Kickoff Sessions
Weekly podcast episodes with the sharpest minds in the world to help you live a richer & more fulfilling life.
Previous guests include Luke Belmar, Justin Waller, Sahil Bloom, Gad Saad, Peter Schiff, Stirling Cooper, Jack Hopkins, Sadia Khan, Matt Gray, Daniel Priestley, Richard Cooper, Justin Welsh, Arlin Moore and more.
Kickoff Sessions
#256 Nir Eyal - The Psychology Behind the World’s Best Products
Join Voics Incubator for as little as $250 per week: http://voics.co/incubator
Why do some products fail while others get you hooked for life?
It’s not just the technology or the marketing.
It’s the habits they create:
- Why do we check our phones 150+ times a day?
- How do businesses like TikTok and Duolingo dominate user attention?
- What makes us keep coming back?
These are the principles that build world-changing products.
Nir Eyal, author, lecturer, and investor known for his bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’, breaks it all down for us in the episode of Kickoff Sessions
Nir has influenced how tech giants design their most engaging platforms and shared his insights into the psychology of habits, retention, and persuasion.
In this episode, we dive into:
- The GEM framework for sustainable businesses
- The science behind the ‘Hook Model’
- How to ethically create habit-forming products
- The future of AI and mass customization
Ready to create a product that people love and build habits that make your life better?
Smash that like button and stay tuned for next week's episode!
Connect with Nir Eyal
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nireyal/
My Socials:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-lee1
(00:00) Preview and Intro
(01:26) The GEM Framework
(03:32) Why Retention Beats Growth Long-Term
(05:31) The Problem with Online Education
(07:11) The Hook Model Explained
(10:47) The Future of AI and Personalized Experiences
(13:15) Manipulation vs. Persuasion
(17:16) Developing Emotional Connection with Customers
(20:49) Creating Value-Driven Products
(26:06) Problems with Unsustainable Models
(30:47) Nir Eyal’s Retention Strategies
(34:12) The Role of Frequency in Building Habits
(37:05) How To Create User Engagement
(40:37) The Importance of Variability in Rewards
(49:32) Traction vs. Distraction: How to Stay Focused
People equate growth with success. That's a mirage, because you can always buy growth. You have to bring people back, you have to create a customer habit. The ROI on retaining a user is much, much higher than how much you have to spend on acquiring a new user. The opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. Of course it is right Traction, distraction. They're opposite and both words end in the same six letters A-C-T-I-Y-N. That spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us, it's not our pings dings and rings.
Darren Lee:It is an action that we ourselves take. Before we start this video, I have one small favor to ask of you If you've been enjoying the US tour so far and all the effort we put into making these videos as best as possible for you, please hit the subscribe button down below so we can help more people every single week. Thank you, let's kick off Awesome. I want to get from your experience. What really are the components of great products Like? How would you break that down? Not even necessarily software online courses, online programs. What are those kinds of components you would think?
Nir Eyal :Yeah. So a great product or a great business? Because there's a difference. There's a lot of great products that don't make for good businesses and therefore aren't sustainable. So I would argue that in order to build a great product, you have to build it in the context of a great business, or it's not sustainable. It won't stick around for very long. Right, it'll be a flash in the pan. So I can answer the question of how do you build a great business, which incorporates elements of how do you build a great product, which is you need what's called the GEM framework. I didn't make this up. I think this comes from Reid Hoffman, who says that you need.
Nir Eyal :Every great business has three parts GEM. G-e-m stands for growth, engagement and monetization. So growth is about how you acquire new customers, engagement is about how do you retain them, and then monetization is about how do you make the business sustainable and make sure that the cost of acquisition is less than the lifetime value of each customer. So when you have those all three of those that's that's not a startup anymore, that's a full fledged company. Startups, however, usually need two out of the three and a plan for the third right. That's what it means to be a startup versus a full fledged running company. My area of expertise is just on that engagement piece. Right, if you want to learn about growth, that's somebody else. Right, go find a growth hacker or somebody. If you want to find monetization, there are experts that do that.
Nir Eyal :My specialty is really around how do you get customers to keep coming back? Because what I've seen we've all seen in the tech industry is that there are a lot of what we call leaky buckets. Right, there are these products that sometimes take the world by storm. Lots of people are using it, makes a bunch of buzz in the news and then a few months later, maybe a year later, nobody uses it anymore, right? And there's this long history of graveyards full of Silicon Valley darlings that couldn't sustain use. And so I believe, for the vast majority of companies out there whether it's online, offline, enterprise, consumer, web you have to bring people back. You have to create a customer habit. The ROI on retaining a user is much, much higher than how much you have to spend on acquiring a new user. So if you're not keeping those customers, you're really wasting a huge opportunity. So I really want to dive into the science and the psychology of how do you retain customers.
Darren Lee:On the front end, you just see businesses fizzling out, and I think the tech world where I came from and, let's say, the online business world, is very similar in that regard. People run marketing campaigns, they acquire customers, but they can't keep them around, so they're selling one-time products, one-time offering, and people are not really sticking into that system, right, and the mirage?
Nir Eyal :just sorry to interrupt, but the mirage there is that people equate growth with success, and that's a mirage, because you can always buy growth. You can always buy growth. You raise a bunch of money. You give that money to Facebook or to TikTok, or to billboards or to TV commercials or to banner ads whatever way you want, you can buy growth. You can always buy trial use. You cannot buy retention. There's no place, there's nobody. You can give your money to the way. You can buy ads to try and get people to stick with your company. Right, that has to be designed into the product. It cannot be bought. And so if you don't think about that early, you're throwing good money after bad. And that's what happens with every VC hype cycle is that VCs start giving money away and the founders think well, in order to grow, you know, I have to keep growing. Well, they start purchasing ads essentially to get people to use the product, but then, once that spigot of money stops, they're out of luck, right, it's a leaky bucket and so you can't buy engagement.
Darren Lee:Engagement must be designed into the product, and it's funny because if you compare that to a bootstrap company who don't have the excess cash, they utilize what they have, which is the 100 users or the 50 users or the 20 users, and then they become advocates. Advocates turn into evangelists, they become into raving fans and they create an ecosystem. And then that's what's actually so beautiful, because it doesn't matter if you're Uber or you're a coaching program online. It's the same principle. And I want to go specifically into engagement and how you would spark that engagement.
Darren Lee:From my perspective, like, I've seen a lot of these, let's say, like influencer businesses or whatnot. They get people in the door and they're just thrown into a community on school which you'll be familiar with uh, slack and then that's kind of it. But it's almost like the best way to get someone to to actually do the work is just by keeping accountable to them, having a trigger, getting them to send them notifications. Like, how do you think about that? Because, like most courses online, okay, they have like 20% completion rate, whereas if you have a program which is an accountability in a community, completion skyrockets. It goes up to 80, 90%.
Nir Eyal :And this is why, traditionally, online education sucks, right? Because this is what happens with every new technology we port the form factor of the last generation of technology onto the new generation of technology, like this happened with newspapers that you know, the first iteration of newspapers I remember this back in the late 1990s was literally the homepage, like a big PDF of the New York Times homepage, and you would have to, like you know, try and read this itty bitty print, right? So they took the same form factor and just put it online. Well, that's a disaster, that doesn't work. It wasn't until we figured out okay, we need to change the form factor, it has to look a little different to adapt to the best aspects of that new technology. And so that's what has happened with online education. Okay, the traditional form of education is a sage on a stage, right? Somebody blabbing at you in front of 30 people. So we'll just record that person and you'll sit there and watch it, just like you would in a classroom. But that doesn't work. That's like putting a PDF of the New York Times homepage. That does not work. Why doesn't it work? Because you're missing a critical element of what happens offline, which is when you are in a classroom, there are other people, so there's a binding constraint, and then if you get up in the middle of a classroom, the person behind you is going to see that and be like what are you doing? Why are you getting up in the middle of class and the teacher is going to see you and that's going to be weird, right? Whereas when you're watching a class at home online and just somebody you know a video of somebody blabbing on, that's boring, there's nothing to keep you there and more so. You've got you know, you've got TikTok and you've got Instagram, you've got YouTube, you've got all these other potential distractions that want to pull you away with no consequences. So what we see now is something that's working a lot better.
Nir Eyal :I'm an investor in a few companies that do this, like Maven, for example. Is this cohort-based learning, and cohort-based learning does utilize the hook model, so I only invest. I'm an active angel investor. I've invested in about 36 companies now, and I only invest in companies that use this hook model methodology, where the fulcrum of success is habits, and so uh Maven is a good example of this cohort based uh course company, of uh using the hook model, in that the, the, the, the, the. The big differentiation is that the variable reward now isn't just the content itself, it's not just what you're learning, it's that you're part of a community I call this rewards of the tribe and that community gives you more variability, right, that's what makes it interesting is what are you gonna say and what am I gonna post, and what do people think about what I post in this whole social interaction? And most importantly is that it builds investment. So investment is the fourth step of the hook.
Nir Eyal :We're kind of skipping ahead here, but the fourth step of the hook model is the most overlooked in that products, in order for them to become habit forming, they have to do what I call store value. This is a really, really big deal. Stored value is when a product appreciates with use, meaning, unlike traditional products, right, these couches, my clothing, your car all of these things depreciate. They lose value with wear and tear. A habit forming product must appreciate. It has to get better and better and better with use because of this concept of store value. So when you have an online course, for example, where the first few days that you're in the course you're interacting with people, that's great, but you're building a reputation, you're building some kind of you know, you've been building friends and now maybe you get tapped to be a TA in the course in the future, so that each one helps one. Now you're storing value, you're made the product better and better and better with use, and that's what makes it so sticky.
Darren Lee:So what's so interesting about that is the fact that the community appreciates to the point that it becomes like self-fulfilling. So it's like less about like, let's say who the founder is of the cohort or whatnot. The community is stronger than the actual original content and you find that because not many people actually complete the content. They come to the weekly calls or the cohort based learning and that's a beautiful part of it and the investment side. So what other ways can people invest? Because when I looked at that initially, I was thinking from the perspective of you know, you could have a product, whether it's free or low ticket, and then almost like be offering them upsells in the back end, have a higher ticket approach. That's the monetary investment and you have to time investment. What other elements are there? As I just think in the context of my business, which is to do a podcasting, I think of it more like the time investment, because someone might spend 60 hours or 100 hours producing shows. How do you think about that?
Nir Eyal :Yeah. So the investment phase can be in multiple different forms. It can be time, money, social capital. It can be, most importantly, data. Data is going to be the big one as we move into this age of AI.
Nir Eyal :What is already happening with certain platforms, I think is going to happen everywhere. We're going to have this TikTokification of basically everything, where if you are not using the consumer's data to improve the product with use, you're sunk because your competition will. With use, you're sunk because your competition will. So, for example, in an online course type business, in a few years customers will not accept the same course delivered to everyone. They won't accept that anymore. They will want tailored learning based on their usage patterns. So if I'm not getting a concept, I need you to slow down and teach me that concept in a way I can understand. And that's going to be done through AI. It's going to be customized.
Nir Eyal :So we're moving very quickly to an age where, when Henry Ford started on the production line, he famously said you can have any color of Model T as long as it's black. Why did he say that? Because it was really hard for him to retool his factory and give one customer a blue car and one customer a red car Today, that hard for him to retool his factory and give one customer a blue car and one customer a red car Today. That's easy. We've moved along the spectrum right, but in the future we will make products for market size of one, so that your experience with every product you use will be tailored just to you, based on your past usage data. This is already what the social media companies are doing, right. Tiktok and Instagram, like these companies, know exactly what you want based on what you have done in the past, and that's why they're so sticky right. That's why they're so habit forming. So imagine a future where basically everything that is interactive will have that element. Customers will expect this mass customization.
Darren Lee:Who's smashing that at the moment? Who's at the top of this product sphere that you're looking at right now that has integration of AI? That is a small company or whatnot.
Nir Eyal :What are you observing? I don't see it yet with the small companies, because to date it's been very expensive to do Um, but I think you know, for for many years, um, uh, I was kind of a, a tech advocate in a way, right that like uh, that, that uh and I still am very much about personal responsibility, um, but I think recently like seeing that you know how TikTok uses these techniques.
Nir Eyal :Tiktok is the only company that that scares me. That's the only one that I won't put on my phone, um, for many reasons. I think there's also trust issues. I've heard a lot of things on the inside that give me pause about what else they might be, what other data they might be collecting. This is unsubstantiated. Do your give me pause about what else they might be, what other data they might be collecting? This is unsubstantiated. Do your own research.
Nir Eyal :But even if you look at what's blatant, even if you look at how good that company is at understanding what you want, based on every possible tiny data point, and giving it to you before you even know you want it, and what that means in the future is that content won't even rely on real people anymore. They're going to become so good at understanding what you want that they're going to give you generated AI content that they make themselves. And that's, of course, going to be the future of entertainment, right, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because we're getting more of what we want, right? We want content to be entertaining. We want it to be engaging. I just think it should be transparent, and I'm not sure we know exactly what they're doing and how they're doing it, and so that's where I think there's. I don't know if they're abusing it, but there is a hell of a lot of room for a potential abuse.
Darren Lee:It's the line between manipulation and actual customization. Right, it's like there's a thin line there between what you want and if they're creating, let's say, faceless cartoon, like videos, it's like, okay, this is what we need, it doesn't need to be in a production room, but what's the line of what are you being thought in that way? Because if you click on the instagram, for instance, I'll often see things on my explorer page I just don't want to see. You know, as in, it doesn't fill me with joy, which is the whole point. So let's get into the psychology side of it. That puts us out of it.
Nir Eyal :I would just just to play on that point a little bit. It's all manipulation. So manipulation is nothing new, right? When a girl puts on lipstick and makeup to look a little prettier, when a man puts on cologne and, and you know, dresses up nice, we're all manipulating each other. In fact, we pay for the privilege to be manipulated. There's nothing inherently unethical with manipulation. When you go to a movie theater, you know that that's flickering light, that's not real people there on the screen, it's an illusion, and in fact the people that you're observing are actors who are paid to make you feel stuff. So we want to be manipulated. Right, when you go to a magic show, you know it's not magic. Right, we pay for the privilege of having our emotions manipulated. We like it, it's enjoyable and there's nothing wrong with it.
Nir Eyal :But there's two kinds of manipulation. There's coercion and then there's persuasion. Persuasion is great. So what I do, my business, is to help companies build persuasive products. Persuasion is defined as helping the user do something that they themselves want to do. You want to learn a new language? Great Duolingo uses the hook model to teach people new languages. You want to work out? You want to exercise? Great Fitbod uses the hook model to help you exercise. So that's wonderful persuasive technology, helping you do things that you want to do but, for lack of a good user interface, aren't doing.
Nir Eyal :The opposite of that coercion is when you get people to do things they don't want to do, things that they later regret, and so that's unethical Persuasion. We should do a lot more of Coercion is unethical. So the only legal form of coercion is done by the government, right? So when the cop pulls you over and says, hey, you were speeding and now you have to stop, whether you like it or not, he doesn't care if you like it and you have to pay this ticket, whether you like it or not, that's coercion. But that's legal coercion and pretty much the government is the only entity that can do that the force of the law. But for companies to do that, that's unethical, if not illegal. Example if you trick somebody into buying a stupid supplement, pill, powder, potion, whatever and then they start using it and be like huh, it's not working, like nothing's happening, and it turns out that the stuff was snake oil, well, that's coercion, right? The customer, had they known what you know, that your product doesn't actually do the job, that would be a coercive practice.
Darren Lee:It seems wild to me that people would intentionally build stuff that they know it doesn't have a benefit you know, I know, but it just seems so wild to me, right?
Darren Lee:because then, in contrast, persuasion, you know into your own stuff. The way you describe it is like we're just reducing the time delay for that person to get the outcome. So let's say someone is overweight and they want to get fit. Yes, you can do yourself 100, but having a personal trainer will help you get there sooner, like there's no doubt about that. And then maybe that's when the sales call has blurred lines or the application process has things deliberately set up in a way to get people to cross the chasm, to actually spend their money so that they have the investment, so they've hit all the parameters. There you've the emotional connection and the actual physical investment to go and do the thing. Because if I gave you the best product in the world that was free, you're not going to use it unless you make that commitment, and sometimes that's just cash.
Nir Eyal :Right, and the differentiating factor is one word, and that one word is regret. That if, when you use my product, if you regret using it, you're not going to stay a customer for very long, so it is in the company's interest If you want to stay now you can make money by tricking people. You know it's. It's unethical, it's oftentimes illegal. Uh, that doesn't mean it's necessarily unprofitable. I don't recommend it because it's not sustainable.
Nir Eyal :Because if you have a product that people say they regret using, well, what are they going to do? Are they going to stop using it? Of course they will. Right, they're going to stop using it. Not only that, they're going to tell all their friends to not use it anymore either. So, yeah, so the products that are that people regret using even now we see that with social media, right, we see this real tech backlash now of people saying, hey, you know what Like this doesn't make me feel good. I use them every day. That help you limit the use of these products so that you can use them in a way that serves you as opposed to you serving them.
Darren Lee:Tell me more about emotional connection, because I think it's interesting from your world of tech, because in the creator business world it's very easy to see that emotional connection. So let's say you follow Chris Williamson and he has a product and then people buy into that product because they are embodying the values of Chris in that instance. How do you build that into a product that people don't see the face of? Do you want to grow and monetize your podcast but you don't know where to begin? Have you tried all the tricks and hacks but nothing has worked? Have you been wasting time, money and energy and seeing an analytics chart with no growth? That's where Vox comes in.
Darren Lee:We've been helping podcasts grow and monetize their shows for many years. We've grown shows to over 100 million views, done over 10 million downloads, generated over $2 million in only the last year alone, and we can help you grow and monetize your own podcast. We've had some shows go from absolutely zero. We've had some of the biggest influencers in the world come to us to help and improve their show. So if you want to learn exactly our podcast Grow Flywheel and exactly how we can do this for you and completely replicate success, schedule a call right down below myself and we can go through the exact model for you and to grow your podcast this year.
Nir Eyal :So there's a few things going on there, a few psychological phenomenons. One is called the mere exposure effect. The mere exposure effect says that simply, the more times you see a logo, a personality, hear a jingle, the more times you see that, the more you like it Right. There's no coincidence that, you know, in the in American politics we see the same names again and again the Clintons, the Trumps, like you see. Like Trump was a phenomenon because he didn't just come out of nowhere, he was a brand a long, long time ago and and and this you know, this is why you see Coca-Cola advertising everywhere, because the mere exposure effect says that, just by the fact that you see that logo again and again and again. This is why a brand advertising is is a multi-billion dollar industry, because the more you see it, the more you like it right, the more that that's the theory at least.
Nir Eyal :So that's a big part of what's happening is just the mere exposure effect. And then you've got what's called emotional transference, that if you have a good feeling towards the spokesperson, you might have a good feeling towards the product as well. So both of those are playing upon people when they have an endorsement of a product. How do you do that? If you, you, uh, if you don't, if you don't want to pay for that, um, you have to have a really good product, because it doesn't only have to be good, uh, there are studies that find it has to be nine times better. There's a Harvard business review study that found that, in order to break the inertia of someone's current habit, it can't just be better, it has to be nine times better, because it's so hard to get people to switch their existing habits.
Darren Lee:To switch cost effect effectively. They're not able to actually make that change unless they're compelled to. But a question on that is how would you incorporate things like social proof in that instance to be able to? Because, for instance, if I showed someone that was just like you, who's the same age demographic, who used to be overweight and now is in good shape, like that would be easier for you to cross the chasm effectively. So like how would you think about that type of positioning? Cause everything's positioning Well.
Nir Eyal :I think you know I think we jump to our people jump to. I don't do this, but I think people jump. Yeah, no, no, I think people jump to try and selling products that make money. And I'm going to be a little contrarian here and I think that to make money is not a good reason to start a business Because, frankly, if you start a business because you want to get rich, you're just bad at math. The odds of you getting rich by starting a business are infinitesimal. You don't see that because you only see the survivors. You only hear about the winning stories. You don't hear about the 99.999% of people who start businesses and it doesn't work out right. Most businesses do not work out. So if you're starting a business solely for the reason of I want to get rich, you're selfish and dumb because you can't do math. You should start a company because that product has to exist.
Nir Eyal :So in my book Hooked, I give this matrix. I call it the manipulation matrix of when is it okay to use psychological tactics on people Like, when is that all right to do ethically? Because again, we know there's this, there's this differentiation between coercion, persuasion, like you need to think about the ethics of all this, but? But I give this lens about the individual that the individual can use. How can you judge yourself? It's not meant for you to judge other people, other people to judge you. But how should I spend my limited time on earth here to make sure that I spent it without regret? And so the test I give people is this two-part test. Number one is what I'm doing materially improving people's lives? Right? So can I look in the mirror and tell myself that what I'm doing is materially improving people's lives? Right? Like is this magic green powder crap real? Or right, like, is it real? No, it's not. So for me, I couldn't sell a product. You know who they are because it's.
Nir Eyal :I got to go on a rant on this stuff. This kills me about all my podcaster friends, right? They say don't meet your heroes. And this is why. Because all this powder and I don't know if you sell it, so I apologize in advance you don't Great, it's such bullshit. Right, because what it does, when and I'm hoping I'm reaching a few influencers out there that hear me out on this when you sell a solution as a panacea and you can't help it just because of the time you're spending on it, without a massive disclaimer that says don't take this green powder and think you're going on it, without a massive disclaimer that says don't take this green powder and think you're gonna get any results until you first eat right, sleep well, don't smoke and drink in moderation and have friends Before you do those things. Don't buy this shit. And nobody does that. And so what most people think is I'll drink the green crap, right, I'll drink the powder and that's gonna make me healthier. It's not gonna make you healthier until you've covered your bases Eating right, sleeping well, having friends, not smoking, drinking in moderation, exercise I forgot the sixth one and exercise. Until you do those six things, that powder crap is gonna do almost nothing. It's at the very, very, very, very tippy top margin. So why do we spend so much time on it? I know why we spend so much time on it because it makes buku bucks. That's why influencers spend so much time with it.
Nir Eyal :So the first test has to be can I look in the mirror and say this is materially improving people's lives? Okay, that's the first test, but that's not good enough. The second test is to ask yourself to break the first rule of drug dealing. Do you know the first rule of drug dealing. That's the second rule. The first rule of drug dealing is never get high on your own supply. Never get high on your own supply. That's the first rule of drug dealing. I want you to break that rule.
Nir Eyal :So the second question is am I the user? Number one does this materially improve people's lives? Number two am I the user? Why do I want you to ask yourself that question? Because if there are deleterious effects to using your product, you're gonna be the first to know about it, and one of the biggest advantages you can have as a founder is to build a product that people want. How do you know people want your product? Become the user. So when you look at these world-changing companies whether it's Meta, whether it's Google, whether it's Amazon, whether it's all these companies they started these world-changing companies.
Nir Eyal :They started with people who wanted the product for themselves. Right, because that is a huge competitive advantage, because you know the customer, because you are the customer as opposed to I see this all the time with founders. Oh yeah, we're going to build a company that you know so-and-so over there, like Coca-Cola is going to use it and you know some guy on wall street is going to use it. But have you been that person? Are you in that role? Nah, not really. Well, you're not going to succeed because you don't intimately understand the customer.
Nir Eyal :So if you are in that position where you believe it materially improves people's lives and you're doing it in good faith, you truly believe it's going to improve people's lives, doesn't mean you can't make money, if you can't offer, if you can't answer the affirmative to those two questions, but I think you're in a much better competitive and ethical position if you can and it's more of an authority frame too, right, if you're someone who actually goes and does the thing like, for instance, my business is a podcast business and I record every single week and it's the fact that, like, the problem that we're solving is the problems that I've had my entire life and continuously still have does that make sense?
Darren Lee:so it's like I think the founder dilemma stuff would not knowing where you're going into is a big area too that I can riff on for 20, 20 years, because the problem is you're using um, basically you're using like AI, web 3.0, crypto, whatever to solve an arbitrary problem.
Darren Lee:Right, it's like we're going to do X, we're going to do Y, but that person hasn't felt what it's like. And, coming from a trading background where I started my career from, I saw that all the time because, as you probably know, trading is insanely complex in the backend, all the money clears and all this kind of stuff, to the point that if you truly don't understand deep financial services, you're screwed. And that's kind of what happens at 12, 18 months of the honeymoon phase and the money's raised. So it's just a very interesting observation, because this is where we go back to like legs in the business, sustainability in the business. Your first point, because I've even felt that myself, that I feel it's way easier to launch something than it is to sustain something, and the typical advice you get from a founder is well, I'm a builder, I just build stuff. It's like no, you have funky ideas. Why do you think?
Nir Eyal :there's such a, it seems like, at the end of the day, when it comes to influencers, they're either selling high margin, low value stuff like pills, potions, powders or courses on how to sell courses. Right Like it's hard to find an influencer who's not selling you a course on how to sell courses. It drives me crazy. What's the deal?
Darren Lee:So the logic there is the fact that they've done something that's difficult, let's say, like they got the basics of trading. So here's a simple example. But then again to sustain it or to make a very big lifestyle off it, it's like 20 years experience of doing something like this and it's easier to teach people than it is to actually do the thing. Now, the way. My analogy for this is that if you're going to learn golf, you don't want to learn golf from Tiger Woods because he's a 10 out of 10. You actually want to learn golf from someone who's a four out of 10 and he'll come into your local golf course with you and help you.
Darren Lee:So that's the frame that's being taken, which I think there's nothing wrong with it to some degree if you're like getting someone entry level stuff, but if you're trying to perceive yourself as the expert, that's one thing on the core side, on the on the business side, in terms of like, let's say, a creator is a youtuber and now he has a supplement brand, the problem there definitely is the fact that they get integrated with a grow partner, growth operator. The road operator, growth operator handles the fulfillment in the back like operations, maybe delivery, whatever that is if it's a physical product, but because the margins, yes, they're high, but they're a lot lower, because it's split and the revenue is predicated based on the influencer's authority, it gets to a point whereby that sustainable elitist goes straight out and you're sitting out with prime and prime like boom, shot up, ripped back, and I'd I'd like to see the pnl, because I imagine that it's not good.
Nir Eyal :It's not good. Good, no, no, no, it's not good. I heard they're getting sued, but they're always getting sued, yeah.
Darren Lee:But it's just an interesting idea because, like, I think that's why it's very easy for some people to get into business but not to sustain it, which is like I would get a big part of it the retention model in general that they don't have this ever kind of fulfilling brand. And it's funny because, like, my entire business started off of reoccurring revenue to begin with, like it was not this one-off thing. So it's funny because when you go to launch other products, you still think through that lens, being like how do we bring people back? How do we bring people back?
Nir Eyal :And it's the same if it's a big startup or a small or a small business and so many, like, for example, prime, you know you could have done it in such a way to expand slowly to see, like, okay, if we expand it like, do people want what we're selling? Are they repeating the use Like, do they like how it tastes, or is it a one and done type of transaction? How much money, time, headache would have been saved from that approach versus we got to have this everywhere all at once, right. And then you deal with the repercussions, and this happens all the time.
Darren Lee:Well, that's why the, especially in my industry, like the online business space versus the tech space the reputation is bad for this reason. It's because you have these like flash in the pan businesses and it's like, oh God, we're not going to invest in another program or another supplement and whatnot. It happens as a result, but that doesn't mean that you should stop right. I think like the best area of this conversation is about helping people actually be able to understand what it actually takes through this hook model and then be like okay, that's actually what you need to do to build lifetime value retention yeah.
Nir Eyal :Create fans, create evangelists yeah. So your audience is primarily people who are are doing what all entrepreneurs, so young 25 to 35.
Darren Lee:I call it creator entrepreneurs. So they're building their first like online business. So that could be agencies, info, education. It could be SaaS, micro SaaS and so on, because it's so easy to build right now and then basically acquiring customers based on content, which is basically the whole premise of what I'm doing as well is, you have content on the front end. On the back end, you have a business, but the biggest gap that I've seen with all of this is the fact that it's a leaky bucket.
Darren Lee:You can get your bill through the door but you can't keep people or sustain people on the back end.
Nir Eyal :But there's a huge opportunity, I think, here, because, unlike products that require kind of one-time use or that they're kind of hoping you forget the subscription around, right, that like they'll keep you know, like it's true, right, like they're just hoping that that you just you don't forget to cancel, or they create such barriers to exit that they keep you in. Uh right, we call these roach motels. Uh, roach motels, roaches go in, they never come out. No-transcript.
Nir Eyal :What sparked this was that they were deriding the tactics that Amazon uses for you to cancel Prime, that they make it. The article was about how difficult it was to cancel Prime and I had a Wall Street Journal subscription that I wanted to cancel, and I think it's called a roach motel because it's super easy to get in. So when you want to start a Wall Street Journal subscription, super duper easy, don't even give us your credit card, just click this one button and, Wall Street Journal, you've got a subscription done. We'll get the rest from you later. To cancel, oh my God, you have to call, you can't email, you can't click a button. You have to call the 1-800 number between Eastern time 9am to 915am, and then you get on a phone with somebody who talks to you for half an hour trying to convince you not to to to cancel, and then they elevate you to their boss and then you have to just want to cancel, right. And so it was ironic that the pot was calling the kettle black because they were using the exact same Roach Motel techniques, and we see this with a lot of products that are not, you know, high enough quality.
Nir Eyal :So the best advice I can give people is to build something people want Like. So, out of all that that menu of options on how to monetize, the best is to build a product, a product company, that is delivering value, and that is something that actually AI is not going to take away. Ai is going to make the production of that technology easier, for sure, but it's not going to make the hard parts easier. It's not going to make the sales part necessarily easier. It's not going to make the customer relations part necessarily easier. It's not going to make all the stuff the human element of that product any easier. That's your opportunity, right, as someone who's building an audience. Create that content that becomes your source of generating leads and then offering that market segment something that is truly valuable. It's going to save them time that's going to make them more money, whatever the case might be, and retain those customers right At all costs. Make sure that they love your product. That's the kind of sustainable company that I think people should be focused on.
Darren Lee:How do you think about building like an Asension model into into products? So just for a bit of context, the way I've been thinking about doing it for the last couple of years is we've had a high ticket approach for many years and then we unbundled it, so there was all in done for you, then it was done with you, then it was self-paced and it was just community, so it was like an unbundling. Uh, that was like a four, a four year journey, but basically it was like an unbundling. That was like a four year journey, but basically it was easier to build when we went to do it intentionally. But as a result, the approach is that you pick your own journey, you can come in and if you want to get started, you can start it here you can move around.
Darren Lee:How do you think about baking that into a product? At what point do you get something to actually ascend? Or should they do it naturally For an education? It's an education product in general like, even if it is, even if it is a product like if you were, if you're going up, true, let's say from uh, we're in grab or gojek going to gojek premium, like, at what point do we push people up there?
Nir Eyal :yeah, so, uh, the framework is the hook model, and so the hook model is a design pattern to connect the user's problem with your product with enough frequency to form a habit. So the first condition on whether a company can become a habit is frequency of use. Larry Page calls it the toothbrush test that he doesn't want Google to go into any product that is not used with the frequency of a toothbrush. So at least once or twice a day. And this is the biggest reason why a product cannot become habit forming, because the longer it takes to go through the hook, the less likely people are to change their habits. So the reason that these technologies are so habit forming, the reason that these devices hook us, is because, on average, people are checking their phone 150 times per day, probably more, but that's, that's the average, right. So, um, the habit forming potential of a product that is used with that level of frequency is very, very high. So that's the first criteria Is it used with sufficient frequency? What is sufficient frequency? You know, toothbrush type frequency is great, but that's not reasonable, that's not possible for many companies. The cutoff point seems to be about a week's time or less. So if your user is not interacting with your product. Within a week's time or less, there's a precipitous drop off in the likelihood of them becoming a habituated user with your product. Within a week's time or less, there's a precipitous drop off in the likelihood of them becoming a habituated user. Okay, huge, because many products will just never become a habit. So, for example, whenever I get a call from someone in the travel space and they want me to consult for them, really tough, right. There's a certain market segment that does travel every week, right, if you're a business executive, you're flying around all the time. Maybe you're somebody who's booking travel for that type of person. Sure, that's a habit because you're using it at least once a week, probably every day. But for most people going on vacation it's not a habit, right? So don't even try and make it a habit because it doesn't happen with sufficient frequency, right? So that's number one frequency.
Nir Eyal :Then we have to think about this four-part model trigger, action, reward and investment. So the first thing to think about are the internal triggers. The internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape. So every product you use, every decision you make, everything you do is driven by one reason, and one reason only, and that is the desire to escape discomfort. Okay, it's not about the pursuit of pleasure. Okay, it's not about carrots and stick. The carrot is the stick. What do I mean by that? Wanting something, craving desire, lusting, hunger, is itself psychologically destabilizing. So wanting to feel good is itself uncomfortable.
Nir Eyal :So everything we do as someone who's making a product or service needs to be based on how is this scratching the user's emotional itch? What is the pain point? It's not about feeling good, it's about not feeling bad. So you and your team need to be able to articulate what is that internal trigger that occurs with sufficient frequency that we are going to address? Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, insecurity. What is that emotional itch and does it occur with sufficient frequency to build a habit around?
Nir Eyal :So that's step number one. You have to have that internal trigger. Then you have to have what's called an external trigger. The external trigger, the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings. How are you going to reach that customer the moment they feel the internal trigger with an external trigger? So here's the pain point. Now an external trigger. So here's the pain point. Now here's what to do about it. Right, you have the TripIt app. Do you have this app? Right when you land and you're uncertain. Can I make my connection Bing? Use this app and it's going to tell you where your connection is and how much time you have to make it. Okay, that's a very close coupling of the internal trigger with the external trigger. That's very, very critical.
Nir Eyal :The next step of the hook model is the action phase. The action phase is defined as the simplest action done in anticipation of a reward, the easiest thing the user can do to get relief from that psychological itch. Open an app, scroll a feed, push a play button the simplest thing the user can do to get relief, and the easier you can make it, the better. The history of technology. What is technology? Technology is defined as shortening anything that shortens the distance between the recognition of the need and the resolution of that need. That is technology in a nutshell. Whether it's the cotton gin to the iPhone, that's all technology does Just shortens the distance between the recognition of the need and the resolution of the need. That's it. So your job is to shorten that distance as much as possible in the action phase. The third phase is the action phase. The third phase is the reward phase, and this is what we talked about a little bit earlier.
Nir Eyal :It's not good enough just to give people what they want. In order to build a habit, you have to involve what's called an intermittent reinforcement. You have to give an element of mystery. So this comes from the classic work of BF Skinner. You probably met him in your psychology 101 class.
Nir Eyal :Back in the 1950s he took these pigeons and he put them in what today we call a Skinner box and he allowed these pigeons to peck at a disc and receive a reward, get a little food pellet and at first no big deal. This is called operant conditioning. This is how we train pets and husbands to do things is we say okay, if you do this, you get that, and that's all fine and good. But then one day Skinner had a problem. He walks into his lab and he checks his pocket and he doesn't have enough of these food pellets. So he has a problem. He can't afford to give the pigeon a food pellet every time. He can only afford to give it to them once in a while.
Nir Eyal :And what he observes is that the rate of response, the number of times the pigeon's pecked at the disc, increases when the reward is given on a variable schedule of reinforcement, meaning sometimes the pigeon pecks at the disc, nothing happens. Sometimes they peck at the disc and they get a reward that increases the use right, that increases the clicking. So this is what we see in gambling. This is what we see. This is why we watch sports. This is why we love to scroll social media. This is why we watch the news, right?
Darren Lee:With business as well with sales and so on. You might go through a period of time where it's raining and the next time then it's just dead and you think the same input has the same outcome, but it's not related. Do you want to know how we book the most amazing guests on our podcast? Like you're seeing today, I've created a full template and guide and every single script that I've ever used to get the best guests in the world, and I've put everything together in a simple, step-by-step process. If you click the link down below, I'll give you the exact guide to book any guests on your podcast and have a full guest management system for you to manage every single guest. If you want to see the process behind booking guests like Justin Waller, Luke Bellmer, Sterling Cooper and every guest in the online business space, click the link down below and you'll get the full guide for free. Thank you.
Nir Eyal :Right. So anywhere you see that uncertainty media, right, the reason people are still watching is because they're not certain about what this crazy guy is going to say next, right, that's what media is all about. It's all about uncertainty. That's why we keep watching the first three letters of news and EW is what's new, what's different, what don't I know?
Nir Eyal :So having that element of variability is the fuel of this hook model. And then the last step of the hook model, which is the most important and the most overlooked, is the investment phase, which we talked about briefly. This is where users put something into the product to make it better and better with use, by storing value, and so, over time, what you see is that companies who use this hook model, they go from needing external triggers right, pings, dings, rings, emails, all these external triggers to eventually, once the habit is formed, they don't need those anymore because customers, users, start triggering themselves. Right, it turns out, 90% of the time you check your phone it's not because of a ping, ding or ring. 90% of the time you check your phone it's because of a feeling. And so that's when they've got you, that's when they built a habit, is because you've attached a feeling to the use of a product that's crazy and I just was spinning off my head is the beauty industry, especially like makeup and beauty?
Darren Lee:right, because it's something that is not a pinging thing, you're not getting in your app or whatnot, but when you let's take makeup example, when a woman puts on makeup, she feels like all the insecurity go away, or, let's say, her worries go away, and so on that when she takes off the makeup, she's constantly benchmarking against when she had it. That's right and it's crazy. Right, it's a hook right.
Nir Eyal :The internal trigger is insecurity. The action is put on makeup. The variability is how do I look and what are the reactions that I have from other people, and the investment is that every time I look at myself in the mirror with makeup on versus makeup off I look weird, I look different, right, and so I'm invested in my self. Image is to look this way and for some for most people they have a normal relationship with makeup. But some people we all know these people they go too far. It can actually become an addiction. You can get addicted to makeup because this hook becomes a habit and can turn into an actual addiction and even just natural use of it, just even natural use of.
Darren Lee:You're using it every day and so on. If you are building the product in the back and you've the best ltv of all time because people are naturally coming back, you're acquiring the customers, whether it's mac or whatever the brand is, but they know exactly they have the hook model running really well. I'd probably made it not the frequency that you may want to optimize it at, but still they're getting it every six weeks or two months or whatever.
Nir Eyal :If you want to be sinister about it, the strategy that you would do is that you would constantly make something new, new, new, new, new, which is exactly what they do. It's the same shit, just reformulated. There's nothing actually new under the sun because these ingredients are regulated and you can buy the same ingredients for a fraction of the cost. The super expensive makeup, I promise you, has no super magic, whale sperm something or another. There's nothing in it that it's all regulated. But you're constantly pushing out new, new, new, new, new, and that becomes the variable reward, right? Well, I want to try. Maybe this one will work better. Another way you could be sinister is that you don't tell the user exactly when too much is too much. You don't tell them when they've had enough, and so what you see now, especially with brands like the Mac, is this super clown makeup caking on of their product to the point where it is actually damaging your skin. So what do you do here? You make the solution into the problem, and the only way to solve the problem is with the solution, because now, the more makeup you use, the more pimples you get, and the more pimples you get, the more makeup you need to use.
Nir Eyal :Now the good news is that most people have a circuit breaker. Most of us have a circuit breaker that says I've had too much right. A lot of us drink a glass of wine or have a beer. We don't all become alcoholics, right? A lot of us have sex. We're not sex addicts because we have a circuit breaker that says, okay, enough's enough. About one to 5% of the population. That circuit breaker is broken. There's something that they are trying to escape with the use of this product. Whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, they're looking to escape and they don't know how to deal with those sensations. And that's where you get this very vicious cycle that we call addiction versus a habit.
Darren Lee:What other elements of psychology do you think we're not touching on? Like, if you looked at Robert Cialdini's influence, for instance, is there different elements of like? Relatability, likeness, social proof, like how do you think?
Nir Eyal :about that in the context of, you know, world famous products effectively, yeah, so I put all those forms of influence into the action phase. They're all things that make the action more likely to occur. So I think it's you know, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants, right? So I took work from Cialdini and from Bandura and BJ Fogg and I basically amalgamated all this previous work into a model that I think is simple enough to be useful. So I would put Cialdini and Fogg into that same category in the action phase of one-time behaviors, right? Cialdini, when he talks about influence, these factors, it's all about how do I get you to be more likely to do a singular behavior it doesn't really address? How do I get you to do repeat behaviors, which is the subject of hook?
Darren Lee:Makes a lot of sense. How have you, when did you decide to make the change from that to indistractable, like, what was the, what was the logic in your head, to say like, okay, this is how you get people hooked. Now let's go anti-vision to that well, what's the?
Nir Eyal :not to the same products, that's the product, but the same kind of like.
Darren Lee:It almost looks like a mirror effect of the opposite. No, I know it's not, but I know that it almost appears to be that way was that intentional.
Nir Eyal :Well, um, so there's this upton sinclair quote. I think it was upton Sinclair that said uh, the sign of a first rate intelligence is holding two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time. So it's, uh, it looks like they're diametrically opposed, but they're actually complimentary because, uh, they're, they're two different products, right, um, that we want to get hooked to a language learning app. We want to get hooked to a fitness app. We want to get hooked to a great piece of SaaS software that helps our business thrive. We want to get hooked to those things. But we want to get to become indistractable in the face of products that that we feel like are using us, that we're using too much, right Like social media, like, uh, alcohol, like, whatever the case might be that something that we're doing too much of. Those are the kind of products we would want to cut down on Because, frankly, the media companies they already know my stuff, right, like they. That's where I stole it from. I stole it from the social media companies, I stole it from the gaming companies. That's how I wrote Hooked was, literally, I looked at the secrets that they already know and trying to democratize it for the rest of us, right Into a model that now the rest of us can understand to build better businesses Indistractable came out of my own personal problem in that I found that I was getting very distracted, that, in fact, because Hooked became a success, that I was getting speaking gigs, that I was getting consulting opportunities, that I was getting all these opportunities, and I was becoming distracted from the things that made me successful in the first place and I was also taking it out of my family, right?
Nir Eyal :That, uh, uh. I remember there's this one incident with my daughter where we we had this beautiful afternoon planned just some daddy daughter time that I committed, okay, I'm just going to be with my daughter. And I remember, uh, we had this book of activities that dads and daughters could do together, and one of the activities in this book was to ask each other this question that if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim, but I can't tell you what she said, because in that minute I thought it was just a good idea to just let me just check this one thing on my phone, honey, and by the time I looked up from my device, she was gone, because I was sending a very clear message that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. Yeah, and she went to go play with some toy outside and I blew it.
Nir Eyal :And if I'm honest with you, it wasn't just with her. It would happen when I would say, oh, today's gonna be the day I exercise, today's gonna be the day I eat, right, but I didn't and I wouldn't. Today's the day I'm gonna focus on that big project, I'm gonna get it done, I'm not gonna get distracted. And five minutes later I'd be checking email, I'd be scrolling the news, I'd be doing everything but the thing I said I was going to do. So that's when I realized that I think that becoming indistractable is the skill of the century, because we are so inundated with information but we lack the ability to focus long enough to turn that information into wisdom. And if you can be the kind of person that can focus on something long enough without distraction, you are going to be wise, and the rest of the world is going to not be wise, it's going to be just flooded with junk.
Darren Lee:And I find so much similarities between that and, like Horomozzi's overall message, which is just the fact that most people cannot stick to anything for a particular period of time. They can't actually go and do the work, they can't take the calls and so on, and he calls it maker time. Have you can't take the calls and so on, and he calls it maker time. But have you heard about concept maker versus manager? So, paul graham, was it? That's where he got from. So the idea for the maker time is that if you're building this business or working your project, you're actually grinding to move forward, like it's actually progression. It's part of traction, part of that element. Just, you're actually making that movement. But people feel busy checking slack, checking email and, like I do, I do a lot of CO2, right, as in, I check it, thinking it's funny because I look at your thoughts on this. Is that a control element? Because I feel if I'm on Slack more, I just feel more in control. But I know what the business is not progressing unless I'm literally actually building.
Nir Eyal :So this is this is a good place to talk about, um, traction versus distraction. So the opposite of distraction is not focus, the opposite of distraction is traction. Of course it is right. Traction, distraction, they're opposites. And both words end in the same six letters A-C-T-I-O-N. That spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. It's not our pings, dings and rings. It is an action that we ourselves take.
Nir Eyal :So traction is any action that you decided in advance you are going to do. It doesn't matter what that is. You want to play video games Awesome. You want to go on social media Great. You want to go watch Netflix Fantastic. But do it because you said you were going to do it in advance Okay.
Nir Eyal :Whereas distraction is anything that is not what you said you were going to do, and just because it's a work-related test. This gets to your point. Those are the worst kind of distractions. Right, when you're playing Candy Crush, you know you shouldn't be doing that at work, right. But if you're checking email, if you're on Slack, well, I'm being productive. This is a work-related task, right, I'm being productive. But if it's not what you said you were going to do in advance, it's just as much of a distraction as watching videos on youtube. Why? Because it's not what you said you were going to do and so what happens? Is you prior? What do people do? They prioritize the easy work, they prioritize the fun work, they prioritize the the urgent work at the expense of the hard and important stuff we have to move to, we have to do to move our lives and careers forward so I moved into a new home recently.
Darren Lee:In our house and um myself, my wife, like, we work together and we're just kind of, we're always working together in the same area and because of that, time expands Parkinson's law, right, I just end up just like always on slack, whatever, whereas now I've been. So the house is beautiful, it's really beautiful, but I have a tiny room, a tiny room like a Harry Potter room for my office and it's pretty miserable in there. Not gonna lie, it's pretty miserable. So I had the rule is I have to leave my laptop in the room and I can only work when I'm in there. So at like 5 pm, 6 pm, when I'm a bit tired, and usually I'd be on the couch on my laptop or on the kitchen table on my laptop I'm like, oh god, I gotta go back in this place and I go back in and I would get the equivalent of four hours worked on in like 90 minutes, always because I hate being in there, not just I hate being in there.
Darren Lee:Yeah, I just want. I just want to do what I need to do. I can go out and play with my dogs and have fun and so on. You know, because, like during, because I can go in the middle of the day and it's completely sunny, but when I'm in there it's dark, super dark. I go and get the work done and it's it's kind of like capitalizing on that, because I know that I need to go in and get this thing done new piece of content, do whatever, take some sales calls and when it's over, it's over, and I've found that it's actually been again focusing on traction. It's for focus on the outcomes that I need which, from a business perspective, Do you worry though?
Darren Lee:that it's going to make, uh, doing those tasks unfun um, no, not necessarily, because for me it's like a necessity, like, let's say, it's like sales calls or whatever. It's just that I like the fact that there's actually a bit of resistance. It goes back to uh, stephen pressfield's the uh turning pro and war of art. It's like. Whenever, when there's resistance, I'm like why do I feel resistance to something I'm always doing? So it's kind of like actually the opposite of atomic habits.
Nir Eyal :At some point I'm creating more resistance to make sure that I go in and do it interesting, so because you know that you might do other stuff, that you might waste time, yeah, but I don't struggle to work at any point I've never in my entire life.
Darren Lee:It's just the fact that when we're going to like again optimizing or maximizing our life, do I really want to be sitting in my laptop all the time on a couch or do I just want to finish what I need to do and get get moved.
Nir Eyal :Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's. There's a concept that I talk about in the book around time boxing, and so time boxing is is kind of a similar dynamic, maybe not as uh, uh, as punitive as what you're doing, but, uh, the idea is that, like that, you say in advance here's what I'm going to do, and whatever that thing is is fine, right, you want to play video games? Fine. You want to be with your kids Fine. Whatever it is that you say you're going to do, that's what I'm going to do, but only for this amount of time, and the goal is not to finish. The goal is not to finish, the goal is to work on that task for as long without distraction. Why and this is why timeboxing eats to-do lists for breakfast.
Nir Eyal :To-do lists suck. I mean, it's one of the. There's very little research that shows that to-do lists are the way to go. Timeboxing, on the other hand, thousands of peer-reviewed studies, much, much better technique, because to-do lists have no constraints. You can always add more to a to-do list, and the problem with the to-do list is that there's no feedback loop.
Nir Eyal :So here's what people do with the to-do list. They say, okay, I've got to finish this task. Here I go, I'm going to get started. They work on it for five minutes and they say, oh, you know what? I should check email, that's a work-related task. Let me do that for a few minutes and you know what? I could really use a cup of coffee, how long things take.
Nir Eyal :It's called the planning fallacy, which is why it takes three times longer for people to finish a task than they estimate, whereas when you time box and you say, look, I'm not going to finish, I'm just going to work on this task without distraction. I'm going to see how far I get, now you have a metric for how productive you were. Right, how far did you get? So if you say, okay, I've got a big slide presentation, it needs 30 slides, and look, in 30 minutes I finished three slides. Well, that means I need nine more time boxes to finish the entire deck. Right Now, I have a feedback loop as opposed to to-do lists give you no such feedback and they have no constraints, because you can always add more and more and more and more and more to a to-do list, but we only have 24 hours in a day, so time boxing is a much, much more effective technique.
Darren Lee:And the quality of that as well, dropped significantly. I found that, especially when I was working, like in tech for instance, the quality of work is just so poor sometimes because time expands and the actual deliveries deliverables by myself are not up to scratch, whereas, like in the morning, if I know I'm working on outreach or working on acquisition, I need to get the outcome as the entrepreneur, like you're judged on your outcomes as the entrepreneur. So there's a good kind of frame, but I want to say a big thank you, sir.
Nir Eyal :Oh, my pleasure. We really, really banked you a lot, of, a lot of stuff.
Darren Lee:Yeah, we have, but I'd love to go deeper into the book again. Uh, another time if you, if you had like we could do like a two hour session on the book, the second book alone, you know. But I think just your insight specifically around like actually what it takes to really build a sustainable business is not, it's not understood amongst, like, younger people, they're not integrating this into their approach. They're looking for the cash, looking for the quick fix. So I think just having that framework alone makes you build much more intentionally and for me it's a reminder. Man, first I read the book was seven years ago, five years ago now and now second time over it. It just reaffirmed everything that's already worked for me in the past. Thank, you.
Nir Eyal :I really appreciate that. Yeah, it's, it's, I think it. It confirms that when you want something, you can't go directly at it right, like if you're trying to find love. You you can't stand on the street corner and say, oh want money, I want money, money, money, give me money. No, you have to offer value to people, and so to take a step back and ask yourself wait, how am I creating value? How am I creating something that people really want and want to keep using? That's what hooking people. That's what the book is actually really about. It's how to create habit forming products so that people want to continue to use your.