Study human behaviour

Whether you want to go down a scholarly track or just observe for hours at a cafe, just observe, discuss with a friend, and make notes on your observations.

If you want to have success in life, you need to incite certain behaviours in those around you. Let’s face it… people have to say ‘yes’ more often than ’no’, and they need to say ‘yes’ at the right time. So you need to intimately understand the triggers that make that happen.

Here’s a really simple example from the social media world: say you post something on Facebook or LinkedIn every 3 days. But all you ever post are ‘shares’ or quotes or really short insights.

No need for people to click on anything. You’re popular and people appreciate what you do and you keep increasing your followers… but you get no sales.

Consider now instead you post a mix of items. A video one day, a long article the next. Perhaps a ‘Share’ from a website, and the next again a great offer.

In all cases your followers will have to click to interact with your content. Guess what? When you post that special offer they will interact with that too. This is a very simple and practical example of the value of better understanding of human behaviour.