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Research confirms what you may already know to be true.

People are more likely to spend refunded money.

Let’s say you return a $100 jacket. According to Yu, Cryder and LeBoeuf (2024)  you are more likely to spend that $100 refund on a discretionary purchase than if you’d received the same amount as either income, an unexpected windfall or even a tax refund.

That’s because the money has already been designated as ‘spent’.

It feels like free money because it comes without obligation - you ...

In my experience, changing personal behaviour looks like this:

1. “I should” - recognising the need for change
2. “I will” - resolving to change
3. “I am” - doing something different or differently
4. “I did” - moving from the original intent

Each stage has its challenges.

1. I should

I should exercise more. I should eat differently. I should call my loved ones more. I should work less.

Shoulds can feel exceptionally draining because this type of self-talk reminds us of what we’re not.

It ...

You cannot NOT influence. 

👇 👇👇

I talk a lot about influencing skills and how to get customers and colleagues to take action, but here’s the funny thing.

You cannot NOT influence. You're already doing it.

In every interaction – every email, text, phone call, meeting or presentation, you are stimulating a reaction.

You are influencing your audience in some way.

So the question isn’t whether you are influencing, it’s whether you are influencing the desired reaction?

👉 If customers or col...

Early in my consulting career a prospective client gave me some feedback that would change my life.

You see, they’d seen me give a talk on behavioural economics and were interested in how I could help them gain customers for their new bedding range.

No problem.

I outlined the behavioural techniques we would use to frame pricing, create a sense of urgency and overcome customer concerns about buying what was an unfamiliar brand. 

The proposal, well I thought it was a slam dunk!

But that’s ...

The Rule of 100 will change how you discount forever.

Here’s how it works.

For discounts on products that are less than $100, promote your discount as a percentage off.

• For example, if your product is $20, promote 25% off rather than $5 off.

For discounts on products above $100, use the dollar amount rather than the percentage.

• So, if your product is $1000, it’s better to say they get $250 off rather than 25%.

The rule of 100 works thanks to how we perceive numbers.

At lower va...

We make a mistake when we think data will do the heavy lifting.

That facts will convince someone to do something.

It’s better to think of data as currency. It’s not the data points themselves that matter, it’s the meaning ascribed.

So when a stakeholder asks you for data, what they’re most likely seeking is justification.

That's what you need to help them do.

What’s the most fundamental life skill that doesn't get formally taught?

👉 Behaviour.

Would you like to change that?

In a few hours I'm taking to the stage at IntuitMailchimp's From Here: To There sold-out conference, sharing ideas with 400 marketers in how to solve the Click Conundrum. 

Last week I spoke to around 60 web and user experience designers in an ASX 50 insurance company.

A few weeks before that I spoke with a sales and marketing leadership team from one of Australia's largest...

Humans like knowing 2 things:

• What will happen. 
• Why it happened.

Both stem from control. We want to make sense of our world so it doesn’t seem chaotic.

In your business you will wonder:

• What will happen when we send this email out? Release this product? Raise my prices?

And later:

• Why didn’t people open our emails? Buy our products? Pay our prices?

Meanwhile, your customers will be thinking:

• What will happen when I click that button? Take that product home? Buy your...

The hidden secrets to TED talks that their founder, Chris Anderson, doesn't share.

That's what I want to share with you.

If you ever present, either from stage or to colleagues and customers, I think you'll find this helpful.

Chris gave a great TED talk on how to give a TED talk a few years ago. It's now been viewed almost 3 million times.

He seems so effortless in his delivery that I wanted to pull back the curtain and identify exactly what he was doing.

That's what I reveal in this cli...

Magnitude Representation is a grand name for one of my favourite bits of numbers psychology.

When it is represented with more characters, we process a number as larger.

I don't only mean only 3,000,000 vs. 3,000. These are different values.

I mean when the same value is represented differently, like 3,000.00 vs. 3k

You can see the difference in this bank's ad campaign.

On the left, how they displayed the cashback offer in year one.

On the right, the same promo in year two, but see how...