Happy Sunday Friend!
In today's email, I want to tell you about an app I've come to hate, what it taught me about addiction and how it turned into what I believe could be, the most addictive, personally profitible app that I love.
I dunno if you've ever heard of Snap Chat Friend. I learned about it because my kids starting using it a few years ago. I guess it's all the rage with the young ones nowadays.
It's one of the main ways they communicate & meet other kids.
What's to hate about something like that?
Well lemme tell ya.
I started to notice my kids taking stupid pictures of silly things like the ceiling, the floor, the edge of a couch, a leg, the side of their face, and any other random thing you could imagine & posting them in this app.
As a parent, I'm like "What the heck are you doing?"
Why are you taking pictures of random nonsense and posting them on social media.
They explained to me that "Snaps" are how they communicate with friends and that you need a photo of something to be able to send a snap.
So I'm like... "Well, a useless photo is not really communicating. Why are you sending useless photos to your friends?"
They then would say to me "Because I don't want to lose my streak."
What's a 'streak' I'd ask?
It's basically where Snapchat gives you a score of the number of days in a row that you've sent a 'snap' without missing a day.
This number accumulates like a score in a video game and if you miss a 'snap' you go all the way back down to zero.
It was this little addictive trick that snapchat had used to swindle kids into sending as many as 10,000 useless photos online, thereby keeping these kids hooked on the app.
As a dad, and someone who cares about getting the most from life, I couldn't fathom the amount of time wasted on something so pointless..
But what I thought didn't matter. The kids were hooked and there wasn't much I could to to help them see the life cost of something like that. At least at the time.
Over the years my kids have stopped worrying so much about their snap score and they aren't as crazy about it as they once were. Who knows, maybe I do have some little influence on them. (fingers crossed) :-)
Anyway, I hope you can see why that app used to drive me BONKERS.
One of my favorite quotes, which you may get sick of hearing from me if you continue to stay subscribed and read my emails, comes from Napoleon Hill.
"In every apparent setback lies the seed of an equal or greater advantage."
What could I learn from SnapChat about human behavior and motivation?
Could I use this same strategy on myself in ways that were productive and useful?
Tony Robbins once said that the 2 greatest human motivators are 'Hope of Gain' and 'Fear of Loss.' He went onto say that 'fear of loss' is by far the greater motivator to action.
I've seen this play out in my own business over and over again.
Run a promotion with a deadline, where there's something to lose if people don't take action and get started, and the customers come flooding in.
Because I've seen this happen, time and time again, I believe Tony was right.
Fear of loss is a powerful motivator.
What SnapChat had done, was tap into this power.
Because the kids were 'Afraid of losing' their streak, they'd be compelled to send those silly photos.
Again, I wondered, is this something I could use on myself as a motivator to do things that I know I need to do, consistantly, to help me becom the next best version of myself?
Well I'm about to let you in on a little secret.
Couple weeks ago, I was chatting with my programmer friend Brandon. He's the guy that created the personal growth app we bought last year.
During our conversation he asked me... "If there were one thing you wish the app had, that it doesn't have now, what would it be?"
I immediately knew the answer.
Could we build in a habit tracker, that keeps track of the number of days in a row you've performed a task, and display those numbers as streaks and even give you a score on how long your streak is?
His wish was my command and low and behold, just one week later, we have this POWERFUL functionality built into our app - and it's even BETTER than I imagined.
Here's how it works...
When you add an item to your 'to do' list, you can set it to repeat for whatever frequency you desire throughout the week.
