Young Grit Podcast Episode 17 Transcript (Formatted PDF)

 

BF  00:06

Any behavior happens when there’s motivation to do the behavior. That’s one of three. There’s ability to the behavior. That’s number two. And there’s a prompt. The prompt is something that reminds you. And so when those three things come together, the behavior happens. If any one of those components is missing, it won’t happen. And so Hey,

 

SD  00:26

everybody, welcome to another episode of young grit podcast. My guest today is BJ Fogg. BJ is an absolute rock star. He is one of my favorite people we have met recently over the last few months in a group called Genius Network. And BJ has been teaching us all about tiny habits, behavior change behavior design, he is the in charge of the behavioral Design Lab at Stanford University. He’s coached over 40,000 people as of the publishing of your new book. I bet it’s way more now. He has the you have to correct me here, your book, The tiny habits, that the small changes that change everything tiny habits, is number one bestseller on Amazon for business, you have to confirm what I’m saying? Well,

 

BF  01:17

the Amazon editor selected tiny habits is the best business and leadership book of the year so far. Wow,

 

SD  01:26

that is fantastic. I am so proud of you. And it’s well deserved it is I have been devouring this book. And I think our audiences today are going to love our conversation. So my favorite part about BJ for everybody watching on YouTube and all he is just the kindest guy. I love listening to his habit talks is every Tuesday at noon, we have an hour together. It’s a lot of fun. It’s been a huge impact on my life, which we’re going to talk about on my kids lives on my business live three businesses on a lot of our company. But BJ is one of the most humble and one of the nicest guys I’ve met in this game. And so, BJ, thank you so much for being here.

 

BF  02:10

Scott, thank you for inviting me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

 

SD  02:14

Alright, so we’re gonna start out like we do with most of our podcasts a little lightning round. You have to answer the first thing that comes

 

BF  02:22

to mind. Are you ready for this? And I’ve not been warned on any of these things. Right. Okay. Well,

 

SD  02:27

we’ll start on the easy one. Favorite movie.

 

BF  02:31

What about Bob?

 

02:32

Oh my gosh.

 

02:33

Ah ha ha. Right.

 

02:35

That is

 

BF  02:37

so funny. Bob Murray.

 

SD  02:39

That’s right. Oh, boy. Dr. Marvin, there you go. favorite color?

 

BF  02:45

Green has to be chlorophyll.

 

SD  02:48

chlorophyll. Perfect. Okay, if you could have any superpower.

 

BF  02:55

What would it be the ability to help people feel successful at any given moment?

 

SD  03:01

Oh, give him shine that says Look, I love that.

 

BF  03:06

Okay, the superhero shine.

 

SD  03:09

Okay, and then the last one on your round on your bullet firing questions. If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive in all of history, or right now currently getting harder other other than Well, no, I will say anybody I was gonna say other than like, you know, a family, a direct family member. But who would it be? Who comes to mind?

 

BF  03:29

Right now Jane Goodall. I just so admire. I’ve seen her give a TED talk and said hi to her, but never really had. She’s just such a inspiring person. Jane Goodall.

 

SD  03:41

I love it. It goes with the author, speaker side of things.

 

BF  03:45

Yes, she has a book coming out. And we have the same book agent. So I do think that could be a possibility at some point.

 

SD  03:51

All right. All right, listeners, my favorite thing to do is to take a wish of the interviewee and make it come true. So if you’re listening to this, and you know, Jane Goodall put us on us. All right. So um, okay, this is gonna be a fun day. So BJ, you have a book out? This is not the first one. Okay, you are a world renowned author. But we won’t talk a ton about all the behavior change books you’ve done for the last 20 years. What I want to talk about specifically today, are these this idea of habits. Okay, this is this is fascinating to me. Talk about the reason why, first of all, you wanted to do a book about tiny habits.

 

BF  04:30

Well, I’ll just go right to the meat of things. I’ve been doing a ton of research a ton of innovation, teaching a lot of industry, people about behavior change and how to design successful products. And I’ve been teaching tiny habits in my free five day program ever since 2011. The very beginning. So yeah, hundreds of people a week two to 300 people a week that people were saying, where’s the book, where’s the book, where’s the book? And I was like, I’m busy kind of thing. And this went on for years and then one night, I had a dream Then I was going to die in a plane crash. And I fully believed I was going to die. And my reaction to knowing I was going to die was deep regret. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t the trying to avoid pain, it was like deep regret that I had not yet shared. The tiny habits method and other parts of behavior design in a big broad way and in a way that’s accessible. And I woke up and is like, Oh my gosh, that’s really crazy clarifying that I need to ramp down the research, we ramp down innovation and ramp down the teaching, and write a book that brings together these things. And that was, you know, there’s other reasons to write the book. And I had those reasons. But that was the moment was like, Okay, my priorities have shifted, and we’re going to do the book, we’re going to get this done.

 

SD  05:53

Wow. Okay, well, it shows through and now I see your heart. This, this book is chock full of I mean, I don’t I don’t know if I’ve seen another person put more effort into a book, this this. There’s a reason why this book is number one, it is one of the jewels like literally the most juicy book I’ve read, there are 300, tiny habits and ways to give yourself celebration after habit. There’s pages and pages, the entire back forth of the book, are all of the amazing little habits that people can put into their life and how to do anything easily. Right. So well done. And that’s a really, really cool story. So that actually gives me a lot of good context. What, and I know we have a lot of kids listening to this, there’s a lot of entrepreneurial families listening,

 

BF  06:41

everybody. Hello.

 

SD  06:43

And I want to hear for a minute. If you could boil down this book into a simple understanding idea. Yeah, what would be your bumper sticker,

 

BF  06:54

there are two would squish together on one sticker. It’s number one, help yourself, do what you already want to do. And number two, help yourself feel successful.

 

SD  07:10

Help yourself, do what you already want to do, and help yourself feel successful.

 

BF  07:13

Yeah, and those are in the book and I call them the Maxim’s and those are the keys to creating lasting change in yourself, or if it’s others, is help help other people do what they already want to do help other people feel successful. Those are the keys. And tiny habits is a method to achieve that and other ways. But those are the things you’re shooting for when you’re shooting for engagement, lasting change. And habits that will continue over time.

 

SD  07:44

I love it and what makes you what makes you feel successful, what is what is what makes your project.

 

BF  07:52

Um, I just got off some training I did with professionals in my bootcamp. And man. So this was the follow up like three weeks later, after the boot camp wrapped up. And this was a follow on and just hearing people who have used my methods. And, and this wasn’t for their personal habits. This was to create products and services that are good for people to hear the success stories and how quickly they’re able to apply my methods and how game changing it was. And then I’ll give another specific example. Yesterday, I was talking to one of my boot campers, it’s been only today, one of four days of the boot camp. And I was falling up between sessions and he says BJ, these have been the most productive days of my career in the last eight years. And he explained why. So for me to help people achieve, well, yes, be more efficient, be more productive. But that’s in the service of them achieving their dreams, professional dreams or personal dreams. That’s really what my life’s about is, is helping teaching people how to be healthy, healthier, and happier. And here are the methods here are the models inherent, here’s how you apply them. It’s not good enough to just be a theory. It’s not good enough just to be an academic. People might cite, I have to be practical, I have to have impact in the world. And so hearing the success stories, man, that’s for me, it’s like bam, okay, yay, you know, good for that person that they were able to apply it and they took the steps. And, you know, and I know and everybody listening to this knows, when you do an adventure when you do a book. you’re investing a lot of your life and time into that. Yeah. So to feel like that is paying off in the ways I had hoped. That’s when I feel successful.

 

SD  09:39

Okay, well I got to share because this is the podcast for anybody who wants to overcome an issue in their life to learn a habit to change a behavior and and figure out why there’s roadblocks why they can’t do it, why it’s a struggle. And I have one quick story of that you’ve already done so you know kind of the passion project in my life is the my first sale Calm, right? A bunch of kids launching businesses all over America and now all over the world. They come in and they do a week of training, like a couple hours, the little videos that we have for them a week of prep, and then they launch their business to the whole world, right? And they make several hundred dollars and they celebrate the shine moment, they do a huge celebration with their family now. And then they can turn off their business, right? They’ve learned a ton about entrepreneurship, or they keep going, we implemented. And for the listeners out there, we implemented specific, tiny motivators for kids after they finished parts of their checklists to give themselves a little celebration, we made some of the things that we realized were too hard, it took too much ability, right? We simplified for them. And then we increase their motivation with fun rewards, right? They can earn swag, once they finish certain shit. We literally kind of revamped our training program. And we just had our first girl go through it. She is 13 years old, go. I’m an African American Girl make cookies. I believe it was kailyn. I forget if it wasn’t Caitlin, I’m so sorry. I think it was Caitlin was her name. I’m interviewing her in a few days. She just launched her business in Maryland. And she made $900 on her lunch Day to all of her community in selling these little their heart cookies, their little beautiful, healthy, thin heart cookie sold by the dozens. And what a great idea. Well, and she The main thing she said was I it was so simple. And I it was an idea of what to do for a long time. Now, when I joined the my first sale program, which is using your ideas, BJ, she said each step was so simple for me, I was able to celebrate and be excited the whole way through. And she did. I mean, our average student is like 200, she just did 900. And so just seeing these kids successful gives me the feeling of success. I love watching these kids be successful. So I got to share with you that was one of the coolest experiences of the last week for me is watching this girl just crush it with her family and friends and her neighborhood. I mean, she was doing little fun celebrations, she would go talk to the school, the school posted on their Facebook, they had little things they said I’m going to do one house today, where they went to their neighbor and dropped off a card. And then they because they were already in a flow. They did 50. Right.

 

BF  12:25

Yeah, you know, getting started is often the hardest thing. In fact, did you know just bam, take that next step and keep going?

 

SD  12:33

Yeah, okay. And I got a plenty more stories, but I won’t say him yet. Let’s get into it. Let

 

BF  12:37

me let me comment on that. $900 is terrific. And it’s great. But the benefit goes way beyond the money. You know that and I’m sure you’ve talked about this before, you know, the money is one way of tracking impact. Right. But really the benefit to her and the people she’s worked with and the people she’s serving and all of that. That’s, it’s that’s so much bigger than the money itself.

 

SD  13:01

Oh, absolutely. The confidence from it is what she got. She’s like, wow, I could do this. This is awesome. And that and giving kids confidence for the future is priority one. Right? The future is exciting. Tomorrow has more opportunity than yesterday. She’s pumped for the future. She can’t wait to figure out the next one. Right? I wish I had that sort of thinking all day every day. So okay, we have got to get into this. Can we talk about map? Can we talk about the three things that make up a tiny habit, and then we can talk about map for a minute. So yeah, let’s get into education mode and tell the listeners what this is really about.

 

BF  13:37

Okay, this won’t be too complicated. Because at the end of the day, behavior, the way behavior works is pretty simple. And it’s way simpler than people think. And this model came together for me in 2007. And I call it the Fogg behavior, model. behavior, any behavior, whether it’s a habit, or a one time behavior, like buying something or, you know, going to Hawaii on a vacation. Any behavior happens when there’s motivation to do the behavior, that’s one of three, there’s a bility to the behavior, that’s number two. And there’s a prompt, the prompt is something that reminds you. And so when those three things come together, the behavior happens. If any one of those components is missing, it won’t happen. And so I write it out as B equals m A p, that’s not strictly an equation. You can’t do algebra with it. But it is a model that it’s like an answer to a riddle. This is how all human behavior works. It’s a function of motivation, ability and prompt. And that is, that for me was the breakthrough in then creating the tiny habits method, and the other models and methods of behavior design and so on. And that model is being used widely every day. I get emails asking for permission to use it in different ways. And so that People are recognizing that that was sort of like equals mc squared except its behavior. So it really is that simple. To be able to understand behavior, it’s always those three components coming together at the same moment.

 

SD  15:17

So So motivation, ability, and a prompt my motivation, my desire to the level of wanting to do something, yes, yes, my ability, which means the ease with which I can do it, yes. And then a prompt, having the perfect visual or audible or whatever, it’s a trigger that something is right there in front of me at the right time to make it happen,

 

BF  15:42

right. But we can also self prompt, we can just say, Oh, my gosh, I gotta call my mom, right? So prompts can come from different directions. Self prompting is not ideal, because relies on your memory. So there’s three different sources of prompts. And we may not want to get into that kind of detail. But the prompt is the thing that says do this now. Say, for example, I decided I need to buy some tart cherry juice. So I’m motivated to do it. I have the hope. And you know why? Guess what happened? The instructions, Scott, I read it. So I read these really great instructions for this product. I haven’t said tart cherry juice. So I’m motivated to buy it for better sleep, I’m able to buy it, I can afford it. But when I go to the grocery store, if I don’t have something that reminds me, I’m not gonna buy it, right. So you’ve got to have something whether it’s my partner saying, Don’t forget the cherry juice, or it’s a little note, or something that says Remember to buy it. So a lot of times we are motivated, and we’re able, but we’re lacking the prompt so it doesn’t get done.

 

SD  16:49

That’s right. So let’s, let’s take another one for me flossing. Okay. And I love this example that you give. I am terrible at flossing. And I don’t know why my whole life I I think I convince myself when I got a Sonicare that Oh, that does most of it. I do it twice, fly brush twice a day, once in the morning and once in the night. And one of my best friends is my dentist, Dr. Gable adrift. And he’s you know, one time he told me finally that if you don’t get the gun gap between your teeth, it can go into your stomach and cause problems like the germs can cause you know, decay in your gut. And that immediately changed my motivation level. Yeah, I was like, I don’t want that. So I immediately started flossing a bunch right after that happened. But it’s still been a problem. And I realized the other day, you know that I my flosser was not in the right place. It was in a very different

 

BF  17:45

room.

 

SD  17:46

Yeah, it was. So I was I wasn’t opening the drawer, because my toothbrush and toothpaste are over here. Right. So although that motivations been high, in my mind, for years, the prompt wasn’t there. And I also had the string, the string floss that was like, kind of annoying, and you got to wrap it around your fingers and lose some blood flow and, you know, try to get in between teeth. So then I got because of this book, I get the the flosser with the handle, were just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it’s way better. And you know, and you knock it out. And and then I realized, okay, the prompts not there, right? So the floss or had to go on the toothbrush, right there, right there in front of me. And then I realized then in the book, you talk about, you know, maybe instead of trying to convince yourself, you got to get every little piece of plaque out and every little thing with every tooth, why not just one tooth?

 

18:40

Right? lower the bar, lower the

 

SD  18:42

bar, keep it simple. So I just said, Okay, I’m just going to do it start with one tooth, all I do is one tooth. And then because my mind made it that way, it was so simple. I did the tooth and I’m like, Okay, I’ll just do the rest of the team. Right? And it was very, very easy. So that is how I hacked my ability to floss my teeth.

 

BF  19:03

Right, using a good What a great story. That’s right on. I mean, and, and people can apply that to so many aspects of their life, because there are patterns. And this is what I learned in coaching. I mean, I stopped counting at 40,000. And this is personal. This is like I’m interacting with people on email one by one, there are patterns of change. And you’ve outlined one of the patterns, which is make it easy to do. And so you have motivation, make it really easy. And then if you’re not doing it, then check the prompt. You know, how am I going to remind myself to do this and sometimes you take the physical object you need, like the floss or the little handled floss that you’re using. And you use that to be your reminder, you set it out so and that technique is called staging that so in my Stanford lab, we’ve named different techniques of behavior change, and when you use the actual object, you need to do the big havior and you use that as your reminder, then you’re doing this technique called staging. So congratulations, Scott, you staged this, and it worked. Awesome.

 

SD  20:11

So now let’s get into more of that I want to know more of the the techniques. So staging is one of them, what are a couple of the other

 

BF  20:16

Oh, there’s various so you can map it to motivation, ability and prompt. So sometimes what you need to do is there’s actually seven different things. And now we’re going a little bit geeky behavior, one leads to behavior two, I’ll just keep it to three. That behavior, one can make behavior to more motivating, so say, You’re not flossing, you watch a video about flossing as behavior one, which increases your motivation for behavior two, which is flossing. So in that case, behavior one watching the video is designed to increase your motivation because maybe that’s what you’re lacking. If what you’re lacking for flossing is ability than getting the floss out of the drawer and putting it on the counter, which is the behavior then gets behavior to to happen, which is flossing, or if prompt is lacking, there’s different ways to design a prompt and I’m being prompted by my phone right now at the wrong time, even though it’s supposed to be on silent, right prompts for like, prompts can be like not great, they can be poorly designed like that one, right? But

 

SD  21:28

I just put mine on on airplane mode just because of what you did a good job

 

BF  21:32

well

 

21:33

prompted me to put my phone on me.

 

BF  21:35

So prompts can come from lots of directions. But if What if you’re motivated enable, then you You just have to say, well, what’s going to prompt or remind me to do this. And when you combine MMP in different permutations of seven possible solves, we’ve written a paper with different names. It’s a little bit geeky to go into that. But just the thing to think about is, for any given behavior that you want to happen, you can analyze, is it a motivation problem, or an ability problem? Or am I lacking a prompt? And then design to get the motivation there or make it easier to make sure there’s a prompt, so there’s a systematic way to think about it, then there’s a systematic way to design for it.

 

SD  22:21

I love that you just dissected it, right? You You just pulled apart why every everyone listening can think about this for a second, what is one thing that you’ve wanted to do, but you just never do it, and you struggle to do it, or you forget to do it? Or you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I got to stop doing that. Right? And you just pulled it apart? Is? Is my motivation, actually high enough? What do I need to do to get my motivation there?

 

22:45

Yeah,

 

SD  22:46

what is my ability actually there? Is it not there? And how do I make the ability easier, right in front of and then the prompt? Which type of prompt Do I need to get myself to that habit?

 

BF  22:55

And Scott, there’s a twist here, and let me give the twist. If you want somebody else to do a behavior, and they’re not doing it? Well, it’s because either they’re lacking motivation, or they’re lacking ability, or they’re lacking a prompt or some combination, we’ll just stick with those three, there’s an order of troubleshooting. So let’s say that you want, I’ll pick something really simple. I want my partner. So I go surfing every morning. And let’s say I want my partner to fill up a thermos

 

SD  23:23

is amazing, by the way.

 

BF  23:25

Yes, I met this morning ways weren’t so great this morning, but it was beautiful. So let’s say I want my partner to fill up a coffee thermos for me every morning, when in reality, I do my own coffee, but for the sake of example. And so once I make that behavior clear to him, like Hey, would you make sure I have a coffee, thermos ready to go, and he’s not doing it? Most people would make the mistake of going to motivation, like getting upset or explaining why that’s the wrong place to start, you actually start with the prompt, make sure there’s something that prompts that person to do the behavior, okay? Because they may be plenty motivated, and they may have the ability. So you troubleshoot by saying, is there a prompt? Is there a reminder for my partner, you make sure there is one and many, in many situations that resolves the problem. So you don’t have to get upset. You don’t have to get in fights you have to get why don’t

 

SD  24:15

they like me? Why don’t they care about me? Why don’t they love me? What’s wrong

 

BF  24:18

with them? And that’s a twist, because most people start there. Now, if there is a prompt, and the person’s still not doing the behavior, then you look at it. Is it easy enough to do? Right? We’re still not to motivation yet

 

SD  24:34

and write it down? Because this is so smart. Yeah.

 

BF  24:36

Well, this will save many relationships or moments in a relationship or parenting. Yeah, yeah. Right. So it’s like, okay, let’s, let’s make it easier to do like as easy as possible. And the most of the time, if you’ve solved for the prompt, and you’ve made it easy to do, it will happen. If it’s still not happening, then you know, it’s a motivation problem, which is the hardest to deal with. So there’s an order to This systematic way. And the if it ends up being a motivation problem, then it’s like, okay, now I have to figure out, maybe this is even the wrong behavior for this person, why am I trying to get somebody to do something they don’t want to do? So you have that question? Yeah. But if for some reason they really need to do it, like pick up their room or, you know, clean the sink, well, then you may have to mess around with motivation to get it to happen. But you only do that as a last resort. You don’t do that first. You do that last. Gotcha. Oh, my goodness.

 

SD  25:30

Why didn’t you call it Pam then?

 

BF  25:33

Because for the design order, so that’s the troubleshooting order. Yeah, I get it again, order goes the other direction, pick behaviors that people want to do. Make sure it’s really easy. And then make sure there’s a prompt. So there’s one direction for design. Yep. The other direction for troubleshooting.

 

SD  25:50

Yeah, that’s good. It’s like a car check. wheels. Check the hood. And then you can go into the engine. Yeah, that’s smart. Okay, I love this. Okay, so let’s do a real time one with me. You ready? Okay. Ready. So I really struggle with my morning routine. I’ve got three young kids. I’m a lot like many of the listeners here. Busy you know, I run lots of businesses and hundreds of emails I got just so much going on. I pass out for part of the night there. I don’t sleep too well. I put my happy under my pillow, which helps a lot. But in the in the morning time my morning routine is just crazy. A kid wakes up you know, my my two year old Sawyer might wake up and you know, four o’clock and I’m like, Ah, there goes my workout. I can’t even think straight How can I go work out or, you know, and and I would love to have I wake up at 630 I’d love to be able to do devotion, just some like quiet time. Some meditation, prayer time. And obviously the brushing teeth going to the bathroom. Close thing. That’s normal, because I that or else I’ll be a social outcast. But walk out smelly and naked. But those are normal, but I would I struggle with that meditation, quiet time, in the midst of crazy, and I always miss it. And you know, I get down on myself. I get sad I get I know. I don’t have the best day when that happens. Right? So what can I do? And then I in my mind, I’m like, Okay, give yourself a break. You’ve got three little kids and life is crazy. And but you know, and then I would I usually can try to do a workout after that to kind of get my morning ready, you know, and that’s a great morning for me before the work down shower than work. But I missed that quiet time. And that meditation time I miss it. And I miss it like I miss doing it. Not I miss it because I don’t do it. But I missed doing it because I know I’m have a better day and I’m more centered and balanced. So what do I do? BJ? Terrific. Well, I

 

BF  27:49

have your answer. It’s not like do this. It’s a process. Just like everything. The way behavior works is a system the way you design behaviors is a system. And that’s what I’m explaining in tiny habits for the first time as it’s a system. So I know how to walk you through the system. The first thing well, let me back check this. So you feel like it needs to happen in the morning that that moment of quiet that devotion. Morning, and it’s okay, if you say yes, because morning is a super powerful time to do things.

 

SD  28:19

It’s nice to center my I mean, I would be happy to do it any time of the day. But mornings are nice, because I just feel Yeah, I can breathe deeper, my chest is lighter, and I just feel more clarity for the day. Okay, so

 

BF  28:32

let’s say yes, so that it’s a morning habit that you want. So this, what you really have there is an abstract aspiration, like I want to have meditation, I want this moment of calm, I want to have this ritual. It’s not a specific behavior. And that’s okay, that’s where everybody starts. So once you’re clear that you want this. We’ll call it a meditation moment, whatever, then what you need to explore what are the specific behaviors that could match? Is it playing a musical instrument? Is it going outside and looking at the stars? Is it sitting in the corner in a chair and meditating? Is it flipping through a physical memory book and feeling gratitude? Right, there’s 100 different things you could do. So that’s really step one, is for you to explore the wide variety of things and I would say come up with 20 to 30 different options. Okay, okay. Everyone kind of assumes it’s meditation, sitting being quiet and lotus position. Yeah, it’s one of dozens of options. And that may be the right one, but it may not be so I’m saying explore. For me what I found it’s actually playing a musical instrument. It’s playing a flute. And I didn’t know that but that provides it for me because I’m getting the breathing. I’m getting the vibration. Who knew nobody goes out and says play the flute m Step called Magic wanding. And there’s more in the book, but essentially, you’re exploring your options, then you go back, and you pick the one in this case, if it’s snacking or other kinds of things, you’d pick more than one. But in this case, we’re looking for one. Okay, that one that you would think would be most effective? And you can get yourself to do it. Yeah. Right, because you want it to be effective. And so you go back and identify of the list of 20 or 30, what’s going to be highly effective? And what can I really get myself to do? Which is a combination of ability and motivation? What can I get myself to do? Once you find that one? And let’s say it’s playing the guitar? Yep. You take that. And you make it really small and easy. So rather than practicing the guitar for 30 minutes in the tiny habits way, you scale it back, and you make it so simple, like, strum three chords. Yep. And that then becomes the habit you designed for. It’s like, Okay, I’m going to strum three chords in this meditative way, or this way, that connects me to a higher purpose.

 

SD  31:11

Journal, what journal one sentence?

 

BF  31:14

Yeah. Or even just open your journal? Yeah, right. I mean, it could be even that simple. Just open the journal. But one sentence is great, too. And then you find where does this fit naturally in my morning routine? What is it come after. So now you’re finding how you can integrate this into your existing routine. Now with kids and unpredictability, sometimes that won’t work. And that’s okay, the days it doesn’t work, fine. If you pick it up elsewhere in the morning, that’s okay. But some days, it just won’t work. And that’s fine. You just realize my routine got thrown off yet. So I wasn’t able to strum the guitar played the flute or write in my journal. And that’s okay. I’ll do it tomorrow. And that’s how you look at. So you, you explore your options. So I’m summarizing here, explore your options, don’t just latch on to one and assume it has to be meditation, you then pick one that you think is both effective, and you can get yourself to do then you scale it back to be so tiny, it doesn’t require much motivation. Yep. And then you find where to place it. What does it come after? Gotcha. And that’s how, and then you reinforce it through emotion. And, and we might get into that later, and if not, it’s in the book. But that’s how you would figure out what to do. And when to do it. In a way that’s not guessing. It’s systematic.

 

SD  32:36

Well, then let’s let’s Okay, this is great. And then we got to hit this because everyone listening loves I my favorite part of the shine, the celebration, there’s always an I even read through your list a shine, explaining what a shine is to everybody before and I’ll look it up and

 

BF  32:51

shine is a new name to before. And in tiny habits, I had the opportunity to name this emotion, it’s the feeling of success, the emotion you have when you succeed, there’s not a name for it, not a clear name. And so that’s the emotion you feel when you are trying to hit a three pointer and you hit it, you see it go in, when you look on the wall at the exam scores, and you got a perfect score. That’s the emotion that you feel when you’re trying to solve a puzzle and everything clicks together. So that feeling is six years, 100 hours, there’s many, many ways to help create this. Look at us High Five

 

SD  33:37

yourself.

 

BF  33:39

Yeah, so we feel shine naturally, when we succeed on like exams and solving puzzles, and so on. And what that emotion does is to signal to the brain that you did something good, and something that will help you and that behavior then becomes more automatic. So it’s a motion that creates habits. It’s not repetition, like people will say and mislead you. It’s emotions.

 

SD  34:05

Yeah, I’ve always heard that bJ 21 times and you’ll have the habit.

 

BF  34:09

It’s not true. It’s not true. Look at the research they’re citing when they say that you’ll see. They’re not interpreting the reason and it’s not supported by the research, I can find no scientific evidence that repetition creates the habit. That’s not true. It’s emotion. And so sometimes it will happen naturally. Like say for example, I buy a new pen. This one’s green, but in reality, it’s purple pen for me. And using the purple pen. I was like, Oh my gosh, my handwriting is better. I feel like I’m connecting better. So that feeling of success that my handwriting looks better, I’ll be able to express myself better and the thank you notes. Yep, well wire in the habit of using the purple pen rather than green pen. So notice this all around you the products that you love the products and services That you use that you love and then become part of your life, they have given you the feeling of success they’ve given you shine. And that’s what’s wired it in. So you can take that natural dynamic, and you can hack it. So when you sit down to play, let’s see, what did you choose as your meditation.

 

SD  35:22

I actually like the guitar idea, and probably a journal, I’ll do journaling guitar.

 

BF  35:27

Okay, so let’s start with guitar. Um, what I would do on that is the three chords you play, pick your favorite song, the one that makes you feel happiest. Don’t pick a hard song where you’re going to stumble, pick a song that you love. And as you play it, recognize that you’re succeeding and creating the habit, try to enjoy the music. And if you need even more than that, do the self talk and say where to go, Scott. Now at that point, if you want to set the guitar aside and go on with your day, that’s fine, you might have grandkids and that’s fine. You’ve done the habit you’ve succeeded. When you want to do more, and you can, and this can even be day one, you can play the guitar for 10 or 30 minutes, but set the bar low and do the three chords good. Cause yourself to feel successful, whether it’s just enjoying the music, or giving yourself a high five, or imagining yourself on a stage. And everybody’s cheering for you because you’re a great guitarist. Yep.

 

SD  36:26

Which best friend being happy for you. Drama happy beyond the wall, do a subtle head nod, clench your fist and say, yes, there’s 100 days that people can choose. And it really matters because it does ingrain the behavior it does, and then in journaling.

 

BF  36:42

What I would do, if I were doing journaling, my habit would just be open the journal, and then I will draw a smiley face. Because it gets you writing and the smiley face will help you feel like happy and successful. Wow. That’s and and and if you write anything and you don’t doesn’t matter, you’ve so the habit is open the journal, most of the times you open the journal, you’ll actually write something that’s meaningful beyond the smiley face. So that’s how I would hack that one.

 

SD  37:09

I love it. Oh, my goodness. So is this why people can go cold turkey? their emotional connection? Because in their emotion is potentially so high here that it causes that change.

 

BF  37:22

Yeah, you know, and that’s a more complicated situation and of cold turkey and stopping habits. Tiny habits is primarily about creating habits, okay, that you can do use the tiny habits method to stop. I’ll give a quick example here. A true one from my life as I was changing how I ate and I realized eating bread at restaurants was not helping me eating all the nachos at restaurants was not helping me. I love nachos. And I love bread. So the tiny habit recipe became this. After I see the server approaching the table with bread or nachos. I will say no bread plays or no nachos, please. So notice by doing that habit, very, you know, it’s like no bread plays three words. Yeah, the bread, the bread and nachos would not land on the table and I wouldn’t eat them. So you can use the tiny habits method to reduce or stop unwanted behaviors like bingeing on bread. Wow. So behaviors behavior always comes back to motivation ability prompt, and the tiny habits method is a technique for creating habits for their big aspirations. or stopping behaviors. And there’s a chapter on that as well.

 

SD  38:39

I actually have you got to talk about the super fridge real quick if you can, because I know I have a picture I’m gonna pull it up real fast. This is you consulted was at Weight Watchers is that

 

BF  38:50

I trained Weight Watchers all their product people along with my sister Linda, we went to New York, North Fifth Avenue. And we went in and we, they were their programming gotten really complicated. And they’re like, it’s a 50 year old program. It’s evolved over the years. And we just added an added and it’s too complicated. So we went in and help them understand, you know, what I call behavior design. There’s a version of that in the book. There’s a professional version that I teach in my boot camps. And with that, they were able to hone in on exactly what the key components should be of their program and get rid of the things that were just adding clutter and that weren’t working. Yes.

 

SD  39:30

Wow. Okay, I’m going to share my screen and see if this works for a minute. So I’m going to share screen. Okay, can you see this

 

BF  39:37

fridge There we go. That’s our fridge.

 

SD  39:39

This is BJs super fridge and look at this everything in the fridge.

 

BF  39:45

So what’s this idea of a super fridge explain the super fridge is what you do is you prep all the food and you need to do it about once a week you pre prepare it, cut up the bed, wash the veggies, cut them up, put in containers cook the keynote ah Cook the lentils and have things just ready to go, wow. And only having the fridge foods that on your game plan there’s nothing in the fridge that you have to resist or say no to.

 

SD  40:12

So and so everything in the fridge becomes like an exciting thing I can have as much as I want to say no,

 

BF  40:18

no, no willpower required, if you’re hungry, even at three in the morning, you open the fridge, you eat whatever you want, you don’t have to use any willpower. And so that’s one benefit. The other is it’s so easy then to cook healthy meals. So if you’re, you know, have 20 minutes for lunch, bam, grab the Keenum up, pull some out, grab some celery, grab some onions, oh, maybe I’ll throw on red peppers, throw them in a pan, saute them then put on the mushrooms, and boom, you got it.

 

SD  40:47

We got it. We have three little kids at home. So we need to figure out how to hack our kids eating too, because I feel like I can eat healthy if if there’s no kids food anywhere around. So we might need to rethink what our kids are eating too. I agree with this principle so much. That’s a brilliant idea. You just took away any potential temptation or a negative motivation that anyone would have and you’re free your fridge is now like, instead of just keeping things cold your fridge is like this superpower, right? Like

 

BF  41:16

your fridge his job. And this was the thing that surprised me. I knew that making good behaviors easy to do good eating behaviors, easy to do was important. What I didn’t realize and my partner and I did the super fridge, she mainly headed up. He’s very particular about the containers and so on. But what happened was the role of the fridge shifted away from like you said, keeping food cold. To now the job of the fridge is to help us eat on our game plan. Yep, that’s what the fridge does. It’s not about cooling things. It’s this thing is the center of the kitchen and the kitchen is the center of the home. And so super fridge is like Bullseye for helping you stay on your nutrition. gameplan

 

SD  42:00

Wow, that’s awesome. I think this this rule applies. We’ve already hit on 10 different ways that this tiny habit mindset applies. I got to share this quick one with you. My next door neighbor, my best friend, Michael Bennett. He is an entrepreneur like me, and like many of our listeners and he has you know, he’s a real estate financer. They have a company that helps take people on trips to like, Havasupai falls, and they’re really really cool. He’s one of the nicest most generous guys he just started Mike’s grub. He started a restaurant, okay. And I love it. He just boldly went right into it. And he said, Okay, we’re gonna launch this thing it’s it’s good food. It’s healthy food. It’s It’s really tasty food. And he got a lease right next to a carwash which our other friend owns

 

BF  42:46

Oh Andrew thing.

 

SD  42:48

And so now their thought was it’d be really cool because they get people going to the carwash and they can order food and then go to the carwash and and all that kind of stuff that was the idea so he spends all this money starts the restaurant. Zero people from the carwash are getting food at the restaurant, right? He’s getting traffic okay elsewhere, so we have this problem and this is literally in the last week he started two and a half weeks ago. Okay. So we’re sitting here trying to think okay, is it motivation? Is it ability, is it a prompt, and the more wheat analyzed and they were trying to give out like, you know, QR codes to people as they go through the carwash, but the inside of the restaurant is like on the side of the carwash, so it’s out of their way a little bit. No one’s going to scan the QR code while they’re in the middle of a carwash. They’re trying to figure out how not to like die. So we went through all this Okay, is it Are they hungry? Maybe they’re not hungry, maybe it’s the wrong time of day. So we went through all this motivation billion prompt and we realize that people just don’t think about oh, I can get a coffee or a breakfast burrito. And then you know, get it right after my course. They just don’t know about it. So the knowledge isn’t wasn’t really there. And then the ability to do it wasn’t super simple. And there was no prompt right in front of their face. So what here’s what we created. Are you ready? Okay, ready. I had this idea of this is all your credit. There’s a car Okay, so there’s you go. You can either go here when you drive in, go to the restaurant, or you can go around and do the carwash. Okay, okay. And there’s a why, at that, why, at that, why I’m putting a cart of locked wheel yellow cart. That’s the exact same size. It’s like the window roll down for people to drive it right side. Yeah. And on that cart is a sign that says press the button. Okay? And there are four giant, like easy buttons, you know, row on the cart, okay? And there’s four things that it says on there it says press the button in big red bold font, okay? And they’re driving right by that okay? And they don’t go to the restaurant, and then it says 90 seconds, orders ready. Whatever. Leave your car, pay out. Wash

 

45:01

cars. And this is another

 

SD  45:03

easy to do. All they got to do is literally go bam. And it takes a picture of their car. Yeah, the order inside and it’s the picture is like or chata coffee, cinnamon roll for the morning. And then oh my gosh. This is literally I’ve never had this idea before just because your book I was like, Oh, this is the way. And so then we just and it’s a TV, it’s going to be a TV. So for lunch and dinner, they just swap out the pictures for different types of lunch and dinner that’s like, you know, a salad to go taco for dinner. They even have pizza and stuff. So it’s all right there. And the dollar is for $3 $4 $5 is very simple, you can press up to five buttons and just you press the buttons and it’s in it’s a little bit of a shine moment. So there’s a little sound that goes off that says nice choice. And, and it’s a little red, it has a little red LED. So it’s just very intense to press the button. And then we have the green umbrella over it. So we knows that that’s not the same green umbrella for the kid who’s sitting in the chair after the carwash taking their credit card.

 

BF  46:08

So it’s easy to identify again, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy. So

 

SD  46:11

in literally I think we clocked it at like 15 seconds, you can take the person’s credit card, you swipe because it’s already there. And no tip just fast. And then they give them their food.

 

BF  46:20

No sighs I love that and ready to go. Good job.

 

SD  46:24

So I will I will update you on the progress. But we immediately when we went through we’re like, oh my gosh, so many people are going to buy from this thing.

 

BF  46:32

Yeah, I would. Yeah, update me Now, clearly, the restaurants going to do better. But also, if you can get the carwash to track their customers, their customer loyalty and frequency is going to go up so it’s going to have the benefit also Yep, driving more traffic increased traffic to the carwash.

 

SD  46:51

That’s right so we’re excited like just simple simple things like that and even in happy right the the the biotech wearable that you just got, we are creating simple ways to help prompt people. Right? Would you like a calendar reminder for when you want to set this up? Right? Let us know if we can help you set up these prompts in your life to be more productive, get energy we need to better sleep. We’ll just help you in the background like not on your phone all day. But we can help people use these to have better habits throughout their day. Yeah, so great. It’s it’s been so so so helpful for me and I really, really appreciate your time and this has been such a fun one. Okay, we got one more question or two. We got to hear we didn’t hear your first your my first sales story from your, from when you were a youngster. Let’s go back to when you were a kid. Oh my god, what was your first you know, because now you’re an author, right? You’re a speaker, an author, you have your own businesses, you’re an entrepreneur, what was the first thing

 

BF  47:53

there are so many I grew up in a home where it was all about being an entrepreneur, there was no word for it back then. But it was like start your own company and my dad and especially my dad and just generally it was like Yeah, why work for somebody else work for yourself. You know, start lawn mowing. I mean, we sold oranges door to door we mowed lawns. We even sold contact lenses door to door which was crazy at the time. That became one 800 contacts somebody Stoller basically, like yeah, it goes on and on but I’ll I’ll pick a weird I don’t know what the first one was, but I’ll pick a weird one. Okay, that was illegal. But it was supported by my family, because it was about learned to do business, learn to learn to sell stuff, learn to be an entrepreneur. Every summer we would go to Wyoming to have a big family unit. I’m from at this and Wyoming sold firecrackers. So what my what my brother and I figured out we could buy blocks of firecrackers in Wyoming brink. And, and within the block, you’d have like a pack of firecrackers that cost you about 10 cents. Yeah, we can bring it back to California and we could sell the little packs for $1 50. So our margins were a buck 40. So here we were, we know it was kind of illegal. My parents knew we were doing it. We were the firecracker people, and then we would sell those at school or people come to our house. I know this sounds terrible. But we learned stuff. And our margins were great. And so we looked forward to going back to Wyoming getting firecrackers and

 

SD  49:32

firecracker brothers. Exactly is

 

BF  49:35

awesome. There were so many things we did and I think the upshot of that of the firecrackers, you know, just on and on. I mean it was like hair. The fog kids again selling us stuff was I learned I developed confidence. And I didn’t realize this until I got into college and I was later considering jobs that I knew I could always make money. I knew that I could Create a business so I could create something I could make money, and that I did not have to take a job to get money. And what that allowed me to do was to pick whatever career path I wanted and take really big risks based on what I wanted, not on the fact that I was going to get a paycheck, because I knew I could make money, I didn’t need the job. Yeah. And that allowed me to do things in very unconventional way and take risks that really paid off big. And I attribute that to me being a kid, learning how to sell things, learning how to figure out how to run a business, and so on. And so I had the confidence that I didn’t have the fear that I, I would have to just do something for the money. So I was able to follow my passions, and I still do it today, I do projects. And I do work that I just really love. But the game changer was coming out of college with money in the bank, by the way, I had $10,000 in the bank after four degrees, because I was running my own little businesses and stuff. And then I took jobs that were things I wanted to do and things I wanted to learn.

 

SD  51:07

That is awesome. And that’s such an empowering thought, right? Yeah, that kids don’t have to worry about you know what job you’re gonna get someday you’re not to worry. I mean, half the jobs are going to be completely new anyway, and 15 years that no one’s ever even thought of today. So you don’t have to worry about it. What you can think of is, what do you love to do? Mm, what are you good at? What do you what do you get flow time? And what’s your passion? And if you can realize that you can turn things into a business or be successful to learning these basic principles of entrepreneurship of what what profit is, what margin is how you make $1 40 for every firecracker, that’s an important principle, right? I mean, you know, if you’re selling an A class, or an educational, you know, curriculum or something, an online educational thing, that’s a lot of margin that’s really important to understand versus like, a grocery store that has only 3% margin, if you sell apples for 50 cents, they probably cost them 45, right? I mean, so you want this, these are great principles that are better learned when you’re a kid when you have more freedom and risk and there’s not a lot to lose, and yeah, it’s

 

BF  52:19

great. And and let me add to this. Scott, the role of my parents, the discussion around the dinner table could be about you know, we’re gonna do this, or why don’t you try that. And we were actually discouraged from getting a job like at Taco Bell and stuff. It’s like, why don’t you just try your own thing this summer, and if it fails, that’s okay. It’s not about you making the money, right. So much. It’s very, very clear to myself and all my siblings, it’s seven kids in our family. We would much rather you have to start your own thing and have it fail, then you just go get a retail job or a taco bell job that was totally clear that that doing your own thing was more valued and that failure wasn’t like a big huge problem. Yeah, just dive in and try it and you’re gonna learn stuff by doing it.

 

SD  53:11

That’s That’s my favorite thing to teach kid entrepreneurs it’s not win or lose it’s winner learn like you’d nine losing is a great there’s no losing because you know, it’s just something you paid to learn. That’s it. And unfortunately, I’ve made millions of dollar mistakes now but those aren’t mistakes those are lessons learned. I paid for the most prestigious degree you could ever pay for that was the most expensive degree but guess what? I will not forget that lesson for as long as I live because I learned a lot and I’m better for it right and so that’s the thing is you win or you learn

 

BF  53:49

Yeah, I and I that’s why when you reached out to me and you told me about my first sales like I love it I immediately got it because that you know if you said BJ what was the one thing that you did growing up that has changed the trajectory it was that it was having a home then valued entrepreneurship even though we didn’t have a word for it back then yeah, and they supported you and then it was about that encouraged you to do that and supported you in that top that was a game changer.

 

SD  54:19

I didn’t realize this but I think we named it perfectly because the my first sale feeling the feeling someone gets not just the money like you’re exactly right. But the feeling you get that you made something with your own hands or your own mind that someone else needs or wants so much that they would pay you for it. That feeling of that is like such a freeing success feeling right? That it’s it’s like the perfect moment that everyone immediately gets it so more you know, I got lucky I guess before we met we named

 

BF  54:52

and it’s great. I’ll just add one more thing. So my father’s a nice surgeon and but really a business person that happens to be Really good eye surgeon, but he would help us, like hit up Wi Fi on some orange, orange orchards, we’d go pick the oranges, or we would cook up wheat in this certain way we’d buy the wheat night, whoa, bring it home and cook it up. And he would spend his time doing this, this dollars per hour, that was not a good investment for an eye surgeon at all. Right. But he knew because he also kind of learned this from his father who was very entrepreneurial, that this was a great investment of his time to help his kids learn these things. So even though it didn’t make sense on the balance sheet in terms of dollars per hour for his time, in terms of helping us learn and changing and so I just want to point that out. It may not make sense in the near term in terms of dollars and cents, but you’re investing the investment you’re making your kids and helping them do this just pays off massively. Yeah,

 

SD  55:52

yep. That’s some of the best things we can do. So Oh, man, this is a great conversation. BJ, thank you so much for having this. So there you have it, you guys. BJ Fogg, one of the probably the world’s most renowned behavior design specialists. teaches us tiny habits and how they can change everything. BJ thanks again. This is a fantastic day.

 

BF  56:13

Thank you so much.

 

SD: All right, guys. Take care. Talk to you soon.