Adam Torres and Kurt Nelson discuss employee performance.
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Show Notes:
Behavioral science can have a direct impact on employee performance. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Kurt Nelson, PhD, Founder & Chief Behavioral Officer at Lantern Group and Co-host of Behavioral Grooves. Explore employee performance, behavioral science and the upcoming book Kurt will be launching with Mission Matters.
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About Kurt Nelson
As president and founder of The Lantern Group – A behavioral design & communications agency, Kurt is an innovative leader that helps companies apply behavioral science insights to improve their employee’s engagement and motivation. Kurt helps businesses design and leverage their employee communication, the design of their variable reward programs, and the structure of their HR initiatives to drive employee behavior that delivers bottom-line results.
Kurt is also the co-founder and co-host of the award-winning podcast, Behavioral Grooves. Listened in over 120 countries around the world, Behavioral Grooves explores the positive application of behavioral science to work and life by interviewing some of the top behavioral scientists, leading authors, and innovative practitioners in this field.
Kurt is a member of APA, SIOP, TCCN, and World at Work. Kurt has served on the board and as past president of the City of Lakes Rotary Club and acted as chair of the International Services Committee and Club Service.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, today is a very special episode. We have Kurt Nelson on the line and he is.
Founder and chief behavior officer over at Lantern Group and also co-host of behavioral groups. Kurt, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Great to be here. All right, Kurt. So for my longtime listeners, they know there’s nothing more that I like to do than welcome a brand new author into our Mission Matters author community, and our community overall.
And I’m happy to announce that Kurt will be participating in our next volume of our, of our bestselling Business Leaders book series. So, Kurt, first I just wanna say congratulations and it’s really an honor to work with you on the upcoming book. Thank you. It’s been, it’s been fun and very insightful, so love all of it.
All right, Kurt. So we, we got a lot to cover today and I love having a fellow podcaster on the line. So of course we’re gonna be talking about behavioral grooves. We will be talking about lantern group, of course. And then of course, we’re also going to get into the overall topic, which is, you know, how behavior impacts employee performance.
But before we start that, we’ll, we’ll start this episode. The way that we start them all. With our mission matters minute. So Kurt, we at Mission Matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Kurt, what mission matters to you? Yeah, so the mission that matters to me, Adam, is that.
I wanna bring understanding and insight into human behavior to people. So not only understanding your own behavior, but understanding the behavior of those people that you work with, that you commute with, that you have interactions with. And really trying to peel back the layers so that we understand why we do what the, what we want to do, and how that happens.
Fantastic. Love bringing mission-based individuals and entrepreneurs on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they do it, and really what we can all learn from that, so we grow together. So, great to have Yian and Kurt. What, let’s, let’s go a little bit, you know, back in your career for a bit.
So like, when did this, this connection or this want to help people with behavior? Like when did all that start for you? Yeah, so it’s, it’s interesting. So I went back and I got my MBA after I did like one year after under undergraduate. So I went back and I got my mba and, and as part of that, I was really looking at getting into business, trying to figure out what my thing was.
But one of the, the courses that I took, there was this idea on consumer behavior, and I had always had an interest in psychology. But this class and consumer behavior really got me really interested in this. Trying to understand why changing a product from $3 down to $2 and 99 cents increases the amount that you sell on that.
But if you had You know, a product that was priced at $3 and 1 cent and you reduced it to $3, it makes absolutely no difference in sales. And so it’s still, you’re saving a penny. So it really is, from an economic perspective, the same thing. So obviously there’s something psychological going on there.
And so that really kind of caught my interest. And I went and I left and went to work for a company full-time. But then as I started to get into all of that a little bit more really just started Saying, Hey, this is something that really intrigues me and I wanna explore what is the motivational factor for employees?
How do we, how do we get people excited about the jobs that they’re doing? What do we need to do from a organizational perspective? And so, shortly after you know, starting actually five years after I kind of got a job after my M B A decided to start the Lantern group to really make that happen. Yeah.
And, and, and what’s interesting to me about this is I can think about, you know, some of my, my college courses, some other things that I’ve done, and I got, you know, had this interest, but I never really took it further to, let’s say, make it a business. Mm-hmm. So there’s a difference between, you know, having an interest in something and then pursuing it as a career.
Like, have you always had that entrepreneurial bent or was this kind of like that thing that just prodded you over, let’s just say, I don’t know the, the the entrepreneurial journey edge, we’ll say, yeah, and that, that’s a great question cuz if you would’ve asked me probably as a youngster, if I have an entrepreneurial component, I would’ve said no.
I mean, I, I look back at my entire family And everybody worked for somebody else, right? Mm-hmm. So I didn’t have any mentors that were out there kind of doing their own thing. The only one that I had was my brother-in-law who actually went bankrupt. So the, the, the ideal of going out there and kind of doing something on your own was foreign, was a little bit scary, was all of these factors that come in when you think about that.
And so really what? Kind of jumpstarted it. I, I think was a couple different things. As one of the guys that I worked with we talked about he wanted, he had the entrepreneurial bug and he wanted something and do different things, and he was trying to bring me in and, and that never worked out. But all of a sudden as I started talking with him it kind of got infectious.
And so all of a sudden this guy whose father, grandfather. You know, older siblings all worked for somebody else that what I can go off and maybe do something on my own. And there’s a lot of unlimited potential with that. And so that was really kind of the, I think for me, the impetus that thing that pushed me over the edge and then ended up You know, getting married and, and falling in love with a, with a great woman whose family was all entrepreneurial, you know, that was it.
And so kind of that was the, the final push over the, over that edge as you want to say, so. Mm-hmm. Now I wanna speak on those early days just. Just a little longer cuz considering your background, I’m, it’s just a guess, but when you said, you know, I’m gonna start a business, I’m being an entrepreneur, that’s gonna be pretty foreign maybe for your community and support system.
Like most of the time people, I’ll tell you from my experience, I’m picking myself for a moment. Like when I said I’m gonna go from being a financial advisor, something that’s always been a, you know, Pretty straight laced, corporate America guy and start a business, let alone a media company. My network, my friends, every, everybody said I was crazy.
And I mean, that they meant, they just wanted the best for me, right? Like when I say they, they said that like, they don’t mean any harm, but they’re like, what are you talking about? Like, go do what? Like how, how is that shift for you? That’s a really good question. I think the piece for me mm-hmm. Is that, again, as I mentioned, my wife’s family mm-hmm.
Had they, they were a family of entrepreneurs. Her father was an architect, had his own architect architectural firm. Her mother was a potter had a potting business. You know, all sorts of different pieces around that. So I think from that perspective, I had the support of her as well as that family network.
Yeah. I think My family just didn’t understand and mm-hmm. They were like, okay, you know, do whatever you wanna do. But you know, weren’t there necessarily to help, but they were also supportive cuz they were of course very cool, you know, run and do that. And I think from my friends’ perspective, again, most of my friends worked for somebody else.
Mm-hmm. But they were looking out, like you said, they were looking out for my best interest. Mm-hmm. And I don’t think any of them, you know, I did it young enough that, yeah, if I failed, I could, I always said this, I had The rent that I paid on my apartment at that time, I could work at McDonald’s and cover the rent and pay for food.
So if I had to, I could go back and, and just, you know, make sure that I survived. So that was good, and I had the ability to be able to make that happen. But yeah, I did have the mentors. That was one of the things that as I, as I look back And any kind of suggestion I give for young entrepreneurs is to really say, find those people who can help navigate the way for you.
Mm-hmm. That can help not just from a cheerleading perspective, but from a way of saying, think about this. What are the, what are the roadblocks that you could potentially run into? What are the things that you need to be thinking about now that in two years maybe not make a difference now, but in two years, they’re gonna be really important for you.
Yeah, I, I, I agree with that. And the reason why I wanted that story from you to see how your experience was, is because I know some people have watched this that are at different phases of their entrepreneurial journeys and whether they’re being, you know, really supported or whether maybe nobody around you understands what, what you’re talking about.
It’s okay, you’re in good company. There’s a lot of other people out there like you, so I always make sure I get that story out, Kurt. Yeah, no, it’s so true. So let’s let’s go a little bit further into today’s topic. So how behavior impacts employee performance. So as you were going on this journey, you know, going from when you started the business to now, like a lot of different things have taken place, is there anything that as you’re building this business, like you’re going further in your practice, like what kind of surprised you along the way?
Ooh. I, I think what surprised me is the lack of knowledge that many leaders inside of larger organizations, those are typically what we work with, work with Fortune 1000, fortune 500 but their lack of understanding of some of the, the behavioral science, the psychology of human and employee behavior and the.
Kind of we’re stuck. We’re all stuck in our own heads. We’re all stuck with the o, with the history, the education, the experiences that we’ve had. Mm-hmm. Which is fantastic. But oftentimes what we see leaders doing within organizations is saying, well, this is how I did it. This is what motivated me.
This is what got me to this point, and that should work for everybody else. And when you look at the research and when you look at, you know, building out programs or kind of. Building in initiatives in order to make those things happen. Mm-hmm. That n of one isn’t necessarily the best kind of path forward for the organization as a whole.
Yeah. And people need to understand that our behaviors are driven by a number of. Different factors. Mm-hmm. And it’s not always just about the willpower and pay me more and do different pieces that are gonna motivate people to do those things that you need them to do. That there are all these other factors that weigh in and those can be, if not more important, at least as important as you’re driving that business forward.
And so the lack of understanding of some of those pieces from the leadership within organizations mm-hmm. And kind of that, you know, Everything is surrounded by what I did and how I did it was really kind of surprising for me. Yeah. And so speaking of lack of understanding, I don’t wanna assume that our audience or anybody for that matter, really understands behavioral science or like, or like the context.
So maybe we take a step back for a moment and tell us a little bit more about it and help us define, you know, what behavioral science is. Yeah, so behavioral science has a technical kind of definition, but the way that I like to talk about it is really it’s any of the sciences that are out there, psychology, social psychology, sociology, economics neuroscience that deal with understanding why we think the way we think or why we behave the way we do.
And what I love about behavioral science is it brings this cross pollination from a number of. Different kind of areas of research and tries to bring those together to say, alright, so if you do X and that drives Y behavior, let’s understand what it was about X that drove Y behavior and really peeling back.
All of the, those onion layers that we have as humans and trying to figure out what are those aspects that we can control, what are the aspects that are out of our control? Mm-hmm. And it gets into a lot of the components around our innate biases and the biases. Not necessarily in, in, I’m biased against a certain race or religion or different pieces like that, but the biases that our mind plays on us in, we have a status quo bias that we like.
Things to stay the same, as opposed to change. We’re more likely to stick with something, even if we think that, you know, that future could be better with this. It’s the loss of version. This idea that we are that a loss weighs a lot. More on our mind than an equivalent gain. So if I lose a hundred dollars, that’s twice as painful for me compared to the gain or the, the pleasure that I get from finding a hundred dollars.
Mm-hmm. And there’s a number of those. There’s hundreds actually, of them that the, the researchers have identified and found. And so really it’s taking those insights into. Why we do what we do or why we think the way we do. Mm-hmm. And then applying those at least the way that I work is applying those into organizations and into how we think and act.
So, Yeah. Can you give us maybe an example on how this affects us in our everyday business life? I know you gave one that was from a classic example, right? Pricing 2 99 to 3 0 1 or or, you know, how it can affect sales, but how does our, like, day-to-day behavior, I should say, one of the early examples that you gave?
Yeah. How, how does this affect us like in our day-to-day business lives? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a, an. It implies a number of different factors as we think about this. Mm-hmm. So a, if we think about this, and a lot of the work that we do is around employee motivation, employee engagement. Mm-hmm. And so, as I mentioned before, oftentimes what we see is that leaders are going, well, when I was in the field, when I was a sales rep, when I was an employee, you know, this is what motivated me.
Yeah. And, and the fact of the matter is, is we, we can show pretty, pretty emphatically that there are lots of factors that come into play. And so one of those is, is oftentimes we say, well, you know, employees, if you ask them all they want is more money. And economically speaking, that would be the right answer.
If I’m a classical economic, Economist, what I’m saying is, alright, pay me an extra, you know, a bonus of $10,000 and I can take that $10,000 and, and apply it to whatever I need or want most. But what we actually see is that that’s oftentimes money isn’t. The only thing, I’m not saying that money doesn’t motivate, money does motivate.
It motivates across the board. There isn’t a cap on how much you earn. That money won’t motivate more. There’s some elements of diminishing returns on that, but we won’t necessarily get into that. Yeah. But the fact of the matter is, is that oftentimes you can create, particularly with salespeople, you can create short-term incentives that are around winning you know, some a set of golf clubs or mm-hmm.
You know a grill or some vacation that you’re doing. And that can be much more powerful mm-hmm. Than putting a, you know, the equivalent of the cash that would, they would earn with that. And there’s research that shows that, you know, the cash component raises performance 10 to 15% in many of those examples.
But when you put the merchandise or a trip or some other experiential type activity mm-hmm. That, that increase in performance is 30%. 30 to. 35, 40% increase. So if you just looked at the cash, you go, we’re doing really good. It’s increasing 10, 15%. But if you looked at what you could be getting with equivalent kind of budget and outlay, you’re actually missing a lot of that performance.
So that’s just one example and you can go into how you communicate to employees, to how you structure a program and how the, the steps that they need to go through, how you nudge things, how you set things up from a perspective of what is easy versus hard, and all sorts of different factors that come into play.
Let’s go a little bit further into like the idea that, so, you know, as leaders watching this and not saying that somebody, you know, wants to quote unquote change their employees as per as people, right? We’re not saying that what we’re talking about is. We’re talking about wanting to, you know, change maybe some of the behaviors and to, and to give incentives is one thing that you mentioned.
But is there like a possibility for like real behavior change that’s like lasting? Is that something that’s possible? Yeah, there is. And so when we think about behavior change there, there’s a couple facets that I always talk about it, cuz I think one of the things that people don’t understand is that it’s this yin yang.
So behavior change. On one aspect is really hard. It’s really hard to get people to change their behavior, particularly if they’re set in their ways and various different things. And on the other hand, behavior change is absolutely easy. We change our behavior every single day. The way that we communicate today via text and social media and everything else is vastly different than what it was 10 years ago.
Hugely, hugely different than what it was 25 years ago when I was starting out in various different pieces. Yeah, in, in business. And so change happens all the time and it just does, right. But when we’re trying to change our employees’ behavior, our own behavior, oftentimes we try to think about that as I just need to get them more engaged.
Or from a personal perspective, it’s about. The willpower, how much willpower do I have? And what we always talk about is behavior is driven internally by a fair amount. I’m not saying that willpower doesn’t matter, but it’s also driven by the surroundings. The environment, as we like to talk about in the business, context matters.
And so the context, the environment that you place your people in that you place yourself in really makes a big difference. And so if you wanna have lasting behavior change mm-hmm. One of the things is, you know, just make. Sure you understand what are those factors that are driving the right behaviors that you want?
Mm-hmm. And leveraging those and making that much more prevalent or easy to do. And then what are the things that inhibit those good behaviors and kind of reducing that, reducing the friction that comes with that. I give this example all the time as I talk about. I love Oreo cookies, right? Yeah. I, I, you know, it’s the one of those factors I work out of the, out of my house.
Mm-hmm. And so I go down three or four in the afternoon. Typically, I kind of get those little hunger pans and need that afternoon snack. And I know that if there’s Oreo cookies in the cabinet, in the cupboard right there, and I open it up, I can have the best willpower in the world and trying to avoid like mm-hmm.
Oh, I shouldn’t eat those. I should eat the carrots or the, you know, the nuts or whatevers will look more healthy. But if they’re there, I will more than likely, probably grab one or two, and then one or two leads to three or four and 4, 5, 6, 7, and all of a sudden the entire Oreo is gone. So one of the things that we can do is A, I can just take those Oreos.
Instead of having ’em in the cupboard, I just move them down to our downstairs into the basement. We have shelves down there, right? They’re still there. If I still want them and they’re okay, I can go down and do that. But just that added. Extra distance that I would’ve to walk in order to get them. So I go open up the cupboard.
They’re not right in front of me. Yeah. I’m less likely to go down and eat those Oreos and then get stuck in that Vistage cycle. So things like that. Setting up your environment for success as opposed to failure. Hmm. Man, Kurt Pringles, get me every time. There you go. It’s, don’t put a thing of Pringles in front of me.
I’m done with it. Now you gotta do, and as much as you wanna sell yourself, oh, this time I’m gonna, I’m gonna not do it. It’s, it’s, it’s how I’m not gonna eat the whole thing. Yeah, right. I open up that va that, that Pringles can, it’s done. Yeah. That’s how it works. So well, well, Kurt, I wanna, I wanna maybe shift focus here just slightly for a moment.
Let’s get into Lantern group cuz I, before we go further our conversation, I wanna talk a little bit more about what you do and really how you’re working with organizations. So tell us a little bit more about your firm. Yeah, so Lantern Group is a behavioral change and communication agency. So what we do is we work with organizations on bringing up behavioral science lens into their employee kind of performance.
So looking at how are your employees behaving, and mostly that is around employee. Motivation and engagement, and a lot of that is with salespeople. So again, we, we, we work with employee bases. We work across the organization on a number of different things, but the vast majority of the work that we do is really going in and trying to understand what are the things that are driving the behaviors from a motivational perspective and engagement perspective of your workforce.
And so with that what we tend to do is, Go in we’ll do a diagnostic and kind of deep dive again, bringing all the behavioral science insights that we have to understand what are the root causes of those behaviors and what can you do as an organization to drive the right behaviors that you want.
And so that’s the upfront, that’s the the behavioral change piece. The behavioral design aspect that we do. And then on the back end, what we’ve realized is that, Most organizations don’t do a very good job of bringing in a communication perspective that is actually designed around driving the right behavior change.
And so with that perspective, there’s lots of companies that do really beautiful communications, really creative communications, and we do that as well. But what we also add is this level of saying, Hey, how are you framing? That conversation. So we do a lot of work, as I said, with incentives. So you can frame an incentive program as to, Hey, look at how much you can earn this year with this new plan.
Mm-hmm. Or you could frame it from a perspective of, Hey, don’t leave money on the table this year. Mm-hmm. With our new 2023 plan or whatever that would be. Yeah. Now, Basically, it’s not much different, right, when you think about it, but the way that our brain processes that information, one is viewed as a loss, right?
Mm-hmm. Don’t leave money on the table as like, I can lose money. I’m leaving money on the table. I’m not making as much as I can. Versus one is a gain message. And so the difference in how we frame those is really important to how that actually impacts our behavior and. Not saying one, we don’t always use a loss frame.
We don’t always use a gain. It kind of depends on the culture and what you’re trying to achieve and various different things. But that’s the type of work that we try to bring in when we’re working with our, with our clients. And so we’re trying to understand what is the strategy that they’re doing that they need to achieve?
What are the behaviors that they need in order to achieve that strategy? And then we apply the behavioral science insights to understand what their employee base is going through, what are the factors, the context that they’re within. And then we build initiatives around that, whether that be training, communication, others, everything from a simple PowerPoint to videos.
We do a lot of work with employee videos and to, you know, executive speeches and, and different pieces along that to training programs. So all, all across the board. Now are you or if you give us some insights. So is this I know you work with a lot of large companies, you work with small business as well, middle market, like any specific industries or, or agnostic?
Like, give us a little bit of a feel for that. Yeah. We, we tend to work mostly with, I said, fortune 1000 companies. Mm-hmm. Our. We work across industries, but the main industry that we tend to be working in is bioscience pharmaceutical med device. So that’s 80% of the work that we do really working.
Most of that work is with the sales side of the organization. So again, 70% of that work is working with the sales side of the organization. Mm-hmm. We. Don’t work as much with small companies. We do do some mid-tier companies across the board, and that is actually really, we get excited about that because oftentimes we’re able to have a larger impact across the entire organization as opposed to working within departments or divisions within some of the larger organizations that we work with.
Hmm. And now is there a, is there a I know there’s the B2B component. Is there a c component to to experiencing some of your content? Yeah, so the really interesting piece that we started to do about three years ago is so I have four employees and we have a number of contractors that we use.
So we’re a relatively small business. Mm-hmm. But we have a large impact. And one of the things that we realized is that, hey, we’re doing all of this great work of bringing behavioral science insights into the world of b2b. And so if you’re in a large organization, you get that education, you get that knowledge, you get the tools, the tips, all of those things to do that.
As you mentioned before, I’m also a co-host of Behavioral Groups podcast and with behavioral groups, podcasts, we interview behavioral scientists and researchers from around the globe. So we have all this great information about, again, understanding why we do what we do and the fact that we realized is, We’re not able to get that information and the tools necessary to apply that information to individuals lives.
And so what we did is we started building out what we’re calling Brain Shift. And so Brain Shift is a it’s a series of different products. Right now we have a 13 week journal that is a guided journal. So basically it is taking behavioral science insights. Every week you get a new behavioral science insight to learn.
We have specific prompts every day that are different, and so they’re unique to the day based upon the the behavioral science insight, but also really Baked into that behavioral science insights that we know will drive behavior change and help you achieve goals. So over 13 weeks, you are having an a daily guided journal that will help you a, set the right goals, break those goals down into manageable chunks, make sure that your.
Keeping yourself motivated expressing gratitude that helps in kind of making sure that you have the right mindset to move forward with this to helping you be more creative in thinking about what you need to do and identifying roadblocks that might come in the way and how you’re gonna overcome those.
And a variety of different factors so that, that. Journal is a very powerful tool. In addition to that, we have other aspects. So we have these shorter guides that are all right. How do you set a goal? So one of the things that we, we know is that goals are really important to driving behavior. But how do you set the appropriate goal for what you want to do?
And people have a hard time. You think about New Year’s Eve and you setting the resolution and everybody kind of sets that resolution and the research shows that hey, within two to three weeks, 70, 90% of people drop that, you know, kind of working on that goal. Well, part of that is because they haven’t set the right goal to really align with their self-identity.
And so we have a, a leader shift. Docket that’s out there that looks at how do you make sure that you’re setting the right goal, and then how do you break that goal down into manageable chunks and you bringing some of the science in. So it helps you kind of make sure that you’re achieving the goals that you set for yourself.
And then we have a calendar. That, again, helps you every month go through goals and we’re building that out more and more. And so over the course of the next month, we’re gonna have journal volume number two. So the brain shift number two, different behavioral science insights. We’re gonna have a manager’s journal coming up shortly where if you are a manager, you need to understand how can I really make sure that my team is operating at.
It’s best. So how do I have those crucial conversations? How do I make sure that I’m motivating and engaging my employees my team to their best ability? How do I build collaboration? Yeah. All of the science behind that is built into that journal that will then help you day-to-day go in and work with your team and be able to do that.
So that’s the whole brain shift brand that we’re building out that is gonna be out there for the consumer side. Yeah. And, and I’m excited to watch this brand continue to, to build and to build upon your work. But you, you did mention the behavioral groups podcast, you know, you know, I was gonna circle back to that.
My listeners know I love supporting podcasts, podcasters. I might be biased, right? Because we have a, a podcast agency. But I think everybody should have a podcast. Especially for any business owners, business leaders out there that wanna communicate and get their message out there. I just, I mean, I, I love the podcast, but for yourself so that I won’t be the only one preaching this.
Why’d you start your show and and you told us a little bit about it, but go a little bit further. Yeah, so the start of the show is actually interesting. So I have my co-host Tim hok. We’ve known each other for years, but he worked at a different company that I did business with and so we got to work with each other.
But it was kind of on project by project basis. Yeah. But we really admired each other in kind of the work that we did. He left that position. Back in 2017 and right away I reached out and I said, Hey, we gotta figure out something to do. Yeah. And so we, we met over lunch. We kind of were talking over all the stuff and he was starting his own consultancy at the time.
And we said, Hey, let’s start this piece where we want to build this community about for people to really help understand and how I can use behavioral science and, and, and build a community around helping people understand how. Why we do what we do. And we actually started this not as a podcast. We started as, as a meetup.
And so in the Minneapolis Wow cities area, we were the, you know, we looked out there, there wasn’t anything there. So we started this meetup and what was really interesting is you know, the first one we kind of did ourself. The second one we brought in a speaker and the speaker relatively famous speaker.
And, and so we’re going, oh, we’re gonna have 25, maybe 30 people show up at the second one. Tim, who loved to death is a musician on the side as well. So he has six albums that he’d done. He’s kind of folk kind of artist and has all this recording equipment. And I had just done a radio interview and so I said, Hmm, let’s think about this.
We’re gonna talk to 25, 30 people, but we could put this out out of the podcast. Really simple and it can give, you know, hundreds of people, if not thousands of people that it’ll get to. And we go, we’re doing a meetup once a month, so we’ll just bring the, the speaker in every month and have them get there an hour first.
We’ll talk about what they’re gonna talk about. We’ll put that up as a podcast In Doune, we’re done once a month thing. It’ll be really easy. Couple hours, extra a week. And, and as you know, that that’s not how this works. So we found out that we had so much fun with that. And the fact of the matter is, is we wanted to talk to so many people that we knew in the industry that were researching and doing this great stuff, and they weren’t gonna fly to Minneapolis to come to a meetup.
Yeah. But with the technology, we could get them on a podcast. And so it became kind of our, it it overtook the meetup. Definitely we’ve been, we’ve actually. You know, once Covid hit kind of, the meetup kind of faded away, but the podcast kind of expanded. And so now 350 episodes in, you know, we’re talking with some of the leading researchers from around the globe, Nobel Laureates you know, people who have Really kind of made their mark.
I mean, some people, Phillips Zimbardo of the, of the Stanford Prison Experiment Gary Latham, who developed goal, the goal methodology theory and, and variety of different things to, you know, variety of the new kind of researchers out there that are bringing up the new kind of. Cutting edge insights that we understand from psychology, sociology, neurology, all of those factors.
And so it’s really fun. It’s the, it’s like, I think we mentioned in our talk before we did this. It’s the, it’s the, my favorite part of the week. So yeah, it, it is a lot of fun and I, and I, that’s why I, I have to get the story and why you. Started and, and the evolution of it. Cause I feel like everybody’s story and how they started, how they, like when we started this, well the first podcast we started I didn’t even wanna do it, the fir the other co-founders to Rock.
He’s like, Adam, you gotta do a podcast. I’m like, for what? He is like, well, so we could sell more books. And I’m like, I don’t wanna do this. What am I gonna do with a podcast? And you know, all these years later, all these episodes, it’s. Been really one of the driving forces behind our media brand and really just a lot of the fun around building our community.
I love that you mentioned the podcast and what you’re doing is this community because it does become a community of all of these individuals with this shared experience from maybe different backgrounds that, you know, have come together to collaborate for the sake of a show and to get, you know, meaningful content out to, to different podcast audiences.
So I think it’s awesome. Speaking of communities, we’re not gonna go far into the book today, as I mentioned before, to the audience. And the reason is cuz we will be bringing Kurt back on for a, a part two or two of this interview series and we’ll do a deep dive into his writing and and the book once it’s out and live.
So don’t worry there, but keeping it really high level today, Kurt. And I know we’re still in editing and the editing phase of things, but high level, what are some of the things you hope to propose in the upcoming book? Yeah. So again, it, it relates back to from a leadership position, what, what can leaders learn from behavioral science that will make them better leaders?
And what do they need to understand about human behavior, human motivation to apply within their employees and the projects and programs and way they set up the business to really leverage those insights. So it’s not just about Hey, here are the things to avoid, but it’s about here are the things that you can tap into and that, I think for me, again, it goes back to that mission, right?
Helping people understand better about what drives our behavior and what drives the way that we think. And so that’s really what this is, but really specifically for leaders as they’re building that out. All right. I’m cutting you off there. I do sell books. We’re gonna, everybody’s gotta come back and and we’ll, we’ll tell you more about it when you can click on the Lincoln and grab a copy.
But we’re not there yet. But, but Kurt, I’ll tell you, it has been great having you on the show today. Learned a lot. About not only behavior science, but you, your background, what, and also, you know, the inception of your podcast. A lot of, lot of great things here. So Awesome. Welcoming to the community and just have to ask, I mean, what’s next?
I mean, what’s next for you? What’s next for your business? What’s next for the podcast? Yeah. So what’s been very inter, I mean, we’ve been growing by leaps and bounds in the past two, three years. I mean, it’s amazing when you think about everything that the world has gone through and, and how that has impacted us.
So what’s next for us is we are continuing to grow the B2B business. We’re working with organizations that are finding more and more reason to really get in and, and understand their employees and understand what it is that motivates them. What engages them? What are the, what are the things that. Companies can do in order to, to leverage that, to be able to say, Hey, let’s make sure that we’re giving our employees the things that they need in order to stay engaged and motivated, that they want to keep working with us and want to do the great work that they’re, they’re want to do from their own perspective.
And then two, building out that consumer side of things. And I think that for me is really exciting as we’re, as we’re taking that next step is saying mm-hmm. How can we take. All of this great knowledge that we have, the, the pieces that we built for corporations and those tools and tips and all of the factors that go into that and make that available to anybody that’s out there.
Whether it be an individual who just wants to buy it for themselves, or whether it be for a team manager who, as you said, we don’t work with small companies or even mostly medium size companies, but might be that individual manager who has 10 people working for him or her, and hey, can I. Use some of these tools to really help me or to help my team.
Mm-hmm. And so those are the factors that I think are really exciting as we’re moving forward. That’s what I’m super excited about over the course of the next year or two. And Kurt, if somebody’s watching this or listening to this and they want to learn more about Lantern Group or to follow your journey and of course your podcast what’s the best way for them to do that?
Yeah, so obviously you can go out to lantern group.com. You can go out to behavioral grooves.com on all of those. And we’ll have all of that information there If you want to just, I, I’m out on Twitter a lot, and so if you just want to kind of. Ask a question or do something else since I’m at actually two of them at Motivation Guru and at what motivates So two different Twitter handles.
I don’t know why, but that just happened. So Motivation Guru and what motivates are the two different ones that I have. And so reach out. As I said, you know, it’s that community piece and I am happy to just talk to anybody about behavioral science, some of the issues they have. Oftentimes I can answer their questions, you know?
Mm-hmm. But I do love just having those conversations and, and bringing whatever insight I can to help people out. So, fantastic. And we’ll put all the website links and all that good stuff in the show notes so that our audience could just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode of the platform, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and experts, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, and really, you know, what motivates them to get up and.
Out of bed in the morning and to go out into the world and to make a difference. If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we, we invite you hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing.
And Kurt, really until the next time, and it’s been a pleasure working with through today and looking forward to the next interview. All right, thank you, Adam. Thanks everybody.