Neuroscience, Storytelling and the Future of Marketing with Tracy J. Trost

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down neuroscience, storytelling, and the future of marketing. To drop these value bombs, I are brought Tracy J. Trost in the EO Fire Studios. Tracy is an award-winning filmmaker, author, speaker, and creator of the heartwarming TV series, American Homecoming, inspiring audiences worldwide through film, books, and motivational content. Today, we'll be talking about how storytelling touches the subconscious.

0:40We'll talk about the connection between neuroscience and storytelling. And we'll talk about how the world has changed, but the industry has not, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Tracy and our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litturse, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

1:17Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy, from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Tracy, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? So very excited to be here. you know that's kind of a loaded question because I think people think success is a destination you know if I get this then I will be successful if I drive this car if I have this home if I have this boat and quite honestly what I've learned in my short time on this earth that success has nothing to do to where you're going it's in the journey of getting there if we go back to Earl Nightingale and he says success is the constant pursuit of a worthy ideal and I think when I was able to grasp that concept, it brought peace to my life because I was no longer comparing myself to other people and what they had and what they were doing.

2:33I was actually able to look at my life and go, you know what, I may not be at point A yet, but I'm having a good time getting there. And it allowed me to appreciate the moments along the way. And I think that's quite honestly, So if I was to give it a definition of success, JLD, I would say appreciating the journey and soaking or squeezing every ounce of joy out of the journey that you're on. Boom. I love that. And that quote is fantastic. I love the idea of the constant pursuit. That's so important to think about. It's not the realization, Fire Nation, of a worthy ideal. It's not getting to the finish line of that.

3:15It's the constant pursuit of that. It's the journey to get there. And I really think so few people really get that, unfortunately, until it's too late. I mean, for years and years and years, Tracy, my go-to question would be asking people their worst entrepreneurial moments. And so many would share the day they sold their business because they thought it was going to be the best day of their life. And they realized, hey, my constant pursuit is over now. And I've just realized this thing. But what's next? What am I here for? So a lot of interesting things we're going to be talking about today, Fire Nation.

3:51Neuroscience, storytelling, and the future of marketing. And I want to talk about your journey, Tracy, that brought you to filmmaking. Journey brought me to filmmaking. Here's the thing. Years ago, about 15 years ago, I was walking on the beach in Florida with my then three-year-old daughter. And as we're walking along, she's stopping and she's picking up, you know, little shells. And she's kind of hanging on with her hands. And then she goes a little bit farther and she's getting more and more shells and she can't, like, carry them. So she kind of picks up her bathing suit a little bit. It was kind of like a little skirt kind of bathing suit.

4:31And she's holding that. She's filling up her suit with all these shells and rocks and things. And it's full to overfilling, actually. pieces are falling out. And then all of a sudden we come across this really beautiful blue kind of big shell and she wants to pick it up. But every time she bent over to pick it up, the other ones would spill out and she'd get upset. And then she'd pick them up and put that back in there. And then she'd, you know, same thing kept happening over and over. And finally, I just, you know, all my great wisdom as a father, I go, honey, if you want that big one, you got to let go of all the other stuff you have.

5:04And I tell you what, John, that hit me like a bolt of lightning because there was a lot of things I wanted in my life, but I hung on to so many past beliefs and past understandings of who I should be or who I thought I should be or what I thought life should be at that point that I was honestly holding myself back from going to do what I want to do. And I felt like that was a God moment where I felt like God spoke to me and said, same thing, Tracy, if you want to get to this other place in your life, which was being a filmmaker, you have to let go of the other beliefs that you have about yourself that you can't and that who you are now is who you will be you know because I've always been an entrepreneur in my life and I was very successful I had a large printing marketing company and we were doing great about 140 employees at the time and I felt like I can't go do what I want to do because I have to run this business I have to be this person I have to be this leader and after that experience with my daughter, I realized I'm hanging on to too many past beliefs.

6:09And I have to let those go if I really want this dream of being a filmmaker. You know, it comes up for me when I hear this, it's sunk cost fallacy. Like so many people think because of what they've done in their past or what they're currently doing, like if they stop doing any of those things, then they'll have wasted everything that came before that. And you know, this happens a lot to people that go to law school and they find out I hate law and the study of law or medical school. I hate the study of medicine. They get there, but they're like, well, you know, I've already put in four years of undergrad and I've already taken out loans for this school.

6:47And if I leave now, then I'll just be in debt. I'll have nothing to show for it. And then they just lead this unhappy life because of this sunk cost fallacy. Like they're just hanging on to things in their past or what they've already done. Instead of saying, you know what? That blue shell is gorgeous. and it's the only thing that I really need in my life. Let me just drop everything else and let me pick this up and let me go forward and see what happens from that point. And so I think that's such a deep thing that a lot of people that are listening right now need to hear, need to think about because Fire Nation, just like Tracy had his aha moments, you may as well by having those thoughts.

7:28And it comes back to a little bit on conditioning, understanding brainwaves. And that's one of the things when I got into neuroscience, and we'll get into why I did that, but one of the big things I discovered is the conditioning and the brain patterns. And when you're zero to seven years old, your brain is what's called a theta wave, which is basically, if you think of it like a computer, you're recording files. It's the same wavelength that your brain enters when you go into hypnosis. It's open to suggestion. It takes things in as true, and it makes them true. And many times people, and I was one for sure, had a belief about themselves that was limiting.

8:09And because of that, when certain amounts of success would come or certain opportunities would come, this limiting belief that I had about who I was or who I could be would hold me back. And I would actually self-sabotage myself. I'd have a little bit of success and I would do something to screw it up. And even when I was doing it, I'm like, why am I doing this? And I had to come back to rewriting those files in my brain and learning new things about and being willing to believe new things about myself. Yeah, that self-sabotage conversation, it's a whole other animal that a lot of people, again, never sit with and never think about.

8:42But then, you know, later in their life, they're looking back and they're like, wow, look at all of these self-sabotage moments that happened because of me just not sitting down and thinking about it and being intentional about what am I doing here. Now, you believe that storytelling touches the subconscious, things we've kind of been discussing right now. So dive deeper on this and let's talk about why it even matters. It's very important because we got to understand we're all in sales in one way or another. And some of us are selling products. Some of us are selling ourselves, no matter what we do.

9:16Like in this conversation that you and I are having, in one way, I'm selling you an idea and I'm selling you myself as we talk. and I opened up this conversation with a story, hopefully, that an audience could relate to. And when you tell a story, because we've been taught storytelling ever since we were little kids. Our parents told us stories, and we saw stories in church, and every cartoon we watched was a story. We like it. We pull into it. Even in the Bible, I mean, when Jesus was speaking to a certain group of people, you know, he talked to the farmers. He said there was a man who had a field and he planted seeds.

9:49He told things in a way that people could relate to. And that's one thing that I really learned years ago, about nine years ago, I went from this marketing company that I had, sold that, decided I was going to go into filmmaking and did that and did four different projects. And I got approached by the nonprofit fundraising world to help them with their fundraising. And that's two minute commercials that you see on TV. And of course, in the past, It's always been the sad dog, the sad kid, you know, poverty. And I felt, I said, if this is what you want me to do, I can't do it because I honestly don't believe it really connects with people.

10:29I think it makes people feel guilty. But if you allow me to be creative, I think there's another way to go. And we did, one of the clients I worked with was Scheuner's Hospitals for Children. And we created a new way of storytelling where it wasn't about, you know, because you give us this money, we do these operations and these kids have better lives. It's now these kids saying, because of your generosity and your donation, I can play basketball. I have dreams. I have hope. And we speak to the subconscious things that people want to get involved in. We move them to a point of guilt, to a point of collaboration.

11:05And I don't know. Storytelling is the fundamental basis in that, I guess I would say. And it's how we communicate to each other, even though we don't know we're doing it. So you did that in that one scenario, and I think that example was really important with Shriner. Can you give another example of how you've utilized this and the work that you do that actually does connect with people in that different way that utilizes neuroscience and storytelling to change the way that fundraising is done? Sure. And there's a science to it as well. You know, storytelling is an art and it is a skill that you develop.

11:42But when I was getting into this world of fundraising, I was trying to understand why do people give like you can send out a flyer or a mailer and it has a picture of a dog on it or whatever it is and it does really well and you can do that same thing again next month and it doesn't. And I had to think there's a reason why that is happening. So we actually built a lab. It's called the NeuroFundraising Lab. And I hooked people up to galvanic skin responses, oxytocin release measurements, EEGs to measure which parts of the brains are being fired, eye tracking, I mean, all sorts of biometrics. And through that, we would test our commercials.

12:20And I could put people who are in my donor profile on there and watch the commercial. And it wasn't one of those things that it said, hey, this commercial is going to work or this one isn't going to work. What it did tell me is I could see where people were connecting, where people had internal signs of rejection to whatever it was I was doing. And it's important to understand also that not everything is going to be high. When you're telling a story, you want ebbs and tides. I want people to go low, but that way, so when I go high, the payoff is bigger, right? And so we refined our process and our storytelling through using this lab and the science of neuroscience or neuro fundraising to make it work.

12:58And in that, that's honestly why I've gotten into my next project, which is this television show called American Homecoming. Well, Fire Nation, we're going to be diving into that and more as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors. The fourth quarter is here. It's time to hit your revenue targets, finish strong and win the quarter. But before you can win Q4, you have to close deals. And before you can close deals, you have to fill your pipeline and nurture prospects, which is oftentimes the hardest part. So how can you get a jumpstart on your Q4 sales goals? What you really need is an easy-to-use, all-in-one sales software like HubSpot Sales Hub.

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15:56See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ziprecruiter.com slash fire. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash F-I-R-E. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. Tracy, we have listeners here at Fire Nation. They're small business owners. They're entrepreneurs. They're looking to, like you said, everybody's in sales. We're all in sales in some way, shape, or form. So how do you find ways that entrepreneurs, businessmen and women can use this knowledge specifically? Perfect. I'm so happy you asked that question because that is an important thing to understand.

16:31And please understand, all this information that I'm sharing is not something I've created. It's something that I've obtained from hundreds of hours of podcasts and thousands of pages of books and videos. So what I'm going to share with you, you may have heard some pieces before, but it's important that it comes down to a simple compilation. And I'm going to give you six quick keys to things when you're looking at your marketing to incorporate if you can, right? Number one is authority. We have been designed and trained and conditioned to follow authority. When a police officer speaks to us, when somebody who seems a doctor or somebody speaks to us, we listen to them because in our lives, they're an authority.

17:16So the question you ask yourself when you're presenting marketing materials or presenting a story, is there some form of authority in there? Is it a person? Is it a group? You know, it doesn't have to be like a president or a an actor, but it can be something that has to the group that you're trying to reach has a sense of authority that your audience will say, hey, this is so and so. Or this is a this type of a person. I need to listen to them. So number one is authority. Always try and have that in there if you can. Number two. And please, John, jump in if you have any questions. I'll go right through them.

17:48The other one is reciprocity. We have been culturally conditioned to return a favor or a debt when we've been presented with one. And is there some way that in your storytelling you can say, like for me, when I tell stories of veterans, that's a pretty simple one. Like, you know, they've done so much for us. Now it's our turn to say thank you to them, to give back to them. Is there something in your materials where something has been done for the purchaser or the person you're marketing to that you can tie yourself with that reciprocity so that people want to return the favor, return the debt that they subconsciously feel that they may have with you?

18:25Number three is liking. Most people have been conditioned to respond to stories or images they like and that they're familiar with. you know, seeing, reading, or hearing something that they also feel familiar, it releases a chemical that reinforces their own image. You know, people want to see themselves in a good light. They want to feel like I'm a good person. So when you give them imagery, and I think that's one thing we have to understand, like my audience that I went after, or go after is 65 to 80 years old. And if I'm showing them imagery of things that they don't associate with or agree with in today's world, even some of the language that we use, some of the politically correct things that are spoken about, it automatically turns my audience off.

19:10So the question is, are you using language that they can identify with? And that really pulls into the next one, which is consistency of image. Most of us have been conditioned to honor commitments, especially those that have confirmed our self-identity. Am I giving my audience something in my phraseology, in my imagery, and my story that I'm telling them, that they can see themselves within it. I mean, there's another one that's outside that's called mirroring. We will mimic or do something that we can see ourselves in. It's like when a baby and a parent are connecting and the parent starts opening its mouth or sticking his tongue out, the baby mimics because oxytocin is released to reaffirm that, yes, you're in the right position and you're doing the right things, and so you get subconsciously rewarded for it.

19:56So I use these phrases like in fundraising, things like because of you or your call says you care. I give them imagery that your call says you care because quite honestly the opposite. If you don't call, then do you not care? You know, so I'm speaking to their subconscious mind. And in many ways, I'm triggering them to take response versus causing them to take response. Because most people think our market, the people that we're marketing to, they think I have to give them a logical argument or story so they can consciously make a decision. And quite honestly, 90 % of the decisions we make are all subconscious based on beliefs that we built from zero to seven years old.

20:38So if I have an audience that's 70, what time of life were they growing up when their files were being written? say it's in the 60s, okay, am I talking to them or showing them or giving them things that reaffirm who they are, or am I trying to sell them on a new idea? And you'll see a lot of resistance from an audience if you're trying to sell them a new idea, not based on their own identity. I think many times we try to say, we want you to be this person, so we'll sell it to you. What the truth is, they're saying, we're already somebody, give me something I want. The next one is social proof.

21:10We've been conditioned to follow the crowd, especially a crowd of people that we see that has a reflection of our own self-image. So wording, I always use things like when it's fundraising, because of other caring people like you, things like that. I want to give people the idea that there are others out there doing this. And in regular marketing, you could say things, join the crowd or join with thousands of others or something that makes them feel like if I don't take action, it's FOMO. I'm going to miss out. I'm not as cool as all the other guys are. And then the last one is scarcity, perceived scarcity.

21:46And I think this is one that most marketers understand. Make it feel like if I don't do something now, the person you're marketing to, then I'm going to either miss out or an opportunity is going to be missed. I think that one gets used a lot. I think strategically it can be very effective as long as it's not pounded on them. So you've got social proof, consistency of image, liking, reciprocity, authority, and scarcity. I would try to build four of at least those six things, everything that you're doing. I built in my company basically a grading scale. And if I write a script or write a piece, I'll send it to my team and have them grade me, you know, one through five on the use of social proof, one through five on the use of reciprocity.

22:34And if my grading out of those six things, I should get, you know, 30 is 100 % on everything, which you don't get. But if I'm not above 22, 23, then I go back and work on it again. These are all powerful things, Fire Nation. And one thing, Tracy, that's really has jumped out to me over the years and doing what I do is that whole aspect of like the following the crowd, like thousands of people are doing it. It's like there's even a subconscious thing within that is that people don't want to put themselves out there and like maybe be the only one. They don't want to be a fool. That's one of people's biggest, deepest fears is to like, wow, I'm a fool because they got scammed or they did something and nobody else did or other people thought it was stupid.

23:16So what other people are doing is the crowd is with you, behind you. You're joining it. And that's a very deep-seated, innate thing within humans that we just have. It comes to our survival instinct. And if you think of the herd mentality, it's ones that are on the outside of the herd that get attacked by the lion, right? And so you want to be in the herd. You want to be protected by the herd. And if the herd runs, you run. If the herd stays, you stay. And it's basic survival. Fire Nation, are you utilizing all six of these things? Hopefully at least four, like Tracy said. But hey, six could be the A-plus way to go here.

23:52I don't know that I've done that yet, but I'm working at it. I do want to end with a bang, And that's your project coming up, American Homecoming, the TV series. As a military veteran, I spent eight years as an officer in the U.S. Army. I love when people are doing things for veterans and recognizing the military. So I first off want to say thank you for that and tell us more. American Homecoming is a very special project. I actually left the company that I was at for those eight years to focus on this project. It's my purple shell, I could say. and I realized that I would never give it the time or the attention it needed to make it successful if I was running a, you know, multimillion-dollar marketing firm, right?

24:36And I tell you what, it's – the basic reason is I work with a lot of VSOs in helping them with their fundraising. And when you go out and you meet all these different veterans who have been disabled in one way or another, you get a glimpse behind the curtain a little bit and see a bit of the struggle. And one of the biggest struggles I realized is that veterans, when they get disabled and they come home, most of the times their home does not work for them. They need ramps, wider doorways, automatic doors, a bathroom that they can move around in, and just basic functions of going to the bathroom or getting a shower.

25:08And we did a special project for somebody who needed a – they had kids that were upstairs. It was a two-level home. And he was paralyzed on one side of his body. for him to go upstairs, he basically had to drag himself up the stairs. And it took about 40 minutes for him to do it. So a very basic need for him is just a way to get upstairs to see his daughters. So we put in a chairlift for him. And after that, he was able to wheel up to it, climb in the chairlift, go up and get in another wheelchair. And it changed his life. And as we were doing that story, I'm like, gosh, this would make an amazing television show, you know, because it touches on a real need.

25:48So that's what American Homecoming is. It's a home remodel makeover show that focuses on disabled veterans. Beyond that, though, let's talk about storytelling. The thing that I think separates American Homecoming from other shows like this is the story behind the story. The main story is, you know, you meet a veteran, you get a story. Who is he or her? Why did they do what they did? And then we send them away for a week. We jump in, remodel their home. The best thing is they think they're getting a ramp or maybe a bathroom. but we actually remodel the whole home and it's new appliances, new furniture, new, all new design.