Introduction to The Brainy Business Podcast
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode one of The Brainy Business, understanding the psychology of why people buy. This episode is about unlocking the secrets of the brain. Ready? Let’s get started.
Announcer: You are listening to The Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here. Here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
The Brain as the Final Frontier
Melina Palmer: Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer, and I want to take a minute to welcome you to The Brainy Business podcast. Thank you so much for being here today and taking time out of your life to learn with me. I am super, super excited to chat with you every week and give you insights into how the human brain actually works, how it makes buying decisions, and how you can use that in your business. The human brain is amazingly complex and interesting, and even though we all have one, it turns out we don’t really understand how they work. There was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Golden Age of Neuroscience has arrived.” And in 2014 they said, we have learned more about the thinking brain in the last ten to 15 years than in all of previous human history. And really, that’s true. And it’s amazing to think about. And there is so much that’s happened since then. Since 2014, we’ve had another four years of learning. And this has really been when the field of behavioral economics has started to pop up and when it’s being much more commonly recognized and you’re seeing more of it as different areas are really digging into the brain and what it does and how it works and all these things that are just fascinating. For me, I consider our brains to be the final frontier. You know, they said space, at one point, you know, space was the final frontier. I would agree. It’s still, there’s still some of that as well as our oceans. But really, the brain is the final frontier to me. And that’s one reason why there is a rocket ship in The Brainy Business logo. I love that that’s there. And I just want to give a shout out really quickly to Justin with 52 Card Media. He did such an amazing job with The Brainy Business branding and logo and business cards, website, strategy, collaboration. He has been awesome to work with. I would absolutely recommend him to anyone, and I’m just so beyond thrilled the pieces that I’ve gotten from him. If you love this logo too, we’ll have a little mini, like clap yay. Thanks Justin for getting that all done.
Bridging Academia and Business
Melina Palmer: So thinking about that final frontier of the brain, we’re constantly finding new things and rules of how the brain works, and this is a space where we can test and try so many things. It’s really fascinating to understand how our brains make decisions. And I think that this shouldn’t just be an area for academics. I want to bring these concepts out of dense research papers and journals and translate them into actionable, usable, bite sized pieces for busy business professionals and entrepreneurs like you. And that’s what you’re going to get on this podcast. Typically one new concept a week, like bite sized chunks, if you will, with all the information you need and none of that extra stuff that you don’t. Proper research requires and relies on things like variance, standard deviation, and statistical significance. But I promise you will rarely, if ever, hear me talk about them in this podcast. I will link to studies that I talk about in the show notes. And if you want to geek out with me over some of the official stuff, I’m all over that. I do enjoy digging into statistical significance and standard deviation and mean and median and all that great stuff, but I don’t think it needs to be here. So if you want to geek out over that with me, send an email to melina@thebrainybusiness.com and let’s chat. We’ll have a conversation,
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but in my opinion, in a podcast like this, we need some fun. So if you want a light hearted, conversational approach, I’m your gal.
Episode Focus: Unlocking the Secrets of the Brain
Melina Palmer: Now that that’s out of the way, what am I going to cover in this episode? If you remember, this episode, episode one, and again, thank you for being here with me on this inaugural episode of The Brainy Business. This episode is called unlocking the secrets of the brain. And in many ways, that’s what the entire Brainy Business podcast is dedicated to. It’s what behavioral economics is all about, and it is what I am just so passionate about. But this episode, I’m really going to dig into foundations of that, which is where the podcast came from. So it made sense to call it. Call it that. So, first, in this episode, I’m going to talk about three things. The first thing is why you should care about behavioral economics and the impact that it has on your business. Second, I will tell you a little bit about how the brain actually works and give you a foundation to start from which is useful for the entire podcast listening experience. And I will make sure over in future episodes I will be reminding you of these things. It’s not like if you don’t hear it here or remember it from this one time that you’re never going to hear it again. But it’s just a great place to start with the foundation. And finally, this, is especially for those of you who I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally yet. I will provide a little background on myself and why I am qualified to share this information with you.
Understanding Behavioral Economics
Melina Palmer: So, first off, we are talking about why you should care about behavioral economics and the impact it has on your business. Now trust me, I know that the phrase behavioral economics is by no means a sexy one. My background is in marketing and branding, and so this is a term I really struggle with. It explains what the field is, sort of, but it can turn a lot of people off, and it did for me at first, too. I’ll get into that story a little bit later when I talk about who I am in part three here, but when I first heard the name of the field, I was sure it was not for me. Luckily I got past that name and I’m now a die hard advocate of the field itself, even though I think the name could use a little bit of work. When I am out speaking, consulting, or just networking with people, the question I get most often is, what is behavioral economics? As a side note, it’s my personal mission to ensure that so many people know about this, that one day I won’t be able to say that anymore. I won’t be able to say it’s the most common question I get asked. And in fairness, it’s usually more along the lines of at a networking event or something where people say, well, what do you do? And when I say that, I help people understand the psychology of why people make buying decisions and that I have, or I’m finishing up my master’s in behavioral economics, people say in what? Or what’s that? Because they don’t know what it is and can’t even really repeat it back to me even after I’ve just said the name because it’s a little bit complex. So alas, for now, what is behavioral economics is the most common question that I get asked, and I always start my presentations with this information. What I like to say is, if traditional economics and psychology had a baby, you would have behavioral economics. It’s a relatively new field and it’s been gaining traction and momentum in recent years. There are foundations actually for behavioral economics that reach back as far as 1979, but most of the work has been done only in the past 20 years or so. There have now been three Nobel prizes in economics that have gone to people within the field itself. The most recent was in 2017 for a man who actually won. His name is Richard Thaler, and he won for his contributions to behavioral economics from a behavioral economist. And that’s the first time that’s ever happened. It’s a really big deal. And I have been saying now for years as I’ve been talking about this, that this is a field on the rise. You will be seeing this around. You will see behavioral economics popping up at, conferences you’re attending, whether it’s because I’m speaking at them, or around in articles and things like that. It’s getting a lot of momentum. Thaler winning that Nobel last year
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is going to be a big catalyst for the field, for sure. So. And then you can say, oh, yeah, I’ve heard about. I know so much about that. I’ve heard Melina talk about that all the time on The Brainy Business podcast. So you are ahead of the curve. Way to go, you.
The Predictability of Human Behavior
Melina Palmer: So, where did the field come from, and why is it needed? Why do we need behavioral economics instead of just psychology and economics as separate fields? The problem with traditional economic models is that they assume logical people making rational decisions. And fortunately, or unfortunately, that is not the world that we live in. More often than not, people making decisions that are decidedly illogical or irrational, meaning the economic models are often wrong and they don’t accurately predict behavior. If you’ve ever done a focus group or a survey or gone out when you were thinking about launching a product or a brand or whatever, changing up something in your services, and you asked a bunch of people, hey, if I did this thing, would you buy? And they said, yes, I’m so excited. I would absolutely buy your toothpaste if it has baking soda in it, and then you put baking soda in the toothpaste, and at the end of the day, nobody buys it with whatever your product happens to be, of course, that you understand what I’m talking about here, people. If you’ve been frustrated or confused by people saying one thing and doing another, you know what I’m talking about. There is a reason why my signature talk that I give most often is called “Consumers Are Weird,” which is because our brains make really strange decisions, and we don’t do what we say we’re going to do most of the time, unfortunately, especially when it comes to buying so frustrated with this phenomenon. Gradually, over time, psychologists and economists started working together or stepping into each other’s fields. These pioneers were looking for some sort of explanation or a common thread to help explain and accurately predict behavior. And just like that, I put that in quotes there because there’s a lot that happened. But just like that, the new field of behavioral economics was born. Through many studies, research projects, tests, conversations, considerations, and questions, the field has been able to find many ways our brains all tend to act. Rules of thumb we tend to use as a species, and behavior we have learned over time. When I’m talking on this podcast, not that, just this episode, but when I’m speaking about behavioral economics in general and these rules of thumb, the really fascinating thing that has been found is these trends, these concepts, the way our brains work is rooted in who we are as a species in general. These are real universal truths to the way that we as humans make buying decisions now, but really any sort of decisions or choices. And so they tend to cross over gender, they go over geographic location, other demographics, age, things like that don’t really impact these decision making rules that our brains have learned over time. And, the best part about that is that while people may not be logical, they are very predictable. And that is something that behavioral economics has been able to discover. And then now what we’re able to use to predict behavior. So, understanding those concepts and trends that I will discuss with you in The Brainy Business podcast, or if we ever have the opportunity to work together one on one, or if you come to one of my sessions, it’s going to allow you to increase return on your investments, create more interest in your business, and turn more of those interested observers into paying customers. Sound good? Does that sound like something you want more people to be interested in your business and more of them to go ahead and buy, then you are in the right spot. You picked the right podcast to be listening to. That is what we’re here to accomplish for you and your business.
How the Brain Works: Conscious vs. Subconscious
Melina Palmer: And that leads me to the second thing that I told you we would cover in this episode, a little bit about how the brain actually works to give you a foundation to start from. So what I want you to do at this point is to just take a second. I know I’ve said a lot of things, so clear your mind a little bit and take a quick second to stop
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and consider your own brain. I’ll give you a minute, not a full minute, of course, because that would be a really boring podcast. But when you think if you’re considering your brain, what do you actually know about it? What’s it doing right now? How does it work? Essentially, when we think about our brains, anything that we can relate to or know about is part of this conscious or cognizant part of our brain. This is when you are aware of thinking, or you’re thinking about thinking. I know that sounds like a strange phrase off the cuff, but I have found it to be the best way to help people understand the concept. So anytime that you are thinking about thinking and you can relate to what your brain is doing, that’s that conscious cognizant part of your brain. As a quick side note, for anyone who has already done some pre reading or research into behavioral economics, you’ll notice I use the terms subconscious and conscious instead of Kahneman’s system one and system two. Daniel Kahneman is a brilliant man, and without his groundbreaking research with Amos Tversky, the field I love may never have emerged. If you remember back to the beginning of the episode, I talked about research done in 1979, which really kicked off the field, and that was done by Kahneman and Tversky. Kahneman, a psychologist, actually won his Nobel Prize in economics back, it was the first for the field back in 2002. Again, he’s phenomenal. His book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, has really amazing insights and stories. But it is, admittedly, it’s quite dense. I know I have a friend who put this into a book club, and it was not. It’s just. It’s heavy. The information is fascinating, and I know quite a few people who have intended to read it. But it’s just, there’s a lot. There’s a lot there. But for me, I have made the strategic decision in my business when I’m speaking, when I’m consulting here on the podcast, I don’t use Kahneman’s terms of system one and system two, because I don’t think they resonate well for people outside the field. You know, I think they’re easily confused, where if I’m telling a story or explaining how something works, and I say system one, and you might think, which one was that again? And you get sort of hung up on the nomenclature instead of what we’re actually trying to do and learn, it’s just too difficult to differentiate between if you don’t use the terms all the time, like those of us who get degrees in this area. So on the other hand, subconscious and conscious are terms we’ve all heard and are close enough to help everyone really understand and know what I’m talking about intuitively when I’m giving examples. So you can focus on those lessons and applying them instead of trying to remember which system is which.
The Power of the Subconscious Brain
Melina Palmer: So now that that’s out of the way, back to how our brains work, as I said, anything you can relate to in what your brain is doing, when you are thinking about thinking, you’re in your conscious space. We’ve all heard about subconscious thinking, but how much of your brain’s processing is done subconsciously, would you guess? 25, 50? 75%. The highest number I’ve seen quoted for this was in a great book called The Buying Brain. And The Buying Brain put the number at 99.999%. Can you believe that? That would mean that only zero, zero 1% of our brains processing is done on a conscious level, which is just mind boggling. Haha. Pun intended to me. And for any of you naysayers out there, the lowest study I’ve seen puts the number at 95%. So I sort of split the difference. And for the sake of convenience, I tend to go with 99% and say 99% of your brain’s processing is done on a subconscious level and with that of your customers as well, which means your brain is doing a whole lot of things, chugging along, making decisions, doing things that you know nothing about. And to help really relate and understand to this concept, a lot of people talk about the
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brain as if it were a computer. You say a computer can process information in bits per second, things like that. It’s not exactly the same, but if you were to use that analogy, The Buying Brain also tells us that our senses and the subconscious brain can process about 11 million bits of information every second. So again, the brain, the subconscious part of our brain, can process about 11 million bits of information every second. And our conscious brain can do 40, period, the end 40, compared to 11 million. That is a pretty big gap. And what does that mean? It means your subconscious brain and that of your customers is making all those decisions behind the scenes. It’s an iceberg, is what it means, and you know nothing about what it’s doing, and you can’t really understand because your conscious and subconscious brain don’t really talk to each other. The subconscious brain doesn’t have a concept, really, for language. It’s driven by images, impulses and rules of thumb determined over time. If you think about small children that don’t have the ability to speak yet, they still are able to communicate. They can point at things they want, they know things they like and don’t like. And they have, they’re very territorial. They might make grunts or things like that to communicate and point, but they can’t say, that’s mine. Why did you take that other child, or, you know, brother, sister, mom, dad, whomever it is, but they’re able to communicate with you. And that’s a lot of how your subconscious brain works. It makes these decisions as if in the same way a small child would. And another question I get asked a lot is if this is like left brain and right brain. And it’s not. It’s also not that you have two separate systems, that when one is working, the other is turned off. It’s actually they’re both going at the same time. And I like to think of it more as the gatekeeper. Your subconscious brain, part of your brain, is more like the gatekeeper. It is constantly scanning your environment, taking in all the information around you all the time, and basically just saying, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, flag. And when it flags something as abnormal or not fitting into a previous rule, something that needs to be evaluated, it passes that along to your conscious brain for processing, which then steps up and says, all right, conscious brain is here. I’m working. I’m doing things. And you feel very accomplished that you are able to work on something, but it is just the little bit you’re doing, and your subconscious is still working and evaluating things around you. But when your conscious brain steps up to address whatever has been flagged by your subconscious brain, the conscious brain has to do really slow, focused work. Remember the 40 bits per second compared to 11 million. And that is where the title of Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, makes complete sense, right?. So these two systems are working in tandem all the time. And all of our environment is really led by this. One of the ways that I usually describe how the subconscious brain works is if you think about driving a car, when you first learned to drive a car, especially if it was a stick shift, it was very difficult process to go through. Where you’re thinking, are my hands at ten and two? And where are my mirrors? And which foot goes where? And what does this pedal do? And looking here, looking there, you’re very tense and focused on what’s happening, and it feels like everything’s happening faster than you want it to happen. And that’s because it’s in your conscious space. But today, when you drive, assuming that you’re over the age of 16 or you learn to drive more than, you know, six months ago, you are able to just breeze through all those things. They’re just happening normal. You know how to turn on your car. You know where you’re supposed to be. You backed out of your garage a bunch of times or whatever, it happens to be parked in this space, and it’s all very normal. You have your routine, what you do. But then if you get to a spot with really narrow lanes or a semi truck drives next to you, or it’s snowing outside, you might tense up a little bit and feel like things are slowing down a little bit. And that is because you’ve switched from subconscious to conscious to where that is where your conscious brain is having to focus its attention. So the subconscious was doing all the stuff it’s used to doing. Rule of thumb, this is how that works. And then, oh, flag something. We need to. We really need to pay attention right now
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because we’re in danger, and then you can keep moving. The other story I tell about this, which is also related to driving a car, is my car has one of the step emergency brakes, where you push down with your left foot, and my husband’s car has the pull e brake and the center console. And any time I drive my husband’s car, and even though I talk about this all the time, seriously, all the time, when I’m giving presentations or telling people about what I do, I bring this up a lot. And I always say that I think about my. When I’m driving another car, and I end up doing this sort of step to nowhere where I, like, fall forward and take a step with my left foot to undo the emergency brake and feel silly, because then I remember that it’s this e break in the middle. But my brain is so used to. My subconscious brain is used to getting me ready to go and drive the car, that that’s how it thinks of driving. And then when I sort of fall, my foot falls to the floor. Then I realize, oh, that something’s wrong that’s not there. And then I reach and look for the actual e brake. Like, if I’m in, a different car, like a rental car, or if I’m in my husband’s car, I think, come on, Melina, you know this. You thought about this. And then I pull the fix the emergency brake in the center console. So that is a little bit about how your brain is working, subconscious versus conscious. So they’re both constantly doing things albeit the. So the subconscious works much faster. And even though we don’t realize it or like to admit it, the subconscious brain is really running the show. It uses those rules of thumb that I’ve alluded to a little bit here to quickly process information, and it does a good job most of the time. I mean, we’re all still here. We haven’t been eaten by lions and gone as a species, so our brains are doing something right. But a lot of the times our brains make really strange leaps and guesses based on rules that really don’t apply or make sense for the situation, but it does so consistently and in a predictable manner. So when you think about, like I’ve said, this is done. Our brains have set these up as a species over a very long, you, know, hundreds of thousands, millions of years to set us up for the way that we make decisions as a species. You know, enough people got eaten by lions that we’ve learned to avoid them and things like that. But now our world changes so quickly. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast about how technology has changed our lives, if you think about, and you hear that obviously, all the time, but if you think about our environment and just what’s happened over the last 30 or 40 years even, and how much has changed, our brains can’t adapt that quickly. And old rules of thumb need to sort of be put into these new boxes and spaces. And the rules for fighting predators, whether you fight or flight, but addressing predators around you need to apply to new dangers around us, like ads all over social media and things like that. And you know, there’s a lot of information out there these days with our social media, television, phones, in this high speed world, everyone is exposed to, I heard a statistic, an average of 5000 brands and messages every single day, 5000 a day. And that’s a lot of information for our subconscious brains to be sifting through, not to mention all the other stimuli that’s around us.
Applying Behavioral Economics in Business
Melina Palmer: And so how can a brain, how can you expect your brain to evaluate and make decisions on important things, like the best mortgage to buy, or what shampoo to use, or who to follow on Instagram, or whether or not to like something enough to give it a heart on social media when it’s bogged down with all the stuff happening around us? But the good thing is we can use these rules of the brain to our advantage. So the way it does that, the way it knows, is by using these rules to take care of mundane decisions, and then it frees up your conscious brain that it only has to be tapped into every so often. So the good news is, if you know how people are going to make decisions, you can build your messaging off of that. And not in a smarmy or sneaky or unethical way, but in a really helpful communicative way. And really, when brands make their messaging simple and set it up in a way that it speaks to how the subconscious brain makes decisions, it’s easier for people to choose you. And that’s it. Make it simpler for people to buy communicate to the subconscious brain in the way it
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wants to be communicated to, and you will win. And that’s why I’m here to help you do just that. And that is what The Brainy Business podcast is going to help you do as well. With little tips every week. I, like I said, I’ll typically do one concept or topic and really round it out and give you applicable ways that you can use that information in your business, whatever it happens to be. And I will make sure to have examples from a whole range of areas throughout the podcast and its life.
Melina Palmer’s Journey into Behavioral Economics
Melina Palmer: So now that you have a little foundation into the field of behavioral economics and how our subconscious brains are running the show, I’m going to get to my final point of this episode, which is just a little bit about me and why I’m qualified to share this information with you. As I’ve said a couple of times in the episode, my name is Melina Palmer. My undergraduate degree and the bulk of my career has been in the world of marketing and branding, a lot of which was in the credit union space. Shout out to all my credit union members, employees, and advocates listening right now. So happy to have you here. Thank you for tuning in. And, it is actually relevant later on as I’m talking about how I got into behavioral economics, I would say that I can attribute with 100% certainty my finding this field when I did. I can tie back to my work in credit unions, and I will tell you why in just a minute. But further back, when I was completing my bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington. Go dogs. I remember toward the end of my courses, there was one section in one book in one class about consumer behavior and decision making, and reading about it, I was just enthralled. It was so incredibly interesting to me, and I was hooked right then, you know, in that class, which I think it was either my last term or maybe the second to last term. But I knew, you know, before I even completed my bachelor’s degree. I knew that I wanted to be learning more everything I could about the psychology behind decision making. And at that point, I started saying, you know, people are asking, what are you going to do after school? And some people were saying then they wanted to get mbas. You know, you’re asking about that. And I knew that an MBA wasn’t right for me. It’s right for so many people. It’s great program. But I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do, what I was meant to do and research. And I had said, you know, I’m obviously I’m getting a job and things like that, but when, when I do go back to school and get my master’s degree, I knew I was taking some time off. I said, it’s gonna be in consumer or behavioral psychology. That is what I want. And unfortunately, I found out pretty quickly that the program I was longing for did not exist anywhere. I called several universities over the years and inquired about which program I should enroll in to get the education that I was looking for. And the response that I always got was, you know, we don’t have a program like that, but you could create one if you want. My thought, which you might be having here now. And maybe over time, I got a little bit snarky and potentially had an actual response of this as I got frustrated. But something along the lines of, you know, if I knew what I needed to study enough to create my own program, I wouldn’t need to go to school. I wouldn’t have to pay you money to teach me a thing that I can teach myself. So discouraged, but not completely avoidant. I never really get rid of dreams once I have them. If I’ve set a goal, I’ll come back to it. But I put the dream on the shelf for a little while, and I focused on my work in marketing and branding, which I absolutely loved and was very successful at. We won lots of awards, and I really enjoyed my work, but something was always missing that was really nagging at me. And like I said, when I have a plan or a goal in mind, when I’ve decided I’m doing something, it just has to get done and it’s sitting there and I don’t forget about it. You know, it might not surprise you, especially those of you who know me personally, it might not surprise you to learn that I have always been an ambitious problem solver. And that’s where innovative programs and the world of researching new things, looking for new things, lifelong learning has always been important to me. My mom loves to tell a story that she got from my fourth grade teacher, who I remember her name was Misses Axburg, but Misses Axburg had told my mom a story about how I like to, how much I could stick to my guns. And my mom loves this story.
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I don’t remember this specific example, but I have a vivid memory of it now because my mom has told me about it. But apparently when Misses Axburg gave me a grade of a zero on an assignment, she said I didn’t turn in. It was, you know, she used to do the assignments where you had in elementary school. If you remember, it’s the long line of grades in a, just along the way. So it’d be like 20 out of 20, 20 out of 20, 20 out of 20. For mine, let’s say 20, 20, 20, zero. Because she said, I didn’t turn in the paper. And I knew that could not possibly be true because I’m not the type of person that doesn’t turn in assignments. So I calmly went up to her, apparently, and explained that I was sure I had turned it in. And asked, in her words, she said very politely, I, you know, I’ll just, I’ll take it. But I asked if I could go look through the filing cabinet and locate the missing document. She said, yes, sure. A little bit surprised that a fourth grader, a nine year old, came up and asked her for this. And after a few minutes, I had located the paper, brought it to her, and politely asked her to update my grade. And I’m sure very immediately where I said, I will stand here and watch you update it. I must say, I really appreciate that my mom likes that story. I’m confident I was not the easiest child to raise. So thank you, mom, for putting up with me and my stubbornness and dedication for ambition and creative problem solving is what I like to call it now, like I said. So anyway, when I set my mind to something, I keep working at it until I reach that goal. So in my pursuit of lifelong learning and questioning and trying to find ways to really get at this thing, I knew I wanted to pursue an education in someday. I ended up finding a really awesome credit union innovation program and group that’s called I³ (I-cubed), which is through the Filene Research Institute. So for any of you credit unioners listening, you should apply for I³ if you’ve been thinking about it, if you get the chance, absolutely do it. Be a member of Filene. I’m, all about them. And they are the group that helped me to find when behavioral economics was actually just starting to come around and be a thing. They helped me find it. The I³ program is a two year commitment about bringing innovation to credit unions. The three Is are ideas, innovation, and implementation. This program teaches you to think outside the box to discover problems, come up with solutions to problems people actually need solved so you don’t end up with a bunch of pet rocks and actually create test products and test products for viability and then present those findings to groups of credit unions across the country. While I was in that program, over my two years, I had the good fortune to be able to present at some really amazing places, including the World Credit Union conference, which was in Denver the year that we were there, and also at Harvard, which being able to present at Harvard is just a really cool thing that I can’t put enough words to, I guess. But while my group was at the World Credit Union conference in Denver, the Filene, the I³ people, they provide content for us to be learning in addition to the presentations that we do and, getting us, you know, thinking differently and things like that. And there were some people there from Duke University’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, and they were talking about their research, and I just, I knew this was it. It is what I had been searching for for all those years, since my undergraduate, and, you know, maybe not all those years, but what felt like a long time for me. So all these years since I, had graduated from college, and I knew I had found the education of my dreams. And so I went to one of the girls that was there presenting, her name is Jamie. And when I asked about the field and said, tell me, what is this? I have to find these programs. Where can I learn? What do I do? And she said, it’s called behavioral economics. And I stopped and said, “Nuh, that doesn’t sound right. I, that’s not what I want. I don’t want that.” But after some of my own research and speaking with her, I found it was true. Behavioral economics was the field I had been pining for all these years. And, there were a few programs popping up at select universities like Duke, around the country and the world, but they were so few and far between. And there, there wasn’t even a program in Washington. And to my knowledge, at the time of this recording, there still isn’t actually a degree that’s able to be obtained in behavioral economics in the
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entire state. And as I was not interested in moving, I was able.
Ongoing Research and Future Goals
Melina Palmer: I was really lucky that I came in at a time where I found a really fantastic online program through the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which offered an actual master’s in behavioral economics, which is, again, not a common thing, as I’ve been. Now, I’m almost done here. But when I’ve talked with people about my degree and that it’s actually specifically titled a master’s in behavioral economics, people that are familiar with the field are even surprised and really excited that there’s a program where you can actually get a full degree in it versus, you know, some field of psychology with a few classes in behavioral economics. It’s just not common yet, so I’m so thankful that I found them. So, at the time of recording this episode, I am wrapping up my master’s program. Hooray! With some really exciting research that I’m doing in partnership with, believe it or not, the Filene Research Institute and a credit union out of Portland, where we are testing and trying to see my. What I’m looking into is if there’s a way to increase savings behavior, get people to save more without having to use matching funds and without being really invasive into their life. And it’s actually based off of a, study that was done through the Center for Advanced Hindsight out in Kenya. And I’m really excited that this is able to come full circle. So that sort of rounds out my story. And now you know why I took a little bit of a detour to get to who I am and why I’m here. So, once those results are in, there will be an episode dedicated to the study. It’s a six month research study that is undergone right now. We’re just wrapping up the first month at the time of recording this. So a few more months of waiting before the research will all be in, and I will be able to do my analysis, and I then get to be digging into things like statistical significance and variance and all of that standard deviation and good stuff. But when I share it on the podcast episode, I promise that I will also not use all those terms, because that’s no fun for you. So, once that is done, once I’ve finished my master’s program, I’m planning to take a short break before rolling right into my doctoral studies, which will also be pursuing additional research and work into behavioral economics. Like I said, I’m a lifelong learner, so I’ve set this goal and it will happen. I will be Doctor Melina Palmer in the not too distant future. So one of the things I’ve found in my master’s program and what has led me to build my. I knew I was gonna build my consulting business and my work around this idea, around behavioral economics in general, and to marketing, branding, you know, that’s why I was taking the time to study it and dedicating so much of my life to it. But what I found is that the field is really academic. And, it’s because it’s so new, it completely makes sense. But being academic means it’s backward focused and it’s. It’s more. And what I mean by that is it’s working on understanding how the brain works. So it’s looking for things. And when you do studies like that, what you’re able to find is, you know, people do things this way, or, we, we think people will do things in this way. So we built a study around it and proved that, yes, people do this thing, whatever it happens to be, whatever the concept is, and then it just sort of stops. And that’s how academic research really is. But where you’re able to say, okay, we did this, and these would be some interesting things to look at in the future, but it’s really just saying, what do people do? And that’s great. And what I think is for a business, somebody who’s an entrepreneur or working inside of a company, or if you are working at a marketing agency or things like that, that’s who I’m really speaking, speaking to most of the time. But if you are looking to apply things where you say, okay, people are loss averse, so what, you know, what does that mean to me? How do I use that information? And that is the real gap that I found here and why I have created The Brainy Business podcast and The Brainy Business as a company, the consulting I do the speaking is to get people being able to understand what these concepts are and then how you can actually apply them. What does that mean for you? That is
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what I love doing and what I’m here to do for you. So, being able to find out what the concepts are is great and it’s important, but, you know, what do they mean? How can you use that information to make better decisions, better messaging, better brands? That’s what I’m here for, and The Brainy Business podcast will help solve that. Hopefully this podcast will be around for a long, long time and will help me see through this vision I have of a world where this complex academic field of behavioral economics can be a widespread and well understood space that is foundational for all businesses and students. Like I said, I am looking toward the day where what is behavioral economics is not the most common question that I get asked anymore, but that most people just know. And that’s what I’m working toward. But I need you to help that vision come to life. So if you liked this episode, and I truly hope you did, please consider rating and reviewing it on iTunes or whatever app you listen to. That’s really important, especially for a new podcast. And as I’ve said, this is episode one. And in this inaugural episode, being able to have ratings and reviews helps with iTunes rankings so that people are when they’re searching for the podcast will be able to find it and that it will pop up on phones and things like that and hopefully be in the new and notable section. And if you don’t listen, if you’re not listening on iTunes or in any other of the players and things like that, please, please consider rating and reviewing there as well. It’s just itunes is the most common. Instead of listing everything out every time, that’s, why I’m saying that. So also, please consider subscribing to the podcast. I would love to have you as a subscriber. And then that way, when new episodes come out every Friday, you’ll get them right away and have automatic notifications. And for those of you who are on my email list already, whether you signed up, previously heard me speak and signed up to the newsletter list, I will be sending weekly newsletter announcements of new podcasts when they come out and other content, and anybody who’s interested in signing up, you can do that at thebrainybusiness.com. Also, if you know someone who you think would benefit from the information, who would find it interesting? A friend, family member, coworker, peer whatever, whomever. If you think they would find it interesting, would you consider sharing it with them? You can send them a link to the episode and you can get that directly on the Brainybusiness.com or through iTunes or your other favorite player. So thank you in advance. If you do rate, review, subscribe and share, I greatly appreciate it. I really appreciate you. And for everyone who listened, who you made it this far, we’re at the end. I want to just say thank you so much for listening. I know now there are so many podcasts out there and so many things that you could have chosen to listen to for these last minutes that we’ve shared together the better part of an hour. Most episodes I’m aiming to be in the 30 to 45 minutes mark, so, you know, but I really appreciate you taking the time while you were cleaning or running or exercising or driving to wherever you’re going, or, however you choose, whenever you choose to listen to podcasts. I appreciate you choosing me and thank you for listening to The Brainy Business. I hope it was helpful, useful information and that you got some tidbits that you will be able to share and use in your business. And hopefully I will see you here again on our next episode.
Upcoming Episode: Wording Mistakes Businesses Make
Melina Palmer: Episode two is titled “The Top Five Wording Mistakes Businesses Make,” and this one you will not want to miss. It was a topic that was requested a few weeks ago when I was as I’ve been building out the podcast I went through and was asking for suggestions from everybody I was meeting and seeing and in the Facebook group and all through social media saying, you know, what is it that you want? What are the topics that you are most interested in? And the most common one that I got was something around this, these wording mistakes that businesses make. So I have “The Top Five Wording Mistakes Businesses Make” is episode two. You won’t want to miss it. And the good news is I have made it so that it’s already available for you right now. So where this episode one came out live on July 6 with both, with episode one, two, and three all available to you. If you are one of those people who likes to binge listen or watch Netflix or things like that, I am here for you. So please consider checking that out and I look forward to speaking with you there
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in the next episode. Have a wonderful, fantastic day and be thoughtful.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Brainy Business podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.
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