Tim Ash is an acknowledged authority on evolutionary psychology and digital marketing. He is a sought-after international keynote speaker, and the bestselling author of Unleash Your Primal Brain and Landing Page Optimization. Tim has been mentioned by Forbes as a Top-10 Online Marketing Expert, and by Entrepreneur Magazine as an Online Marketing Influencer To Watch. He is a former digital agency head, international keynote speaker, and marketing consultant to top companies.
Well, our brains evolved for a reason. And we share things with the earliest forms of life on Earth, like insects and more primitive or let's say, more ancient forms of life. And then, as we evolved, we layered on different things so that at the very end of our evolution, we gotten some really, really bizarre to species level stuff that makes us unique. In fact, I'd say that's why we took over the whole planet. And so understanding that evolutionary path, and some of the things that we inherited along the way, helps us to understand how to be in relationships with each other, whether that's in business, or in personal relationships.
I like to go back to first principles and evolution to define all this stuff. And so I like to ask the question, why is storytelling even something we do? Why do we have language? Why do we tell stories? And we're highly cultural creatures, we'll probably talk about that in more depth as well. But one of the things that we can do is learn from each other. So you know that you can learn from your own mistakes or other people's mistakes. And by being able to learn from other people's mistakes, we avoid danger, we increase our chances of survival. So if I said, hey, Lori, if you keep going down that forest path, and around the bend, you're gonna run into a really angry mama bear and it's gonna tear you to shreds. I got the scars to prove it right here. I'm still bleeding from the encounter with the bear. Right? That's probably useful information to you. Can we agree on that? Absolutely. So basically, what I did just saved us the danger, or the time investment, and the uncertainty of dealing with that situation by telling you about it. So what I did is I kind of transferred my experiences into your head. I don't know if you've ever watched the old Star Trek show. They had Mr. Spock, he was a very logical Vulcan and he could do this Vulcan mind meld where he'd put his hands on your skull and transfer his experiences directly into your head. And it seems so far-fetched, but that's essentially what stories do. They've shown on brain scans that if a teller is telling a story with a very slight delay, the recipient on the other end is activating the same parts of the brain. So you're really doing a kind of a mind meld and transferring your experiences into someone else by telling a story, a very powerful way to help you survive.
Lori: I love that. Your focus sounded like it was heavy on the education side of things, but also storytelling, from my perspective. And just the way that people connect is and want to be part of a conversation or pull more information is not only education, but also entertainment. I think it's a combination of the two.
Well, again, from an evolutionary standpoint, I don't think entertainment is a goal. But I'd say that entertainment helps the medicine go down. So if I'm telling you an experience, I might choose to be funny about it and then that makes you more engaged with it, which forms a stronger memory of my story. So absolutely, that's important. One other thing too, that's super important, is knowing that the morals that people get from the same story are going to be very different based on our experiences and our...
