Jul 8, 2022
Before I introduce you to this
week's guest, I want to take a moment to celebrate a very special
anniversary...two days before this episode airs, on July 6, 2022,
we celebrated the four-year anniversary of The Brainy Business
Podcast! Four years, 212 episodes (including this one, of course)
and we are also dangerously close to 600,000 downloads of the
podcast from over 170 countries, which is so awesome! (Pretty
confident this episode will push us over that
threshold…)
I am so excited to introduce you
to Dr. Daniel Crosby. In this episode, we talk a little about his
books and the work he does in behavioral science around investing,
which is very cool and so relevant. Investing is a time when we
tend to throw logic out the window and the subconscious runs a bit
rampant. But the main reason he is here today is that he recently
had a tweet go viral.
It had nothing to do with his
work, and seemed like a fascinating opportunity to hear what it was
like to create a tweet like that and live in the space of something
everyone says they want -- to go viral -- and see what it has done
for him personally, for his business, outlook...and any insights on
what this says about human behavior that we can keep in mind for
all the application in business. As I'm sure you can appreciate,
this is so relevant to his work in investing and how people will
randomly jump on one bandwagon over another and invest because the
herd is doing so even when they haven't done their own research.
Check out the episode to hear him tell you all about his viral
tweet!
Show Notes:
- [00:48] Two days before this
episode airs, on July 6, 2022, we celebrated the four-year
anniversary of The Brainy Business Podcast!
- [02:35] In the episode today,
we talk a little about Daniel’s books and the work he does in
behavioral science around investing, which is very cool and so
relevant.
- [05:40] Daniel shares about
himself, his background, and the work he does.
- [07:31] He loves studying human
behavior and thinking deeply about why people do the things that
they do but he didn’t want to do it in a clinical
context.
- [08:57] He has two popular
books: The Behavioral
Investor and the
Laws of
Wealth.
- [11:03] The
Laws of Wealth
is his “ten commandments of
investor behavior” and it talks about the power of behavioral
principles.
- [12:50] The Behavioral Investor
is a deeper dive into externalities
that are incredibly important but often
overlooked.
- [14:40] Dr. Crosby’s top
investment tips: automate, have a financial process, and get a
third-party opinion on decisions.
- [16:02] One of the reasons
folks have such a hard time investing is because it is so
counterintuitive.
- [17:40] Our herding instinct
does not serve us well in investing.
- [20:38] Daniel’s went viral
with a tweet.
- [22:17] When he figured out
what was causing his tooth pain he decided he needed to make better
health decisions and gave up Diet Coke.
- [23:44] He snarkily tweeted
that he had given up Diet Coke over a month ago and he didn’t have
any of the joys people told him he would receive.
- [24:39] Elon Musk responded to
his tweet and it went crazy with over 32 million views and over
half a million likes and retweets.
- [26:34] Part of what made his
tweet go so viral was that there were at least two camps chiming in
the comments, especially Diet Coke addicts. It also went viral on
TikTok and Instagram.
- [28:12] It struck something
powerful in two very different groups of people.
- [28:39] The most fascinating
piece to him was follower count because he initially lost thousands
of followers and then he ended up about where he
started.
- [29:55] His analytics showed
that he gained 87 followers from a tweet that 32 million people saw
in one day. It shows that going viral in an off-brand way doesn’t
do much for you.
- [32:28] We spend so much time
thinking about going viral and then it often doesn’t help
much.
- [33:42] It was uncomfortable
for him to have the heat turned up that high and know that many
people were looking at him.
- [35:40] He decided not to use
the viral tweet for self-promotion or business because the content
was very different.
- [36:32] Melina shares an
article that she recently wrote for Inc. about Brand Lessons from
the Michelob Ultra Guy.
- [39:18] Daniel shares about the
Ocean Spray guy and his interaction with an intern at Diet Coke. He
got a 24-pack and 2 six-packs of free soda.
- [42:08] Usually we expect viral
posts to be over the top. His tweet was surprising, it was funny
and still vanilla.
- [44:53] There is nothing so low
stakes on the internet that people can’t make a big deal about it.
It gave him the sense of the power of a crowd so it actually made
him go into his shell a bit.
- [47:24] Melina shares her
closing thoughts.
- [47:52] Melina shares Daniel’s
full viral tweet.
- [49:02] We as humans feel this
need to strive for that silver bullet...the one thing that will
change everything, but in reality, it is a lot of little things
that add up to a life and business that makes a
difference.
- [50:45] Don't sit around hoping
and lamenting over that one thing that could change everything.
Instead, focus on one thing you can do each day to get a little bit
closer to your goals and show up where it counts, so people can
rely on you and your content.
- [51:44] Whenever you are
listening, will you pay it forward and share an episode with a
friend? If you love the Brainy Business, let's share it with more
people from around the world who would love to be a little more
brainy. None of this would be possible without you, so thank you
again for listening, subscribing, sharing, rating, and leaving
reviews. I appreciate you!
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