 Thanks for being here. I hope lunch was good already. So let's talk about your brain. I'm not my friend Steve's brain, that would be like a different story, like all our other brains. We all have one, supposedly, except for Donald Trump, probably. Political statement right there. So your brain, let's cut it in half and look at what's in there. So your brain consists of three main parts and highlighted here is your old brain, your lizard brain, which is actually pretty similar to a reptile's brain. Because this is a brain stem and a cerebellum. And this is tasked with your survival, your fight and flee instinct. So imagine you're walking through the woods, you encounter a grizzly bear, stops right in front of you, you're staring at it, and this thing kicks in. It gets your adrenaline going. It makes sure that your body starts making endorphins. It will raise your heart rate, your blood pressure. It tenses your muscles, gives you goosebumps, dilates your pupils, and actually moves your ears upright like a dog. You're then ready to either fight or flee. This is your midbrain or your limbic brain. And this is what gives you long-term memory, your visual memory, but also your emotional memory and your muscle memory. So if you're like a copy and paste ninja, that's because of this. Those shortcuts are stored in here. And this has a strong influence on our behavior. And in there is the amygdala on each side, two almond-shaped cores that link sensory information to emotions. This gives danger and emotional value. So let's say you're facing this grizzly bear, you decide to fight it, you lose, then that information is stored by the amygdala. So the next time you encounter a grizzly bear, this will just take over and immediately tell you, start running. So it's pretty useful. And this is your new brain, your neocortex with the prefrontal cortex. This is what we use to think with, to reason. And this has infinite learning abilities. And what has been learned cannot be unlearned. You can create stronger bonds to have one thing take presence over the other. But you can't tell the brain what not to do. Like I can tell you, do not think of a pink elephant. I'm assuming you're all thinking of pink elephants now. And the interaction between the three parts of a brain is what makes us human. It's not the opposing thumbs. It's that how we unconsciously use all three parts of a brain for decision making. And we can use that to our advantage, to make them click. This is Usain Bolt from Jamaica, and he can run. He can run pretty fast. He runs a distance, a track distance of 200 meters, with an average speed of 37.5 kilometers per hour. Yes, those are metric units. This is Daniel Comer. He runs a distance of three kilometers with an average speed of 24.5 kilometers per hour. That's pretty fast. And this is why right now, it weighs close to 8,000 pounds. And if it were to chase Usain Bolt and Daniel Comer, they would both die. This animal runs 12% faster than Usain Bolt. If that surprises you, you're suffering from cognitive dissonance. It's the mental state where you feel discomfort when something happens that does not align with how you feel you should feel about what's happening, what you're hearing or deciding. And we have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering conditions. So let me tell you a story. A few years ago, I wanted to buy a new iPad. Well, I don't stand in line for products much, but if I do, it's likely going to be to give more money to Apple. And I could choose like from two variations, black and white. It's like the iPad mini, I guess. I could choose from black and white. So it was in line, it was a long line. Like in the end, it took me like two and a half hours to buy the thing. I was standing there and chatting with the other people around me. And I wanted the black one because obviously, who needs a white one? And I'd been queuing for two hours. And then the store manager came out and he told us all, you're in luck. We still have plenty of iPads, so you're all going to be taken care of. Win, but out of the black ones, we have plenty of white ones. That sucked, but then I thought, and this took me like two minutes. Well, everyone has a black one. I'll be unique if I have a white one. I'll be like the snowflake of iPad land. All these smudges I make with my greasy fingers, they would be so visible on black and not on white. I'm going to scratch it. Those scratches will also be way more visible on black than on white. So it took me no more than two minutes to change my reasoning and rationalize why I actually wanted the white one. And I was so happy they were out of black ones. Because that made me realize I was about to make a terrible, terrible decision. To end up buying a white one, if you hold Apple shares, you're very welcome. But we do this all the time. We change the rules to decrease the likelihood to second gas later. Only second gas later, after making a purchase, we suffer from post-purchase dissonance or buyer's remorse, and we want to prevent that. We want people to feel good about what they buy. So if you run a web app, like you have this software as a service, you need to constantly remind people of having made the right decision. So they don't go and cancel their subscription. They start when they sign up, send them a welcome email. Let them know how much you appreciate them being there. That's a good feeling. Use wording that targets both new and existing customers. And especially car manufacturers are really good at that. For instance, Skoda, they have the slogan Simply Clever, which tells prospective buyers, well, they'll be clever to buy Skoda. But also constantly reinforces the belief that they want Skoda owners to have, that they are clever people, and they made the right choice. So I want to prevent buyer's remorse. Move on to a different thing we can use and is being used on you. And that's commitment. So we all have multiple personas. At home, I'm a caring husband and father, and at the office, I'm the asshole that needs to sign off on expenses. And we have like a whole bunch of different personas. And we tell stories to ourselves and to others about those, like how we want to be, and we want to stay true to them. So when I'm walking downtown with my three-year-old daughter, someone comes up to me wearing this green piece jacket and tells me, well, I see you walking with your daughter. Do you want her to grow up in a world where she can still enjoy wills 30 years from now and clean oceans? Yeah, sure. That triggers my fatherly persona. Yeah, I want my daughter to grow up in a clean world, like unpolluted. I want to be a good person. I want to have wills 30 years from now because wills. And then they go, would you like to make a $10 donation? It's really hard to say no for most people, because they're tapping into the persona. You want to stay true to it and be a good person. So most people say, yes. And luckily I know these tactics, so I tell them just, fuck off. But most people just give them their money. You want to stay true to our personas. And we can also have brand personas. So I drink Coca-Cola. Some people drink Pepsi. Anyone in here prefer Pepsi over Coke? Two? Slowly and automatically. So I'm a Coca-Cola person. I don't drink Pepsi. I may be dying of thirst in a desert somewhere, and then on day three I may consider a sip, but otherwise let's not go there. It's not just because of the taste. Like I've been drinking Coke for a long time. I like it, but I also believe I'm a Coke person. I order Coke everywhere. I don't order Pepsi. So I won't be ordering a Pepsi next week because I'm a Coca-Cola person. And Apple has been doing something really smart. Probably not on purpose, but they've created these gateway drugs to Apple products. So this is the original iPod and the first iPhone. And this is what made Apple billions in sales of MacBooks and iPads. These are relatively cheap compared to other Apple products. Like they're expensive devices, but compared to a MacBook Pro or an iPad, these are cheaper. So I bought an iPod. It was pretty cool. I got the best MP3 player out there. Then years down the road, iPhone was launched. Super awesome, bought one. And then a while later I needed a new laptop. I wasn't going to buy Samsung because Apple had like ingrain in my brain that I'm an Apple person. I own Apple stuff. I like Apple. So I'm more likely to buy Apple hardware when I need something new. So I asked people to commit to something small. In Apple's case, an iPod is relatively small. I'm running a web app that could be a 30 day trial like no strings attached. Just sign up, no credit card require, start using it, small commitment and we'll talk money later. That's easier to convert in the end and have them write it down. A written commitment is always stronger than any alternative. So let's say there's this review on the internet. Someone bought a Canon camera. I wrote this awesome Canon review that may lead me to buy the Canon camera. But more importantly, someone wrote down, I think Canon is awesome. So the next time they're in the market for buying a new camera, they're likely to buy Canon because writing it down created this or activated this Canon persona within them. Social validation, we want to belong. There is this big herd and we all wanna be alike. So I'll take a look at a short Canon camera segment from the 1960s, I believe. The gentleman in the elevator now is a Canon star. These folks who are entering the man with a white shirt the lady with a trench coat and subsequently one of the member of our staff will face the rear. And you'll see how this man in the trench coat. He looks at his watch, but he's really making an excuse for turning just a little bit more to the wall. Now we'll try it once again. Here's the Canon subject. Here comes the Canon camera staff, three of them at least. And this man has apparently been in groups of four, all right, one last one. Here's a fella with his hat on in the elevator. First he makes a full turn to the rear and Charlie closes the door. A moment later we'll open the door, everybody's changed positions. That's how easy it is. Like imagine walking down the street and there are two people stopping on the sidewalk and they start looking up. Everyone starts looking up because there must be something going on there and we don't want to be left out. We constantly need social validation and that's what these rating stars are for on any website. There are first and foremost there to unconsciously activate your need for social validation. When we see these we know we can validate, so we want to. This is a great tool for us to rationalize the decisions we've made unconsciously. So this is amazon.com and you have this frequently bought together section. That's only there for social validation. Like there's no special deal. If you add up the numbers, like take the pricing with those three individual items, add them up, there's gonna be like the same price. There's not a discount here. It's just people like me who bought this one book also bought the other two. This is hotel.com and they add personas. So when I'm booking for my family, I will choose the family persona. When I'm booking for a trip to Rilskans, I'll choose the business persona. So that's good. I can identify with that and then they know that statistics and charts really apply to our old brain. So they have these bar charts. Sure, a bunch of counters. Then it's not four out of five. No, it's 4.4 out of five. Because the old brain likes fractals. Like the more precise it seems, the easier it is to make us believe that it has to have huge value. And the same goes for YouTube. So Gangnam Style, the most viewed video on YouTube, runner up is Justin Bieber with less than half the views. There's a counter, right bottom, like over two billion views. And the skyrocketed as soon as the news broke that this was the most viewed video ever. Because people who hadn't seen it yet were like, wow, the whole world has seen this and I haven't. And they had it over to YouTube, I started watching, and the number skyrocketed. And that's why it's like so far ahead of Justin Bieber, which I totally appreciate. That's what media attention does and the feeling of being left out of the herd. So speaking of reviews, which work best? Well, they're ranked in order. So let's say I'm on the market for buying a new lawnmower. I have two small kids, age three and one. And I want to buy a lawnmower. So I asked my neighbor, like, you have lawnmower? Is it any good? And he's like, wow, Roy, best purchase ever. So he says, I have a three year old as well. I ran over her with a lawnmower and nothing happened, not a scratch. I'm gonna buy the thing. I trust him, because he's Bob, he's my neighbor. Number two, persona with a story. So I'm on the internet and I read his review of John. John has a four year old and he ran over him with a lawnmower and nothing happened. That's cool. I can identify with him. So I'll be, yeah, sure. I'll trust his review. Then there's just a story. Someone's saying, well, I bought a lawnmower, ran over someone, nothing happened. You should probably buy it. We'll buy again. Okay, cool. And then last, I'm gonna be just rating. Four out of five stars. Well, that's better than zero stars. If I'm on the website that sells lawnmowers and there's 10 options and there are six with zero ratings, not going to buy any of those. I'm only going to buy the ones that actually have a rating. We will do what others are doing. Monkey see, monkey do. And what we especially want is something we cannot have. Always. And we want them now. We want the last item in stock. Want the last seed at this rate. But Scarce is bigger than that. Let me tell you a story about Coca-Cola, which isn't accidental. So 1985, Pepsi had been taking a, over time, growing as market share of the colon market. And a lot of people like Pepsi. They like the slightly sweeter taste of Pepsi over Coke. So Coke figured we need to counter this. We're going to change our recipe. And it's what we now call new Coke. Back then it was just an improved recipe of Coca-Cola. So they had a taste test. And there are many theories on why the taste test filled but one of them is scarcity. People who had the opportunity to taste classic Coke, which they could buy everywhere. And they could taste the new Coke. Like Alpha Can, not available anywhere else. And I can have it now and never again, unless I say I like this better. And hindsight, they shouldn't have labeled the cups probably. People said, well, I like this new Coke. So Coke start using new Coke. They changed the recipe. Some packaging changes. All good until it hit the shelves. People hated new Coke. They wanted the old Coke back. Someone even sued the Coca-Cola company. They lost, but still. And Coca-Cola had to revert the whole thing. They had to revert back to the old recipe. And new Coke was gone. And Coca-Cola was now called Classic Coke. Because people wanted that taste. The taste test was flawed. This was a very, very, very expensive experiment for the Coca-Cola company. We want stuff we can't have. Tesla Model 3, about 400,000 pre-orders. I am pretty confident that if they actually had a warehouse with half a million of those, they would not yet have sold 400,000 of them. But we can pre-order. And if I pre-order now, I'm on top of the list. I want something I cannot have right now. But as soon as it hit the streets, I want to be the first one to drive this Model 3. I was a guest when this picture was taken. 2007, June, release of the first iPhone. The first iPhone. I'm probably somewhere in there, in line, to buy this new iPhone. And this is Apple's tactic. They come with something new, iPhone, Apple Watch, whatever. It's always this thing will hit the shelves in a few weeks. But yeah, we have some issues sourcing parts. There won't be enough for everyone. Bam, people get in line, because they don't want to miss out. When it's the next batch coming, who knows, three weeks, two months, we want to have it now, especially if there's limited stock. It's also scarcity of pricing. You snooze, you lose. So on top, Amazon's deals of the day. If you don't buy it today, that won't be the same deal tomorrow. The same goes with, I think it's best buy, the bottom right. The bottom left is a sneaky one. And it could maybe even argue it's a bit unethical. This is targeted towards young girls. So instead of scarcity of pricing, this simply says it's the first day of school, cement your legacy of awesomeness. If you don't order this awesome outfit now, it won't be delivered to your home on time for the first day of school. And for the rest of your life, you will not be the cool kid. This could be like over that thin line of things you should or shouldn't do. But it's also creating scarcity. And information can be scarce too. So this is a mailing list. You can pop up all the time. If you sign up for a mailing list today, you get this awesome information in your inbox for free. If you don't sign up today, but tomorrow you'll be missing out on issue one. You can't Google this. This is like, especially for you. This will only be delivered to your inbox. You can't find it anywhere else. So we're gonna sign up for the mailing list. We can always unsubscribe later, right? But in the end, we'll just keep getting all the content, some what we'll like, some what we won't. We just wanna make sure that we don't miss out on receiving it. So we constantly limit supply and time box offers. We can do it for physical products, but also in your app. You could be invite only. Like when first one's in, you need a referral code to be able to invite your friends. Like Google Wave, massive success. You could say, well, I'm only allowing 100 new accounts to be created this month. That's gonna be a waiting list. People eat that shit. All right. And then they need to choose. And we like to believe that we choose consciously. But we don't really. We're offered many options we can decide. Like I like going to restaurants with like three menu options. Because otherwise, I just can't choose. We will just choose. Then we'll just choose unconsciously and come up with rationalization later. So this is the Starbucks menu. If you wouldn't have the sizes in there and would mix them up, you've never been to Starbucks before and they tell you we have venti, grande and tall. It will be impossible for you to know which size is which. They deliberately don't use small, medium, and large because they want people who are unknown to the brand to pick the middle option. When we can determine importance, we will choose the middle one when we can choose three. In fact, I was last year was at a McDonald's. But he had two sizes of drinks. Small and medium. What? That's small and large, right? No, sir, we have small and medium. Well, give me medium then. And of course, it's your typical pricing page for any web app. Three options. Highlighting the middle one. Best value. Bought by companies like yours. When we don't know what to compare these on, what to base the comparison on, we'll just buy the middle one. That's easiest. And then the highlighting doesn't hurt so they drive you a bit towards buying the middle option. And this is being cargo-cultured everywhere, of course, but it does work. So limit your options. The easier it is to choose, the most likely it is for people to not postpone. People dislike the post-purchase dissonance. So how can I prevent that I'm going to regret a purchase? I'm going to sleep on it. I can always buy it tomorrow. I don't want people to sleep on it. I want them to buy it today. That's money in the pocket. All right, reciprocity. When we receive a favor or a gift, we feel like giving back. Maybe we want to be nice. Maybe we feel obliged to give back. But mostly we have this unconscious feeling of indebtedness. And that is something we want to get rid of. We don't like to owe anyone. So at my company, we send out strupoffles, which are typical Dutch cookies. So when people start their free trial, we send them this box of four strupoffles for free. No strings attached. And if you don't sign up for the product after your free trial, that's okay. But you're going to receive these in week two. And you will feel indebted to me. It's not going to make you buy the product or get a subscription, but this will help you if you're like not sure, this could just push you out of the limit and give me your money. And I like your money. And of course, it also creates brand awareness and something to talk about. And I hook for like a fundamental introduction and things like that. But it has to be no strings attached. If you expect something in return that does not trigger reciprocity. This is all bullshit. This is all not free shipping. These are even exchanges. You will ship it for free if I spend over 50 bucks. That is not free. That has strings attached. That's the even transaction. This is free shipping. Whatever you buy, we're going to send it to you for free. That's cool. I dig that. I'm going to buy from you. Information can be given away for free as well. Surprise from our blog. It's good for inbound traffic, of course. It ends up on Google. And this is a funny article. We also have in-depth articles on MongoDB and all that. So you're having this itch. You have an issue. You don't know how to fix it. You Google it and you find a solution on our blog or your blog and your website or your Stack Overfill answer. That will get you like more karma points. For us, it just means, that's a cool company. They gave me information for free. Sure, that's not going to trigger any sales, but it does create some indebtedness. In the back of your mind, when you read about my company again, you're like, those are cool guys. You have throughputs and free information. It's the gift of saving time. You have an issue. I give you the solution and it just saves you two hours of work. That's a gift. So the gift should have no strings. And gifts can come in many forms. And I'm sure you can find one that either fits you or your business. You could be selling software. And as a gift, you could be selling consulting services. You could be selling yourself as, hey, I'm a nice person. A random act of kindness goes a long way. We hate losing. We often take things for granted, but we have this sense of losing when things are taken away from us. So let's say 2012, Instagram changed their terms of service so that you could sell your content. Whoa. People didn't like that. They were selling your privacy to the highest bidder. And when you take away something from someone, wording matters. There's been research in which patients having certain animals were told they could be treated. They could be operated on. And half of them, they told, well, if you take this treatment, you have a 90% chance of living. People were like, do it. The other half, they told, take this treatment. You have a 10% chance of dying. Way less people opted to get the operation. Because a 90% chance of living is way better, apparently there are 10% chance of dying. So avoid those alarming words. And when you do tell something to someone, turn into a story. We like stories. We love stories. Our brain does. Stories help us to break down something in chunks, visualize it, and then store it in our long-term memory. And pictures are stories too. Our old brain scans for pictures, not text. So let's say you get to see this presentation again one year from now. You will remember 10% of the words I've been speaking out today. But you'll remember 63% of the pictures in this presentation. So tell stories and use pictures. So let's take a look at how we can combine all the things. This is a hotels.com search result. So I'm looking for a place to go. This case, looking for a hotel in Reston, Virginia. And I get this search result. And it's full of everything we just discussed. There's a story there, which is a picture. There are ratings, and they went to both star ratings and 4.5 out of five. There's statistics, 0.07 miles to the town center, really? But my brain likes that. It likes the 0.07. It makes it so specific that it has to be good. There's dragging into your social validation. Someone else booked this 16 hours ago. There's reciprocity. You can cancel this for free, no strings attached. There's scarcity. There's only four rooms left. And then when I'm not sure what to decide, I'm hanging around on this page for a little too long. This thing pops up just to remind me that someone else went with a different hotel. Maybe I don't quite like this one. So with that pop-up, they try to have me go to a different search result for a different hotel and do the whole dance over again. But whatever you do, be authoritative. Establish authority, whether you're selling your product, your consultancy time, anything else, make sure that people believe you. And I'm trying to establish authority right here. I'm on stage or not. That gives me a certain authority. Then in the beginning, I had these brain pictures. I mixed in some medical terms. That must mean I know what I'm talking about, right? I activate your brain by telling stories. In fact, I started by saying, let me tell you a story, which puts your brain into receiving mode. But I'm not a psychologist. I just write a lot of books. You don't have to be psychologists either. I'm just a business owner wanting to sell his product. I'm co-founder of AppSignal, the best Ruby on Rails error tracking and performance monitoring tool out there. And my name is Roy Domei. You should totally follow me on Twitter because 3,000 people just like you can't be wrong. Thank you very much.