Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that you should help people see why they
Speaker 1: need whatever you are offering. If you have the aspirin,
Speaker 1: what's their headache? Today's tip comes from the work of
Speaker 1: Dan Meyer, a mathematics teacher educator. Meyer focuses a lot
Speaker 1: on student motivation and what scholars have called intellectual need.
Speaker 1: How do you get kids to want and need to
Speaker 1: learn whatever math, algorithm or method you are teaching, or,
Speaker 1: as he puts it, if math is the aspirin, then
Speaker 1: how do you create the headache? Sometimes this is a
Speaker 1: good question. I am not sure what the average person
Speaker 1: encounters in his or her daily life that the cosign
Speaker 1: will solve, but the general point is good. If you
Speaker 1: are offering a product or service, it behooves you to
Speaker 1: help your customers figure out what problem they have that
Speaker 1: you are solving. You want them to see why they
Speaker 1: need you. In my case, I help people think through
Speaker 1: time challenges they are facing. Too much to do, not
Speaker 1: enough time for fun, doing all the urgent stuff and
Speaker 1: never getting to anything important. Guess what, I've got some
Speaker 1: ideas that just might solve these problems. You've got a
Speaker 1: time headache, and listening to before breakfast or reading my
Speaker 1: books might make you feel better. There is probably a
Speaker 1: similar approach in your line of work. If you are
Speaker 1: a nutritionist, you want to get your patients to notice
Speaker 1: when they are lethargic or jittery, or have constant stuff aches.
Speaker 1: You want them to believe that the changes to their
Speaker 1: diets you are recommending will relieve these issues. If you
Speaker 1: are applying for a job, you want to think what
Speaker 1: problems the organization is facing that you can solve. I
Speaker 1: have worked with several people who have identified specific problems
Speaker 1: with my business and then shown what they can do
Speaker 1: to solve them. We can have certain forms of aspirin
Speaker 1: in our family lives too. You may believe that your
Speaker 1: middle schoolers should start studying for tests before the morning
Speaker 1: of the tests, and you would probably be right in
Speaker 1: this belief. But until he gets a bad grade and
Speaker 1: experiences that headache, he may not be particularly interested in
Speaker 1: the aspirin of your advice to plot out a study
Speaker 1: calendar for the week before a test. I don't pop
Speaker 1: aspirin just because I'm guessing you don't either. The pain
Speaker 1: needs to be noticeable. Now. Of course, I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: that you go around persuading people they have make believe
Speaker 1: problems that you can solve. But most of us have
Speaker 1: at least some struggles of some sort, even if we
Speaker 1: don't think about them all the time. Helping people see
Speaker 1: specific ones can make them more receptive to whatever you
Speaker 1: can do to help. In the meantime, This is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our times. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.