Why Understanding Consumer Psychology Improves Marketing Results
Direct Answer: Marketing becomes more effective when businesses understand the emotional, psychological, and motivational factors behind consumer decision-making.
Why Most Marketing Fails to Connect Emotionally
Many professional service providers focus their marketing entirely on features, credentials, and technical expertise.
The problem is that people rarely make decisions based on logic alone.
Clients often choose professionals based on how those professionals make them feel:
Safe
Understood
Competent
Confident
Protected
According to Will Leach, understanding behavioral science can dramatically improve how businesses communicate with potential clients.
The best marketing does not simply explain services.
It connects with the mindset behind the decision.
The Three Types of Goals That Influence Consumer Decisions
1. Functional Goals
Functional goals involve practical needs.
Examples include:
Finding an affordable attorney
Hiring a responsive consultant
Choosing a fast service provider
These goals matter, but they are usually not the full story.
2. Emotional Goals
Emotional goals focus on how clients want to feel during the experience.
For example, clients may want to feel:
Reassured
Confident
Supported
Respected
In control
A law firm website that reduces uncertainty and explains the legal process clearly often performs better because it addresses emotional concerns, not just legal services.
3. Aspirational Goals
Aspirational goals reflect who people want to become.
Clients may want to feel:
Successful
Responsible
Intelligent
Secure
Empowered
This is why effective professional services marketing often focuses on transformation instead of technical details alone.
Why Understanding Motivation Improves Marketing
People Buy Based on Internal Drivers
Behavioral science shows that human decisions are heavily influenced by underlying motivations.
Some of the strongest include:
Security
Esteem
Belonging
Achievement
Nurturance
For example:
A person hiring an estate planning attorney may primarily seek security.
Someone hiring a business consultant may seek esteem and confidence.
A parent seeking therapy services may be motivated by nurturance and protection.
When businesses align their messaging with these motivations, trust increases significantly.
How Regulatory Fit Theory Changes Marketing Messaging
Some Clients Want Gains. Others Want Safety.
One of the most important behavioral concepts is understanding whether your audience is:
Seeking positive outcomes
orTrying to avoid negative outcomes
This distinction changes how marketing should be framed.
For example:
“Grow your business faster” appeals to opportunity-seeking clients.
“Protect your business from costly mistakes” appeals to risk-avoidant clients.
Both messages may promote the same service, but the emotional framing changes everything.
Why Social Proof Matters So Much
People Trust What Other People Already Trust
Behavioral economics consistently shows that humans rely heavily on social proof when making decisions.
This is why:
Reviews matter
Testimonials matter
Case studies matter
Podcast appearances matter
Video content matters
Potential clients often ask themselves:
“If other people trust this professional, maybe I can too.”
This is especially important for:
Law firm marketing
Therapist credibility marketing
Consultant branding
Professional services SEO
AI-search visibility
The Future of Marketing Is Psychological Clarity
The businesses that stand out online are usually not the ones shouting the loudest.
They are the ones communicating most clearly to the emotional state of the client.
Modern marketing requires businesses to understand:
What clients fear
What they hope for
What motivates them
How they evaluate trust
What emotional outcome they truly want
This is where credibility and psychology intersect.
Marketing Is Really About Reducing Uncertainty
Most people are not simply buying services.
They are buying certainty, reassurance, and emotional safety.
The professionals who understand this create messaging that feels more human, trustworthy, and persuasive.
That is ultimately what drives better client decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the three main customer goals?
Customers generally have functional goals, emotional goals, and aspirational goals that influence decisions.
Why is emotional marketing important?
People often make decisions emotionally first and justify them logically afterward. Emotional connection builds trust.
What is social proof in marketing?
Social proof is the psychological tendency to trust businesses that other people already trust through reviews, testimonials, and visibility.
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Andrew Colsky (00:12)
Welcome to Be Picked. We are the podcast that helps professional service providers learn about how to build their practice and sustain a thriving practice as they go forward. We bring you episodes from experts all around the globe who can help share their expertise. And today we have indeed one of those experts. His name is Will Leach. He is the founder of MindState Group and the author of the book
Marketing to MindStates and I am your host Andrew Colsky and I am looking forward to this interview. So Will thank you and welcome to the show
Will Leach - Mindstate (00:51)
Hey, thank you for having me, Andrew. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
Andrew Colsky (00:53)
Great, well we have all sorts of stuff to talk about here, but one of the areas that I think we're gonna be most relevant for us in our conversation is we can talk a lot about marketing steps and things that people need to do, and they're all important, but before doing those, I think it's more important to understand the science behind it in terms of decision making process and.
what leads
people, consumers, to make the choices they make when they actually pick a professional to work with. So can you share with us a little bit of background on that? And then let's dive in.
Will Leach - Mindstate (01:31)
Yeah, so real quick, just on myself, you know, I am in been in the world of marketing psychology for the better part of 25 years. Now I started off in energy and biotech and now I found my way out of PepsiCo where I behavioral sciences at PepsiCo. They have some of the largest brands in the world. And you know, if you're a large brand, one of the biggest things you need to understand is why do people buy the things that they buy, especially we're going against the juggernaut of Coca-Cola. So I have spent the better part of 25 years studying
all the social sciences around understanding why people do what they do. Now, I also came from the background of marketing, right? So I've applied those concepts into what we call mind state marketing, but it really comes from the premise, just like you said, Andrew, is that we make so many decisions every single day. Every one of your customers on the average are making 35,000 decisions every single day. So if you just take that into consideration that your customers are making 35,000 decisions,
What am going to look at this email? Am I not going to look at this email? Am I going to rest my eyes? Am I going to scroll past this, the social media post? You must understand why people make those decisions. And it's because there's a psychological filter. What I do is I study that psychological filter and identify things that you can do to get your messaging through that filter. Because if you don't, you're going to be one of those 95 % of all decisions that are made at the non-conscious level. And frankly are never made because you weren't able to slip through that filter.
Andrew Colsky (02:56)
Right, wow, okay, so that's a great point for me to interject and ask this question. I can imagine as someone listening to this podcast and they might be coming up with a thought, oh my God, are we gonna drill down into the weeds where I've gotta do 100 different steps and think about 1,000 things before I even put out.
some content on the internet or are there some high level things that I can realistically do that are going to have an impact on me? So,
I realize there's a lot that goes into this below, but from a practical perspective, what can people actually be doing and what should they be doing to get found out there?
Will Leach - Mindstate (03:40)
Yeah,
it's a great question. So I wrote a book called marketing to mind states, and I was just telling you about like, it's the practical guide to applying behavioral design to research and marketing and practical meant a lot because my, my, my companies that I work with and brand managers I worked with, they're not social psychologists. They just want to know what to do. I'm gonna tell you, there are four things just for that. You really must understand about your customer. And if you can understand these four things, I promise you,
You can make better sales calls. can message better. You can, you can trigger them to be more excited about your products. And it just comes down to four different social sciences.
Andrew Colsky (04:16)
Okay, and you want to share those four things with us?
Will Leach - Mindstate (04:20)
I will, I will. The first thing you want to do always, always, always is understand what people's goals are. It's something that comes out of science called goal theory. And there are only three types of goals. There's these functional goals. These are the goals that you already know about your customers. My customers say that they want something cheap or they want something fast, or it's those things that your customers tell you all the time in your review data. Those are great things you should know. But frankly, those are the most superficial things you should know about your customer. Functional goals.
More importantly is what we call emotional goals. And that is really how do people want to feel when they get your service, right? So if you're a lawyer out there, you may understand that yes, you have great legal practice, you bill regularly, all these great things that they're going to ask you for. But what you need to understand is how do they want to feel? They may want to know that you are competent because they want to feel like they're making a good choice. So they may desire to feel competence.
And then the best thing you should know is what's called aspirational goals. Aspirational goals are who do they want to become? Every behavior you take, whether you know it or not, in the vast majority of time, you don't know, they are towards where you see yourself as being your best person, your best day. So if you understand what your customer aspires to become when they're working with you and you message to that, you will absolutely grab their attention and maintain their attention. So just understanding goals.
And where you fit in those goals is the number one thing you can do right off the bat.
Andrew Colsky (05:50)
Great.
Will Leach - Mindstate (05:50)
Secondly,
Andrew Colsky (05:51)
Yes.
Will Leach - Mindstate (05:51)
motivations. The second thing is you have to understand what motivates your customers. So it's something called motivational psychology. You already know a lot of these motivations because you learned them in elementary school, but we just didn't have the vocabulary. So there are only nine motivations that drive the vast majority of human behavior. Security, we all know that from Maslow, right? Or empowerment, our desire for control, or nurturance, our desire for love or appreciation. There's esteem.
which is our desire to feel status or respected. So either way, there are these nine motivations. I won't bore with all of them, but if you know how your customer wants to feel, they want to feel like they're successful. That's the achievement motivation. They want to feel cared for. That's the nurturance motivation. If you know that.
Now you know how to message to people in a way that gets them to be emotionally engaged with you. So if you understood if you're that lawyer practice and that that person wants to feel competent, it's a big decision. They're about to hire a lawyer and they want to feel like they're making a good choice. That's called the competence motivation. Now you know that when you're speaking to them, you're going to talk about your ability to deliver masterful results and you're going to talk about how you have been doing this for a long time to build credibility. That is that's great. That's around mastery.
But let's say if really they're driven by control for whatever reason, they felt like they've out of control. They want a lawyer to rein in all this stuff for them to give her the stuff. Well, now you don't want to talk about your idea that how smart you are. You're going to tell them about how you are really good at taking all of these issues and combining them together. You're going to eliminate the chaos. Same lawyer, different way of positioning.
Andrew Colsky (07:27)
Mm-hmm.
Will Leach - Mindstate (07:27)
So that is called motivations. And the third one is really
a fast one. We won't worry about the fourth one for this session. The third one is how do we approach our goals? There's only two ways you approach any any behavior you seek more good or you try to avoid bad. So we call it regulatory fit theory. So if you know that your sir, your customer out there is trying to avoid bad, they're trying to keep themselves out of a lawsuit. Well, now you need to message in that way because that's the intuitive thing they're looking for.
So you're not going to talk about here's all the advantages you'll get when you're working with me. That's something called optimistic language. You're going to use cautious language. Here are all the ways I'm going to keep you out of trouble. Same lawyer, the way you frame up your messaging changes. So those three things, if you know those things about your customer, I promise you, you can message in a very different way. You can talk to them in a way and every time you do, they're going to feel like you just kind of get them, that you're intuitive or that you feel intuitive to them.
And that's why you want to understand this basic social sciences. And frankly, you can do this in marriages. You can do this with your kid. I start off my book talking about how I use these same principles on my kid to get him to eat vegetables. So it's a human behavioral model that I apply to marketing and sales. You can apply it to almost anything else you do.
Andrew Colsky (08:42)
Okay, so wait, that's, that was two.
Will Leach - Mindstate (08:46)
That was three. So goals, motivations and the approach. Yep. The fourth one are biases. And that's
Andrew Colsky (08:49)
the approach okay and then number four okay
Will Leach - Mindstate (08:54)
if you came to me and said, well, listen, this lawyer needs to right now, they got to make a sale in the next hour. What do you do? That's something we do is we call this it's a concept called behavioral economics. It's all out there in the social sciences. It's been out there forever. All you have to do is understand there are biases that we have to help people make fast, easy decisions. So one of them is called social proof.
And that's this concept that we value things that we believe that lots of other people are doing. So if you knew that your customers are triggered off of this bias called social proof, you could just say, hey, you know what? I've been working with 10,000 people in your same industry and I know how the world works in your industry. That little bias that they have of, wow, this person works with 10,000 people like me, they must be a good choice. You just made that decision for them faster and easier.
So biases are things you can put in to your communications just to make help them make fast, easy decisions. So scarcity effect is a classic one as well. Limited time only, you know, limit five per purchase. Those things trigger your mind at a subconscious level to assign value to those things. So in my book, I only talk about 21 of those things. And I think there's about 21 that really make the big difference, at least in America. So if you know one of these 21, or even if you don't know when he's 21, go to the book and you would just look at these 21 and start using that.
And that's the fourth kind of science that I would tell you to use to make your messaging and your sales calls go much fluid, much more fluid.
Andrew Colsky (10:19)
Right. Well, you stole my heart when you said the word behavioral economics. I am a big fan, big student. Daniel Ariely is the first one that I started studying behavioral economics. And I say that because I want the audience to know that there are a lot of books out there about behavioral economics. you know, if you happen to be even an attorney, for example, forget about advertising your practice. If you ever do any kind of trial on ever, you really need to understand behavioral economics. But a whole
Excuse me. A whole range of great information with that as well. So yeah, we could dive into so many different layers here. So OK, so you shared with us a lot of great information there about things that we should be thinking about, motivators, and those types of things. I always try to simplify things as much as I can.
and the way that I have kind of phrased it for myself from the psychological perspective is anyone who's gonna be hiring a professional service provider has some sort of a pain, some sort of pain they wanna get rid of. And the reason they're hiring you is because they want you to bring them comfort. End of the day, every single thing that you listed fits into my category of pain seeking comfort. And as long as the provider understands that,
then their approach is going to be helping the person. And you talked about the feelings, because that is the most important thing. That's what people are really looking for, is the feeling of comfort. Then it's important to approach it in a way
that they understand that you understand their problem, and you can bring them that comfort because you're qualified to do so for these various reasons. Am I on the same track as you?
Will Leach - Mindstate (12:10)
Totally agree. What I was gonna say, but I think yours lines up perfectly. said, people buy confidence, not your solution. Or people buy comfort, not your solution. They will buy your solution if they feel comfortable and they feel confident in you, but that's exactly right. They're buying the emotion in your world, comfort in my world, it could be confidence. And then when they feel that way, that's when they'll choose you. Absolutely agree.
Andrew Colsky (12:31)
Right, right. Okay. So that gives us a great background of what everything is built upon here. But now let's go back to the question, which is the listener is trying to do this. They're trying to run their practice. They're trying to stay above water with hiring decisions
and all sorts of things that are going on. Where do they start in reality to apply some of this stuff? What's going to give them the biggest bang for the buck to get started?
Will Leach - Mindstate (12:59)
Yeah, the first thing I would go back to is that goals idea because it doesn't matter if you have emotionally resonant messaging if you're not speaking to people's goals because if you don't speak to your customers goals, your clients, what they want in their life, then your messaging will never resonate. In fact, they won't even see your messaging. That's from a biological perspective. So the first thing you must do
is just and I don't want to say the word use the word market research. Sometimes you can just literally have a conversation with yourself and your intuition. If you've been a lawyer for a while, if you've been in another service industry, understand just write on a sheet of paper. What do my clients want from me? That's called those functional goals and you can just list them out, write them as fast as you can. Just list them all out. Then what you want to do is take that list and say, collectively, why do they want those things? That gets you that higher order goal thing that I said. So you say, okay, they want these five things.
They want me to be a fair value. They want to be competent. They want me to return phone calls in the next and within two hours, whatever these I don't care. It needs to taste great. My restaurant needs my food needs to taste great. Fine. Write those out and then say why are those things important? And just use your gut. And then when you do that, if one thing say something, well, if let's say if it's a restaurant, and they say, well, you know, if you give me a lot of variety of food, you know, the food is great tasting, it's at a good value.
And they say, collectively, why are those important to my customers? And I say, well, because then I can bring my whole family in. That's the higher order goal. That's emotional. Now say, well, what if I can get you why is it important for you to be able to bring your family to a restaurant? Just do ask that question twice. Why is it important to you? Why is it important to you? That gets you to the aspirational goal, that thing that I told you about that drives all human behavior.
What that is is this is, if I can get my family to eat at the restaurant, we can feel connected because frankly, my family's all over the place and we get a moment once a week to feel connected. When you were in the mo, if you were in the business of connecting people versus serving really good burritos, you're in a different hemisphere of your competitors. That's why you want to know their goals. So just say, are the goals that people want? Why is that important to them? And if you got that, why is that important?
I want you to then build messaging around that goal, that higher order aspirational goal. In that case, I wanna be the father that has a solid family that is able to connect with this family in these crazy times. Message to that. That's a really, really important thing you should be doing.
Andrew Colsky (15:25)
Well, let me jump in here on that connected piece because this is something that I know to be true for myself and I'm curious for your comments on it. So you were talking about a restaurant, a restaurant having good food, good value, good quality, so on and so forth. And sure, if I go to a restaurant and I really enjoy the food and it's a good price, well, that goes on my list of a one return here. But I can also think of restaurants that I've been to that the food was
Okay, there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't like, you know, five star, I gotta have this. But the service made me feel like I was part of the community in there. The wait staff was friendly, understanding, attentive, talkative, but not too much, you know? And I would find myself going back to that restaurant, not because of the food, but because of the connection.
What's going on there?
Will Leach - Mindstate (16:25)
love it. So you tapped into that second module called motivational psychology. So when we go after our goals, and we I just told you bunch of these goals, really, there are feelings that you want, which can sometimes override your goals. Let's say I want a cheap meal, I it's got to be cheap. But then you get bad service, your goal really wasn't being driven by being cheap. If you didn't go there again, you actually your goal was to feel respected or valued or appreciated, which is a great condition. It's a great motivation.
So what you did is you tapped in your example. We call that the belonging motivations, only nine motivations. Belonging is one of them. That's our desire to feel aligned, accepted and connected with others. Right. So we will find that actually a lot of service companies that connection is really important. Like there's a lot of services out there, counseling services, things like that. They want to bring people together and that's that's feeling of connection.
But there's another one called engagement. Actually, we restaurants oftentimes are delivering the engagement motivation. And that is our desire to feel fully captivated in the moment. So music, theater, sports, restaurants live in this world called the engagement motivation. So what happened in that space is that really what you're buying was that emotion of feeling engagement and captivation. Again, if you know that motivation, now you know, okay, so how do I design a restaurant where
I can make sure that people feel very welcome when they come in. Well, you would start training your staff to instantly recognize people that have come in on their second time. You can do little things. I've even seen a book on this where you give somebody on their first try, you have the staff come and say, is this your first time trying this? It's yes, yes. You go tell the manager it's their first time. Manager comes over with a little card that says, hey, next time you come here, here's cake on us. That small little thing, that small little thing makes that person feel recognized.
they make some feel appreciated because the next time they come in, they get a free free cake. And when that person comes in and redeems the cake, the general manager, the manager of restaurant knows the person would redeem the cake. That's his cue to come over and say, Thank you so much for coming back over. And especially if you run on the back of their name, or back of the card, Greg, you call them by Greg or their name. That's how you bring that feeling of acceptance. So when you know these things, you can just think about your whole service, right? Andrew and say, How can I make this person feel that they're connected with us and they can connect with others?
it becomes a totally different service offering when you know what motivates them.
Andrew Colsky (18:50)
Right, right, wow, okay. So yeah, I mean, as you're talking about it, I can think back to experiences that I've had with different restaurants and service industry locations, but then that raises this question. So I get it when we're talking about restaurants, makes a lot of sense. But if I'm an attorney or a doctor or a dentist or a chiropractor or mental health counselor,
These people haven't walked into my office to order food. They've never walked in. They don't know me. I've never met them. I don't know anything about them. The only way that I'm going to actually meet them would be if they set up an appointment to come see me for something. how do
I, if I've never met them and I don't have any connection yet, how do I apply that to me?
Will Leach - Mindstate (19:45)
So what you're going to do, and it's not easy by the way, but there are activities in the book that help us help you get there. So I want you to know that whenever your customers talk to you, whether it's a review of you after they've had your service or maybe when they're setting up the appointment or maybe when you they first walk in your doctor and they first walk in, I want you to know that everything that they tell you, it's like poker. They are giving you tells into their emotions. They are. You've got to condition yourself to read these tells.
So let me give you some ideas here. So if you ask somebody first off, the first thing you want to do is always recognize that your customer is the hero of their story. Let me describe what this is. So the idea here is that imagine from birth when you first opened your eyes, when you came out of your mother's womb, you were the center of attention and you will be the center of attention until the day you die. Every morning you wake up and the world is coming into you. Recognize that our whole lives we're the center of attention.
So you need to talk to your customer. The first thing you need to do if you're a doctor and somebody comes in is realize one, that they are thinking only of themselves and that they are the center of their attention. So you need to first come say, gosh, great to see you. Tell me what's going on in your life and let them just talk. And what you can do when you have people talk, they will give you tells. I'm not really good at doing this off the cuff, but let's say it was a doctor and it was in the psychology space. Let's say it's a psychology.
for some counseling and they're giving you a conversation. Well, here's what's happening. My wife and I have been drifting apart a little bit. I'm ashamed a little bit about how I've reacted last couple of years. I've seen us there. I'm getting to the point where I really want to make a difference and I think I need some help. They have given you tells first off that they feel like they've lost connection. Andrew, we just talked about the belonging motivation. You should go. Okay, this person right now is desires to feel affection from their wife and that they want to fill community with her again.
You just now undercover the two motivations that are driving their desires. And the reason why you want to know that is because if they don't get a good feel, if you immediately go to another motivation, say, well, you we've got to get to a place where you're feeling more respected about yourself. You may want to say that as a clinical psychologist, but that's nothing to do with what they just said. In fact, you may think that that's what they need, but you're not making the emotional connection. So
When you let people talk and they're like I said, there's activities in the book and there's lots of books out there. don't mean there's Danny Riley's books has lots of great stuff in this space that you can identify these motivations that are bringing them to you in the first place and more importantly, the motivations that they will use to take action. So one of things you want to do if you're in a service is it's not just delivering your advice. It is to hopefully get that person to take action to make their lives better. Well, the way you do that is you connect with them emotionally.
So they feel understood, they feel like you're connecting and so that you they trust your opinion enough to take a med take the medication you've given them to take the tools that you've given them, etc. So I want you to know that when you talk to people, they are giving you tells. Now I'm not I know it's hard, right? You're not in the moment because you're trying to really understand what they're saying. In the back of your mind, you're thinking about your service, how you can help them.
What I would tell you would be really important to do is go with your intuition because most of us have a great intuition. By the way, if you've been doing it for a while, you have a good intuition on what your customers really want. Even that person you've never known, but then take the time. I don't know if you can record these calls or not. We record almost all of our calls now, right? Record
Andrew Colsky (23:14)
Mm-hmm.
Will Leach - Mindstate (23:15)
these calls and then you go back into the recording. We use artificial intelligence to understand the psychological mind state people are under. But even if you didn't remembering to listen to that call and go through a very deliberate process of
What were their goals when I talked to them? were their goals? What are they motivated by? Was it belonging? Was it nurturance? Was it engagement? And just writing those few things down so that when you follow up with them, whether it's in an email follow up or whether it's in some sort of a phone call conversation, you now know the words you should be using to make that connection.
Andrew Colsky (23:45)
Yeah, yeah, wonderful. Wow. Well, I want to point out something that has been occurring throughout just this podcast, and I'd love to hear your comments on it. So you and I now both have mentioned Daniel Ariely, because he right, same with me. Okay. So so
Will Leach - Mindstate (24:00)
Changed my life. Changed my life.
Andrew Colsky (24:04)
I said, we're on the same page with that. He is very much into behavioral economics. If I'm not wrong, maybe he even coined the term I'm not sure.
Will Leach - Mindstate (24:13)
Feels like he's one of the pioneers for sure.
Andrew Colsky (24:15)
Right.
But the point is, I know I've never met him. I don't know if you've ever met him, but I doubt he's ever met us. If we passed each other in the supermarket, you have no idea who I am. But the point is, he wrote several books about this. He is visible on the Internet, on podcasts and other types of places. So if I was in a situation where I needed to have an expert on behavioral economics, the very first
name that comes to my mind is his and that's the first one I'm going to reach out to. Now why do I point that out? I point that out because he and I have never met each other, but I already know that if I needed that type of work, I'm going to hire him. And my point being that if you're an attorney, if you're a therapist,
if you're whatever type of service provider out there, how do you get the same thing? And the way you get the same thing is the same way that Daniel Ariely got it, which is
He puts himself out there as the owner of that niche, right? Or an expert in it anyway. So when you're putting out a book, you're putting out podcasts, you're putting out YouTube videos, you're putting out blog posts, you're putting out all these types of things in your area, people start to find them. And then they find another piece about you. And then they start looking you up to find more pieces about you. So by time they are ready to hire that marriage counselor.
or that real estate agent or that attorney, they've already done the research, they found you. You've never met them, you don't know anything about them. But when they're ready to do something to get that emotional connection that you're talking about, they've already made the emotional connection with you and you've never set eyes on them. So by the time they call you, they hired you before they called you. So.
Will Leach - Mindstate (26:02)
I
totally, totally agree with that, especially though, let's just be honest, right? In the world of artificial intelligence, two things are happening. One is that you can build that authority easier than you ever used to be able to. Like you and I, we had to use to write articles for Forbes, right? It would take me a day and a half to write an article. With artificial intelligence, you can write that same article in seconds. So first off, you should be building authority and it's never been easier. Now I would also suggest that that authority comes from your brilliance out there. You
have skills and you have a point of view that nobody else in the industry has. You may not know you have, but you have a point of view. So what you can do with artificial intelligence is take your unique point of view. And this is very easy to do with artificial intelligence, but I'm going to, but you can actually be interviewed by your AI tool to get your point of view. And then you can say, Hey, whenever you write an article, I want this point of view to always come across.
Why that matters is that if you don't have your point of view, then you're competing against lots of other lawyers, lots of other psychologists, lots of other plumbers out there that can talk all day long about plumbing, but not through your point of view. The second reason why that's important for everybody is that people are not searching like they used to search. It used to be you'd go to Google, right? You'd go to Google and say, where are the top lawyers in my area? Fine.
And Google is really good based upon your authority, how many articles you had out there and all the books, anything that you're writing to build authority, your posts on LinkedIn, et cetera. And it would rank you. Now with artificial intelligence, it's slightly different. Artificial intelligence is not giving your readers a long list of lawyers. It's telling them, here's the top lawyer in your area. How does it do that? Well, a lot of people are unsure exactly how the models work, but I will tell you that it does. It looks for a couple of things. One is authority.
Are people and are you writing out there? Because if you're not writing a lot out there, it's not going to pick you up. So you have
Andrew Colsky (27:52)
Right
Will Leach - Mindstate (27:53)
to get content out there. Second thing you have to do is have a point of view. So if you're writing general things about here, the top five things lawyers should be thinking about or divorcees should be thinking about, that's interesting. But it's so many people are writing that. But if you have a very specific point of view,
GEO is more likely, AI is more likely to grab that information and bring you to the top. So there's lots of people you can talk about, but you are absolutely right, Andrew. People are making, I mean, they're buying that solution before they ever pick up the phone with you. And in most all cases, they want to confirm they're making the right choice. So that's why they want to talk to you. And that's
Andrew Colsky (28:28)
Right? Right?
Will Leach - Mindstate (28:30)
why you want to understand their mind state, right? So when they talk to you like, yeah, Andrew, I like, had a good feeling about it beforehand. And he backed up everything he said. That first part,
They already had a good feeling about you happened before they ever went to your office.
Andrew Colsky (28:43)
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I just want to point out to people that, you know, there's another piece to this, which I find important. In my book, I talk about it. I call them ticks. Now I define that in the book. I'm not going to tell you what it is by the book and you'll find out, but here's what it here's what a tick does. OK. If you start putting content out, there's this thing called the Bader-Meinhof recency effect, which is if
Will Leach - Mindstate (29:10)
Mm.
Andrew Colsky (29:11)
I were to say to you, you know,
all of sudden I've started to see a lot of yellow cars on the road. You would start seeing yellow cars everywhere. So if I tell you, put out a blog article or put out a YouTube video or put out a LinkedIn post, you're going to write it. But inevitably, when you're writing it, even if you're using AI to help you and you're tweaking it, your vocabulary that you use to talk about something is going to have some uniqueness to it, different from the way that I would talk about the same concept.
My point is that as you start putting more content out, you use your vocabulary. Somebody now watches your video, reads your blog, whatever it may be, and they hear some word, some phrase that you use. Let me look that up. I want to know more about that. They start looking it up. What do they find? They find more of your content because you're the one that uses that phrase in that way. So it basically takes them from finding you one time
And now it starts to kind of lock them in almost in this like funnel shape where they find more and more of you because they're looking up your words. And of course, who do they find? They find you using your words. So now if you've put out YouTube videos and blog articles and LinkedIn posts and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they're going to find you all over the place. And well, man, obviously this is the guy I need to hire. He's the only one that knows about whatever
Will Leach - Mindstate (30:33)
Everywhere.
Andrew Colsky (30:34)
the topic is.
Will Leach - Mindstate (30:35)
Yeah, it's getting to the psychological filter we talked about before, right? That's it's it's how you get through that psychological filter, they see those words. And if that word, those same types of words, that point of view is on the website, that makes you even more the authority, then they go see you and you're using that that kind of same look and feel and
the same types of words, because they're coming from you and not AI, then yeah, it just feels like that same string of thought is going through all interactions. Of course, you're gonna be the person that they end up buying.
Andrew Colsky (31:01)
Yeah, yeah. So let me do this. It is incredible how quickly time has flown
Will Leach - Mindstate (31:07)
I
Andrew Colsky (31:07)
on this. You had mentioned your book that includes all of this and a whole lot more. Do you have a copy of that you could show us? We can see what the cover
Will Leach - Mindstate (31:14)
Yeah,
Andrew Colsky (31:15)
looks like.
Will Leach - Mindstate (31:16)
I do. It's called marketing to mind states. It's backward. But the red one, you'll notice it gets the red one with the orchestration hands and the wand, right? So it's
Andrew Colsky (31:23)
Wonderful.
Will Leach - Mindstate (31:24)
marketing to mind states the practical guide to applying behavioral design to research and marketing. And I really did make it very practical. And you and I went into some depth on some of the psychology behind it behavioral economics and Arielle. But it really is made for the person that has no idea they didn't study social sciences. And what are the five things you can do or three things you can do right now?
to go apply these concepts of activating the non-conscious. And if you just took nothing out of the show, take this, that your customers are making 35,000 decisions every single day and 95 % of those decisions are made at the non-conscious level. So you must understand these goals, these motivations, these approaches and these biases to talk to the non-conscious. And if you do that, you're in the top three, four, 5 % of all marketers everywhere because you're using science to do your marketing.
Andrew Colsky (32:08)
Wow, wow. So where does somebody find that book and how do they find you?
Will Leach - Mindstate (32:14)
Yeah, you can just go to Amazon, look up Will Leach or marketing to MindState. It's on Amazon, it's on Walmart and all the other major book platforms. If you want to connect with me, certainly you can go to mindstategroup.com. That's my company where we actually do this type of research for customers and then help apply the research through artificial intelligence. But really LinkedIn, if you look me up on LinkedIn, will-leach, L-E-A-C-H.
I do lots of article writings on LinkedIn. So if you're just interested in this stuff once a week, I've got an article that's being promoted on LinkedIn. So that's really the place you can learn more about the thinking.
Andrew Colsky (32:46)
Fantastic. Wow. Well, I really appreciate that. You know, for those of you I mentioned that I've got my book. don't think even said the title of it. The title of my book is called Left of Trust. All the stuff that happens before someone trusts you and how to how to build that. Mine is coming out in September of this year, 2026, but it's available for preorder currently off of Amazon. So to find this full podcast, to find
a blog about this podcast, other information, just visit us at www.bpict.com and you'll find all this material and all of our other podcast episodes. And we put out a new podcast every week, so we've got great experts like Will here who are going to share with you things that you never thought about or didn't know how to do.
and they will tell you what's gonna be most effective for you and where to be spending your time and where to be spending your money. So Will, I give you the last word.
Will Leach - Mindstate (33:52)
Yep. It's not as scary as it sounds. You're probably doing a lot of this stuff anyways, but if you just go through a couple of activities, really simple things you can do that come from the book and just from any of these books that we've been talking about, look up behavioral economics on Amazon and you become a really strong marketer in sales for your company without understanding the vast majority of the things that these social scientists have learned, but just apply these concepts and see what it can do for you.
Andrew Colsky (34:17)
Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Will. And thank you to the listeners for listening. And we look forward to seeing you all on a future podcast of Be Pick.