because of the specs of, you know, the camera. It's an emotional thing or whatever it was. And he got so emotional about that not being true. No, no. I have a physics degree from such and such a school. He was like personally offended.

And I was like you don't realize that your reaction is actually proving my point. You're not coming back with facts. You're coming back with the emotional appeal of why you think you're rational. And, and I think when you tell people that like, no, you're not persuaded by a logical argument. We're, we're, we're, we're all human.

We want to think we make logical, good decisions. Yeah. And often we do, but many times that's not why we're doing it. And so I can understand that kind of initial reaction of, no, it's gotta be logic. Just trust me because this makes sense and you'll see it from my side because it's right, it is objectively true.

And so you'll do the, the obvious action. And turns out that's just not that effective. But I can see why people get their backup when you tell them they're not in control of their decisions the way they think they are.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Sure. Well, you know, like I think about like any product pitch, and they don't usually speak to your emotion.

They speak to, here's the specs of, let's call it a phone. Here's the specs of the phone. Right? You're buying the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy phone, right. Loaded to the nuts with everything. And you look at the specs and you make a decision. You're right. The decision, even if I pick the highest camera or the highest megapixel camera, I'm not picking the high, the highest megapixel camera because of the specs.

I'm picking it because I have a passion for photography. Yeah. I have a passion for great video. And I'm thinking in my mind, oh, how great will this feel to have the best, highest quality images I can have for my posts or for my family photos. But I call it, oh, well I bought the one that's like 200 megapixel.

'cause that's just a crazy number. And it sounds awesome. But we're not buying the number. We're buying the feeling we get from having the best.

Ben Wise: Yeah. I, I feel like a good father taking beautiful photos of my kids. I feel like a proper influencer. 'cause my videos have whatever quality, but like if you bought the one with 170 megapixels instead of 200, I guarantee nobody would notice a difference.

Quality. Terrible father. Well, it's terrible. My kids would hate me. We'd be as strange. No, nobody watching a video is going to notice. I, you know, I'm actually a big camera nerd. I think when you get beyond like 10 megapixels, people aren't gonna notice. It all looks the same, but we're arguing because mine has 30 and yours has 28.

Like, it's what it means to me on that emotional side. But you're right we don't ignore the specs. We use that to justify the emotional decision we've already made. I'm not making an emotional decision. I'm making this because it has really good specs. Look at the, the megapixels and light whatever, and the editing.

Yeah. We have rationalized an emotional decision by using all those facts afterwards. It's the emotional side works really quickly. You make that gut instinct and then the rational side of your brain kicks in to justify what the emotional side has already agreed to.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. So what has to come first?

Do you have to entice the emotion first? Then the mind will essentially back it up with data and facts?

Ben Wise: That, that's exactly, it's that kind of confirmation bias. And, and when you go into the research on, on how your brain functions, the emotional side is one part of your brain, the rational side is a different one, and the emotional side just works faster.

So you have made an emotional decision before you've processed all the rational stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Wise: And then as you process that, you agree or you, you rationalize what you've already kind of, what your gut, I mean, we call it your, you know, your gut instinct. My gut instinct made a choice, and then my slow brain took the time and the, the details to to rationalize why 200 megapixels is so important.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well, you know, I look back to like all the deals that I've ever closed in my life, right? Whether it be for a client or for me. It was always the deals where we made an initial connection. We booked a lunch, we got to get to know each other. We built trust, we built rapport, and then we sent the proposals in.

That closed the quickest. Yeah. And I never thought about it from that standpoint. I always thought that it had to do with the connection. But what you're kind of saying is by building that emotional connection, by going for that face-to-face, becoming a human, you are essentially, you're getting to the emotion before the proposal.

And so they justify their feelings with the facts.

Ben Wise: Exactly. And I mean, that's such a great example in sales specifically, or brands that have kind of long-term relationship, just how important that relationship is. There have been many deals that I've been a part of where I could have sent through anything, but I had a longstanding relationship.

I had really good trust and the proposal wasn't a proposal for X, Y, and Z. It was a proposal from Ben. And I know, and I like and I trust Ben.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Ben Wise: So without even reading the details, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna take it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you don't need to go deep into this because you know that Ben isn't gonna screw you.

Yeah. 'cause you've already established the trust.

Ben Wise: Got a good, you've got a good relationship. People buy from Hu we always say people buy from other people, even in B2B, we like to think like, oh no. Well, if I'm selling a marketing B2B, then I need to be really rational because it's a corporation. But the corporation is staffed by human beings who are emotional.

That's right. And you need to have that relationship.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, so, you know, let's look at all the crap we're getting in our inbox these days. Let's just talk about that for a second. Because I'm probably getting a hundred stupid emails a day of people trying to sell me stuff, but I have no connection with them.

No rapport. I have no emotional connections. Therefore, I really don't care about half the ads that come through my, my inbox. Talk to me, how should we be doing this? What is the correct way? Utilizing these new principles, utilizing the power of trust, of persuasion. How do we market emotionally?

How do we do this?

Darren Chiu: Ooh. That's a big

Kelly Kennedy: question. How do we market emotionally?

Because that's the question here, right? Isn't it? If we have to, if we have to emotionally connect before the proposal, what's the secret sauce?

Ben Wise: I think the best brand from a marketing perspective, the brands that do it the best, spend a lot of time and effort and marketing budget and resources to create that emotional view of what the brand means.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Ben Wise: So if you take Nike, yeah, Nike, just do it. That means I'm a, I'm a serious athlete. You know, I, I don't know much about shoes. You could line up five different pairs of Nikes and I would have no idea what the difference is, even if there's a giant cost difference. But I know with Nike, it's gonna make me feel that way because they have, for years and years and years, shown all these images and these stories of how they're supporting.

People who are passionate about their sport, it's not a, and it becomes a bit of a fashion statement, but it, it's very different than other brands that come out of like, look how hip and trendy we are. And that solves a very different emotional need. Um, so I think it's, it's that consistency, understanding what emotion, what emotional connection you want to create, and then being like strictly aligned to that in everything you do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. You know, like one of the examples and just, I'm just gonna call it fitting, is Google. I don't know why I love Google, but I love Google and it's very weird. And like, I think about that from a standpoint of, I've just trusted Google for so long, for my browser, for anything. If someone, if my, and I hate Microsoft's probably listening and they're gonna be like, ah, Kelly.

But I'll tell you what, like if Microsoft tries to sell me edge or something like that, it's like, no, like I'm good with Google. Like I've always had Google. I trust Google. It works for me, it does everything I need. But I don't know why, I don't know why I protect Google so much. I just love Google. I use it for meats, I use it for everything.

And I, I just always have, and I don't wanna change that. But it's super funny because, you know, if we think about it from that standpoint. There's a part of me that's just always had, and I have that emotional connection to Google and I don't even know where it came from, but you guys did a great job clearly.

Ben Wise: We can't give away on this secret sauce of Google. Another example of that emotional side that I really love because it just show, it shows how irrational we are is years ago when Coca-Cola launched new Coke. Yeah. They did so much research and like taste testing that like objectively the taste of new Coke was better.

People liked it better.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ben Wise: Emotionally people are tied to classical Coke. Yeah. And emotionally, people hate change that. You give me this product that we know is better and I don't want it. Don't you dare change my Coke. Right. I'm one of those people. It's that emotional connection. Yeah. Even if rationally we know it's a different better product, people don't want it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I'm totally there, man. Like, if I go for a Coke, I want classic Coca-Cola. I don't want Coke Zero or Diet Coke. I just want my classic Coca-Cola and yeah, you're right. It's like, it's like maybe the other ones are better. I don't even give a shit. That's the one I want. Yeah, man. It's crazy. It's crazy when you think about that.

And you know, what I wanna know from you is you obviously, you've obviously researched some of these principles behind why we do this. You know, why. What are some of the things you've learned along the way? Like what, what are some of the principles you've learned about persuasion that are critical to marketing anything?

Darren Chiu: Oh, we are so many. Which one do we start? Yeah. I think one of What's your favorite? One of, like, one of my personal favorite is probably, it's probably the Maya principle that we talk a lot about in some of our trainings. I knew you were gonna choose them. Yeah, it's, it's one of our favorites. It's just so cool.

You know, uh, I'm not sure if you came across that. I'm familiar listeners. Uh, Maya stands for most advanced yet acceptable. And it's an idea, it was a coined by uh, uh, an industrial designer, his name is Case me, Ben Raymond.

Ben Wise: See, I'm the nerdy side of the designer, Raymond Lowy.

Darren Chiu: He came out with this idea.

Yeah, it was, it was never about persuasion. It was always about, whenever you come out with a brand new idea, that idea, it cannot be too new. It has to be as familiar as it is new. Anything that's too familiar is not new enough. I don't care. Anything that's too new, I'm like, whoa, I'm not ready for change.

You gotta strike that perfect balance. Speaking of Coke, he's actually the guy who designed the code bottle. Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. He designed Coke bottle and the Shell logo station and a few other things. Air Force one, the airplane. He designed that as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Darren Chiu: And it's a great concept and we, we talked about this in many ways early, talking about phones.

Uh, that's why iPhone has been so successful. iPhone. He, they strike the perfect balance of Maya. Every iteration of a new iPhone. It just incrementally better or different than the one before. Yeah. Even if you look at Steve Jobs the very first time he introduced the first iPhone, he was so afraid that this is too new.

He kept repeating mm-hmm. To everyone that this is a phone, this is a internet device. This is a, uh, I, this is a iPod. iPod and this is just three things. You know, you already know these three things and we're just putting it together. Yeah. Um, so these tactics are being used time and time again. It just, it's amazing.

And I think everyone should really think about this whenever they're trying to introduce a new idea to your counterpart, either in business, in negotiation, uh, don't try to, we, I think sometimes we get so obsessed. Be like the, to be the newest thing, but no, just tweak what's really good and just make it better.

Look at Uber. Taxis already being around, they just made taxi a little bit different. Yes.

Ben Wise: Yeah. I mean, I love the iPhone example because I, I think most people would agree the iPhone is one of the most revolutionary products ever. Absolutely. You know, talk about a big jump, but to sell it in, he brought it back to that, that yet acceptable part of Maya.

Like, here's the foundation that, you know, the iPod, the internet communicator, like you, you know, these things. It's, yes, it's amazing, revolutionary, but you know, the foundation, it, it, it made it very acceptable for the audience.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I remember watching, I think all of us that were millennials at that time, remember watching time.

Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. And actually, you're right, like from a design standpoint, even at that time was a huge jump from a phone or a computer, right? Like you almost really, so kind of what you're saying is you can have, 'cause if we're, if we're linking back to the iPhone example, the iPhone design was revolutionary.

No one had ever, well, it's not that we've never seen a touchscreen before, but like, like that, a phone, a computer, all in a touchscreen thing that I can fit in my hand like that hadn't ever been proposed. So it was a very new radical concept. But the way that he made it work, you're saying, is by linking it to things that we completely already understand.

You have to be able to backlink it. Is that what you're getting at?

Ben Wise: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's that. It's that foundation of understanding. This is an amazing new product, but it's got com and you know, the components, you know, an I what an iPod is and what it does. You know what a phone is, you know what internet communication is?

Yes. Revolutionary product, but it's based on things you understand. I mean, it's like how many startups are out there right now pitching themselves as we're the Uber of this, or we're the Airbnb of this. Yeah. 'cause yes, we have this amazing new idea, but we're couching it in something that you really easily understand and are familiar with.

Kelly Kennedy: I see. So you kind of have to backlink it to something that we already believe in and trust. Right, exactly. It comes back to, it comes back to trusting something. We have to have a formation of trust. And so if you can link it back to it is like something you already trust it all, it kind of brings a residual trust to your new product.

That's right. My gosh. And I've never, I've never heard of that before, but that's an amazing principle.

Ben Wise: Yeah. Super cool. And once you, you start to see it everywhere with, with products and conversations and, um, I remember we, we were doing a, there was a big change happening on my team at, at work a few years ago, and people don't like change.

It's difficult. And, and yeah, usually when we say, oh, there's a reorg, here's the new stuff. And you just jump right into the new stuff and people immediately get their backs up instead of jumping into the new stuff. I said before we get to the new stuff, I just want to like, I. A foundation. These are the things that are not changing.

Your manager doesn't change. The products you're working on doesn't change. This other thing doesn't change. And so everyone's like, okay, we have a familiar foundation.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ben Wise: And then once you've built that foundation, then you can build up with the new stuff on top of that. But if you skip that foundation, you just go right to the big changes.

Yeah. People are are gonna have their backs up.

Kelly Kennedy: My gosh. Like how do you remember all these principles? Right? Like I think that's like the takeaway here is that these are all amazing principles, but I'll tell you what, like unless you were actively, I. Making plans with them in mind. And I'm not sure that we all do.

And I can tell you, like, I don't have that great of a memory. So like, even, even reading Dr. Shafer's books, it's like I might take one or two principles and learn them fairly well, but there's like 15 principles or 20 principles in that book, right? Yeah. You know, when you guys are doing your training and you're teaching people these principles, how do you make sure that they get locked in here?

How do we make sure that at the end of the day they can actually remember the principles? 'cause it's hard to remember these things and to then it's even harder to implement them.

Darren Chiu: Yeah. I can take a stab at this. So a a couple of things. Number one, I think like Kelly, you're a very emotionally intelligent guy.

A lot of stuff that we, when we talk to people, even strangers, we are try to be, we know we're self-aware. We try to position ourselves in a way that's maybe not threatening when we meet someone new or when you talk to someone, you kind of have a rough idea how you want to interact with other people.

And all that's, that's learned through just years of experience of being a decent human being. But a lot of these principles, sure. What we have learned over the years is that some of us already know intuitive, intuitively some of these things. No one has ever broken it down and told us that this is why I know when I talk to a stranger I should be this way, or when I try to tell someone this thing, I should be that way.

Uh, some of the feedback that we got from some of the students is that, Hey, this is so cool. I was already doing this, but I didn't realize this is important. I didn't realize this is what, yeah. The psychology is behind what it's all about. So I think a lot of it, it just naturally resonates with people who are more self-aware.

I would say that's a really strong baseline and we're being lucky to just meet a lot of incredible students who really get this concept. Another thing that Ben and I, we really try to do is that we always try to have a story behind every single principle. We always tell the actual either a history, history lesson or a personal story.

And that is really, really memorable. Every principle, we can tell you a story right after, after, right. About that principle. And the stories are just amazing. Yeah. Everybody loves stories. You can remember stories at the end of the day. Yeah. Students, they might forget what the name of the principle, what the detail is, but they remember that story and through that story they learned the lesson.

And that is very often a very memorable tool that we have for in our classes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes.

Ben Wise: Yeah. It, it's also something that we really think about as we do the, the newsletter. We, you know, we said there's, you know, nearly an endless number of tactics and techniques that we could write about, and we could put something out every week if we wanted to, but we chose to do it monthly to make sure that people had time with that new concept.

And, and at the end of each newsletter we say, here's your challenge for the month. Here are the steps you take. We want you to go and practice this for the month. Once you've practiced it a few times, you find those situations, you find those conversations where it fits, then it becomes kind of that default behavior and just part of your toolkit.

But we wanna make sure that people have time to actually put it into practice. 'cause you're right, I've done the same thing where you read a book, 20 great ideas, you go back to your desk and you forget what to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep.

Ben Wise: Giving them one thing to practice, one thing to focus on in a whole month before you get your next one, means you are gonna have the time to like really learn it.

Really understand it, and kind of make it a habit before we give you something new.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And you know, while we're talking just quickly about principles, um, on Captivate, I believe this month is the pratfall effect. Am I right on that? Great. Yeah. Can we introduce the audience to the Pratfall Effect?

Ben Wise: Basically the Pratfall effect is like, it, one of the, kind of the foundational principles that we like talk about is this idea that humans buy from other humans. And that is like what the Pratfall effect is, is all about basically. People don't like when someone is too perfect.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm.

Ben Wise: Knowing a mistake, a flaw, an imperfection makes you seem more human.

Yeah. Makes you seem more authentic. And then people will like you more and trust you more because you seem more, because you come off more authentically. So the, the original study actually had a guy go up and like present something to a group of people, uh, on multiple times. And one of them he spilled coffee on himself, which is a silly, embarrassing thing.

The human thing knew I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna get up on stage with, you know, coffee all over my shirt. But yeah, when they surveyed the audience after the audience of the one where he spilled his coffee was the most persuasive. Wow. 'cause before he even opened his mouth, he was human, he was authentic, he was relatable.

Now we're not suggesting go out and still, you know, just get pour yourself. Don't try to project that you're perfect, that you're flawless project, that you are human with all the wrinkles and flaws and warts that that comes with, and people will, will warm to that much more.

Darren Chiu: Authenticity is very important to people.

And I, and, and now that the topic of election I think like, you know, when the presidential candidates, they go up the entire outfit. It has to be good enough, but not perfect. The perfect amount of scuff on your shoes. The suit doesn't need to be perfectly tailored, but it cannot be crappy. Like at U eight, it needs to be pressed nicely, but it's sharp or like crazy creases.

It's just the perfect amount of imperfection that it's so you can appeal to a larger mass. So all of these things, yeah. Wow. I think it just is everywhere around this and but I, I love, and Ben, you also had a good post on, uh, Jennifer Lawrence.

Ben Wise: Yeah. Kelly, I don't know if you remember this, Jennifer Lawrence, the, the actress when she was in, um, the Hunger Games, I don't remember if she was speaking or if she won the Oscar, but at the Oscars event, they call her up on stage and she trips on her way up.

Darren Chiu: Yeah.

Ben Wise: And then you can very visibly, like, you don't have to be an FBI trained mouse reader to know that she drops an F-bomb right away with millions of people watching. And if you read about, like, again, like spilling your coffee, an embarrassing moment. Yeah. If you read about that afterwards. People loved her for it.

Yeah. People thought, oh my God, she's so human. She's so relatable. What a human moment that we got to witness there. She's dressed to the nines, but you know, she struggles and heels just like the rest of us. Or, or what, you know, that type of a reaction, it made her seem so authentic. People liked her more for having tripped and swore.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. We do like authenticity, don't we? We love, we love feeling human. We love feeling human. I think that, I think that's one of the coolest things that really came out of COVID. And I talk about this all the time on the show, was that we were able to kind of leave our armor at the door and just be like, okay, look, I'm a human.

I, I struggle the same as the rest of you. I have anxiety just like the rest of you. I deal with all my challenges. I'm afraid of things. I feel like that it was a really freeing thing, COVID on a certain level, like we all can agree COVID sucks, but on a certain level there have been great things that have came from COVID and the ability to just be more authentic, to be human, to say, you know what?

I struggle too. Me too. I got issues too. Uh, you know, I, I, I got it. It just, it opened doors that we weren't allowed to walk through pre COVID, and I'm, I'm very thankful for that.

Ben Wise: Some of my favorite things I saw in COVID people on, on, on tv, you'd have like a virtual interview and it would go like live on national television and people would do it from home, but they would have the carefully curated top half of their outfit.

Everything behind them that you could see is perfect. And then they're also supposed to like the side picture that shows like, oh, they're actually still in their jammy bottoms, their floor is covered with crap. 'cause the kids have been running around all day and it's like, it looks like this and it's perfect, but nope, no, I'm struggling.

It's a human moment too, and, and that kind of thing. People love seeing those pictures.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. One of the things that I wanted to ask you was, you know, with Persuasion, with, you know, with all of the lessons that you guys have learned, what do you recommend for people to do to start learning? And obviously we're gonna send them to Captivate because you get all the, for you, you got a monthly newsletter.

Exactly. I think that it can feel like a lot for people listening right now. Maybe they just started their own businesses. Maybe they're selling for the very first time. You know? What kind of advice would you give them, Ben, you know, how does one get started? Learning how to master emotion, how to.

Do things differently and better than what we've been saying. Not just facting people to death. Not just saying like, here's my services and here's why you want them.

Ben Wise: Here's teacher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, benefit, 7, 8, 9. Still have

Kelly Kennedy: 95% of stuff is being sold, right? Yeah. Like that still is how we're doing it. Love it. How can they do it better?

Let's give them a leg up today. Teach them the wise words of Ben Wise. O oof. And, how can they do this better? I gonna, two words of Ben Wise. Um, time to live up to the name Ben.

Ben Wise: Oh. Blame my parents for the name. Um, honestly, I, I think it comes down to the foundations. And as you said, it can be overwhelming.

We could easily have a hundred different posts with a hundred different tactics and techniques that you could think about, but that foundational pivot from logic to emotion. Is by far the single biggest thing for anyone to become better at, at their abilities of persuasion, because it's just gonna change how they approach it.

And when we do a lot of our trainings or a lot of our speakings, we'll say that like, you know what? We're gonna go through five really great techniques today, but you're gonna come to a situation where these five don't apply. That's okay. Come back to this foundational idea of emotional decision making and that we're humans, we buy from other humans.

We we want that connection. You want that relationship and appeal to their emotional side, and you will a hundred percent be more successful if you just have that one simple shift in your mindset.

Kelly Kennedy: Love that. Amazing. So just essentially, instead of thinking and facting them with, this is my product, this is my service, this is why we're the best, try to appeal to what they care about.

Is that kind of what you're thinking here?

Ben Wise: Yeah. Understand what they care about, connect with them on a human level and. Then all of that functional stuff will kind of follow through to, to support it. But if you're making, you know, if you're in B2B sales, you have that emotional human to human connection.

You've got a massive leg up. If you have a brand that you're marketing and you, you have that as, you know, some sort of emotional benefit, like a Nike or an Apple, or those aspirational brands have, it almost doesn't matter what you launch, people are gonna buy the emotion. They're gonna buy into that emotion and just start with that foundational piece.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Now, one of the pivotal questions I have to ask you regarding this is, I know there's a lot of people who are afraid. They're afraid to make that human connection. You know, we talk to them all the time on this show. I try to give them all the best advice. I'm like, Hey, just pick up the phone, make a friend.

Right? Like that's, that's what we're trying to do. But I know there's a lot of people listening who are like, Hey, this sounds cool. Do I have to build the connection? Does it have to be me? Right. If it's me, I'm gonna say, yeah. But can it be done via email?

Can it be done in different ways?

Ben Wise: Absolutely. You've gotta be true to, to yourself.

Part of it, of a human connection is that authenticity and if you're forcing something that you're not comfortable with, that's not gonna work. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to be best friends where you're like, you know, going for pedicures with your customers. Yeah. You know, you don't need to be braiding each other's hair.

You can, there, there are simple tactics and techniques all around building a quick rapport. Are you gonna be BFFs? No, you don't need to be BFS, but can you make a little bit more of a connection than you otherwise would have? 'cause that's gonna set you up for success a little bit better. And it's not about having a silver bullet, it's about trying a handful of things that makes your success rate go up four or five percentage points.

And then doing that on mass. Because once you aggregate that across a lot of sales pitches or a lot of marketing, that four or 5% increase in your success rate has a massive impact. Yeah.

Darren Chiu: Yes. And I'll add yes. I think like Kelly, to your point, like people being afraid or fearful of this, I think they have it all wrong because when you are trying to make that connection, it is not about you get over yourself.

It's about the other person. That person is your material and yeah. Can you see Kelly, like we've been talking for about an hour now, right? I noticed you are nodding a lot. You're nodding a lot. You are active listeners. You, I, I, you're an active listener. You are threading whatever we say into your personal experience.

You're talking about things that is relatable to yourself and to us. And it's a lot of fun, right? And I'm paying attention to who you are. When I said those things to you just now, how did that make you feel? Yeah, I felt good about that. There you go. And that's nothing. And there is nothing, nothing of it's about me.

All I did is I just sat here and I just watch you and I listened to you and I tell you how I feel about our interaction. So for those who are hesitant to build this connection, they had to remember. The foundation of communication, the foundation of persuasion is all about, the other person is never about you.

Yeah. You gotta be a good listener. Don't listen to reply. Don't listen to, oh, this is what I'm gonna, I'm gonna, my myself pitch is gonna apply here because he said that. No, just listen. Just freaking listen. Get over yourself and be a human being. Listen, why you listen enough, the information will present itself.

And if you know your business, you will come to a natural conclusion on how you should position your ask or your pitch to that person. And I hope that put takes a lot of pressure off individual to being like, how do I build a perfect relationship? No, just go and just be. Just listen. Just be a human being and pay attention to a counterpart.

Ben Wise: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Your most important tool in the world of persuasion is listening. Yeah. It's not how you frame things, it's not what you do, it's how you listen.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You guys have both been in marketing and sales an incredibly long time and you know, just like me.

Ben Wise: I'm glad we're not that old.

Come on. Well, me neither. I think the camera adds a lot of gray to my beard.

Kelly Kennedy: I'm catching up. I'm catching up. I have more kids. Yeah, no kidding. No. Well, we already have four. I don't think I can take another one. But, uh, one of the questions that I have is how has this changed your approach to marketing and sales over the last 12 to 15 years?

Right? Like, you guys have been doing this a long time. Based on where you started to where you are today, how has the way that you market changed?

Ben Wise: A few things for me. I would say the first one is leaning more into those client relationships. So as, as a, you know, as a salesperson, having a good client relationship is the most important thing.

And that's true. You know, we have a lot of cross-functional internal people that we work with. Those relationships are more important than anything. Um, but I also find, like in individual conversations, I do start to notice when that emotional stuff comes up a little bit more and you can start to see how their, you know, how they might be interpreting such, you know, a, a, a pitch or how they might be reacting.

Um, and I do a lot of sales coaching at work and bringing in a lot of these things, um, that I've learned through Captivate, really impacts how I'm able to coach others because I, I can see the situation that they're talking about, and maybe it's because like I'm objective and not part of it that I can say, oh, that is, you are literally talking about this specific principle.

This is what it means and this is how you can adjust to make it maybe a little bit more effective. And so maybe it's because we go very deep and I, you know, we write these every month. But I, I do see as we have a kind of extensive toolkit, I do see them coming up all the time individually.

Darren Chiu: Yeah. Yeah.

Darren, what would you, what would you say? For me, I have become very, very aware of what kind of emotion I'm trying to elicit in my communication, in my discussion with my clients. Is it sense of urgency? Is it, am I trying to call for collaboration? Am I trying to get 'em excited? Or maybe I'm trying to inspire confidence about themselves and about the stuff I'm offering.

Uh, because that changes the entire tone of my meeting. That changes the entire tone of my approach, right? Ben and I would talk a lot about this, a similar, like the exact same ask could be asking so many different ways, right? One of the examples that we give that everyone's talking about ai, and then let's say, Kelly, you're running a company and I want you to adopt some AI solution.

I can come to you and say, Hey, Kelly, I love hanging out with you, and it's so cool. And guess what? There's so many cool AI solutions out there. I think it's gonna be so cool, so beneficial for your business. You wanna go grab a drink and talk about how this could work? Or I can say, Hey, Kelly, a lot of your competitors are adopting AI now.

The market's gonna move on with or without you? How do you feel about your business five years from now? You haven't done these things. I don't wanna be left behind, but two very different. But you see, same ask. Yeah, same ask, two very different emotions. And I think early on in my career, I would just build a pitch.

Well, I'll just go to the client meeting just thinking, this is what I wanna talk about and done. Yeah. And now I take a step back, like, what is the emotion that I think is, that's going to be the most beneficial in this meeting, or for my client to experience? Then I will communicate as such.

Kelly Kennedy: Man. Wow. Okay.

Well that is crazy. So what I, what I'm getting from here is I think before anybody makes any pitch. Maybe what they should do is write down what are the motions I want to elicit from this pitch? My gosh. I think that'll change proposals forever. Yeah. I sure folks, I've seen a lot of bad ones. Yeah, that's a great idea.

I literally never thought about that. But like doing something as simple as writing at the top of your page. I want to, I wanna elicit fear of missing out. I want to elicit happiness. I want to elicit, good feelings, or I wanna elicit urgency. And then, you know, essentially knowing what it is you're trying to do before could be game changing.

Darren Chiu: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Ben earlier talked about the, we're all emotional decision makers and that's really truly the foundation of this. Right. And one of the pushbacks that we often hear is that, well, the numbers still need to make sense there. There still needs to be logic. We're not just you know, building business based on happiness and Absolutely.

And what we're saying here is that all those numbers, the financials, those are table stakes. If you have a crappy product, if you don't have a strong offering, then work on that. But we're talking about table stake. You could, you have, you should come to us with very strong business proposal, great integrity in your business plan, and that's table stake.

And then we're gonna add on the emotional aspect of it. And we're gonna let emotion be the driver. But if your product is bad. We're not trying to manipulate. Yes. It's not gonna say, we're not trying to manipulate clients here. We're trying to sell a good product with emotions, being our good friend.

Kelly Kennedy: And I will tell you from many, many, many years of business development and negotiations, that if you have the trust, if you have the rapport, you can work out the numbers later.

If they trust you and they like your product, and the thing that's missing is the numbers, they'll give you the opportunity to make those numbers better.

Ben Wise: Yeah. Yeah. And you guys can, you know, if you have that trust, you'll be collaborative. It doesn't become a pitch, it becomes a like, let's work together to figure this out.

That's right.

Darren Chiu: So you got Taylor Swift. I don't know if you know, like Taylor Swift's knew his album when it first came out. First of all, I love Taylor Swift but when it first came out, there was like, some people were saying that, oh, it wasn't good. And then usually. When a, when an artist comes out with a new AANA isn't good, they kind of get slammed a little bit.

Yeah. And all the swifties, instead of slamming her, she's had brought out so much rapport. They're saying that it's us. We are not on the right wavelength. And then we'll listen to it for us. Yeah. We'll listen to We like it.

Kelly Kennedy: We weren't ready.

Darren Chiu: Yeah. We're not ready for this greatness

Ben Wise: and we need to, we nothing into the future with this new album.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's where you want to be as a business. We're not ready, but we love it. Yeah. Jam swift of business. See, that's what everybody's think about Google right now with Gemini. They're just not ready, but they, they want to be, they're ready to take it on. Honestly, AI is like one of those things that's like, I don't know, man.

Like I, you're, I, you know, I'm gonna go back to what Darren said, like, you wanna embrace AI or get left behind. I am 100% on board with that. I'm embracing, I think the scary thing for me is, is that I. There's so much ai, especially as a podcaster being thrown my way that it's like AI overload. I don't know what I need.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what I,

Ben Wise: I'm actually not sure if we're talking to actual Kelly or just an AI generated version right now. Maybe I'm a robot. I really, really convincing AI bot we've been talking about man.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, so we watch Big Brother at Our House. We're a huge Big Brother fans and this year they incorporated deep fake AI into it and it's like, holy crap.

Is that unreal? Like uncanny. You couldn't tell like that our, our world is about to change Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, guys first off, thank you so much for coming on. Second off. Thank you. I wanna dive deep into Captivate. What is it? Why did you make it? And you know, what was it like building it?

Ben Wise: Well, when we're done building it, we'll let you down.

Honestly. It's just a lot of fun. It's working on stuff that we really like. We find the content, the subject matter, just really interesting. It's applicable in all walks of life. I think we both really like the writing. We like the producing elements of it all. We love the trainings and the speaking.

I remember we, we were talking to somebody from a speaker's bureau and she was like, as one of our questions before we take you on why do you do this? Why do you like, do it? And my answer is honestly, 'cause it's, it's so much fun.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ben Wise: So that's kind of where we are, we're, we love the content, we love the subject matter, and we're just having a ton of fun figuring out where to take it.

If anybody out there listening wants to talk about ideas with us, we are all ears. Love to look at, at ways to partner, ways to collaborate, ways to work together. So, we're open to anything. Just seeing where it goes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And you know, for the people that have been listening that maybe haven't like clued into what it is yet, it is a monthly newsletter on persuasion topics.

And it is incredibly well done guys. I checked it out. I love it. I'm gonna be signing up. Um, highly, highly huge fan. Huge fan. I think persuasion is amazing and I, I, you know, I mean, I'm not from a psychology background, but I find psychology very interesting and you guys dive deep. The topics are well covered.

You really give like examples and how it works. And so, yeah. So for anyone listening who wants to, it is a free monthly newsletter and there will be links. I'll have it in everything to do with the show. Come check out the show page, check out my LinkedIn, but um, it'll be there. Sign up. But Captivate isn't all you do, you also do, like you said, workshops, public speaking.

Can we talk about those?

Darren Chiu: Yeah. So Captivate really is the umbrella of everything that we do. And under which there's, we have a lot of different topics that we dive into. Obviously all build on the foundation of the psychology of persuasion. So there's like sort of the main one that we do, which is all around the psychology of persuasion and negotiation.

And then we also have, we also talk about change management because as you see ai, a lot of changes is happening. Absolutely. And how do we deal with it as an organization? Change management. Uh, we also talk about storytelling, which is my personal favorite. 'cause I love storytelling. Yeah. And that one is a slight departure from sort of the hardcore business stuff.

Yeah. Well, I shouldn't use it with hardcore ones. We, we definitely take more emotional and comedic liberty in the storytelling part of our training. Yeah. And that's also a lot of fun. What else am I missing then?

Ben Wise: Oh, the e e-commerce. I, and, and I think the way that they've all come about, like, so we have a bunch of different presentations and things that, and workshops that we've developed.

But we always kind of come back to the, the foundation of like that psychology and persuasion piece. So someone says like, Hey, we have a conference about e-commerce. We're like, cool, let's go deep on the psychology of persuasion in e-commerce. Yeah. Somebody says, you know, we're talking about AI and change management, or we're talking about storytelling.

It's like, awesome. We're gonna take the psychology behind that to help upskill the people in the audience or people in the workshop. Um, but as you said, you know, we, we, we actually don't have a psychology background of like formal training, but we wanna make sure that what we're suggesting, what we're teaching people is founded in like good, robust research.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Ben Wise: And we kind of take our role is to take it outta that like ivory tower of reading, a really, really, really boring research study. And what do I take away from that boring 15 page paper to make it useful for you when you go to work tomorrow? We're recording this on a Friday, so not tomorrow when you go to work on Monday.

Kelly Kennedy: Well that boring, you know, that boring 15 page paper wasn't written just to be written either. It was written to be used by people just like Ben Wise and Darren Chiu. So would rather learn. I would rather learn from you anyway.

Ben Wise: There you go. We'll take the 15 page, really dry paper and turn it into a five minute monthly newsletter so it's easy and accessible for you.

Kelly Kennedy: That is absolutely amazing. And you offer these services, uh, across North America, am I correct?

Ben Wise: Yep, that's right.

Darren Chiu: Yeah, I mean, I mean we'll do it across the world. If you wanna fly us.

Ben Wise: If you have a company in the Maldives and you want us.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well like you said before, Hawaii is calling so it Hawaii, you know, you might even give a little discount if they put you up on a beach.

Darren Chiu: Oh, 100%. Absolutely

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing guys. Amazing. This has been Darren Chiu and Ben Wise from Captivate. It was an absolute honor having them come on and chat with me about persuasion. We don't typically do panels of three very often, so I really enjoyed this dynamic. Guys, thanks for doing it and uh, I wish you the best of luck with Captivate and your future.

Ben Wise: Thank you, Kelly. Really appreciate you having us and we, returned the sentiment. We wish you nothing but the best and hopefully we can keep partnering and finding ways to cross paths.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Until next time, this has been episode 252 of the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Intro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.