TCC Podcast #292: Changing Stories, Shifting Thoughts, and Incorporating More Play into Your Life with Jocelyn Brady

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

The Copywriter Think Tank
Copywriting Income Survey
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Jocelyn’s website
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
Words Can Change Your Brain by Andrew Newberg
The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
Huberman Lab Podcast 
Play By Stuart Brown 
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  It doesn’t matter if you write copy or content or whether you work on marketing strategy or sales. Pretty much whatever we do as writers depends on understanding human behavior and the way people think. The more we know, the better we can communicate. And our guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is a former copywriter and current brain coach Jocelyn Brady. She stopped by to help us understand how the brain works, what it takes to create curiosity to tell stories, and how you can keep your reader engaged long enough to deliver your message. Everyone who communicates as part of the work that they do will benefit from listening to what Jocelyn has to share in this episode.

Kira Hug:  A quick PSA, The Copywriter Think Tank price tag will increase this June. So if you have any interest in joining us inside this mastermind, don’t wait; apply today. We are so excited to introduce some of our newest members in the Think Tank to the entire crew this June during our two-day virtual retreat on June 9th and 10th. It’s coming up fast, so again, if you’ve had any interest in the Think Tank, now is the time to apply. Head over to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more.

Rob Marsh:  All right. Let’s get to our interview with Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Brady:  This is a long circuitous journey, I think. But I’ll say that the first time I was really that my brain went, “Wow, what brains can do,” was… Well, the first time I held a brain was in grade school when we were dissecting a fetal pig, and I really needed to see its brain. That was not part of the assignment. We were just looking at its organs. And I was like, “But that’s crazy. We’re not seeing the part that powers all the parts.” So I was the sole student there with my hacksaw, just determined to see this thing’s brain. That stuck with me.

And then later, a couple of decades later, my dad had a stroke and he had lost his ability to speak. And I was just like, “What? This guy, who’s this brilliant storyteller and poet and a lyricist and hilarious, and would always say things like, ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older,’ when he got to the really juicy part of stories.” And I’m like, “But I need to know this ends.” So when that happened, I really wanted to know what is going on in his brain and what’s possible. And that’s how I learned about neuroplasticity. The brain is magical. I like to call it a magical asset, which we can get to. But the fact that even a physically damaged brain can learn to rewire or create new connections. So my dad got his ability to speak back and to tell dad jokes and to still say, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” I’m pushing 40 now. So I don’t know how old I have to be to get to the good parts, but…

So these are like backstory context. It wasn’t until 2016 that I got my… I enrolled in the NeuroLeadership program for brain coaching. Sometimes they call it results-based coaching. And I thought about going back to school to become a neuroscientist. But at this point, I was running my copywriting business. It was like brain voice consultancy, running that full-time. I had gotten my MFA in creative nonfiction writing, and I was like, “I’m not going back to school again right after this.” So I got this into this program, which was great, because it was just focused on the neuroscience and neurological underpinnings of the language we use and how we get into more towards-states or away-states and just giving… It gave me a lexicon to talk about things that were fascinating to me. Because while I was training people to tell stories and tell their brand stories and adoptive brand voice and have personality and their writing, I was way more interested in, like, but what’s going on in your brains and how are you guys communicating and getting along? So that’s when I jumped into it, brain coaching.

Rob Marsh:  I love that. And I kind of would love to go back and talk a little bit about your experience with copywriting, the agency that you built before we go all the way into what you’ve learned on brains. And clearly, they’re linked really tightly. But yeah, tell us just a little bit about the kinds of brands that you were working with and how you were applying what you knew at that time about this whole-brain neurology thing to tell their stories.

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. So I had gotten into… So I started in 2008 and at that time, had no plans. Like no, I was just… I’m going to earn enough to eat a sandwich and pay the bills, like an accidental business owner, or entrepreneur type. So that led into… my first big client was Nokia when they were a thing. And they were coming out with these new products. Then the iPhone’s like, “Hi, I’m here.” So that was an interesting time. And then a lot of tech companies. So I worked with Microsoft and it started with writing case studies and interviewing people all over the world to say, “Well, what do you love about Office 365?” Or whatever it was at the time.

I loved the interviewing and then it just kept growing and building. Suddenly, I had more work than I could handle. So I realized I needed to hire people. So, bookkeeper, that’s a good idea, and other copywriters and consultants and strategists. And then we were creating the brand voice that became really close with a couple of people who ultimately became CMOs, chief marketing officers. So they’re like, “Hey, we trust you. You’re great. You know how to do all this stuff. So just create our brand voice, go interview all the people, go do all the research and then go train all our people on how to do it.” So that was with… God, who was that at the time? SunTrust who turned into Truist to some banking clients, financial clients, couple of startups, and currently also consulting with Prudential. So it’s like these industries and companies I never thought I would get involved in and here we are.

Kira Hug:  So for a copywriter listening, you’ve had great success working with these big-name clients during your copywriting career. What do you think you did differently or did really well that paid off during that time and that we could pull into our businesses today?

Jocelyn Brady:  I was listening to your episode. Is his name Dan? The Brain.fm episode is fascinating.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Kira Hug:  Yes.

Jocelyn Brady:  Oh, that’s great. And he has such a good point, which is don’t take… If you’re not asking “it’s a no” and don’t stop until you hear a clear no, I think that is just the best advice. You keep trying. You keep pestering people and reaching out to people that you really want to work with and think of… I mean, I would just blind-pitch people. I was like, “They sound fun to work with.” And I would think of… I would research them and then find, “Oh, this guy used to run a shave ice shop. I’m going to make a joke about shave ice and ice shave. And I grew up in Hawaii and he’s going to get it.” And that was it.

So it’s like, what is something that’s going to make him want to open that email because the subject line is interesting enough, right? It’s like all the practices that we know in copywriting. And then, what’s that first line that’s going to make him smile, what’s going to make him want to read more, what’s going to make him crack up in his seat and say, “I need to talk to this gal.” So I think that is something. Just see how you can make things fun, especially if they’re scary and just keep trying. Think of it as all a big experiment.

Rob Marsh:  So I would love to get your thoughts on stories and what’s going on in the brain. And it’s funny because as I was going through your website, especially your about page, you’ve got one of the most intriguing about pages I’ve ever seen. And it’s like screen after screen of curiosity and wait a second, “I got to pay attention”. Like I need to know how this ends and I need to know what that is. And clearly, you’re applying a lot of the techniques that you’ve learned. Tell us about what’s going on in our brains when we’re telling stories, when we’re hearing stories, and maybe most importantly, what can we do as writers to make sure that that connection is happening?

Jocelyn Brady:  Oh yeah. So that about page is a good example of me thinking, “how can I make this really fun?” Because I think a lot of us are like, “Oh God, I have to write my own about page. I have to write my own bio, blah.” It’s hard enough to do it for other people and then to do it for yourself and it feels impossible. So it’s, yeah, what is something that makes me feel curious and, boom, open with that, right?

And taking people on a journey. I mean, you’re always taking them on a… I like imagining, I’m a guide through the going in the rabbit hole. And that’s how I like to see the world is there’s always something to be fascinated by and curious about. And it’s just like those old axioms. The job of every sentence is to get the next sentence read, is to make them want to read the next thing, to get people more and more invested using tension and release, and throwing in little bits of comedy when things get serious because there’s a lot of serious things that happen in my life and everybody’s lives.

Having a volcano eat my house when I’m seven, it’s a pretty serious thing. But to say it like that, to say a volcano ate my house when I was seven, your brain is like, “Wait, what? I haven’t heard that before.” Saying something in a unique way that you can’t help but pay attention and probably want to know more. So it’s thinking of those things like what’s going to get the brain to go, “Wait, wait, wait, what?” And when we tell stories, I mean, that is how our brains work. It’s constantly telling stories, even in our sleep. Everything that we do, it’s a meaning-making machine to help us think things. Or actually, it’s like making shortcuts all the time. So if it’s making stories, it’s like, “Okay, this is how this works. I understand the connections. I see where that goes.”

Now, I don’t really need to think about all of that because you can make shortcuts that I don’t have to think about how I’m going to go make breakfast because I already understand the mechanisms behind it. So it’s like this is a very… It’s like the brain being lazy by doing all this extra work, making connections in the background. And when we tell stories to each other, our brains sync up across time and space. Right now, us talking is going to be released in some future time and that listener right now is in training with our brains. How cool is that?

Kira Hug:  What about for storytellers? Or maybe let’s just say copywriters who don’t feel like they’re great storytellers; that’s not their specialty?

Jocelyn Brady:  Mm-hmm.

Kira Hug:  What are one or two things they could do to really step into that and feel confident telling the story?

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. I mean, I think everyone is a natural storyteller from the first time you said, “Hey mom, look, there’s a kitty. I want it.” Personal story. I did that actually. Forced cats on my father. Thank you, father. He now lives in a cat sanctuary. So it’s that, it’s that. It’s thinking of the connections in your life that are delightful. And if it feels daunting to think, “Oh, I need to tell a story,” just think what is something I would tell a friend right now about something that happened to me, about something I found curious, about something I imagined.

And just taking that kind of edge off of like, this, all you’re doing is trying to bring a smile or some delight or some wonder or some kind of movement, emotional movement, to a friend. You’re just making a friend feel something. I think that’s a really great place to start. And it’s always around like… There’s frameworks you can use. I developed one literally called story, S-T-O-R-Y. So you can think of like how to break things down into bits and get into more of the technicality of it and practice those skills. But ultimately, it’s just like, “What’s going to make a friend of mine feel good about something I can tell them that’s interesting?”

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I’m curious what the story framework is. Because as you were talking about your about page, obviously you’re mentioning the things that you’re doing to interrupt the pattern, the things that we don’t expect. You’re creating curiosity. But once you have that, how do we make sure that we basically do the rest of the story well, so that when we get to the end, we get to the point the person is ready to take action or they’re ready to do the thing that they need to do.

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. I think, I mean, we all want to see some kind of change, right? I mean, you could think of it as a character in their context is challenged and they change. So there’s like three Cs. I guess it’s four Cs. You can think of that as like you’re setting up something. You’re setting up a reality that people are going, “Okay, okay. I’m here with you. I’m in this reality. Even if it’s crazy, even if it’s Alice getting small and talking to a caterpillar or cat, we are with you on that journey right now. Okay. We’re in that context.” So that character in that context then is challenged. So you need to feel that emotional experience. You need to feel the stakes, like that person is going through something and it’s hard for them.

Yeah. Okay. There’s like a physical version of it, but it’s always about something they have to face internally. They’ve always been afraid to speak up. So then they’re going to have to have that challenge in the story. It’s like thinking of the thing that is the most triggering emotional response for them that they have to work through so that by the end you experience the transformation or the change. Unless it’s a tragedy, and then it doesn’t turn out well. So that’s one way.

And the story framework is very similar. It’s nothing new under the sun. I just thought why isn’t there an acronym to teach people how to tell a story using story. And it turns out that it’s really hard. And it took a while, but it’s the same sort of thing. It’s your setup and your twist. You think of Dorothy and Oz. So you have Dorothy in her black-and-white world. She really wants a life of adventure and wants to feel at home in her own skin, but she doesn’t. She feels like she has to fit into this world that doesn’t make sense to her. And then twist, literal twister takes her out of her reality, puts her in a new land, and then you have, oh, obstacle. Oh no, we have to go through and face these challenges. And there’s a wicked witch, and there’s a crazy wizard.

So our resolution. You’re resolving to make a change, often with the help of friends or the new skills you’ve developed through that obstacle that you’ve learned. You’re taking with you. So that, yay, final step, you’ve learned something that you can then pass on to others or that people can take with them. Because that’s what storytelling ultimately is showing us how something works so that our brain can make sense of it so that it can again go back to make those shortcuts and make connections and make meaning.

Kira Hug:  Where do most of us mess up? Even trained writers, copywriters in our community, we think that we’re decent at this. Where have you seen us mess up? Or maybe even you’ve seen this mistake in your own storytelling.

Jocelyn Brady:  Overexplaining minutiae is sometimes like a safe space for us. We’re like, “Oh, the people…” And you can get this in copywriting if you’re writing about products, people get really focused. A classic example of focusing on the products, like the phone has one trillion megabytes of data that you can sync to that. It’s just like nobody cares about that and make me feel something. But if you show me that, “Hey, the camera on this phone is so good. You could see the microscopic specs in your cat’s eye. How cool is that?” So I think it’s getting bogged into details that aren’t emotionally relevant or resonant and not building up the stakes. I think sometimes we can shy away from the emotion or not get clear on… Here’s another one. I’m kind of like interrupting myself, but being too clever versus being clear.

It’s fun to be clever. It’s really delightful when you find a way with words. A lot of us get into it because we love language and words and wordplay. But if it doesn’t make sense, it’s not doing its job. So get clear. Make the emotional stakes clear. And that could be again, as small as like a little product that doesn’t feel like there’s some big emotional weight to it, but there is because we make decisions based on emotions. Emotions drive the sale logic and justifies a purchase. So I think that’s it. Like it’s super clear. Forget about all the details. Just get to the very basic core. And with storytelling in particular, like show and be very clear about some kind of journey transformation or change.

Rob Marsh: So Jocelyn, one of the things that you do with stories is the opposite. Instead of telling somebody else’s story, you help people think through the stories that we tell ourselves. Talk to us a little bit about overcoming our own BS, the crap that’s going on in our heads, and how we can rewrite those stories in a way that helps us move forward.

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. So BS, that’s, thank you,  I like to call them the BS, your brain stories. And that’s again, going back to why I call the brain a magical asshat. It’s a working title of my book, Your Brain is a Magical Asshat. Because it’s magic. It does all this stuff. It thinks thoughts. Your brain does all this stuff, it breathes and it does all these things. It computes all of this stuff you never even have to think about. But it’s an asshat because it’s saying… it’s constantly telling you lies. Usually about what you’re not able to do because the brain likes to keep you safe.

And it’s such a hypocritical entity because while it wants to keep you safe, it loves new experiences and novelty. So there’s this tension. So we feel like, “Okay, I want to try something new.” My own example of when I decided to embrace brain coaching full time. When I first got into it, I was very excited about it. And that’s where you get to the thing that you know is important to you. You were very excited about something. You really want something. It’s just driving you. You’re like, “Yes, I love this. I love this. I want to do more of it. I love talking about it.”

But then it’s scary if you’ve already identified as something else, like the business owner of a brand narrative consultancy. So then to say now, “Hey guys, I’m a brain coach now,” felt very uncomfortable. And I had to reconcile with the word coach, which I couldn’t stand. It had a lot of BS around that. So it’s going, “Okay. Brain is trying to keep me safe so it’s going to say things that aren’t usually very kind. You can never do that. This is a horrible idea. Everyone’s going to think you’re stupid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” That’s the BS to focus on, okay, how do I flip the script on that? How do I accept that these are just stories that my brain made up to keep me safe? Even if it’s being an asshat, how do I now go poke at that, flip the script, say, “What if it is possible? So what if people think I’m stupid? Who cares? I know I’m not, or maybe I am and that’s great.”

It’s just, again, like finding ways to play with your thoughts so that you don’t feel so stuck and full of anxiety. And I mean, it’s not… I get irritated when people are like, “It’s only mindset and it’s only stories.” But it is a big part of it. And if you can start to be more aware of them, you can start to pursue stories that are more helpful for you, creating what you most want before you die and being the kind of person that brings creativity and joy and kindness and compassion and the things that we all want to see more of in the world.

Kira Hug:  I’d like to hear more about this career pivot for you too. I’m wondering when you started to feel that need to pivot in your career. I mean, I know you mentioned you went to training in 2016. But did you feel like that excitement or even that fear a couple of years before that? How did you start to ease into that new direction?

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. I was terrified of… So I was sneaking in more and more brain stuff, neuroscience into storytelling workshops that I was leading and talking to people about it when they were… A lot of my clients would call me. I was basically doing coaching without really knowing I was doing that for a while. So I was doing consulting, like providing answers and recommendations versus coaching, which is just asking people questions and nudging them in directions that they already want to go. And yet saying, “I’m going to start coaching. I’m going to go into brain senses.”  No, can’t do it. Scary.

So, while this is happening, because I’m now suppressing this part of myself that wants to play in this new way, I start getting more stressed and bitter and started getting really disillusioned and bored with this thing that I had built. And now I am a multiple… At this point, multiple six-figure company, working with multibillion-dollar brands on some of their most important initiatives, consulting the CEOs on how to talk to their investors and the chief marketing officers on how to develop their brand voices and talk to their teams. And even like, “Hey, Jocelyn, can you look at the Super Bowl script and give us your analysis of the language and any recommendations?”

So it was really cool stuff on that level. And yet here I am growing more and more like, “Ugh, more words I don’t care about.” I was getting very unhappy. And that has a really horrible effect on your work and your relationships. It started building and building and around 2019, I had just led this big series of storytelling workshops. And I got home and I couldn’t… I felt so deflated. I am so tired of talking about brands because what I really want to be talking about are brains and how we deal with emotions and things like curiosity and tapping creativity and getting people to have better relationships with themselves and others. And it’s hard to reconcile this in a business world and people who know you as one thing and business and copywriting and all that kind of creative direction.

So it wasn’t really until… Again, so 2019. And I’m thinking now, how am I going to start saying no to business that comes in, because now this is my livelihood and now I’m scared of losing it. And I have a team, so I feel responsible for them, for keeping this revenue machine going. So then COVID came along and said, “Hey, heard you were bored. How about, poof, all your contracts vanish.” Okay. So that’s what happened. And I’m sitting here going, “Wow, I guess I don’t have to say no to these things because they’re not here anymore. Mm-hmm.”

And while it was unsettling and it felt like, oh wow, the ground is slipping beneath me, but I’ve been through this before with a literal eruption. So at least I have some skills to deal with it. And now I get to rebuild what I really want to be creating. So that was a really good… I don’t advocate people wait for any kind of eruption to happen, but it is a great opportunity to see things clearly and to start building. And that’s when I really went all-in on, “Okay, I’m going to go explore this brain coaching and speaking and doing workshops on creativity,” and still do things on storytelling, but really shifting my focus more to how do you tap your brains to be more creative. To create what you most want before you die, which is something I like to say a lot.

Rob Marsh:  So for you, COVID helped you make the shift by removing a lot of the reasons, the things that were in the way. But for other people who maybe are thinking about making a change and they’re still dealing with that head trash, all of the brain keeping you safe and all of that, is there a simple tool or a way, a process that we can use to reframe those kinds of thoughts so that we can start to move forward?

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, plug alert, I do have betterbrainstories.com where you can type in the thing bothering you, and it will prompt you along the way to bring up what are the emotional ties to that, how does this make you feel, what is the worst thing? Okay. Now let’s flip the script on that. Literally, you just start writing the opposite thing. That’s it. You’re just tricking your brain to go, “All I’m doing is writing the opposite thing. I don’t have to believe any of it. I’m just simply doing an exercise of grammatical opposites. I know how to do this.” And then you start to see things that you’re like, “Oh, what if that were true? What if I could take a little step forward? What if I have the skills to adopt, or I could create the time to start playing more, exploring more, studying something I’m interested in?” Having one conversation with someone doing something I’m fascinated by, just those tiny little things.

So that’s one way of doing it. It’s just like literally tools to flip the script and looking at the opposite and just playing with opposite ideas. And the other thing is I’m also becoming tiny habit certified as we speak with behavior scientist BJ Fogg. And he’s a big advocate, and so am I, of tiny habits. So if you find this big daunting goal or aspiration, this thing you really, really want, like I want to become a brain coach, I want to become a speaker, I want to become a content creator, fill in the blank, right? So then ladder down, make that smaller and smaller and smaller. What are the things I would do as a content creator? What are the things I would do as a brain coach? Okay. I might be coaching people. I might be telling people I’m a coach. I might be creating content. I might make a one-minute video.

And then you think, “Okay, even smaller. What is the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest thing? I’m going to write down one idea on a sticky note for a piece of content that I think might be cool. I’m going to put it up next to my computer after I open my laptop for the day, for example.” And then that’s all you do. Just one tiny step. Once you train your brain to see that it can do that one tiny step. Oh, yay, I wrote my Post-it note. Then you can start adding onto that and building on that. And you’re giving your brain that little neural, juicy, yummy… Yay, you did it, dopamine, serotonin. I’m making things. I’m doing stuff one tiny step at a time. I think that’s a really great way to start is just like, again, make it so, so ridiculously small, you can laugh at that step. But then you’ll do it. It’s like that floss one tooth.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I love BJ’s approach to that. It’s so hard. I think if I’m remembering it right in his book and when I’ve heard him speak, he talks about how you force yourself to only do the little tiny thing, which, again, flossing one tooth is so ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you just floss the others? It almost makes it hard to do the little thing.

Jocelyn Brady:  Yeah. And even with that too, it’s an experiment. Think of them, this is encouraged, right? It’s like all an experiment. There is no failure. You’re just learning. You’re seeing what, huh, being curious about it. Did this tactic or tool work for me? Did this tiny step work for me? Okay. If it didn’t, maybe I can try moving it or creating a different step or am I… Or just even examining, am I really interested and motivated to do this, and if not, I’ll pick something else. Because sometimes we might even dilute ourselves into thinking there’s something we really want, but it’s not the actual thing. Like to say, I don’t know, “I want a six-figure business.” Maybe you want that. Maybe what you really want is to find more flow or to be recognized as an expert in your field, or it’s just looking at… There’s a lot of different possibilities. So just start with one and start exploring.

Kira Hug:  All right. So Rob, this has been a really fascinating interview so far. Apologies to all of you listening. I have a cough drop in my mouth. I don’t know what’s happening to my voice, but we’re going to work with it.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, we’ll do our best. So I made a bunch of notes and lots of really cool stuff. I think I would start just with the story framework. I know I’m skipping kind of to the middle of what Jocelyn was sharing. But the framework of… and how she walked through the Wizard of Oz as that example, but sets up the  twist, overcoming the obstacle, resolving whatever the thing is, that’s got to be resolved. And then, she’s called it “Yay,” but the learning, the change, the transformation that happens.

And as I think about stories that we tell, whether it’s in the copy that we write, or as examples, teaching our kids, or even just entertaining other people, that always follows those steps and I think it’s… And might be worth writing those down on a sticky note. As we’re writing to make sure it’s like, “Okay, in the setup, I’ve done the right thing. I laid the foundation for the story that I need to tell or the product that I’m going to be selling. And I can introduce the conflict, the twist, the obstacle, how would we resolve it, and then how do we talk about the transformation.” I really like the way she framed it. And yeah, you and I are both fans of frameworks and this is a good one.

Kira Hug:  We also talked about the stories that we tell ourselves. So brain stories, and this part really hit home for me because I tell myself so many negative stories. We all do. And so recently, I’ve really been trying to catch those stories and just question them a bit more, because again, so much of this just happens every day, every minute of the day. And so I like that we touched on that topic and even pulling in some of the expertise from Byron Katie about the work that she’s done and introduced to so many different coaches and so many different people. Really catching those stories when we tell ourselves and asking the simple question, is this story true? And that’s something that I have definitely been working on.

And most of the time, the stories I’m telling myself, they’re not even close to true. And so I know there are other questions that Byron Katie will continue to ask, but that one question for me has been so helpful just to understand that this is something that I’m doing and I can catch it when it happens by asking, is it true? So that could be something that we can all use more frequently as we’re telling ourselves stories about who we are and how we show up in our business.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I like a lot of things as Jocelyn was talking about this. The fact that she calls them BS, brain stories, but also BS with the double entendre. And they usually are BS like you’re pointing out. Oftentimes they’re not rooted in truth, and we need to identify that. But Jocelyn also mentioned that it’s kind of hard to overcome them. Even though we know they’re just stories, there’s a reason that they’re implanted in our brains. There’s a reason that they’re there, and whether they’re trying to protect us and keep us safe, whatever. It’s one thing to say, “Well, they’re just stories, so flip it around and change it.” But it’s not that easy.

And her practice of writing the opposite, literally flipping through things backward in order to overcome that, I think can be a really good practice. So when we encounter this BS that we all deal with, it’s not just a matter of, “Okay, well, that’s not a true story and I’m fine now,” but really trying to work through, “Okay, what are the outcomes that I want? Why is this story not true? What is the true story? Where can I find the evidence for the true story?” All of that stuff is really important in getting to the truth and helping us move forward.

Kira Hug:  And we also talked about BJ Fogg and Tiny Habits, which is a fantastic book that you’ve talked a lot about previously, his different models. I actually, after speaking to Jocelyn about it in this interview, I jumped into the same program that she has enrolled in, this certification program so that I can be certified as a Tiny Habits… I guess, Tiny Habits coach.

And so I appreciate that mention from Jocelyn because it was not on my radar at all. And it’s something that I’m really interested in using mostly for myself and for my family, but also to help other copywriters in some of our programs because we get most tripped up by our own mindset and our own habits. I mean, that’s what shapes our day and our week and can work well for us or can work against us. And so I have been fascinated so far about what I’ve been learning and the habits even that I’ve created in my day-to-day life over the last few weeks it just started. And so I’m obsessed with the habits we can create and how that affects our behavior design today.

Rob Marsh:  So do you do the Maui habit? That’s BJ’s number one habit.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I mean, to jump into all of it, you kind of have to get over some of the cheesiness of parts of it, right? So waking up in the morning and planting your feet in the ground and saying, “Today’s going to be a great day,” can feel very cheesy and silly, but it has actually made a big difference for me. And I actually have better days when I do it. And when I forget to do it, the day just kind of will fall apart. So that’s one habit that I’ve created. And then I build… The cool thing with habits, of course, is you can continue to build. So you can set yourself up for success with multiple habits that turn into your routine. So, I mean, I have a bunch of habits now, Rob, in the morning, a really solid morning ritual that is working for me right now. I mean, it may change.

Rob Marsh:  I love hearing that. I love the Maui habit. I do it. I don’t actually do it…

Kira Hug:  You do it?

Rob Marsh:  … as soon as I step out of bed because my wife is right there and she’s usually asleep because I get up pretty early. But driving my kids to school almost every single day, as we’re driving like, “Man, what a beautiful day.” It drives them crazy.

Kira Hug:  You do that every day?

Rob Marsh:  I totally do. Yeah. I love it. I tell myself it’s going to be a great day. And yeah, I like it. In fact, thanks to BJ, after I read his book, that’s like what got me even flossing my teeth every single day. So there’s…

Kira Hug:  I’ve been using that habit as well where you just floss one tooth and of course, you’re like, “This is ridiculous. I can floss all of them,” and it feels like a win and you celebrate along the way. What are some of the other habits you have created for your morning routine?

Rob Marsh:  So, well, I mean, we’ve talked about some of this stuff in the past, but I get up and I exercise. I either walk or run or get on my bike, do that. I recently started jumping rope, which I can only do for a few minutes because it totally just trashes my heart rate. And so there’s that part of my morning routine. And then there’s lots of little tasks and things that happen before I hop on my computer and go through some email and get started on my day. But it’s mostly about exercise and just taking that first hour or so to hydrate, to just get my body moving, and to be thinking about something I often will read in the mornings. There’s some spiritual practice, that kind of stuff that I do as well. So that always helps.

The thing that I really love though about BJ is the Fogg model of behavior. And I know we’ve talked about this in one of the trainings that we have, our persuasion training. But the model makes so much sense when you’re combining ability and motivation and triggers. And this isn’t really something we can easily illustrate on a podcast. But look it up, check it out, get the book, whatever, because when motivation’s really high, you don’t need a lot of ability to make a change. But when motivation’s really low, now you’ve got to be very convincing. You’ve got to have a high ability to either make a change or avoid the thing that you’re trying to avoid. The model is just such a good frame for thinking about even how our customers engage with the offers that we make. And yeah, to me, it’s an amazing sales tool, even though that’s not really why BJ developed it. He’s talking about habits and personal development, but it applies to everything that we do as copywriters.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. That’s a really good point. I’m learning so much that I can apply in my day-to-day, but even better. I’m looking at it the way that we’ve laid out some of our programs and some of our offers and services. And it’s just, that you can do it so much better if you understand the model. So I think we’ll just have to bring BJ on the podcast to geek out about this properly. But what I love about what Jocelyn introduced to us and really talked through in this part of the interview is that she has been following her interest and her curiosity and her passion really for learning about the brain and just jumping fully into it and taking these certification programs and just figuring out how to pivot based off what is interesting her today. And I really admire what she’s done.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I was going to say the same thing. I mean, she really started talking about it at the very beginning of the interview that there’s this… I think maybe a lot of copywriters, content writers operate in the same way. And we’re so curious about things that we often will follow links down rabbit holes or whatever. And one minute we’re reading some research that’s applicable to our sales page and the next minute we’re on a Wikipedia page about something that happened in the 1300s in medieval France, right?

And that’s kind of a weird