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- Why are Perfect Ted SO BLOODY good? Using Behavioural Science to Unlock their Hidden Super Powers (+ deffo implement these too)
Why are Perfect Ted SO BLOODY good? Using Behavioural Science to Unlock their Hidden Super Powers (+ deffo implement these too)
Dan Pope
November 15, 2024
I sat by the roaring fire and I’d never felt so cold. Marrow melted to ice.
The fire danced her luscious orange and blue and white flames crackled into a biscuity chorus. I thought: my soul should feel like Sticky Toffee Pudding. Warm - cosy - oozy. But it was cold like railway tracks in early January after all the Christmas warmth melts away.
I thought more.
How do you test the temperature of the country?
How do you get a feel for the feeling of what people are feeling?
Fuck off to a pub.
YUP. I was at a pub. I won’t say the name.
I escaped the biting Autumnal air and walked into the pub.
The Front House was a Donald-Downer. A Front-of-House who’d rather be Back-At-Home ferociously wanking into a packet of Tesco Wafer Thin Ham.
People, here, were shaggy-sheep-sheepy-shaggy-baggy-faggy-scraggly — Cloudy Lemonade— personalities — eyes curdled with Mr. Sleep —- Walking YAAAAAWWWWNNNSS and STRETCHEEESSSSSSSS.
Here people quaff back Cider or Craft. No Standard Draft. That’d be Daft. I laughed.
I expected the luscious creamy-dreamy West Country cheeky bumpkin fun:
“funnily enough my luvaa, us Devon folk bladdy lavs us Fudge we daz”
“owrite maa luvaaa, how are yaa getting on?”
“fancy a hob goblin cidreee?”!
Instead it was cold.
The feeling in the pub was so cold.
The kinda pub where cute Grandad’s transmogrify to miserable gits quick. Cold faces. Chips on their shoulders. Complaining about cold chips. Them bladdy miserable gits.
“These chips are bloody COLD! Bloody COLD I tell you. Send them back!! EXCUUUUSEEEEEE ME…these sodding chips are BLODDY FREEZINGl”
“Send them back now…!!”
Gaggle of saggy-scrotum-faced walkers. Chunky kit chorus.
Wallies in Wellies who love the word “Weaponise”.
The whole pub had a lobotomy, it felt like the pub had had a stroke.
“would you like a menu?”
“No mate, I’d like you to shit on my face”
”Yes, a menu, would be helpful”
Then, that all changed. One man with optimism came in. That one man was our American Family Friend Paul.
Paul is from Ventura, California. Paul has an endless sense of optimism and curiosity.
Paul’s entrance to the pub, shone a light on the stark difference between British and American founders.
The British Pub typifies the British feeling: we are pessimists. We suffer tall poppy syndrome. I love it. I love taking the piss out everything and anything with my mates. I love the pub. I love the sardonicism.
And that explains why Perfect Ted are so successful?
An American Mindset in a British Culture is a Truly Unfair Advantage
But being a raging optimist is an unfair advantage in the UK.
Half the reason PerfectTed are so successful - Teddie, Marissa and Levi spent time in America where anything is possible.
Paul Graham, founder of YC combinator, who lives in the UK says (on a Tyler Cowan podcast) “the problem with the British is they’re incredibly bright and intellectual, but we severely lack ambition”
A question I’ve been thinking about: How do I 100x my ambition?
THE Crimbo DOO for Founders & Directors last few tickets left… grab em here!!
Creativity is Intelligence having Fun - Albert Einstein
Am reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. Tells the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the founding dons of behavioural economics. And, latterly, Danny wrote the seminal book Thinking Fast & Slow
In Thinking Fast & Slow Danny Kahneman created:
System 1 Personality (Fast)
System 2 Personality (Slow)
System 1 is intuition.
System 2 is solving long, hard problems.
The greatest challenger teams are strong at dancing between System 1 and System 2.
Thinking Fast: being relentlessly resourceful and acting quickly with intuition.
Thinking Slow: really thinking about the strategy and vision of the brand.
Perfect Ted typify a challenger brand with the ability to Think Fast and Slow
Interestingly, in the book, Danny and Amos are TOTAL opposites:
Danny was pessimistic, untidy, sardonic, shy.
Amos was optimistic, neat, crazy, gregarious
The thing that kept them together?
Laughter.
Laughter.
Laughter
When I went to the PerfectTed office to record our podcast.
One thing SLAPPED me round the face and stuck with me ever since. The laughter in the office.
These guys and girls laugh. and laugh. and laugh.
and graft. and graft. and graft.
Laughter = more graft.
PerfectTed are Laughter-Grafters.
Some other musings to quaff back
Seth Godin: The Professional is Hard on themselves, the Amateur is Easy on themselves.
Check out latest pod with Seth
My inner monologue is a right little mendacious scumbag at times. Tells me I’m bad at everything.
“You’re shit. You’re an idiot. That was awful”
I am, through discipline, getting better at being harsh on my work but NOT on myself.
Chris Williamson has a great line on his podcast with Matthew McConaughey where he says “You know what I’d buy me a beer”.
Love that. Helps me separate my worth from my work.
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