Hacking Happiness

When Charlie Munger valued businesses, he looked at “lollapalooza effects.” These are positive psychological stacks that reach a tipping point in customers leading to loyalty.

In more actionable terms:

How can you manipulate psychology in the favor of your business?

You can study Freud, Adler, and Jung.

You can learn all the cognitive biases.

Or you can cut straight to mastering the happiness chemicals. Because what people care about most is happiness. 

Therefore, if you learn how to make your customers happy, you will win in business.

Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

These are the chemicals released in your brain when you’re feeling happy. Learn to stack them in your products and content and you’ll make more customers happy.

Dopamine

The keywords for dopamine are novelty, discovery, and learning.

Surprise, difference, unpredictability—these design mechanisms release dopamine because they exploit our NEW radar.

Change up a tempo unexpectedly, add pizazz, create that ‘aha’ feeling of discovery. Make em say “wow.”

All of the above techniques spike dopamine and make your products more memorable.

Side note: Spiking dopamine is the main goal of a strong hook. Dopamine heightens the senses, and spiking dopamine in a hook makes the rest of the experience more vivid and engaging.

Once you’ve hooked your customers, it’s time to stack on serotonin and oxytocin.

Serotonin

Status, prestige, and signaling are the keywords for serotonin.

Make your customers feel powerful and special. Give them kudos, show them respect, appreciate them, and award them symbols that distinguish them.

The key here is to give them identities and symbols they can brag about.

To crush the skill of boosting serotonin, give your customers status symbols and identities that unlock bragging opportunities.

Oxytocin

WE, group-signaling activities, and trust are the keywords for oxytocin.

Make your customers feel like they’re a part of an alliance. Steve Jobs made you “Think Different” and inducted you into the tribe of geniuses. “The Artists” was how Steve Jobs leveraged oxytocin when building the first Macintosh. He had each member sign the inside case of the first Mac to make them feel like real artists.

Know your WE, and make sure WE do special things.

Strategy Questions:

What is new and different about your product?

What status symbols and identities could you give your customers?

Who are WE? What do WE do? What are WE striving for? How do WE identify?

Takeaways

• To spike dopamine make sure to pleasantly surprise your customers

• To spike serotonin make sure to give customers status symbols

• To spike oxytocin make sure to give your customers group-signaling activities