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In this episode, Barbara and Thomas discuss:

 

  • The conversation covers expertise in ethical persuasion and neuromarketing to help business owners become unforgettable in 11 seconds.
  • It is explained how human decisions are driven by primal brain responses and the critical role of emotions in choosing.
  • The “you language” strategy is discussed, focusing communication on the audience’s needs rather than self-promotion.
  • The importance of silent listening is highlighted, emphasizing truly hearing others instead of planning responses.
  • Methods for accessing specialized training and books are shared, encouraging the application of these techniques to boost professional visibility and effectiveness.

 

Key Takeaways:

“To make a decision and rationalize that decision takes 11 seconds… deciding to listen to me and keep me in your mind, that will take 11 seconds.”

 

Connect with Dr. Thomas Trautmann:

 

 

Connect with Barbara Hales:

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Chapter 1: Introduction & Guest Background


[0:00:02] Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, and today we have with us a host of happy brains, also known as Thomas Trautmann. Welcome to the show.
[0:00:20] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah. Super happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[0:00:24] Dr. Barbara Hales: Thomas is a really interesting guy. He is a dynamic entrepreneur, coach, author, and speaker, passionately dedicated to making business owners unforgettable in 11 seconds. Get that as the founder of Happy Brains, Thomas utilizes the science of ethical persuasion to transform lives and businesses, fostering communities that thrive on mutual growth and success. Before I get further into it, I just want to say he is one of the first people to have flown around the world, including jumping into the North Pole in a special suit. So, this is an extraordinary guy with a PhD in artificial intelligence and an engineering degree in computer science, which is perfect for now. Thomas’s career path led him to influential roles at companies such as IBM, HP, AOL, Bosch, and Steelcase. His entrepreneurial spirit eventually guided him to start his own business, where he learned invaluable lessons from both triumphs and challenges. As a former certified neuro marketing instructor, Thomas leverages cutting-edge brain and decision-making science to enhance his clients’ marketing, sales, and business strategies, recognizing the need for a more human touch. In neuromarketing, Thomas developed the ethical persuader system and authored Make Me Great. Central to Dr Trautmann’s mission is the Make Me Great concept, which focuses on helping business owners stand out in 11 seconds. Keep that in mind. That is a great tagline. He guides CEOs, executives, and business owners to evolve from stressed chihuahuas into happy, successful Kangals, fostering trust, success, and fun in their lives. For all of you out there that say at this point, what the heck is a Kangal I will tell you, it is a dog that is similar in appearance to an Anatolian Shepherd, which is quite large, but he is very sweet, very protective, very astute, smart, very protective of the people around him, so now you know what a candle is. Also, a 10x performance coach with Grant Cardone Thomas combines brain science and ethical persuasion with Cardone’s expertise in money marketing and sales, helping clients achieve exponential growth. Today, Thomas delivers workshops, training, coaching, and seminars worldwide as a conference speaker. He empowers people to become ethical Persuaders and fulfilled business owners living life to the fullest. Wow, wow, wow. Welcome to the show. I’m so happy to see you today.
[0:04:17] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Thank you. I don’t know what I can add to all that that’s good, thanks.

 

Chapter 2: The 11 Second Concept


[0:04:23] Dr. Barbara Hales: So, tell me, how did you get the idea of people being noticeable in 11 seconds?
[0:04:34] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Well, the idea is that most people try to persuade other people. I mean, you are persuading all the time, right from yourself to wake up, to get out of bed, to your spouse, for example, and then to your clients to come to see you, or even just to listen to you. So, most people do it rationally. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we. Facts were about the. Cells, their brand, their services, their products, whatever, and it has been scientifically proven. Then, in fact, the human brain doesn’t make any rational decision. We rationalize a decision afterwards. It has been made by a part of the brain called the primal brain. And to make a decision and rationalize that decision takes 11 seconds when you make 30,000 decisions per day, approximately, so many, many, many, on automatic, without knowing them, but deciding to listen to me and keep me in your mind, that will take 11 seconds. So that’s how I help people. I have business owners. I’m a business owner myself, and we all struggle a lot. You know, in my very first business, I remember sitting at my best desk, looking at the bank account and seeing that, well, no more clients were coming in, and no more money was coming in. So, it was either I got the job, or I found something else. So, I didn’t find it over. Find it over overnight, of course, but I paid attention to neuro marketing. It was the first time there was a documentary about it, quite some time back, and that’s how it started. We implemented some of the techniques and saw a 400% increase in our business. And it was a motorcycle tour business at that time. And we even had BMW friends approach us to organize the motorcycle tools for their clients. So that’s how it started, and then I decided to become a neuromarketing instructor. And yeah, that’s how I connected brain AI from the past, from my studies to real life. And yeah, during a conversation with my wife, it became clear that neuro marketing lacks humanity. You learn a lot when you do. Don’t get me wrong, neuro marketing works perfectly. It gives two-digit growth easily. It targets the human brain. So, you could say it’s human, yes, but the people attending the workshops were learning things to implement for their companies, not for themselves. So that’s why I say, okay, something’s missing here. So, I’m going to create something which is called the ethical persuader, which is about you learn first, how you get from people the decisions you want, why you help them make the decision they need, which is ethical, by the way, and then you can implement it in your everyday life, in your business, wherever. So that’s how the whole thing started.

 

Chapter 3: Happy Brains and The Power of a Smile


[0:07:26] Dr. Barbara Hales: And how are you associated with happy brains?
[0:07:31] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: But happy brains, that’s my brand. So, what’s driving me? My, why is that? I want people to smile, you know, to be happy. Because when you smile, a good, natural smile, you know, with a little Duchenne wrinkle here and so on, your brain gets a shot off, end of it. So, it’s a free drug, you get happy. And the more drugs you get, the more you smile. And even when I smile, I can make you smile, and even if you don’t physically smile, there is a theory of mirror neurons: when I smile, the smile neurons in your brain are triggered, so you also get a shot of endorphin. So, if I smile, you smile, and we make other people smile. It may become a better world for our children. So that’s how Happy Brains was born.

 

Chapter 4: Ethical Persuasion Beyond Marketing


[0:08:16] Dr. Barbara Hales: Your marketing system is what your workshops and your training are about, correct or not.
[0:08:24] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: it’s more than it’s more than marketing; ethical persuasion can be used everywhere, from leadership to marketing to sales, even to your personal life.
[0:08:33] Dr. Barbara Hales: And I would agree with you that a person who is unhappy in their personal life is not really going to be very persuasive about anything else that they have to provide. So that would be your first step, getting people to be happy.
[0:08:54] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: That’s what I try to do in my trainings and in my workshops, is to see the first smile when suddenly the light bulb goes on and say, Wow, yeah, now I understand my stupid decisions, because, yes, the primal brain is not smart. You know the I could say, the USP, the unique selling proposition of the primal brain is, it’s better to be stupid and alive than smart and dead. So those decisions, I mean, the primal brain is a very old thing. Our whole brain stopped evolving 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, so we are still running, especially that brain, the decision maker, processes that come from the cave age. We have changed the world around us because we are Homo sapiens. We are conscious of being conscious and so on. We have the super big rational brain that no other species on Earth has. That’s why we think we are rational beasts, when in fact we are not. We are facing more than 200 cognitive biases that drive our decisions; we could make them rationally. Decisions. There’s just one problem. Is the rational brain 200 times, excuse me, 200 times slower than the primal brain? So, we make a primal decision, and we rationalize it afterwards.

 

Chapter 5: Emotions and Human Decision-Making

[0:10:16] Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, that makes a lot of sense, and I imagine a lot of decisions are also made with the heart first and then rationalized,
[0:10:25] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: If you talk about the heart as emotions. Yes, it was demonstrated in 1995 by a guy named Antonio Damasio that you cannot decide without emotions. In fact, you need an emotional variation. You need to take them from one emotional state to the next emotional state to trigger the decision process. So, a lot of people get it wrong. They think that if I scare you or if I make you happy, you will make a decision. No, you’re just memorizing, but you don’t make the decision. So, you need to really create those two emotional variation states and get a variation. So that’s what we call the heart. You know,
[0:11:04] Dr. Barbara Hales: When you are training your clients to be persuasive, how, how is it that you do that, you know, do you have certain qualities or properties that you try to elicit in them?

 

Chapter 6: The “You Language” and Lasting Change

[0:11:24] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Well, the first thing I do is show them how their brain works. So every training starts with a few experiments. So, I don’t hurt anyone. I don’t open the brain bucket and scoop out the slice. Nope. We do some very simple experiences, and people see that, in fact, their brain is lying to them. Our brain is lying to us. So, I mean you, for example, when you go into a freshly painted room, okay, it smells like paint after two or three minutes, what happens? It’s normal, smelling like paint, right? But the paint is still there. The paint molecules are still in the air. But your primal brain, the decision maker, cannot process too much information, so it just filters out information, the smell of the paint. There is no contrast. It filters it out. So, for example, for your audience, if they always repeat the same message. You know, there is no contrast. Or if they adjust an MD among other MDs, there is no contrast; they will be invisible, completely forgotten. If you become a doctor, who, I don’t know, makes you one, one meter taller or three feet taller. I’m the only one doing that. That’s contrast. Then I will keep you in mind. Then I will maybe take those 11 seconds to keep you in my mind.
[0:12:54] Dr. Barbara Hales: After people come to you for the initial training, do they continue onward, so that their life continues to be happy and evolve into conquering any stress and problems that arise?
[0:13:16] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: That’s where it’s become interesting, and that’s why I added coaching to everything I do, because, in fact, the human brain being the human brain, it hates change. So, during the trainings, for example, online training workshops and so on, people are super happy and excited, and 48 hours later, they are back to their old selves. So, I had business owners tell me, “Thomas, I mean, your training is great.” My people enjoy it, but 48 hours later, they still keep making the same mistakes. So we have added coaching to keep people accountable and to really use the techniques and the tools I provide them with, and that’s when you start seeing results, because it’s a 180 degree switch in the way you work, in the way you talk with people, you persuade people and so on stuff one so, for example, one simple thing that your audience can implement right now is use something I call the you language. That primal brain is a survival tool. It cares about one and only one person on Earth, and it screams at you. That’s why it stays here. Make me great. So don’t talk about you. I couldn’t care less about you. Talk about me. Make me great. So, of course, when you have a long relationship, you can talk about yourself, no problem. But at the beginning, when you want new clients, when you want something new to happen. It’s your language. Your emails and phone calls have to be in your language. Extremely complex to implement that, because you want to talk about yourself, because you have that same primal brain that cares about yourself. So that’s a tough one, but it works when you do. It. It works absolutely.
[0:15:02] Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s why, on your about page, when you’re when you’re when you could present information that instead of saying, like, I graduated here, I did this, that it is much more effective if you take that page to just say, I help this problem that you may have. I have a solution to that problem you may have. Because, you know, at the end of the day, that’s what they’re really interested in,
[0:15:34] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah, in fact, you should not even do it like that. It’s not that I have you. You have this problem, and you need this so that you feel better because you, you, you, and then watch here, there is a solution for you. I say the same thing you do, but I don’t talk about myself. It’s like, if you have maybe for, for, for your, for your, I know what’s the name in English for, for, for the for a doctor’s office, but if you have a website for that, that’s a little exercise that everyone in the audience can do is look at your website and look at how many times you are talking about yourself and how many times you talk about them. I’m pretty sure it starts with Home, About Me. You provide the services. I am a doctor. I am doing this. I have graduated I and don’t worry, 95% of people have the same problem on their website. That’s one of my favorite moments during a training. I just use one website as an example. And yeah,
[0:16:42] Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, now it’s going to go to your website to see what you mean, and I probably will too, but your suggestions instantly, you know, turn things around. And you know, it’s easy to see how more enticing, you know, writing it that way would be,
[0:17:02] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah, and you will see it’s, it’s a mindset to have. It’s, you can’t say the same thing in your language as in the I language. It’s just written the other way around, absolutely.

Chapter 7: Accessing Training & Final Advice


[0:17:17] Dr. Barbara Hales: So, regardless of where in the world a person is, presuming they either speak French or English. Can the training be completed entirely through Google Meet, Zoom, or another video platform?
[0:17:33] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: I’m starting this week with a new client. We do it fully online,
[0:17:37] Dr. Barbara Hales: And it’s once a week. For how long?
[0:17:41] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: It depends in terms of coaching. So well, you can do the online training that’s at your own rate, and then the coaching. It’s either once per week, or we start with once per week, then go biweekly. Depending on how long we go for, it can be 90 days, 180 days, or 1 year, depending on how far you want to dive into ethical persuasion and making people Great.
[0:18:04] Dr. Barbara Hales: And how would they access that training program with you? What would they go to online?
[0:18:12] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Well, they go to my website, which is happy, Dash brains.com, and there you can select whatever you want, or even get in touch with me. Have a strategy call. It’s a free call, of course. So, we assess the problem and look at some pointers for moving forward.
[0:18:30] Dr. Barbara Hales: Your Make Me Great is a book that you’ve authored, correct?
[0:18:35] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah, it’s the name of the system,
[0:18:38] Dr. Barbara Hales: five-step systems. That is also the name of a book that.
[0:18:41] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: You wrote? Yes, the book is also called Make Me Great.
[0:18:44] Dr. Barbara Hales: and a person can access through Amazon,
[0:18:49] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Amazon or my website.
[0:18:51] Dr. Barbara Hales: Okay, very good. So, at this point, could you give the audience two tips that they could implement right away? And, you know, making them visible in 11 seconds. And also, just elevating them as professionals,
[0:19:13] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah, well, I already gave you the first one, which is the U language. Use the U language, try it now. Well, you know, when you try to be seen out there, use your language. Focus on what drives the decision in your audience’s brains: subconscious frustration. That’s the longer talk. It’s very human. It has nothing to do with a quick example, maybe not a good example, when it comes to me because I have no hair, but you have lovely hair. So, if I sell you a shampoo, the usual rational way would be to say, with that shampoo, bah, bah, you are going to have blonde hair that is going to fly in the wind, right? But you don’t buy shampoo for that. You buy to clean your hair, but you also want to be seen. For example. For example, maybe you want people to talk to you. So, I would say next time you go to a party, they will all look at you. They will all want to talk to you because of your hair. I’m not talking about my product, my shampoo, and so on, but doing something completely different. So that’s what you have to target. What drives a decision in the brain, and how does it use your language? That’s the first one. The second one is to use a very tough one, too. It’s called Silent listening. You know, most people say you should do active listening. You listen, write down, and so on, and try to interact. I’m pushing it further. I use silent listening. That means it has to be silent up there. You may say, “Okay, Thomas, I was on vacation,” and then your brain goes, “Oh, I have to tell her about my own vacation.” Oh, that was pretty cool, because I will tell her about when the kids went swimming and so on. The sea was so blue. And I’m no longer listening to you, because, again, my brain wants to focus on me and wants to be great, but I have to listen to you. So, you have to learn to silence that thing up there. So that’s the second technique,
[0:21:05] Dr. Barbara Hales: And that’s such good advice, because so few people can do that. You know, silence is, you know, a very difficult thing to achieve, and a lot of people are very uncomfortable with silence. They feel that they have to fill it up.
[0:21:20] Dr. Thomas Trautmann: Yeah, exactly. Well, in fact, it’s a very important tool.
[0:21:26] Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, I’ve really enjoyed our session today, as I’m sure our listeners have, and I encourage you all to go into the show notes so that you can reach Dr Thomas Trautmann, because he’s definitely worth pursuing. He’s a really interesting, professional and really interesting guy. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today. This has been another episode of marketing tips for doctors with your hosts, Dr Barbara Hales and Dr. Trautmann. Thank you. Thank you, and till next time.