 The learning, you know, we should, as people, never be closed off, you know, to learning new things. Hello, intelligent beings of this marvellous planet. Welcome to the 42 Courses podcast and thanks for listening. Louise Ward is the co-founder of the Behavioral Science Club on LinkedIn. Each week, the group speaks to the leading speakers and authors from the field of behavioral science. The club only started in June 2020 but already has over 4,000 members. Louise has been in market research for 30 years, also represents Ireland, the World Admin Summit and is a mentor. And if that's not enough, Louise is also one of the top students on 42 courses, currently at sixth position on the Global Leaderboard. All in all, an amazing person and one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I'm really delighted to speak to Louise Ward. Hello, Louise. Hi, Brent. Thank you so much for inviting me along. Thank you for your time. Great stuff. So Louise, explain to people what you do in your normal everyday life and then we'll get on to behavioral science. Super. Yeah, so I'm a market researcher. I've worked in market research for a very long time now. I fell into it by accident out of school. My dad worked in advertising and I hadn't got the most spectacular exam results. I was thinking of doing, believe it or not, I was interested in becoming a probation officer. And my dad is a man of very few words, never ever judged anything I've done, but it was the little bit of advice he gave me. He said, Louise, it's not the most glamorous job. And he brought home from the advertising agency a book which listed all of the market research agencies in the UK. And I wrote to all of the market research agencies in London and got an interview and got my first job working for a company called Milpro, which was a medical market research agency. And I must say, they gave me a really fantastic grounding. I went into the field office. So there you're right on the ground as it were managing the interviewers out in the field. I've since then always advocated for the concept of moving around departments and understanding what every department did because half of the challenge in an industry is that when you join on a graduate program and go straight in at a certain level, let's say junior research exec, not understanding how the work is done on the ground loses so much subsequent understanding. So I always advocated for that, the moving about departments and understanding all the people who are working on the ground with exactly what involved. Wow, really interesting. And that was in London, but you've got the map of the world behind you there. Where are you now? Yeah, I'm in Dublin now we came my husband is Irish and we came over when my first son was born. So all of my four children brought up or grown up Irish, even though they still completely tease me about my accent and my random things that they say oh that's so English mom. They're half English, but they're not English when you go up in Ireland. They're a very strong Irish identity. Well you have little inflections of Irish in your accent these days. I've been here nearly 30 years now. Okay, so we are talking because you are a person on the scene in behavioral science so let's get into that. What first got you into behavioral science? I think it sounds so jazzy Brent. I absolutely fell into the subject again I think I have a tendency to falling into things unplanned. Maybe that's the reality of how our lives work I don't know. Right back at the start of lockdown when we were all trying to find new ways of doing things and of course everything then started to become a reality of the events that had been booked to be in person then came into an online version. And Nudge Stock very quickly adapted and put on their first online behavioral science festival. They've subsequently done the second one which is much more polished. During the behavioral science festival which I hadn't heard of Nudge Stock, but I knew Ogildi from the advertising. Oh this sounds really interesting. I don't know what this is, but I'm going to sign up. And I was just blown away. So interesting. It was so different. I've never come across this before. And yet at the same time I think a lot of people in behavioral science would say it was new to me but there were so many aspects of it that were familiar. I don't know which field you're coming from. But the thing that particularly took me was that I was being introduced to all of these new speakers who had written books. I was like oh now they look fantastic. So I started putting together a list in LinkedIn. And it was just a post saying watching Nudge Stock, here's a list of the books of the speakers. And it just gained amazing traction. I was a bit surprised. As we were watching the behavioral science festival, there's all the fantastic chat going on which is the way that good online events go these days. So you can get involved and add the link in for the book. And in the chat somebody said oh that would make a great subject for a book club. And yeah and Prakash Sharma who's my co-host in behavioral science club was chatting along and listening to the speakers and saw this conversation going on. Well, unbeknownst to me Prakash had for a while been looking to he's a behavioral scientist in India with a thousand and one stories. And he'd been looking to do a podcast or do something. And he was like oh you know is that what I want to do. And when he saw the suggestion of the book club and he saw my interest in the book. He went straight way into LinkedIn and opened up a group in LinkedIn. Told me what he'd done. And there were about four of us like great we've got a group. He soon took traction he asked me if I'd managed group, which I agreed to. And one of the first people who was chatting with us in the group Tony Navarra in the state. He said well why don't we have as our first book. Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. Yeah, I neither heard of Rory Sutherland or he might have been a big shot at the time but I certainly haven't heard of him. And he said well listen it was hosted by Ogilvy and told me he was the vice chair of Ogilvy so I said fantastic. So we chose Alchemy as our first book in the book club. There's probably about 40 members now. Wow, this is really great. And I just had the idea that Ogilvy, maybe the PR department might like to know that there was a group of guys who had set up this group. Because we've chosen Rory's book I thought they might be interested in knowing this. So I rambled up an email to PR Ogilvy. So he might like to know there's 40 enthusiastic people who've chosen Rory's book as their first book. And I suppose this is the thing that escalated it to make it become what it very quickly became, which was through Rory's response to that, which was that very quickly he got back to us, told us how flat he was. He recorded a short video for us which says there were about 100 members. And it just really kick started things because I think I had had no idea or understanding of what a difference it would make to say that our first guest speaker was going to be Rory Sutherland. And the kind of kudos that then gave it for other people to say it must be something which it wasn't at the time. Yeah, so that really, really made a difference to have Rory come along as our first speaker and as you know he's a marvelous speaker and we just had a really great time. And was that the very first book that you personally read on behavioral science. Yes, that was my introduction to behavioral science. And I had it both as the audio book and I had a copy of the book. Me too. I'd go off walking each day with Rory in my ear and come back and his voice is very much present in the book and it's very funny and he has little end notes which so much show his particular personality in the book. But it was a great introduction to the subject. And in many ways I think took away any of the sort of possibilities of a sort of fear that I might have had that coming into a subject I knew nothing about, because he makes the subject so accessible. Once you know that behavioral science is something possibly as simple as re-labeling a dish of carrots as a crunchy fresh carrots and putting them in the right place as you approach the salad bar or meal. Once you realize it can be something as simple as that you just think oh well this is this is for everybody and this is such a simple concept. Complications can be brought into it it can be made much more sophisticated, but it's something that we're almost all doing all the time without realizing and it's bringing a science to it to measure it which I just thought, oh my God that's just so simple and yet so appealing. I just really took me from the start. I'm just writing a post today about my first book that when I started my behavioral science journey which was actually Richard shot in the Joyce factory. And yeah it's just all those lovely wow moments and of course of course it's like that there's little biases that you just don't even realize that. So I wanted to ask you a question about the behavioral science club because I attempted to join very early on and I got a message from you saying saying. I know exactly what you're going to say so let me just move on yeah let me just move on the story about what happened. So we've got Rory along and then I just being completely naive as to how important any of these people were I thought well if Rory's coming maybe we'll just invite all the authors and we'll make it much more of a we just thought we were going to chat between ourselves about the books which we still do often but so I just started rattling out emails to cast some steam and as you do. Everybody said yes it's like Jesus this is fantastic and I think Procash was a little bit shocked about the audacity of it all but still we went with it and as I say between. Going over a year now we've possibly had only one refusal. Yeah one person said no they couldn't do it. Oh I don't I don't like to say. I was just overwhelmed by people's willingness to give their time. I mean we're not completely naive in that we understand that it came at a time when many of the means for promoting. The books had sort of fallen by the wayside people weren't doing their usual circuits by the traveling around and book signing so it was another opportunity to get in front of their audience. But the situation that you have alluded to their brain was that as I said you know 40 members and then it was 100 members and I very much felt that I wanted to have a connection with the members. I was recognizing the names as they came up again and I still do send a personal message to every person who joins and we've got over 4000 members and as you said as it reached 500 I had a little bit of a crisis. I was chatting with percussionist like oh my God you know all this isn't quite what I thought I was going to be managing you know there's all these people and I feel like I want to be able to have a personal connection with all of them. How can you have a personal connection with so many people. So I started for cash with anticipating that I would well get over this little flutter said to me oh well you know do what you have to do, so I started sending this message, which is the one you receive brand which said that we had thought that we would possibly restrict membership. 500 members. Now, you know all of these various behavioral science techniques that people might use to make something appeal more to say it's restricted didn't actually cross my mind at the time but all of a sudden I was getting all these messages, asking basically what people had to do. And somebody even said to me oh well I'm a very good friend of Rory and I'm sure that he can do something about me getting into the club which we thought was absolutely hysterical. So. Well I did send a plea saying I've read all of these books and watched all Rory's YouTube videos and. Yeah, I think a few people afterwards seem to suggest that you might have done it on purpose but it was clearly a little bit of a flutter on my kind of not really feeling that I was back I was in control of things but I guess soon explain things to me that don't worry you don't need to hold absolutely everybody's hands and logo by first name and what they're little quirky. And it's just gone from strength strength. It has it's a phenomenal success and congratulations for it and like you said about about managing it I mean how much time does it take up for you each week. Well we check the group page. I mean I check it every day because there'd always be another sort of half a dozen people who've asked can they join so I don't like to leave people for too long. But that's not really only a case of then just sort of clicking to let them join because I said then I send a message to them which gives them all the details about how to join that how to do this. I mean it might be a cut and paste but sometimes you're cutting and pasting it 20 times a day you know so sometimes it takes more time than others and then of course depending on as you know yourself for a podcast depending who the guest is then depends on how much background time you want to spend preparing to speak it might mean you're reading the person's book. It might mean you're not doing anything else or books absolutely might mean you're not doing anything more maybe than just checking their profile, reading a few articles just to get a feel for the person so it depends who the speaker is. But if you're a sort of enthusiastic person and keen to learn it doesn't seem like it's working anyway because it's just a pleasure to meet a new person every single week and learn something new from them. It isn't but that's that's something that just really intrigued me about you is because I mean on if you follow if anyone follows you on LinkedIn or Twitter. I mean, my God the amount of books that you get through I mean, do you are you scanning it like light speed are you reading every sentence. We just had a conversation about yeah we've just got a conversation about this in the in the house, actually, because I was saying that when you read fiction. You don't read it that fast because you know a key plot change could come up at the bottom of page 74 and if you miss that you've missed the whole thing of the story. So it's essential when you're reading fiction to really unless you think oh Jesus this is a lot of description about a few trees I can scan over that but it is essential to read the whole book. I don't think that's always the case. For example, I was saying to my daughter that I was reading a recent book and this certain subject came up and then the author started talking about something I was like, oh, I know what he's talking about he was giving the example of such and such and such and such and oh, I know what that is and in that case, you can skip on a few pages, but it's not so essential to absolutely be reading. Okay. Yeah, every single aspect of the book, but there's only so much you can skim read I mean to get the the gist of a book you've got to really read most of it. Well, yeah, I mean if anyone is a bookworm and they and they want to get into behavioral science and just follow Louise on LinkedIn and Twitter because it's yeah that's like the bibliography. So, and I think maybe at the same time, you kind of got into 42 courses that was probably through a Rory recommendation right. Absolutely absolutely so the two things that absolutely hand in hand Brent, which is that, as you know 42 courses sponsored both of the online festivals for a nut to stop. Yeah, and I'm not sure if I had looked at it before. But anyway that certainly gave me the interest to to look it up. And as you say the most popular course on 42 courses is Rory's original he has a, there's a second one now which is excellent, which I can recommend to anybody, but his original. He has a science course on 42 courses I think is one of your most popular ones. Yeah, and is a fabulous introduction to the subject. And as you say Brent and once I've done that I was absolutely hooked. Yeah, because this is a great reason to talk to you just alone is that you're on the leaderboard with global leaderboard in the top 10 or top five no. Well, I mean I've had this conversation with with Chris your esteemed us Chris Rawlinson, which is to say to him that I've done a lot of different types of online courses, but none of them are like 42 courses and I really do feel that he created a very unique style of of running the courses of designing them and as he has explained to me that he couldn't find exactly what he wanted and so that as opposed to other courses you do you start to recognize the format because they're using a design template he particularly created this for his needs and you know I think it absolutely pays full dividend because for the user of the course. It absolutely ticks all the boxes you're getting constant feedback from your progress that you feel that somebody is alongside you. It does have that person touch because you see the acknowledgement from the person who has marked your particular commitment if it's something that needs to be submitted, and it's not something that needs to be submitted, you can then see the feedback from the other people who have taken part in the course, you can comment at the bottom and create some kind of I think as well all of the sort of meta links as it were all the other ways in which if you're in a particular chapter that has the links either to watch the can, winning advertisements or linking to another article if that's something that you're interested in, you can just go off in any direction down the rabbit hole. Yeah, to particularly look into that area so the extent to which you use the course is up to you, you can just chug through, if that's all you want to take from it. But there's so much more potential to create more interest for yourself if that's the particular area you want to develop. Yeah, and I speak to students like on average one a day actually all around the world and they all say that exactly the same as that that it's, it just opens up a world in each course. Well, thank you, thank you for saying that and Chris will just be delighted to hear all that. I mean, actually I was doing one of the older courses most I mean I work for the company and I was doing one of the courses after work last night. No escape. But it is really motivating when you finish a lesson and then you get the, the meme, you know, and which says like oh you've done six correct answers on the row and all this kind of stuff. And yeah Chris did spend a long time he spent years three years researching how to make engaging online, motivating learning. He has he's really cracked it yeah some good stuff so but anyway, that's that's not a hard sell I just wanted to say it because that's how I feel about it but I wanted to ask you, you've you've obviously done a lot of the courses because you're on that global top 10. So like is there one that is like, you wouldn't have thought that was your kind of subject at first but then you thought that's a course that you know everyone should know about is there anything, anyone that you would like to. Yeah, so there's one that particularly jumped out at me which is the happy cause with my Mike, Mike, why king in Denmark. Yeah, from the, from the happiness Institute. And I started that course, and even just from the title, I thought oh my God, the happy cause I thought it was going to be some kind of sort of hippie dip, you know, listen, you know, I'm always open to new things. Look, and also I just before that I done the course is, I'm sorry, I've completely forgotten her name, the Yale professor who does the happy course is to come back to me. And the thing that shocked me about this course was that it was scientific. So straight away, it launches in the measurements that are taken by this happiness Institute in Denmark, the way in which they measure happiness with their surveys consistently year on year working with other governments, and it sort of took me And I made me realize how, even just from the title of the course I'd completely misconstrued what was involved and I've recommended it to several people. I actually introduced colleague of my to Mike, why King and we had a joint call because I was so impressed and said no you've got to meet with person. So that was really great. Now the other one that didn't surprise me in content is the course on remind me of the name FinTech, sorry the FinTech course. Yeah. And again, this surprised me because I didn't expect to be interested in it but thought I'll do it anyway. And I just found it absolutely fascinating such a great introduction to the whole concept of just understanding Bitcoin and all of that terminology that we're reading so much about today, which in a way it's easy to skim over articles and be reading terms that have come into our everyday language through FinTech, but not actually saying to yourself, do I really know what that means. And realizing somebody asked me, maybe I wouldn't be able to explain it. And that's exactly what this course does. It absolutely takes the part of basic concepts of FinTech, right from the outset, and explains the key terms, the concept of mining all of this stuff that you read about. And as I say, when someone stops you just hold on a moment, you would have to admit, no, I've no idea what that's all about. And that's exactly what the course does. So I'd really recommend that one. Well, great that it opened that door for you as well, but you've sold it to me. I haven't done that one yet. So I'm going to get into the FinTech. Oh, great, Bren. I highly recommend it. And let's just let's just jump back to behavioral science because I'm sure people because you're an influencer in the field now like what are the conferences that might be coming up that you are particularly excited about what about killed economics and killed Kenny. The funny thing about all of these things is that conferences that you thought yourself, oh, I'd love to go there. Now, we all have the opportunity to attend these and even as we start to reopen and things open in person. Most hosts of these events have got the cop on that they've spent possibly two years with virtual audiences and they shouldn't say goodbye to these audiences. During the start of lockdown, I signed up to a lot of the Financial Times online festivals, which were absolutely fantastic, such a diverse range of speakers and the excitement of being in my office and watching a live conversation with the French president. I was absolutely beyond myself. I think that's an example of what we've had the opportunity. I don't know if everybody realizes what a privilege it's been to be able to sign in to an event that I would have paid over 100 sort of euro to attend or more and travel and just be able to sit in your office. You are watching these people live, you know, it's not a recording, it's not, it's not even the same as a live interview on television because in most cases, there's a potential that your question could be asked of this person. So I think really it's, in a way, if people have engaged with it and taken full advantage of it, it's possibly been a very unique time culturally. I heard somebody call it the third renaissance recently, because they were saying, you know, not only have gone beyond just being sort of a blog that somebody might pick up or a podcast that might be picked up, but this whole concept of really being able to engage and create something yourself to just jump on any minute and there we are you've got an audience. Yeah, it doesn't really matter if there's only 30 people there, you know, you're still able to broadcast an event of live Twitter now just on sound. Yeah, there's also a new platform set up in India called Mensa. I don't know if you've come across that brand. I've heard of it. Yeah, so we had the host on behavioral science club and this is another sort of concept, a little bit like Clubhouse, but it's only 20 minutes. It's like the Twitter or Clubhouse, you know, you just jump on, you can talk about anything for 20 minutes. And I think it's all part of this sort of, you know, this, this renaissance. If you feel anything's possible really, which is a really great liberating feeling. I'm waiting for the platform that comes on and you have to do a conference in 20 seconds and we'll join that one friend. Okay. And final word, like you put a lot of energy, commitment, focus, all of that into the behavioral science club and you have had this fantastic success from it. But what what do you get back from it as a reward because we're really interested in it for two courses with in the background in the far future we're doing like a course on resilience and all this kind of stuff you know these the next century that people need and empathy and all this it's all involved in what you're doing so, but it's so rewarding I'm sure right what what do you get back from it. To be describing it as what do I get back from it. You know, that's when you start doing something you don't go into it. You know, it's a job you're getting paid but you don't go into something you know pick up a book and say what am I going to get out of it. So that's the reality of how humans are. But, you know, if I say to somebody, well I'm co hosting this group where every Saturday we get to meet a new person, and I have the privilege of introducing them to another sort of 60 people who attended I can ask them whatever they want. It might be that I read their book for somebody to then still be saying but what do you get out of that you know to speak for itself the privilege of being able to speak with these people. When you yourself consider yourself to why should they give me their time. Why should they. And so, I think it sort of just thinks for itself and it's the learning aspect of it. You know, we should people never be closed off, you know, to learning new things. When somebody says they feel they know all there is to know about a subject will won't be tied that person because people who think they know everything of the very people who, you know, don't know anything and until we say, and acknowledge that we don't know anything. You know, there's no, you know, that's, that's, that's the time in which you can start to go forward and start to learn when you acknowledge that you know nothing. And maybe it was a benefit to me to come into the subject knowing absolutely nothing. I was a real tabular raster as it were. And so, you know, nothing could be too much information when you have nothing. Great stuff and it's, I have to say, there's been a real privilege speaking to you. I love following your stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter. I wish I could go to more actual behavioral science club live but Saturday is a bit sacred for me and my wife, and I'm not allowed to kind of like being doing work. Absolutely. I like watching them on YouTube. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. And yeah, we're just, we're just grateful that people still turn up every week to join us. We have regular people obviously we recognize now who's been joining us. You then notice other people sort of come away for a little while and they might spring back and it's really great to see them. There's always new people joining and who knows how long things will last in a very strange time. Maybe people will completely lose the runners themselves and say, well, look, I'm absolutely sick of going online on a Saturday. It's the last thing I want to do. You know, you never have a definite period of time. And if it's something that comes to an end, so be it. But while we're all enjoying it. Well, you're having a great run. Enjoy it for the time that's in it. Yeah, that's my attitude. Long may it succeed. Thank you so much, friend. Thank you so much. Been such a great time talking to you. Really inspiring. And continued success with the behavioral science club. I'm 42 courses from new courses. So if you want to join us in behavioral science club, we meet every Saturday for PM UK time for one hour. I try to be strict with the time but for cash like to always ask our guests, you might stay for another 15 minutes or so. We never quite want to finish. And we're a LinkedIn group. So if you just go on to LinkedIn and search behavioral science club, then you'll find the group and I'll click you through to join. So thanks so much, friend. We now click privilege talking to them. Lovely. I'll put all the link in the show notes. I'll put the link in the show notes for everything. Thanks so much, friend. That's great. Really, really, really great. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye now. So if you go on to LinkedIn, it's behavioral science club and that's behavioral with the English spelling with OU in the spelling there. And on Twitter, they are at B-C-I club. B-E-H-S-C-I club. So follow Louise and Prakash there and go along to their Saturday sessions on Zoom to see the absolute top speakers in behavioral science. And thanks for listening today. Until next time.