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In June of 2013, I was introduced to Nir Eyal through Ryan Hoover. Nir had been blogging a lot about psychology and analyzing what makes a highly engaging product.
Show Notes
In June of 2013, I was introduced to Nir Eyal through Ryan Hoover. Nir had been blogging a lot about psychology and analyzing what makes a highly engaging product. Nir eventually published a book on that topic: Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Hooked is a guide to building habit-forming technology, written for product managers, designers, marketers, and startup founders.
In this episode we get into how you can design your products, especially the initial experience, to create traction. We also get into my addiction to iTunes.
Show notes
- Nir’s web page is: www.nirandfar.com
- www.hookmodel.com
- He tweets at: twitter.com/nireyal
Note from Justin
This interview is a smaller segment of a full-interview with Nir, available on Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. Screenshots are up now!
Want to help the show? If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb. Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!
Music: Lethal Force by Striker, visit them at striker-metal.com
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Hey. How's it going? Happy Thursday. If it's Thursday when you're listening to this, welcome to Product People. I'm Justin Jackson.
Speaker 1:If you want, you can follow me on Twitter at the letter m, the letter I, and Justin. And this is a show where we talk about building products, launching products, especially people those of you that are trying to build your own thing, maybe on the side while you work a a day job, or maybe you're at a small little company and you're you're building a product as a team, this is the podcast for you. We talk about great products and the people behind them. In this episode, I interviewed Nir Ayal. He has a a book called Hooked, and we talked about habits and how they relate to the products we create.
Speaker 1:And Nir has this framework, these four steps in creating a habit, in hooking a user that I think you're gonna find really helpful whether you're building an app, like a mobile app for a consumer or whether you're in the b to b space. We got into that as well. Lots of really insightful and actionable things. I I was really kind of pumped up about this one. Got excited about talking about all this stuff.
Speaker 1:So I think you're going to enjoy it. If you haven't already, you can check out my product people newsletter. I send out a new newsletter every weekend, justin jackson dot c a slash newsletter. Alright. Let's get into the show with Nir.
Speaker 1:First of all, let's get into a little metal. Hey. It's Justin Jackson here, and I'm here with Nir Ayal. Did I say that right?
Speaker 2:That's close enough. Oh, man.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show, Nir. How are doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, Justin. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad you're here because I wanna talk about your book. You've got this book called Hooked that you did with our mutual friend, Ryan Hoover.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. Who used to just be Ryan Hoover, but now he's Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt fame.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That now maybe before we get into this, how did that partnership happen? How did you guys get connected? And and what was this idea of doing the book together?
Speaker 2:Well, the the prototype was all my idea. It's all successful because of me. Ryan is just the front man.
Speaker 1:Now we're getting the real story. This is what I want to hear.
Speaker 2:Okay, funny story. Here's what happened with Ryan. So Ryan, you know, Ryan used to blog a lot. He doesn't blog anymore because he's too busy raising $6,000,000 from Andreessen Horowitz. But he used to blog a lot.
Speaker 2:And so one of my friends sent me this email that said, Hey, this guy put you in his blog post that you're one of the people he wants to meet. So back in late twenty twelve, Ryan Hoover writes a blog post that says, The 13 people I want to meet in 2013. And I think I was like number six or seven, don't know. And you know, Kevin Rose was up there, and BJ Fogg, and all these people in tech was there. And so I was one of the people he wanted to meet in 2013.
Speaker 2:Well, I saw the email, I just, you know, I wrote him back and said, Hey, I'm here. Come down for lunch. Let's meet up sometime. You can cross me off your list.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we sat down together. We had some burgers. And he said, I really like what you're doing. He was reading my blog posts and my writing on TechCrunch and a few other places. And he said, How can I help?
Speaker 2:What can we do together? And I said, Well, I have all these blog posts, and I have this model that my readers have been asking me for a book. But I've kind of been lazy, and I haven't put it together. I want to keep writing. I don't want to stop and edit all this stuff.
Speaker 2:You want to help me with it? Ryan said, Sure. And he did a great job of compiling it together and figuring out, Okay, here's the holes. Here's where we should fill in some stuff. And so then we took it from that to what we thought would be like a 20 page PDF, right?
Speaker 2:Like this little book that we could give out to our readers. He would give it out to his readers, I'd give it out to my readers. Well, that 20 page PDF became this two fifty page book now that we have out. And we originally self published it the very beginning of this year. And then a few months ago, PortfolioCulled from their Penguin division, their division of Random House.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice. And now the book wait, I'll get it for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's see it.
Speaker 2:Now this book will be available hardcover, all pretty and fancy, professionally published. November 4, it'll be available in The US and Canada. Yeah, we're very excited.
Speaker 1:Really? Didn't know that you guys are getting it actually published. That's the real deal.
Speaker 2:This is the real so the first version was a self published dinky version that we kind of did ourselves. But this thing looks like a real book now, which is exciting. It'll be in in bookstores and wide distribution, so we're really excited.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a great story about how you two met, and it's kind of a it's a good case study.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people ask, you know, how can they meet people? How can they create partnerships? All those things. And Ryan's one of those guys, like, he just said, well, here's the people I wanna meet, and he published it. And sometimes that works, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Right. Right. I mean, you know, he's Ryan's a connector. He's all you know, he's he's, people just kind of gravitate to him, and he gravitates to people, and he's helpful, right? He wants to see you succeed, which is why I think Product Hunt is succeeding so much, because it has this culture that Ryan has brought to the community.
Speaker 2:You know, functionally, it has a lot of similarities to Reddit or, you know, Dig back in the day, but there's something about the culture of Product Hunt where, like, nobody's there to, like, bring you down. Everybody's if your product is really stupid, this culture of, Let's see how far this can go. Let's support people who are working on these products. And I think that comes out of Ryan.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, about Ryan. Maybe later on, we'll get into the hook model of Product Hunt.
Speaker 2:Right. Oh, there's a great model behind a great hook inside Product Hunt.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'd love to get into that. But, Nir, let's talk about your background. Sure. How did you first get into products?
Speaker 2:Right. So my last company was at the intersection of gaming and advertising. And so I was in that industry for about three years, and then that company was acquired. But in that time, being in these two industries of gaming and advertising, you know, these two industries really depend upon mind control. Let's face it.
Speaker 2:Gaming and advertising is really about getting people to do the things you want them to do. The interesting thing was when I was in those industries, I noticed people using certain techniques, and using them because they worked, or, you know, they would see the competition using them, but they wouldn't know the deeper psychology behind why these things worked. And so that was a little frustrating to me because I wanted to figure out, you know, where was the guidebook for how to use psychology in product design? And I really didn't find that, particularly when it came to habits. And so I originally started writing this stuff after that company was acquired.
Speaker 2:I had some time on my hands, and I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next. How I would allocate my human capital. When you think about VCs, right, VCs can put a little bit of money into a lot of places. Well, can't do that. We've got to pick really, really well.
Speaker 2:And so I wanted to spend some time thinking about what I wanted to do next. And so I came up with this hypothesis that habits would really matter. That as the interface shrinks, right, as we go from desktop to laptop to mobile phones and now to wearables, habits are more important because we just have less real estate, right? There's less places to trigger people with messages to tell them what to do. So we need we rely upon habits to get people to come back.
Speaker 2:And so that's why I started researching how to build habit forming products. And I didn't really find a resource, not one that an entrepreneur could really use. I found a lot of academic stuff, which was interesting. And there was a lot of pop psychology stuff, which was more story based and fun to read, but I really wanted a how to guide, like step one, step two, step three. And that's the book we wrote.
Speaker 1:I wanna back up just a little bit there. Yeah. Because you said something interesting, which is all of a sudden you had some time to think about what you wanted to do next. You wanted to choose wisely. And it it sounded like there was something about that where you're saying, you know, what what am I really good at?
Speaker 1:What is really important to me? What what is maybe unique about my human capital? I think a lot of people are asking themselves that question. Like, how do you figure out like, we were just talking about Ryan. He's clearly a good connector.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden, you were saying in a place where you said, okay, what am I going to focus on? How did you filter down? Did you have a bunch of
Speaker 2:ideas? I'm not a good person to ask for career life advice. Because my path was, Okay, sell two companies and then do what you want. So that's not a really good model. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I wish that was replicable, but I didn't put that much thought into it. I think the question I asked myself was, what would I do if I didn't care about the money? If I just wanted to do something fun? And at that time, it was research. It was right.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to do that for a while. So that's what I started doing, thinking that, okay, well eventually I'm gonna have to start my next company, and what should that be around? But I just really got into the subject matter. And then luckily it kind of became more. I started blogging, my writing got syndicated, you know, onto TechCrunch and a few other publications.
Speaker 2:And then one day my old professor from Stanford calls me up and says, Hey, I've been reading your blog and Your model sounds really interesting. Let's teach a class together. And so now I teach this class at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business and at the Design School. And then that became the outline for the class became what we ended up making into the book.
Speaker 1:So this is something you're passionate about, you started pursuing it, and then
Speaker 2:It wasn't strategic. Wasn't strategic. Well,
Speaker 1:maybe sometimes that's the answer, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I guess so. I mean, I guess the answer is not to quit, And the answer of, okay, well, how do I make sure I don't quit? Is to enjoy it. Yeah. Now, I wish I could give that advice to everybody, but what if what you really like is to golf all day, but you're never gonna be Tiger Woods?
Speaker 2:Should you golf? I don't really know, right? Can you support yourself golfing? I just happen to be lucky enough that what I really like doing, some people also will pay money to buy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bit of a Venn diagram there, isn't there? People will pay for it, and I like it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, well, let's talk about habits. Why is it important for us as product people to look at habits? Why should we even care?
Speaker 2:Sure. So there's a lot of reasons that habits are good for the bottom line. Number one, habits increase customer lifetime value. That the longer people use a product, the more engaged they are with the product, the more valuable they are to a company. Second is that habits increase defensibility.
Speaker 2:That it becomes harder for a competitor to sweep in and take your customers away if the customers form habits with your product. Great case in point is Google versus Bing. Why does Google have such massive market share, even though studies have found that there's a fiftyfifty preference split. When strip out the branding of Google versus Bing, people can't tell the two apart. Literally Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fiftyfifty preference But we use something like Google out of habit. We use it because we don't even consider if there's a better option out there, which is why the cold truth is that when it comes to many products, it's not the best solution that wins. Oftentimes, particularly in technology products, it's not the best technology that wins. It's the one that's the stickiest. It's the one that once you start using is hard to stop using.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So habits increase defensibility, habits supercharge growth. So if you think about, you know, what do we want when we talk about virality? It's not actually that we need our product to be viral, it's that we want that hockey stick growth curve, right? That's what we want. Well, what's actually more important than straight virality is a short viral cycle time.
Speaker 2:And viral cycle time, nobody talks about, but it's incredibly important. Viral cycle time is the amount of time it takes for one person to tell more than one person about your product. And if that doesn't occur frequently, if that's not happening often, you're never going to get that exponential growth curve. Why? Because you're constantly leaking people as well, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Churning customers all the time. So that engagement loop has to happen very, very, very quickly in order for there to be a short viral cycle time, and in order for you to have that exponential growth. So for all these reasons oh, and the last reason that habits are important to the bottom line is that habits make people less sensitive to pricing fluctuations. So we have more flexibility with any not just monetary cost to our business, but, you know, the friction of learning a new version of a product.
Speaker 2:So a great example of this, when Zuckerberg changes Facebook, right, and this has happened multiple times, Every time there's a change to Facebook, people get all up in arms, and I'm gonna quit Facebook, I'm never gonna use it again. How dare he do this or that? He implemented a news feed. How terrible. And, of course, we don't quit.
Speaker 2:Right? We keep coming back. We learn the new way to use the product, and we keep because our habits are so darn strong, we'll accommodate these changes to the product. And pricing is the same situation. You have a habit around drinking Diet Coke every day.
Speaker 2:You know, if it's 5¢ here, 5¢ there, you don't really notice. You built that habit, and you don't really think about that behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's actually I'm thinking a lot about this habit I have now of buying things on iTunes. Okay. And now I actually realized that I'm I'm in the you know, a lot of people have moved on from iTunes, but I'm still here in iTunes. But there was a time where I switched over.
Speaker 1:And that was it's interesting to me that, you know, like I had habits before, which was like torrenting and, you know, getting maybe buying CDs or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then now I'm trying to think of how did I develop that habit. But it's almost like I crossed this threshold. And once I had that habit, now I'm that's my habit. Like, I can't not do that. People say, well, why don't you try Spotify?
Speaker 1:I said, well, I I just like buying my music on iTunes. Right. Maybe it's better, but I'm already in this
Speaker 2:And you probably can't even articulate exactly why. It just is. It's part of your, you know, it's part of your habits. It's part of your identity almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, why are we Giants fans as opposed to Royals fans? Well, it's kind of like who we are. It's what we've always, when our mom and dad used to root for the Giants. So I'm going to root for the Giants. That's been part of my tradition.
Speaker 2:And there's something very similar that happens when it comes to habit forming products. Part of it is that fourth step of the hook model that we describe in the book, is that the investment phase, which is absolutely critical in forming these long term behaviors, gets users to put something into the product. And it turns out that through these successive passes through the hook, with this last step being the investment phase, the more people invest in something, the more valuable it becomes to them. There's a few reasons for that. I mean, there's this cognitive reason.
Speaker 2:There's a very interesting cognitive psychology about why this happens. Yeah. But then there's also this functional reason of, you know, the more content you put into iTunes, for example, it gets better. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:Like it's your one and only music library. That's where all your music is. You know where it's gonna be. Now they can start even recommending new music to you based on your content. The product gets better and better.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if we're talking about the investment part of cycle, and I'm gonna get you to talk through all four in a second, but Sure. They just released family sharing. And so I I was just mentioning before the call, we started that I have four kids and my son is getting really music. So now I can share my iTunes music with him on his iPod touch. And there's part of that that it feels really cool to me.
Speaker 1:It feels like I'm passing down, you know, my vinyl. And but and it would be different if it was like on it would feel different to me if it was on audio or or one of these other things. That part of the investment cycle? Like, they're they're making it better?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So there's there's a few different types of investments that we identified. There's content, there's data, there's followers, there's skill, and there's reputation. Those are kind of the five big buckets that we identified. So you've got a few there, right?
Speaker 2:You've added content to your music library, and now you've got a follower. Yeah. Your son, your son has become a follower. Yeah. And the fact that you've invited that follower to join you in that product experience makes it more valuable to you.
Speaker 2:And how likely are you now like, oh, I gotta switch all my music to some other service and now I've got to invite him to it. It's a pain, right? You've invested in it so much already, it becomes more difficult to lead, even if there's a better solution out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. So before we get to these four parts of the the hook, I just wanna go back a little bit. Yeah. Because one of my questions is you you mentioned Google and Bing, And then we mentioned me, the old man Jackson still hanging on to iTunes when all the kids are in Spotify.
Speaker 1:Part of it seems like whoever's first is going to win. You know, Google was kind of I guess they weren't first first, but they were the first one that kinda nailed this. Now they've got all the market share. Everyone's you know, the habit is all with Google. How is it impossible for Bing to to succeed now?
Speaker 1:Or is there ways they can?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you go back and look at the history of Google, they weren't first. Mean, was lots of other search engines when they were around. I think there's a lot of things that they did really well. I mean, there was AltaVista, and there was, I mean, there were lots and lots of search.
Speaker 2:Yahoo was very big. There was it kind of wasn't very clear to a lot of investors why the world would need another search engine, frankly. But, you know, there's a few ways to steal a habit. And as far as I know, there's only three ways to steal someone else's habit. And that is, the first one is to go through the hook, these four steps of the hook cycle, faster.
Speaker 2:That's one. And that generally happens if you can figure out a way to interface, change the user experience so that getting through trigger, action, reward, and investment happens more frequently. That's one, faster hook cycles. The second is more frequent passes through the hook. So the first one is about going through faster, but then the other one is going is using it more frequently.
Speaker 2:So for example, when we change an interface to desktop to mobile, now the fact that I'm carrying this around reshuffles the deck, because now I can go through these hooks more frequently because I'm carrying this thing around. And so all my old habits, all the things I used to do on my desktop at my at my desk, the fact that I can carry this around and and and use it more frequently means that the habit deck gets reshuffled. So now there's all these new players that can compete.
Speaker 1:This is actually true. And I think I'm not sure if you see this right now with the browser market, but for a long time, the browser market from desktop to mobile was quite different. Even if you look at like someone like Opera, who has a very small percentage on the desktop market, on mobile, they have much more because all of a sudden they have this opportunity. Okay.
Speaker 2:Right. It's optimized for that unique behavior on the mobile device. And that's where the cards get reshuffled because the interface has to change. Yeah. Then the only third way to steal someone's habit is if you can make the reward more rewarding.
Speaker 2:So in that critical reward phase of the hook, the third step of the hook cycle, if the reward becomes somehow more a better reward or the signal to noise ratio is better, it makes the reward more rewarding, that's a way to steal users away. So I think in Google's case, they did a few things. They passed users through these four steps of the hook faster, and that the interface was much cleaner. They cleaned a lot of the cognitive junk around what they wanted people to do, which was just get to their search results as quickly as possible, as opposed to the category system that used to be on search engines before. And the second thing they did was that they made the reward more rewarding.
Speaker 2:Right? They just gave you the results faster at the top. I mean, they're all about getting to speed. But now that that's already been the case, now that it's clear that we don't search with those other search engines before, for Bing to come out and try and compete with Google on in in the same way is very, very difficult because people already have their habits with Google. It's who they turn to without really thinking if somebody can do it better.
Speaker 2:And Bing has tried everything. Mean, you know, they, you know, they actually pay people to search with Bing. They actually give you points every time you search with Bing that you can cash in for real dollars. But we don't even think about it. We don't even ask ourselves, hey, might Bing be better?
Speaker 2:Because we have this Google habit that, you know, the product isn't just a little bit. It doesn't matter if it's a little bit better. It's got to be a lot better to to to bring us on board to to use that product instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's go through the four do you call it the four steps of the Hooked Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:Take us through the four steps. What are they?
Speaker 2:Sure. So it starts off with a trigger. A trigger is a cue to action. It's something that tells the user what to do next. And these triggers come in two types.
Speaker 2:We've got external triggers and we have internal triggers. External triggers are things in our environment that tell us what to do next by giving us some piece of information. So it's some kind of call to action, like click here, or buy now, or play this. It could be something in the physical world, like a friend telling you about an app. Those are all examples of external triggers.
Speaker 2:Internal triggers are things that tell us what to do next, but the information for what to do is informed from an association in the user's mind. So what we do in response to being in a certain situation or place or routine or experiencing certain emotions dictates what we do next. So if we feel lonely or bored or indecisive or lost or fearful, what we do to satiate that pain point is turn to these technologies. Right? What we turn to first, what we form an association with dictates the habits we form.
Speaker 1:Interesting. That's
Speaker 2:the first step, the trigger phase.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So if we, again, look at my iTunes habit here, I'm just thinking back now, and one of the things I was experiencing was I couldn't find the music I wanted quick enough. I was tired of, you know, going on torrents and trying to find things. And I realized it was faster to just download things off iTunes. The second kind of internal thing going on at the time was I think I was newly married or maybe we just had our first child.
Speaker 1:And part of me was feeling like, I'm an adult now. Like I should start paying for my music. You know, there's some internal guilt going on. Would would that reflect kinda both external and internal?
Speaker 2:Interesting. So that you know, it's part it's interesting that you changed kind of your identity there, and then and that's why you found that you were looking for a new product that made the reward more rewarding perhaps by affirming that you are the kind of person who pays for music. Good for you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So let's go to step two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so step two is the action phase, which actually refers to what you were talking about before about how the behavior became easier to do. The action phase is all about the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward. Super simple actions. As soon as the user is triggered, what do they do next is super easy. So for example, scrolling on Pinterest, or searching on Google, or pushing the Play button on YouTube.
Speaker 2:Very, very, very simple actions to get my reward. The third step of the hook is the reward phase. Rewards are things that give the user what they want, but these can't be just any reward. They have to be what's called a variable reward, something that leaves a bit of mystery around what the user might find the next time they engage with the product. And so we can there's some really interesting psychology about why variable rewards work.
Speaker 2:We can we can talk about that more. But then just to finish the loop is this investment phase we were talking about earlier, which is where after the user's itch is scratched, after they get what they want, they put something into the product which makes it more likely for them to return in the future. So it could be, when we talked about data, content, reputation, skill, followers, something that makes it more likely for me to return in the future in two ways. One, storing value, so something that makes the product better the more I use it. And two, it loads the next trigger.
Speaker 2:So something that when I invest in it, it brings me back in the future by loading the next trigger, by sending me some kind of message to bring me back again. So that's that's the four basic steps of the hook in a super quick cliff notes of the cliff notes version.
Speaker 1:Well, that's so interesting. The especially the the reward phase. Actually, I'm thinking about both the reward investment now. You know, another reward I I'm gonna keep going with iTunes because I just think it's an interesting case study when I actually kinda dig into it a little bit. Another reward was think about, you know, my wife and I sitting down to watch a movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And in the old days, my habit, you know, when I was in college would be I'd like log a bunch of cables and hook it up to my computer, my desktop, you know, my Pentium, And then I'd torrent a movie, and then it I'd kind of, you know, finagle, and it eventually get on my screen. I realized that that was not gonna work with my wife when we sat down to watch a movie. She wanted to watch it right away. Right.
Speaker 1:And that was something, again, iTunes and the Apple Apple TV, TV, I was able to do that. The reward was we didn't fight before we were gonna watch a movie. We could just sit down and get it instantly. Right? Right.
Speaker 1:The reward is my wife wanted to watch movies with me.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. And that's that's a really important. So in the action phase, there's factors of ability, right? Six things that make something harder to do, and it changes based on the person. So these six things are how much time something takes, how much money something costs, how much physical effort is required, brain cycles, how difficult it is to understand, Social deviance is about the fact that we become more likely to do something when we see other people doing it.
Speaker 2:And then finally, non routine, that we're more likely to do something because we have done it in the past. So it's interesting, for you, torrenting was super easy when you had lots of time. When you were a college student, you had plenty of playing time on your hands. But then you got busy, you got married, you had a real job, and now time becomes a scarce commodity. Whereas money, which was probably the barrier when you were in college, now money was not that much of a barrier anymore.
Speaker 2:So the behavior became easier to do for a service that could save you time at the expense of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Nir, I just freaking love this stuff. It's so good.
Speaker 2:By the way, have to credit BJ. I didn't come up with those six factors of ability. I have to credit BJ Fogg. He's a researcher at Stanford that that cites those six.
Speaker 1:Cool. Yeah. I follow him. And and when you said reputation, where does reputation come in again?
Speaker 2:Right. So reputation is a form of investment. According to the hook model, when I accrue this reputation, so for example, on eBay or Airbnb or TaskRabbit, my reputation is this form of stored value that makes it kind of hard to leave, right? Because I can sell my products and services for more money when I have this really good reputation score. And so how likely am I to leave when a competitor comes if I've accrued all this reputation on my profile?
Speaker 2:It's kind of hard to leave, right? I'd be giving up a lot.
Speaker 1:Interesting. You know, when when you first said reputation, what came to mind was a bunch of us sitting in our office, open office, and all of us discussing how we consume movies. And I said, well, I watch them on Apple TV. And I was thinking in terms of reputation, I was thinking, well, now that's my reputation. I'm the guy that does that.
Speaker 1:I've got a reputation to uphold. Interesting. But you're not really talking about that there. You're talking about kind of an investment, the reputation you have on that platform.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. So that's I cite it as like a a form of stored value. Yeah. That that becomes something that literally, like, you can see on that platform.
Speaker 2:This is my reputation score. This is how good I am to other members of the community. But there's, I think what you're referring to is almost identity, which is a really interesting component of why we use the products we do. I don't really talk about it that much in Hooked, but I'm actually working on this for the next book I'm writing, where there's a lot of consumer psychology around identity, around how we seek to be consistent with what we have done in the past because it's consistent with who we are. So a lot of habit forming products, like we talked about, baseball teams, right?
Speaker 2:Like, why do you follow certain teams as opposed to other teams? You don't know anybody on those teams. Your family members, you know, there's no connection. You know, the people who play on those teams are not from your hometown. It doesn't represent anything about you, other than the fact that there's this contrived history of this is the way I've done it, therefore it's who I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's very I think that's fascinating. I mean, yesterday the Giants won the World Series.
Speaker 1:Holy,
Speaker 2:I mean, it's amazing, right? People it's their identity that they consume this product, in this case, sports. It's a product, it's a business, just like any other business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's who they are, because they form this identity over time. And sports has a really nice hook that keeps people coming back. So identity for all sorts of products becomes a very important component.
Speaker 1:Well, when, like, individually, identity is somewhat interesting. But then when you have a group
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You'd mentioned that what your friends are doing is part of the the hooked model. I can't remember which step it was at, but what my friends are doing
Speaker 2:Social deviance. Social deviance. Yeah. Right. Right.
Speaker 1:So there is a there is a little bit of a you know, it kind of all goes into there's a cycle here. But Right. Once a group starts identifying in a certain way, like, I am an Apple user
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Now all of a sudden if I if I was all of a sudden to say, I I actually couldn't do this. I couldn't say I'm going to switch to Android now because that would be such a deviant act. That be very difficult. Inconsistent.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. We hate being inconsistent. I mean, there's a lot of user psychology around what's called the foot in the door technique. There were some great studies conducted here in Palo Alto actually, in 1960s, where they asked people to put this huge three foot sign on their lawn that said, Please drive carefully.
Speaker 2:And when they first came up to these homeowners, they knocked on their door and said, Hey, will you put up a sign that says, Please drive carefully? Only 17% said yes. Almost nobody agreed to it. Everybody said, Get off my property. I'm not putting that crazy sign on my property.
Speaker 2:Except when they went to a certain group of homeowners and they first asked them to put a small three inch sign on their window that said the same thing, please drive carefully. And of course, that group of people, the ones who first put up their little tiny sign that said, please drive carefully, those people, 77% accepted putting the three foot sign on their lawn when the researchers approached them two weeks later because they had already started, right? They had already said to the world that they believe in telling people to please drive carefully. So now it was much easier to go from this little sticker to this three foot sign because they had already invested in this identity, in this belief, which is why actually, when you see people asking you to sign a petition, it's not just to collect your signature. It also has been shown to actually change your perception, to change your beliefs.
Speaker 2:By you signing your name to the dotted line and saying, I agree with this proposition, you actually become more in support of that particular point of view because you've invested in it. You've made Yes. You've declared your identity. You've declared your preference. And the same occurs with all sorts of products we use.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think one thing that people might think about with this model the way you've described, it seemed like the the hardest part for someone that's just building something is that first part, the trigger. They're trying to think like, how do I either create an external trigger that people notice and care about? And then also, how do I tap into what's going on in someone's, you know, brain? Like so what are some of the the some of the advice you give to people that are building products on how to create that initial trigger?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's these two types of triggers, the internal trigger and the external trigger. And if you don't understand what the internal trigger is, if you don't understand the user's itch, it's hard to build a habit around it, right? Because we're, you know, these behaviors come from these spontaneous actions that the brain has formed an association with. And every time I feel bored, before I even think, I open my phone, right?
Speaker 2:And I'm checking Facebook. I'm opening some kind of app to scratch that itch of boredom. Yeah. So it's very important to first identify that itch. And there's a few techniques that I detail in the book on how to do that.
Speaker 2:So there's this technique around building user narratives, of understanding where in the user's life do they experience this itch, if they experience it at all. Alright, we have to go out and observe. And then another technique is to figure out what is currently scratching that itch. Sometimes I hear from entrepreneurs when I say, okay, what how does the user currently solve this problem? And Scotch tape and bubble gum, or pen and paper, there has to be an existing solution to this problem, or it's probably not a problem.
Speaker 2:So it's really important to understand how are they currently solving that problem? What's the existing habit that we're going to displace? And then do those three techniques that I told you about before, about how do you steal away somebody's habit, we can analyze and say, Okay, do we have a better hook? Do people go through it faster? Is the frequency of going through the hook occurring more frequently?
Speaker 2:And if so, now we actually have potential to grab somebody else's habit and convert them to our new habit.
Speaker 1:And is the external trigger always something that is triggering something internal? Is that the idea?
Speaker 2:No. So the idea is that we want to place the external trigger as close as possible to the internal trigger. And this is this is a a point that I wish more marketers would listen to because I think it's super important. Even if you're not building a habit forming product, it's important to figure out what's the pain point that you're trying to address. That's the internal trigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah. With an enterprise product, it might be this anxiety around what am I supposed to be doing every day, right? That's a palpable feeling that a lot of people feel in the enterprise. What's my task? What am I supposed to be doing today?
Speaker 2:Well, that's an internal trigger. That's an emotion. And then the idea is to send this external trigger, this thing that tells the user what to do next, how to solve this pain as closely coupled to the internal trigger as possible. So when I see a lot of companies fail and send spam is when they don't couple the internal trigger with the external trigger. They send the external trigger kind of whenever they want without considering, hey, how do we closely couple these two things?
Speaker 2:And when you can do that, when you can send a message, the moment the user is most likely to experience that internal trigger, the boredom, the anxiety, the whatever the pain point is, that's when it's magical. Interesting. It's welcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The yeah, Man, there's there's definitely I'm just thinking about I work for Sprint. Ly. So we have project management software.
Speaker 1:And that that case that you just talked about about people wondering, what am I doing today? So we have this button called mine. What are my tasks for today? But I was just thinking like, where do you get most of that anxiety? Well, it's in the morning.
Speaker 1:I I get to the office Right. And I'm wondering what do I so if we had a way of triggering on time, like, when we know when you get into the office, hey. Good morning. Here's what you're doing today. Would be amazing.
Speaker 2:Right. So that would be a welcome trigger that says, actually, yeah. That is exactly my problem right now, subconsciously. Don't think users will actually articulate that. That would be a welcome trigger that said, hey, maybe you're geo targeting.
Speaker 2:We know your place of work. Therefore, when you're in the radius of your work, we're going to target. Or something as simple as a timed trigger, right? Some kind of external message that says, in the morning is when you're most likely to feel this pain point, to experience this internal trigger. Well, that's what we're gonna send you, an external trigger.
Speaker 2:Eventually, though, the idea is that through successive cycles through the hook, we don't even external triggers. Right? Eventually, just form these associations, these mental bonds with these internal triggers that we do these things automatically. But to start people through the hook, we have to use external triggers to get people to go through them the first few times and start investing service.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So you just mentioned enterprise software, and that's something I wanted to talk to you about is, you know, this model is really clear with a consumer product. What about in the b to b space? How are you seeing people use this hooked model?
Speaker 2:Sure. So to be clear, not every business needs a habit. There's lots of companies that don't need a habit. Enterprise products, or actually any kind of product that doesn't require habitual use, that doesn't require unprompted engagement. If it's the kind of product that people buy once, maybe they have a big committee decide that is going to buy the product.
Speaker 2:Well, that's kind of the antithesis of a habit. A lot of cognitive effort. It's a lot of thought to go into buying a product. That kind of product doesn't need to be a habit, right? If you tuck it into a closet somewhere and nobody actually uses that product, some kind server product that nobody actually engages with, does not require habits.
Speaker 2:But if you're building the kind of product, enterprise or consumer, that needs to be used, that needs to be engaged with on a frequent basis, so companies that started from the ground up, so the frontline employees like Salesforce or GitHub or Stack Overflow or Slack or Asana. I mean, products first need to create user habits, and then they're purchased, right? These SaaS models that first you have to start investing in the product, and then eventually, once you've used it enough, then you'll start paying for it, then you'll start, you know, paying with real money. That only comes from creating these habits. So the same four steps of the hook model apply just as much to an enterprise product if it requires unprompted user engagement.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the one I actually think about a lot is this idea of so I'm gonna try to get this internal versus external. But what a lot of people feel internally when they're going to a meeting
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Is I need to impress my boss or I need to impress the people there. Mhmm. And I always thought for a lot of b to b software, what would be perfect is if I don't know how you could trigger this right at the right moment, but if right at that moment you could say, here's a printable PDF report that you can take to a meeting right now, and actually every meeting you go to, and it will make you look good for your boss.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting you said that there's a have you heard of Refresh? No. So I'm an investor in a company called Refresh. It's this cool little app that does something similar. The idea is that you get into a meeting with somebody, you're about to have lunch, maybe it's a work colleague, maybe it's somebody you don't see very frequently.
Speaker 2:And what do you talk about, right? Before you talk about what you really need to meet about, you talk about, Hey, how's the weather? But you don't you don't meet with them frequently enough to remember what their favorite teams are or what their kids names are or what they're into, what their hobbies are. So refresh, figure it out that there's this internal trigger, this anxiety around, Oh my gosh, I'm about to meet with someone, and I don't remember their kids' names. I don't remember what their favorite hobbies are.
Speaker 2:I don't remember what we talked about last meeting. Yeah. Right before the meeting, because they tap into this data that's on your calendar, right before the meeting, they send you a refresh, like this little dossier that tells you, Here's three things you can talk about with the person you're about to meet with.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. I love that. Yeah. Because you could see right away how that would be helpful. Right.
Speaker 1:Especially if it doesn't automatically. Right.
Speaker 2:And it's exactly the right time. It's it's contextually appropriate for when you're about to meet with somebody. And then, so the reward is the information itself, and the joy that comes from, Hey, you know, I heard you were a Giants fan. Isn't that great about the World Series? Or whatever it might be, right?
Speaker 2:This topic conversation that you remember that the app told you. Then where it becomes really powerful is that after your meeting, you get another notification that says, hey, you just met with Nir. What do you want to remember about Nir? And with one swipe, you can actually input some information. Oh, okay, Nir just wrote this book called Hooked and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:You can type in something so that the next time you meet with me, it'll prompt you with the information that you put in. Right? So the platform is a great example of this investment phase of how the product gets better and better the more you invest in it, the more data you put into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm I'm really liking these case studies. What about if in the last few minutes we have here, we go through a few? Sure. So you mentioned let's talk about Product Hunt first because that's an interesting one for both of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because I I actually remember, like, Ryan sending me that idea, and I was on his early he had a linky dink thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And Startup letters. Right? Startup First iteration.
Speaker 1:And I remember at the time thinking, this isn't that compelling to me personally. How when it got going and it was clear that there's other people involved in it and there's this community, now I'm hooked. I go almost every day. So what is it about Product Hunt that hooks people into using it?
Speaker 2:Right. So let's talk about the Product Hunt hook. So the external trigger is this email you get every day. So you sign up at Product Hunt, you get an email that says, here's what's trending in Product Hunt. And it's not everything, right?
Speaker 2:It's not the kind of email that you go and look and look forever and ever. It's just a few of the top things. And there's always this variability about when you take the key action of opening that email, there's all this variability inside what you're going to find in that email message, right? So the trigger is the email, the action is opening it or clicking on a link to the to Product Hunt, and the variable reward is what what's in, you know, the content itself. It's this search for information.
Speaker 2:Product Hunt, it's rewards of the hunt. Yeah. Which is one of the three types of variable rewards we talk about in the book. It's this information reward. So that's the variable reward.
Speaker 2:What's the product of the day? What's trending? What's cool? What's interesting? What's the latest and greatest?
Speaker 2:The investment comes when, of course, registering for the service, so that now you're not just going to site, you're actually getting the email every day. That loads the next trigger. Stating preferences. So when you start upvoting things, Ryan's collecting that information. Now we know more about you.
Speaker 2:We can start tailoring what you see in the future. When you give personal friend information, when you log in through Facebook or Twitter, now you start getting an email every time one of your friends posts something to Product Hunt. So now you're loading the trigger even more because, hey, I get an email every time Ryan posts something to Product Hunt, and I'm gonna check it out. Because if Ryan thinks it's a good product to post on Product Hunt, I certainly wanna know about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so all these investments load the next trigger and make the product better with use. So that would be the quick and dirty of the Product Hunt hook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about another one.
Speaker 2:Oh, I forgot the last step.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Overtime, sorry. So the external trigger is the email, but the important thing is that over time, if you go through these four steps of the hook, the trigger, action, reward, and investment, over time you start associating the product, you start using Product Hunt, when you begin associating it with this internal trigger, maybe it's boredom, maybe it's this need to figure out curiosity, what's going on today, what's the latest and greatest. So now you don't even need that email message anymore. When you have a few minutes at your desk, instead of going to, you know, New York Times or ESPN, this becomes where you go. So now you don't even need that email message anymore.
Speaker 2:You've formed an association with that internal trigger of, let's say, boredom or curiosity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That's It's interesting. As you go through the model, you can really see each phase, can't you? Like, this is Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then Yeah. The the other trigger would probably be you know, I started seeing I was signed up for a long time, but when I really started using it was on Twitter. I kept seeing people share product hunt links. Mhmm. And and then all of sudden, like, well, there's stuff going on here.
Speaker 1:Like, I gotta check this out. I I had this fear of missing out, I I heard you you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Right. FOMO is a great internal trigger. Right? We don't like the feeling of FOMO. FOMO sucks.
Speaker 2:We're missing out on something. That's a very palpable thing that all of us feel. So products that can scratch that itch and make us feel like we're not missing out, that's products we like to use.
Speaker 1:Well and I have a feeling that this next case study I want us to get into has something to do with fear of missing out as well, which and it actually kind of boggled me when I saw it initially. But Slack.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:There's there's been lots of of group chat apps before. You know, Basecamp had one called Campfire that was really popular. Then HipChat came along. It seemed like everyone was using HipChat. And then all of sudden, Slack came along, and it just like, you think this is an established space.
Speaker 1:Like, there's no more room here. And all of a sudden, they they it seems like they just took over. So what do you think they did that was different? Like, that's like Bing coming along and taking over, you know, from Google. What what did Slack do?
Speaker 2:You're you're in this space more than I am. I'm actually curious to hear what what you think. What do think they do particularly well?
Speaker 1:Well, the one thing in terms of triggers is the fear of missing out. And I'm not sure why this happened. I'm guessing the product is quite delightful to use once you once you get in and get invested in it. And people started talking about it. And one thing I noticed is just like it seemed like everyone was talking about it on Twitter.
Speaker 1:And you start to feel a little bit like you're in you're using this tired old Campfire client. And you start thinking, well, what am I missing out on? Like, the Right. Everybody's using this. This seems like, is there something I'm not seeing here?
Speaker 1:And so for me, I think the initial trigger was I've got to see what everyone's talking about. Like, I've got to check this out.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And once the other thing that happens is once you so the product is really great. There there's obviously some things here. But once you get people in it, like once you in you invite people, you're you're kinda and they they start enjoying it. It's kinda hard to get out.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's the investment is following if inviting followers, so to speak, to to work with you
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In Slack. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's there's a lot of things that Slack does in a really interesting way. I think I think one actually might be, but but again, this is more your industry than mine, is that from what I understand, they let you pretty much do everything.
Speaker 2:Like, there's not there's not much they hold back from you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:How much you do, they hold back. Yeah. But the actual features, can you can go on and on and on and on. Very easy to onboard, really easy to start using the product, Kind of hard to stop using the product because once you start connecting all these APIs they have, that's a form of investment. Once you start inviting other people, that's a form of investment.
Speaker 2:And so that that big that's pretty that's a pretty good hook. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else that you're So you mentioned that you're working on a new book. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What else?
Speaker 1:When is that going to come out? What's Yeah, haven't really
Speaker 2:announced anything yet. So I'm not It's not that I don't want, it's not super secretive, it's just that I don't know if I'm actually going to finish it. I don't want to have the pressure of, Oh, Nir told me he was going to make a book, so he better finish the book. It's a labor of love, just like Hooked was. It's going to be more about mainstream products.
Speaker 2:Hooked is really for technologists and for people who are building technology products. Most of the case studies and examples are apps and technology products. Oh, cool. But this next book is going be more broad focused. It's going be about all sorts of products that change our behavior.
Speaker 1:And when does Hooked hardcover come out again?
Speaker 2:Okay. So in The United States, it's on Tuesday, and Canada's on Tuesday as well on the fourth. And in The UK, it's on the sixth.
Speaker 1:Wow. Right on. So right away here, people will be able to get it.
Speaker 2:Next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Next week. Awesome. Here's a few places you can find Nir online. There's nearandfar.com.
Speaker 1:On Twitter, he's Nir and Ayal, which is which is n I r e y a l. And then the book, can find at hookmodel.com. Did I miss anything there?
Speaker 2:Right. Hook so hookmodel.com, one thing that your listeners should know is that there's a really nice book bundle. There's all this free content, all this bonus content that's not in the book that you can get by going to hookmodel.com. You can buy the book anywhere. All you have to do is go to hookmodel.com and enter in your order number from wherever you bought it, and I will give you a workbook, and two ebooks, and videos, and all this great bonus content that you can get for buying the book, all for $17 What?
Speaker 1:Wow. No way. Cool. Cool. I love that.
Speaker 1:There's a that's a trend in publishing right now, adding all this additional content. Think Right. It's
Speaker 2:There's a lot more that you put the book in, it goes to the printer, and there's all this other stuff that you think about and you want to share with the audience. That's all in the book bundle now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, Nir, I really appreciate your time. I genuinely really enjoyed this. I Thank you. As we were talking, I just felt like there's something about your what you were saying that was clicking to me.
Speaker 1:And I just had a great time. So I'm gonna have to have you come back sometime.
Speaker 2:I'd love to, Justin. Thanks so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Cool. Thanks. Alright. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:If you want to help out the show, the best way to do that is to log in to iTunes, search for Product People, and leave us a nice review. Again, if you want to check us on the web, productpeople.tv, and we're on Twitter at product people TV as well. I will see you next Thursday. Talk to then.