Portals: The Best Tool to Reduce Friction in Your Customer Journey

Speaker A: So what I like putting out are these ideas that I sometimes call massive, meticulous, messy ideas. So the idea of a portal is how to better begin everything. A portal is a transitional space, like the entryway into Disney ride, the tunnel into a sports arena, the right mindset, warmup at the workplace, the intro to your favorite television show. And it's creating positive anticipation for what's to come. It's creating, creating and shifting people into the mindset for that. And it's completing the narrative metaphor of going somewhere different.

Speaker B: Troy, what's happening? We're rocking finally. I know you and I have been talking about doing this for a while, so I'm glad we could finally make it work on a Friday night.

Speaker A: Yes, I'm glad. Now we're recording it instead of me walking in the hills of San Luis Obispo, having a long conversation at sunset. So this is good.

Speaker B: So for those of you first tuning in, Troy and I met last year in 2023 when Troy came on to Flip the Switch, which was the previous version of this podcast. And he, he had so many good insight and knowledge points that we split it up into two episodes. Some of the highlights, I don't know if you recall that conversation, Troy, but some of the highlights for me was you breaking out and singing High School Musical.

Speaker A: Uh huh.

Speaker B: That was easily the highlight for me.

Speaker A: M. Uh, uh-huh.

Speaker B: Huh.

Speaker A: It's a great, it's a great lesson about how sometimes being cool is just breaking a norm. So if you're Troy Bolton and you tell your dad, I want to do both basketball and the musical, that can seem really cool to someone in the way that something much more edgy seems to somebody else.

Speaker B: So good. So we are going to be having Troy on the show as somewhat of, uh, a recurring guest, let's call it. Oftentimes Troy when he's coming on, he's really hitting it from the behavioral science background. So Troy, give us a little bit of, give us a little bit of insight for people that have never heard you talk before, never seen you, never met, you talk a little bit about what you're going to be bringing to the show.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm A Behavioral Science PhD technically. My PhD is in Marketing focused on consumer psychology, but publish it a lot in social psychology journals. Influencing managers, but also include influencing organizations like the Obama administration. Really doing research on what makes people happy, what makes them tick, what, how, what is their identity, how does that influence. Why do they uh, uh, why do they deny facts sometimes and just this whole human element and Then I used to be a Disney imagineer and I work a lot with businesses like Google and Nike now in creative and marketing side. And so it's really my sort of angle on things is that there are these kind of fundamental truths inside of behavioral science that are really, really useful to understand and then we can build upon them. We can, yes. And them with more artistic practices and artistic intuitions to really do something different. And I call my approach, uh, now scientific mind, artistic heart.

Speaker B: When Troy and I are on together, you're probably going to get a lot of nerding out on specific topics. We've bounced around and probably thrown out a hundred different versions of how we want to run the show when we're on it together and formats. And so that will likely change as we continue to go. But one thing that we both knew together, right? Like, we love jamming out, we love nerding out on different topics and we love going deep and trying to unpack and figure out what are the core first principles behind why this thing worked or why it failed.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, And I would just say I think that really getting at that core, like from like an academic PhD level, but talking about everything that matters is often deeper than most people get. Like people will say, oh, it's because of this. Actually it's about seven layers deeper than that. And if we go down that far, we can find something. And sort of my partial mission in everything I do is to say if we actually track it back to the academic stuff, we can actually do everything better. We can literally use academia to make experiences feel more cool and uh, meaningful to people. And that this general idea is have a scientific mind, artistic heart. And my sort of given the people that are watching this, probably less on the science side, you're probably more in the artsy and business side. I just want to prove to you, uh, that that that scientific perspective or actual research can be so, so, uh, useful and thinking about it further than just a tweet that you see, because I see a lot of people saying, oh, everything I'm doing is scientific backed. And I'm like, okay, tell me more. And I'm like, oh, you read a tweet that said storytelling was good and science shows that that's, that's, that's that we, we should be better. There's better the science than a tweet that just says story is influential. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think to your point, the goal of, uh, us getting really deep and into that core is so that those of you listening, you can actually take the principles that we're talking about and the insights, and go apply them to what you're working on, because we can't always be there to connect the dots for you. And while Troy and I would love to come in and help you and connect those dots side by side with you, the reality is you got to be able to problem solve on your own. You got to be able to do what's working and minimize risk and optimize your business for what's got the best chance of actually making people happy and creating emotional connections with them. So if you understand those first principles, you could do that better at a higher percentage of time. That's our goal.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right, with that being said, let's jump in. Troy, what are you paying attention to? What's interesting to you right now?

Speaker A: Who?

Speaker B: This is going to be a little bit more casual episode, everybody, than we normally do together.

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker B: But what are you thinking about?

Speaker A: So, as you can see by my brightly colored lights, my enthusiastic, earnest personality and Fall Out Boy up on the wall there, I'm a millennial and I've been paying attention to the fact that Fall Out Boy, which is a, uh, band from my time, but is now popular once again, has done a collaboration with the NBA player Jimmy Butler, where Jimmy Butler showed up with that emo look to media day at the, at the, at the. For the NBA. And he's just generally kind of a fun personality and is a general fan of Fall Out Boy. And they made a music video to Fall Out Boy's newest single. So much for Stardust, where Jimmy Butler's in some ridiculous, um, cowboy outfit with one of the people from Fall Out Boy. And it's just, I think this thing that we can dive into to be like, oh, this is what marketing and how you make authentic noise in modern time.

Speaker B: Okay, why, why do you think that worked? Because I had. And did you think it worked or was it like, weird and, and clunky?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, so I think that some people might not like it, of course, but it's not for everyone. But I think that part of what actually makes it good is they're okay with it being clunky. And I think one of the most important things in modern communication is that humor is just so important. Right. So from a fundamental perspective, if I'm going to be consuming material online, humor makes me happy now. I want to approach this thing. It's going to engage it. Humor makes the people feel familiar and friendly. I'm going to like them more and self deprecating. Humor, which is a lot of kind of what Paula Boy and Jimmy Butler in some ways is doing in this is also sort of lowering kind of the standard. It's kind of this like we're not trying to be so normally cool. We're sort of offbeat cool. And it's just so approachable for many people. And this combination that they've really, especially Fall Out Boy and I think Jimmy Butler have got is that you can both either deeply connect to them if you actually are an emo person. Right. And you like the music, like obviously Jimmy Butler does and I do. But you can also laugh at them or laugh along with them. And so it allows like you to hit both the, the really strong heartstring and just the humor of Funny Bone. And I think it's just amazing put together of stuff that's a, you know, a quick shot. This isn't the biggest thing in the world, but it's. It's something that bottles a lot of what's going on.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think to. It is good for the NBA when stuff like this happens because again, your emo M crowd is typically not who I would classify as your NBA crowd. But the NBA has just done such a good job of empowering personalities, individual personalities to shine and encouraging that that grows. It grows the overall brand into a new marketplace. Right. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker A: And that just ideas that I'm going to be seeing probably 50 posts of these over the next two weeks. Right. Of different people reacting to it in my scene and somebody else might see one or none. And so it's this way to also realize how niche things can be and how if the thing is great, the fans will lift it up, they'll start posting about it, they'll make their own artwork, which I've seen and that will be itself. Because your fans are your marketers, right?

Speaker B: Uh, 100%. I can't wait to do episodes where we dive in deep on like fan co creation and how that works, why it works, what people can do for it. All right, let's shift to another idea.

Speaker A: Oh wait, wait, no, I gotta, I gotta.

Speaker B: You got one more point on this.

Speaker A: I just want to sort of like again, as the academic being like, why does this work? Sometimes I say it's like a super signal because it's a lot of things, right. It's humor, it's a heartstring, it's nostalgia. It's using people who have been off beat and establish themselves. Jimmy Butler doing emo hair for the NBA media day. Fall Out Boy Becoming this almost jock jam band. And they play multiple of their songs at NBA games now. So it's all of those things coming together. And when any time we look at something in modern times and we're like, why did this one work? But this one didn't work. Well, the one that worked was, like, working because it was channeling five or six different powers. And the one that didn't work was not doing them well or not channeling them. And it's just such a. And again, like, my sort of thing is I want to go deep with ideas, but also in case examples, I want to point out that the reason the thing worked was that it went deep in multiple ideas. And it's not just somebody was like, oh, we'll use nostalgia. No, that's not enough. There's so many things that are going on in this one.

Speaker B: Huge, huge. All right, that one worked. We gotta talk about one that didn't work, which has been all over my timeline for the last 24 hours.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And that is this Willy Wonka. Willy's, uh, Chocolate Factory. Willy's Chocolate Experience that happened in Glasgow, Scotland. So have you seen this or not?

Speaker A: Because I'm screen sharing. I knew we were recording, so I was like, save it for the pod. And I was like, let David explain it to me on the pod. So I'm only vaguely aware of it. Cause I chose to authentically have me be the vessel for the audience. Please explain to me and the audience what happens.

Speaker B: All right, I'm going to do a screen share. So for those of you just listening to this not watching on YouTube, go check out the YouTube channel and the YouTube videos so you can see some of this. We'll probably do some clips on this, but go check out the YouTube channel. Highly recommend, because this stuff is too crazy. All right, let's see if I can share my screen here. Here we go. Okay, so this is a website for Willy's chocolate experience. Okay?

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: Indulge in a chocolate fantasy like never before. Capture the enchantment. Go ahead.

Speaker A: What you're gonna say that background looks like I took about one attempt on a prop on dolly.

Speaker B: The whole website is like that.

Speaker A: Oh, God.

Speaker B: So actual human content, like written, but clearly. Clearly written by ChatGPT. I mean, look at. Look at this stuff. It is, like, not cohesive at all. It's clearly dolly coming through.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Uh, you look at the bottom of these. I mean, it's not even spelled right in churning entertainment. Cat gotting. Live performances. That's all spelled around. I mean, it is wild that they publish this. To me, what's crazier is that.

Speaker A: Wait, is this. Is this site still live?

Speaker B: The site is still live. They didn't take it down.

Speaker A: I don't know. I feel like they're doing the thing where they're like, oh, well, all presses go press.

Speaker B: They got the cops called on them. It was so bad. Literally, the people that bought tickets called the cops on the event organizers because it was so bad. Okay, so this is the Chat GPT Mid Journey Dolly. Totally created and not edited at all. One human bit at all. And they sold tickets to this thing. I think it was like 35 bucks ahead. Here are the results. All right, so this is. This is from a Twitter feed. But I mean, the. The Oompa Loompa looks like they're cooking in a meth lab. I mean, it is just like, look at these pictures, how bad this activation is. Well, it's like people. People paid for this.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: I mean, you can look at this one. I don't know why it's got the. The audio here.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I mean, it is like they. So Chat GPT, they had actors there playing Willy Wonka. So Chat GPT wrote this script, and part of the script was that the actors needed to do real magic tricks. And so they all just showed up like, what the hell is this? Guests got a single jelly bean and. And a quarter cup of lemonade. I mean, it is unbelievably bad. So I'll pause there. Initial reactions.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's horrible. And so that. Where they. The actors were using also scripts from ChatGPT, is that also said.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the actors, the actors showed up day of. Right. And were given a script. And the script, if you pull up the script that has leaked online, it's like very clearly written by ChatGPT. Not a single human edit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: At all. Whatever. Even including things like. And then like this person opens their hand and bubbles come out of their hands and it's like, okay, what are we talking about here?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, this is. This is like an obvious thing of. People see the power of ChatGPT. And then they're like, oh, we can do this. And don't realize you, for the most part, still need a human editor on most situations.

Speaker B: Ah, 100%. And like, I think that is the big thing is, you know, so many people get worried about AI and some of these Gen AI tools, and they're going to steal my job. And the reality is at some point that may happen for some industries. But for the most part it is going to just speed up our ideation process and you still need talented experienced humans to go execute on the thing and bring that idea to life.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so here's. Let me explain something I do with the students in class with ChatGPT and then also why I think it explains why other people think ChatGPT can do something because they totally don't know this thing exists. I teach students the theory of something. So we're going to tell this type of story, the story spine or something. And this is why this works. Not just here's the template. This is why when you once upon a time and then you move from the starting action and then the becauses create information and a mentor character does this and we understand the theory of that, then ChatGPT will print out stuff and the students will be able to be like, oh, this is why this part is working, this is why. And they can, because they understand how to do it themselves. They can use ChatGPT because they can edit ChatGPT because they understand the theory of what they're doing, whether we're writing jokes and we're talking about benign violation theory and a bunch of other theories. And I think that so many people in business, they literally went to business schools that didn't have a theoretical approach. They just like learned tactics and stuff and they didn't learn deeply, they just learned stories important, but they didn't learn deeply what a story is. And it just trips them. They don't understand why the human skill is so necessary 100% and the human

Speaker B: discernment there of being able to say what's working, what's not and understanding why that happens. This, it, this particular one is really interesting for me just because, you know, I spent that year working for my brother's creative agency where we were building a lot of experiential builds. And as Mid Journey and things came out, one of my friends, Adrian Curiel, uh, he's going to be on the podcast here soon. He was really like one of the first people, especially in the sports space to generate these experiential brand activations purely using midjourney. And they're fantastic. And at ah, NBA All Star Game, he built one for NBA 2K league that was like this super cool immersive Japanese alley and it had boba tea and all these like this grocery store and games and players were coming by to play NBA. And he created all of the initial visuals in Mid Journey and they figured out a way to Bring it to life. Because they knew the idea part was just the beginning, and the actual execution is where the real challenge came in. And again, my main takeaway there is AI tools are great for helping us create new ideas, think outside of the box, think differently. And you need talented individuals who are experienced humans to be able to actually go execute and bring that idea to life.

Speaker A: Yeah. And again, I think that if you need to just use ChatGPT for a functional task, like respond to this email, it can usually do that pretty well. Right. Almost with no edits. But if you need to do something that has a element of complexity to it, ChatGPT usually, or any other thing, doesn't have enough information about the situation to make that happen. And also in lots of these places, certain things just are they just like, you have to feel them out to find them and iterate on them. So combination of have a scientific mind, which means you understand the theory behind what would make a good version, and have an artistic heart, which allows yourself to just feel out what really does make that. And then the other thing to think about this with what AI is doing is AI is. It's predicting, based upon past things, what I should do. Right. But what you often are trying to do is say, I want to do something that feels different than what's been done before. And while of course AI can in many ways do that, its bias usually is to be like everything else, when sometimes what you're trying to do is make it unlike anything else.

Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah, we could go forever on it, and I know we will in future episodes. Um, all right, I want to hit on something else real quick. This was a news piece that I saw earlier this week, but I think it ties into the democratization of tools that brands have available at their fingertips, like a Gen AI type of thing that allow them to connect deeper with their fans in ways that they never would have thought of five, 10 years ago. And that is Barcelona. This rumor that Barcelona is going to break their contract with Nike, who has been their jersey producer for. Or their kit producer for I don't know how many years, 20 years, something like that. And they're not going to go break it for another brand, even though Puma's rumored to offer a, ah, ridiculous contract. The thought process is that they're going to break their contract with Nike to make and distribute their own jerseys, their own kits.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: And I would love to hear your initial reactions on that this, because I think it has a lot of implications for what the future of that industry Is. But you're a former Nike guy, you've done some work with them. So tell, tell me a little bit about your thoughts on this.

Speaker A: Yeah, so two things. The reason a, uh, Nike product sells is one, it's high quality and has good technology, which we know is far more true about their shoes than any of their other products. Right. That's where most of the innovation goes to and is possible. Right. Exceptions exist and the, uh, marketplace has caught up. Right. Like, we are seeing people who, you know, are starting their own brands and startups. Just like, you know, we figured we thought athletic gear wasn't colorful enough, so we started our own startup called Blue Running. Right. Whatever it is. And literally. And that'll happen. But the second thing is, and the reason that I think Barcelona can do this and other brands might not be able to is the reason that a Nike shirt or a Nike shoe is awesome is because it has the Nike brand on it. And the Nike brand has a lot of heritage. So you put the Nike brand on something and it automatically looks cooler. You like it more and you'll pay more because you're paying for the heritage of it. You're paying to be part of the just do it greatness journey. Barcelona has that brand. Right. Barcelona has a heritage. And so when they go to this situation today, they can bring the two things that Nike has always been using. They can bring equivalent or close to enough technology because at least in the, you know, non, non footwear space that it's caught up. And they can bring heritage, maybe not as much as Nike, but maybe even more in this case because it's focused exactly on that product. So might this not work out? Yes. But if they do it right and they understand kind of what they're bringing, assure the audience it's as high quality and really, really lean into the heritage, that would help. I think it would be really cool if, like, sort of when they brought stuff out, whatever they bring out, like, needs to like, pull from, like, stories of the past, like this jersey celebrates the a treble season or something like that. Do something cooler than that. But that's, that's. I'm not a Barcelona fan, so I don't know anything about your heritage.

Speaker B: I don't know if they have the treble in La Liga, but the point still stands. I think what I love about it is that for one, it's a, let's call it a traditional brand. When you think about Barcelona, that is really acting entrepreneurial. And I think a lot of times the bigger the brand that you get the harder it is to be entrepreneurial and make decisions like this that go against the grain. And because most of the people in those structures are risk averse. Because for the most part, the larger the brand, the more traditional you are. Your job is to manage the ship and stay at the top.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But in order to do that, oftentimes you do have to innovate and take risks. But there are a lot of great executives that have bit the dust or got laid off or fired because they took a risk at a more traditional brand that somebody didn't like that risk.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I love that they're even entertaining this thought.

Speaker A: First of all, yeah, I mean, uh, two things I do know about Barcelona is yes, they did win a treble, but it was with the Champions League and uh, Copa the year they won like all six trophies they were competing for. And then the second thing is they've also had some trouble themselves. So they may actually be more motivated than other teams to actually find a new revenue stream. Right. And I think there's probably a lot of teams being like, I'm so glad Barcelona is falling apart. So let's try this thing so we can see if we can down it 100%.

Speaker B: And so I looked it up a little bit. So they've got every other piece of merchandise that they have. They have like a Barcelona licensing group that is in house that creates the kits or creates different apparel, uh, items and distributes them. So I think, I think somebody's just got to run the PNL that said, uh, and the pro forma that says, you know, how, how many less sales are we going to do because we don't have Nike's distribution and will the profit margin that now we're keeping 100% of this profit, you know, are we going to make up for that by, by removing Nike? And I think that's going to be the challenge. I personally, I think you're losing by losing that Nike distribution. I think it's going to be tough to make up for it. I can't imagine Nike's taking that big of a chunk out of it that would make you want to go in house and lose that Nike distribution. But I might be wrong.

Speaker A: Yeah. The other thing to think about here and like from a theoretical perspective is what's changing about the marketplace. Right. So today consumers, I think across all generations, but maybe even more in Gen Z, are less interested in the huge mega brands for all the reasons. One reason being there's just this negative view against the huge capitalistic forces and the ones who are winning that game. And also it's just, you know, it's a trend. We're changing, we're oscillating. We have micro influencers. And, you know, I think that that is something to pay attention to. And I also think that with Gen Z, there are. And everybody. I think sometimes we're also less interested in just wearing a big Nike logo or any type of logo on, on. On our shirts. We were talking about this idea that, like, about 10 years ago in Target, the shirt that was just hugely popular was just like the. This shirt that just said Marvel on it or it just said Star wars on it. And I think that people liked wearing these just like obvious, singular, huge brands. But I think people today, it's just, it's a trend and it represents multiple things. But we're potentially moving away from loving Nike in the same way that we've loved Nike in the past.

Speaker B: Yeah. All right, let's. Let's bring us home here. I think we've got about 15 minutes or so, but we can't end this episode without talking about some of the things that you are getting into from a content perspective with Heidi House and everything that you've got. So you just dropped some thoughts on Portals, which you talked about last year on our podcast. And some of the most popular clips that we've had from the show came from you talking about Portals specifically. So talk to us a little bit about some of your other content that you've got going on that you're putting out, like, more structured, formal thought pieces. And let's specifically, let's dive into Portals in case people didn't hear that last episode. They're tuning in now. So let's talk about why portals are important and how marketers, uh, and operators can use them in their business.

Speaker A: Yeah. So what I like putting out are these ideas that I sometimes call massive, meticulous, messy ideas. Uh, so the idea of a portal is how to better begin everything. And it's meticulous because I'm going to say, here's the theory on why it is A portal is a transitional space, like the entryway into Disney, ride the tunnel into a sports arena, the right mindset, warm up at the workplace, the intro to your favorite television show. And it's creating positive anticipation for what's to come. It's creating and shifting people into the mindset for that. And it's completing the narrative metaphor of going somewhere different. But we're also okay with kind of this idea of the idea being sort of Messy or metaphorical. So there's this huge scientific basis around the science of anticipation. There's huge science around mindset shift. The brain needs time to transition, uh, into different spaces. It needs cues to know what to pay attention to. It needs to activate the right associative networks and the time and the portal does. And we know from also science and academic theory that people think in narrative metaphors and categorizations. That which is special is far away. That which is different takes some time to get to. So you need these portal transitions, whether that is just an opening page on a website to be like, look, you're in this place new, let me introduce it to you. Whether it's, let's turn off the lights at a sports game and have this warm up ritual. So we all get into game time mindset such that when the lights come back off, we're in it, but we're also sort of understanding and being flexible. And that's sort of kind of my view on this is that you can kind of take this idea and mold it across all these different spaces, uh, to wherever uh, you want to do, whether you are running a meeting or running a theme park.

Speaker B: Awesome. So I mean, it's so applicable in so many different ways. I mean, obviously with a lot of our clients where we think about sports, you know, we're thinking about it from what is the vomitorium? When they're moving from that concourse into the bowl, it's the players moving from the locker room to that tunnel space. Right. NBA has done an incredible job with it. You think about Notre Dame and play like a champion today. Right. It's this portal that goes into that. But you can even think about it like fan fest outside of the stadium. How are we getting people ready to go into that? For me, a lot of times I think the challenge with a big stadium experience is your portal is this really unintentional line that you're sitting in for 30 minutes that's filled with hassles and that is setting a poor mindset shift and a poor narrative for what to expect. It's often the worst part of going to a game or an event and that's what you're starting with. And at, uh, least from a portal perspective, it's the entryway into the venue. And I think a lot of people under manage that and it's trouble.

Speaker A: Yeah. So think about this. Uh, all you're doing all day long in any event, and what you're doing is you're constantly going between different types of experiences that means that there are different beginnings constantly. And those beginnings are really, really important because they're A, a time for anticipation or negative anticipation. B, people need to be in the right mindset to come into it. Are they able to enjoy? Right. You see some basketball stadiums, the fans need times to warm up, some don't. And in part, they need time to warm up during the game because they didn't warm up before. And then third are using that narrative metaphor to make something cool and then and distinctive. And then the second thing is, first thing is beginnings are always happening all the time, even like in between paragraphs. That's a beginning. And you can use this as a model for everything. But then the second thing is all good beginnings are really good transitions. And that kind of concept is, what you're really doing is you're transitioning people from forward. Like, and so sometimes starting strong is really useful. Uh, sometimes being kind of low key or almost having like a false start is kind of useful. It's. You're just constant. The idea of the portal is here's a model for something that is happening all the time, that's important and we haven't thought about it. And you can use it constantly across making a TikTok, going into a stadium, starting a meeting, starting a class, transitioning into the next part of a podcast.

Speaker B: So for those of you listening, Troy and I have talked about this concept of, you know, kind of goal insight application. And so I think if you're, if you're listening to this, I mean, we kind of glossed over it. We went straight into the concept and the insight, but from a goal perspective, it's. If you are someone trying to create a compelling experience that is going to engage someone, keep their attention and emotionally connect with them, you have to be intentional about these transitions and these beginnings and how they feel during them. And if you're able to be intentional about them and you can think about how do I want someone to feel during this, that allows you. And that should inform the type of portal that you're putting into place.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. Yeah. So goal, you want to have an awesome experience. The insight is that the mine is not an electric roadster. It needs time usually to transitions, the beginning setup. And that time during the beginnings can be its own positive or negative utility. And people come into the event with many different feelings and different mindsets. Um, so that's a mess. So the answer is the action you can take is to create a portal which is going to do that positive anticipation, take everybody's mindsets. And turn them into the same mindset and create the narrative metaphor of going somewhere new, special or magical. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I do want to talk a little bit about some of the examples that you have to help connect some of the dots for people here. You made a LinkedIn post, I think it was today, yesterday, where you had a ton of different examples on there.

Speaker A: Yeah. So let me mention on this, I have this thing I do, I call it books I'm writing or white paper books where, uh, I write a very long article and I act like it's the outline for a book that I haven't written actually yet and may never fully write the book. But the idea is you're going to get a big a cool title. Portals, how to begin Everything. You're going to get a model for it, you're going to get some science and art and you're going to get so many different applications of it. Because I really believe you only really gain wisdom around an idea, seeing all those applications, because that's how the theory comes to matter. All right, so sorry I had to interrupt and be like, here's my pedagogical educational approach.

Speaker B: But again, it's great. I think for people that are listening to this for the first time, the first time hearing you, they're going to be hearing us more often together. I mean this is, it's great for setting the tone of like how we, how you think about things versus the way that they might are probably more familiar with how I think about things on some of this stuff. All right, so I do want to start first example with a restaurant. So I just helped my brother open up, uh, a taco restaurant. If you come to Cincinnati and you hit me up, I will take you to this taco restaurant because it is the best taco. They are the best tacos in Cincinnati. Cincinnati. And I worked on them with a lot of the hospitality pieces of, you know, how do we make people feel special when they come in and whatnot. And so I think Portals for a restaurant might be an interesting spot for us to start when we think about application. Right. So some of the things that we talk about, we talk about it as. They don't have a parking lot. It is a downtown place.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so when you're first walking in, it's like, what are they first seeing? So right from the jump, they, the facade stands out completely and is this giant green facade that totally is unlike. That's right next to like the corporate Kroger building. So it totally jumps out from its environment and as you walk in and you cross it over.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So everything is like authentic Mexican. Go ahead.

Speaker A: Oh. So, right. So that's. That's the view of the portal. It's sort of the gate. You can see it from the outside. It's part of the experience. But one of the most important things about a portal is, is it can't just be a metaphorical image. It needs to be this process, this time for transition. If you actually look at a lot of the things that have gone wrong in the Disney parks where, like, things don't feel as good, it's because they haven't created that time for transition. Okay, so now we're in the restaurant. What's going on?

Speaker B: No, no. So this is good. So I think one of the challenges. And maybe we help unpack this. So we weren't super intentional about some of the portals.

Speaker A: Uh, right.

Speaker B: We tried to look at it as best as we could because of the constraints that we had. But doing things like painting green, like making sure there's a signature greeting that everybody has when they walk in. And we wanted to make it genuine so people don't have to say like, that would not feel genuine, especially if you're not Spanish. But there is a genuine greeting that you get as soon as you walk in, even if there's a line. Right. Not quite like Firehouse subs, where everybody's like, oh, welcome to firehouse.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: A little bit more authentic than that. And then you get greeted. And you should be getting greeted at the cash register of, hey, is this your first time? If the person doesn't recognize you, and if they do, you're hitting. Or if it is your first time. Um, they're telling you the brand story, how it came to be. Hey, we. We started as a taco truck. Our goal was to bring authentic Mexican cuisine to Cincinnati. We're gluten free menu. And here are the great things about the restaurant. These would be what I recommend. What are you in the mood for?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: To kind of set the stage. But I would say it's not, to your point, around, like a time of transition. There's not like a great. From an infrastructure perspective, there's not a great portal. So I'd be open to hearing from you. Like, how might we think about, like a smaller footprint restaurant that is kind of. It's a little bit longer than quick casual or fast casual. Probably takes like 10 minutes to get your tacos.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: But I'd be interested to see, like, how you think about portals with a restaurant like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, so there are so many things. So there's so many ways to create portals. One is a conversation, right? So. So as you said, like, if you greet somebody, part of the Walmart portal is the greeter, right? It is setting the tone of this is this type of experience, right? We are friendly, we are kind. And so that's. That's definitely so if you have no space, a social interaction can be part of the portal. The second thing is to think of that you have lots of options for. Like, if you think about it, really, the experience doesn't start until you're really sitting down or even getting your dish. And always there's portals between moments, right? Everything is really just a portal into the next thing. But. So where are. Where's your stopping points? So are you stopping at a hostess? Are you stopping at a fast, casual service place? And where do you go to sit? Because one cool thing you can do at some places is you can have them come up to the fast, casual place and you can order, and they actually order in, like, a waiting room. And then they go to, like, the actual place where the. The food and stuff would be. And there's like a transitional moment in that. So Disney does this sometimes as they have, like, waiting rooms, and that itself is it. The other thing to think about is to create just like an actual feeling of, like, going somewhere. So say they enter on the street, like lots of fashion casual restaurants. The door is really far from the cashier. If you give them, like, a line to go to, that's decorated, so it feels like a journey. And. And you might even hang lights over just that space. So that literally feels like, like, um. It's like a. It's the idea of a tunnel or a space hyperspace lane or something like that. But you then would decorate it in. In the thing, then the metaphor can be there.

Speaker B: Interesting. This is. This is why I. I think we're probably going to do some of this on here, where I'm going to come to you and I'm going to be like, here's what we're doing with this brand. Here's why I think it's right. Uh, what else. What are we. What are we missing here, Troy? Yeah, so I. I heard you talking about that, and I immediately. What came to mind for me was haunted house at Magic Kingdom, especially as you were talking about the waiting room, that makes you feel like you're waiting.

Speaker A: Haunted house.

Speaker B: What are some examples?

Speaker A: Haunted house.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say, what are your favorite portals?

Speaker A: Haunted house is probably one of the Best ones in the world. So I'm just gonna take you through Haunted House because it's the perfect lesson of portals on portals on portals. So the first thing is you get into the haunted house, and it's a big haunted house, and you actually are outside and you're in the graveyard. And what it's doing is it's teaching you to sort of look around and be curious. Because on that ride, eventually you're going to get on a car and you're just going to look around. It's not like Buzz Lightyear, where Buzz Lightyear in the portal, he's saying, get ready for battle. And that's, um, a. There's not really, like, a lot of detail. And there's some detail, but. But in the haunted house, there's so many details. So it's actually getting you in the actual. Like, this is how you visually pay attention. Then in their most famous portal, but not my favorite is the stretching room or the elevator, where the room stretches and it literally is telling you look up and pay attention. Once again, it's telling you pay attention and look. And in that, it has this, like, thing where the ghost host says something, and now most people, or a significant percentage of people say it along with them. So. So it's like this rehearsal portal. But then it's my favorite portal. This is my favorite portal. So after the stretching room, it lets you out, and before you get to the car, you have this long hallway to walk down to, but nobody's really in front of you because of how they stagger it. So it becomes this really cool hallway where you actually get to run a bit or jog a bit. And it's this exciting moment where you're building, building, building excitement. And then you can also pay attention or actually, like, physically walk up to things. And so it's just like, get excited about these things. And I love when Disney creates these, like, kind of running moments in their line. They would never call them running moments, but let's be honest, that's what we're doing. And yeah. And then when you get on it, it's awesome. And then that ride also has an amazing portal out, which we'll. Which complicates things. But when. If a portal. If it. If the idea of a portal is that we're going to build anticipation and complete the narrative metaphor of going somewhere new, because that which is special is far away, you also should have a portal out to create the idea that that which was far away, you just went to. It's going to take Some time to return to. And it also wants this idea of reflecting back. Like all movies, they don't end at the climax. They return to the shire, they return home, and they reflect back.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so on. How does Haunted Mansion end where you're like, literally, how does it end with

Speaker B: the, uh, Haunted Mansion? It ends with, like, these kind of mirrors that you look at. And There are these 3D ghosts, or these holographic ghosts appear on the mirror, interacting with you in the mirror. And it's like just such a cool. It's got to be one of the best endings.

Speaker A: And like, literally the idea is they. The ghosts are trying to come out with you. And it's literally this idea of leaving. You are leaving. You're going back into the real world. This was the magical place. But maybe they're going to hitchhike with you. Watch out for them.

Speaker B: You.

Speaker A: It's just a, uh. It's just a wonderful idea of creating the whole metaphor. One of the things I think that American sports don't do really well is portal outs. Right. The game just ends.

Speaker B: And totally.

Speaker A: And there's not a lot of savoring. There's not fans singing the song. That is the thing. They do it a little bit more in college sports. But that portal out is so missing. And there's so many different ways you could do it in the stadium, you could do it outside. You could always play the same songs as people went out. Uh, there's so many opportunities to create this, like, moment of reflection.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting. I mean, I used to go around. We're talking about sports here. One of the things that one of our product offerings used to be that we would go around and we would secret shop at organizations. And this is when I was with Disney, when I have my own company engagement. And it would always bother me when we had somebody that was with me that would be like, all right, we've kind of seen everything. It's the end of third quarter. I'm like, maybe. And we haven't seen the egress. We haven't seen the portal out. Haven't seen. Have we dismissed all of our workers already because we're trying to save money? Or are people actually there giving high fives saying, we'll get them next time if you lost? Or they're saying, like, that's a great win for us. Like, we'll see you next week. Like, what is that ending interaction? Is music playing? Like, what is the vibe as we're leaving? My. My least favorite is when people are just like jamming sponsored ads and people's hands as they're leaving.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now what a horrible. I think some. It's like, it's like we, we just lost a tight game. Like I'm gonna throw this sponsor ad in the trash. And I think it actually does more negative harm to the sponsor than it does good that they just sold him an asset. And uh, without thinking about what are the actual emotions going to be of the people when they receive this in the.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that just what is missing in also more mundane situations like meetings because I work a lot with like company culture and stuff like that as well. And classrooms and podcasts are a portal out, which is. Okay, this just happened. Let's reflect on this and appreciate what we have created. And also a portal out can be a really good way to make sure you double encode. Uh, you re encode. You solidify that. So many people come out of meetings and then they're like. Or podcasts and like, wait, what did I learn? What, what did we decide? Was that good? Wait, how did it start? And that portal out can be uh, useful. So we better do a little summary before we end this. So we so mess up.

Speaker B: So let's wrap this up here, I guess. And I do want to portal out with one, one transition. I want to hear what you're working on next week and if there's anything exciting that you got going that you can share with the people. But yeah, uh, I will say, like let's do a quick recap of the whole episode. We did a little bit of like in the news and some intro to the episode and what this show is going to be when Troy and I are hanging out together. We talked about some in the news pieces between Jimmy Butler, Barcelona kids, the Willy Wonka factory gone awry. We covered some different things there. The main gist of this episode is, uh. The main gist of this episode is really been about portals and kind of giving you a taste of how Troy's brain works. M. And how we're going to unpack behavioral science principles and some. Some really academic thoughts and apply that into your day to day business.

Speaker A: Yeah. And yeah, and I think that you know, and I'll portal out into what I'm doing next as well is like so on this episode, what I'm trying to say is I have this way of looking at things. Scientific mind, artistic heart. We're getting really deep and seeing all these different layers of something. And that's the thing that I like to add. I'm not the person that really knows everything about tech trends and stuff like that. And, uh, there's so many things around decision making, you know, that I don't really know at the, like, financial level. Whenever I was doing my taxes at school, I would just walk up to the tax professor and be like, isn't this cool? Here's a recommendation for new music. Tell me, uh, tell me this right? So I really like this idea that I am providing this thing that is both complementary to what you've heard, but also helping you see things in a new way. So one of the things that I'm bringing out sort of my next book I'm writing this upcoming week, it might be out by the time this gets out, but it's called Every Shade of Blue. And it sort of is another way to sort of say, huh, this is how I look at the world. So here's what this is about. Every shade of blue is seeing all the shades of an idea like Vincent van Gogh could paint with every shade of blue. So a few years ago, I got to see my favorite painting in person for the first time. Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone. I always like Starry Night over the Rhone, over the famous Starry Night, because it made me feel cool, but I genuinely like it. It's, you know, got these two lovers in the front, and I was walking up to it, and it's even more beautiful in person. And the audio tour says it's like he used every shade of blue. And this idea of understanding Vincent van Gogh's brilliance, and I think most people's brilliance is that if they're good at doing something, it's because they can see whatever they're good at in every shade, right? So whether they have a story, they're like, okay, I'm really good at telling a hero's journey story, but here's how I can tell it when it has a mentor that's there a lot. And here's where I can tell it when there's not a mentor. And I've seen those shades. Oh, I am good at beginning things because I understand the portal, and I understand that shade in all these different examples of it. I understand it from a scientific perspective, understand from an artistic perspective. I understand it from a practical business sensibility. And I understand different situations. I understand that sometimes you want to rush through the portal, because actually, the point is to make people feel discombobulated. So a slow portal wouldn't be that. And this idea of making sure you see every single shade is uh, really useful. And so much of what I do in my work often is I'm sharing an idea and helping people see every shade. But also in sometimes my work, I'm not sharing the idea. I'm coming in myself or with a company where I'm the chief scientists at on your feet. And we're helping people, uh, see every shade of an idea. And one example of it is working with Nike. They have these certain values, like, if you have a body, you're an athlete, win as a team. And we will go into the company and we'll say, here's this idea. And for the next hour we're just going to see what this idea means in many different ways. And one of my favorite examples of this is a Nike employee said, oh, I keep saying to the people here in Oregon who run all the, who don't run all the time. I'm like, oh, it's okay. You're not an athlete. You can still be at Nike. And they're like, oh, this is a story of contradiction because the actual idea is if you have a body, you're an athlete. So I'm actually seeing this wrong. And, uh, so that we'll see then. And then we'll also see, oh, win as a team. Somebody would be like, oh, when I was over at Google, this is how we won as a team. Oh, we can take that. But we got to do it different because Nike shade is a little different. And it's just this beautiful, simple model. Other people have different words for it. Story plotter is one that my friends at on your feet use. I like every shade of blue because I got a. Because I love Vincent Vancouver and I love color and I love the color blue. So that's my sort of, uh, model for it.

Speaker B: So Troy is starting to publish more and more on LinkedIn. Where else are you publishing content right now?

Speaker A: So at, ah, my website, heidi house.com is where you can find everything and most everything that's going to eventually be on LinkedIn or my podcast. Original and powerful ideas is going to really. It's already on High Duke House, but it will then be sort of adapted, sometimes made more theatrical for the podcast, sometimes made a little more practical or abbreviated for LinkedIn. And yeah, I'm rolling things out kind of slowly and I'm feeling out the different spaces you, uh, and I. Next time we're coming on, we're going to talk about how LinkedIn has changed. I didn't post it on there regularly for like four or five years. Oh my gosh. It's Facebook now. What? This is so different.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's so different. And we definitely need a standalone episode for that. I'm on there all the time, as people probably know. I think what you're working on is super interesting and that's why I love having you on here. I mean, you really are like this, this scientist, but again, with the artistic heart.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think that that is really what, what pulls it together.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I just, to add on that, to just be like kind of clear on, um, my perspective is like, I like ramble on this, I talk on this. If you're watching the video, you're seeing my face move around. Uh, I really, really think that what is missing are two things. People don't go deep enough in theory and people don't let their heart go wild enough. And, and so I want to sort of model those behaviors of doing both of those things. And of course, course, at some times, and I do it too, you got to bring it back and be like, we can't learn anymore. We need a practical business decision. That's too much intuition. So what I often say my slogan is, what I, uh, usually say my slogan is scientific mind, artistic heart. But there's also this hidden thing which is business sensibility, which I think that I need to return to sometimes myself and need to remind me. But I think everybody else is sometimes caught in this like business sensibility and not letting themselves go deep and precise and logical enough and abstract and emotional and intuitive as art can. Artistic practices can get you. Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean like when we're brainstorming. Right. I mean it's like the basic one on one thoughts of like divergent thinking then convergent thinking. Right. You want to have as many ideas as possible and then narrow it down. But I think too many people lead with business feasibility first and it really limits them from being able to create these really cool, engaging ideas that are ultimately going to move the needle and push you past your competition.

Speaker A: And I'll say one last thing. I know we're running long, but I gotta say it because I think that there are people who think they're being really great at this creative stuff because they come up with a lot of ideas. But that's not really the whole point. Right. It's norm breaking ideas. It's ideas that are really out there or it's ideas that really use science and really deep. You can hit chatgpt now and it will come up with a million different ideas for you. The ability to generate ideas is not the skill, the ability is to generate good, different, scientifically informed, artistically inspired ideas that wrap many different things together. As uh, Childish Gambino says about his work. It's like this compression of culture. Whenever you're trying to do something that's compressing all these deep things and bottling it into one and that's what you're doing. It's not just coming up with like one little tiny thing. Maybe it is when you're just coming up with a, uh, post on Threads for the Day. But when you're trying to do something really big, you might think you're being creative because you got a lot of post it notes of different colors on the wall. But have you let the artistic heart run wild? Have you read deep into the scientific theory that's most related to what you're doing? And if you're doing something related to people, there is millions of pages for you to read and you should at least read maybe 50 of them. So yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, well, on that note, I mean you are going to be, I think you're one of the few people as we do these, where we close out and we say, what are you working on this week? I feel like I usually am working on really cool things, but the stuff that you're working on is, is super, super engaging and, and beneficial. Uh, I'll, uh, flip it and close it out on my stuff. So I'm working on one, recording some more of these episodes. So when you see this episode, you listen to this episode, they'll probably be four or five more for you to go check out and binge if you like them. And if you haven't checked out the website makingthefan.com that will be where we're hosting everything in addition to YouTube, making the fan will be on there. But my big thing this week, uh, honestly, I'm working on the more business side of stuff. We're working on a feasibility study for a new entertainment complex down in the south at a school or not school, I guess a city that I can't really tell you the name of right now, but we're doing this feasibility study and I'm leading all the work around. What do people in that community actually want? And we're not asking them the question, uh, like the classic Henry Ford question of, uh, you know, nobody would have ever came up with the idea of a car, but they might have said a faster horse or a way to get there faster. So we're using a lot of behavioral science principles and different framing of questions to capture Psychographics, as opposed to. Opposed to blatantly saying, like, what type of suite would you want to see? Would you want a premium suite or a field level suite? We're getting to some of those deeper things. So this week we're crafting a lot of those questions and mocking them up and going through it and getting ready to launch here in mid March on that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So in the next chapter, I write for every shade of blue, I could just include you as a case study there. Right. So that's every shade of how to ask somebody what they want. Right. Which is just so, so important. So many times I come across surveys and they ask people one question about what they want, and I'm like, this item is dou barreled. This item is after this other item. So people are just going to infer based upon that also. You have no analysis plan for this. Yeah. And, uh, 100%. Yeah.

Speaker B: It, it, it gets interesting. So anyway, if you're listening to this and you made it through the full episode, congratulations. I'm, I'm, um, uh, congratulations, like Troy just said. But seriously, we can't tell you how much we appreciate you tuning in. Go check out hi, Duke House and some of the stuff Troy is putting out. It's awesome. Tune in and start binging some more of these episodes. We'll have a few more out for you. And yeah, we're excited to go on this new journey with y' all and let us know what else we should talk about. Yeah, we had portals this time. What else should we talk about?

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think the other cool thing about, you know, David and I is if you ask us a question on social media or LinkedIn or something like that, um, we're usually able to respond to it because we can give a lot of usefulness in about three sentences. Right. Because we always have sort of an insight that we're really easy to put into action. It's not going to solve everything for you, but it's going to let you go down some deep thing or help you see a different shade of something. So definitely do that. And as a, as like a selfish perspective, I love more people asking me questions because then it gives me a huge bank of questions. And then when I'm sitting down to make a little social media post, I can be like, oh, this is the perfect question that everybody else will want. I can start it with a real person. You start with a real person. Everybody trusts it more and they see it as more real.

Speaker B: Let's close it out. Thanks so much for listening. Uh, we appreciate it, and we'll see you next time.

Speaker A: Thank you.