Happiness as Your Business Model

Happiness as Your incorporating the human drive for
fulﬁllment into your core business
Business Model

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but
from their regard to their own interest...
The Wealth of Nations, Book I Chapter II

yikes. well, thank goodness there was an

By pursuing his own interest he frequently
promotes that of the society more effectually than
when he really intends to promote it.

The Wealth of Nations, Book 4 Chapter II

but what is even more awesome is that this
invisible hand ain’t so invisible anymore

it’s a big freakin’ obvious hand and it
comes in the form of...

and we are using these tools to produce all sorts of
content online like

as we raise our voices, we are doing the stuff that
is making us really freakin’

we are raising our voices to our

we are sharing knowledge and becoming really
stinking

and we get to do ALL of this while hangin

this rocks. it is an ideal economic situation.

it’s an ideal economic situation for the people who
are part of

it is still trying to ﬁgure stuff out

if only there weren’t those darned people in the
equations, everything would go smoothly

see, most traditional economics see the world as
ﬁlled with

characteristics of homo-economicus

• efﬁcient

• predictable

• motivated by the best deals

• inﬂuenced heavily by marketing

• will always work in his/her own best interest

• mostly rational in buying decisions

(forgive me while I pause to roll my eyes.)

you and I both know that the people in the
marketplace look a great deal more like

characteristics of homo-feelgoodomicus

• inefﬁcient

• unpredictable

• motivated by what makes him/her happy

• ignores marketing messages where possible and rails against marketing
messages that annoy

• will sometimes cut of his/her nose to spite his/her face

• buys crap that makes no sense whatsoever, like those big foam ﬁngers for
$10 at sports games

you just can’t build prediction models for this stuff

...is a multi-billion dollar industry

[insert staggering stats here]

the key is in helping homo-feelgoodomicus feel
good

and this is where I segue into

lets talk a little about the history of positive
psychology...

psychology had a long history of being focused on
the negative stuff, like

but in 1998, Martin Seligman, proposed a focus on
the study of POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY.

positive psychology is the branch of psychology
that “studies the strengths and virtues that enable
individuals and communities to thrive.”

...but WHY happiness? why does this matter?

7 reasons that happiness is key to success

1. happy customers talk to more people about their positive experience

2. unhappy customers talk to the MOST people about their negative experience

3. happy customers are repeat customers

4. happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience

5. happy customers are loyal

6. happy customers will drive your marketing for you

7. happy employees are more productive, creative and loyal

exercise: what makes you happy?

for as many people there are on the planet, there is
a different answer for what makes us happy.

but the American Psychological Association dug
deep down into our hearts desires and found that
there ARE some universals. and they are...

autonomy includes:

•feeling in control of one’s surroundings

•understanding one’s own resilience

•feeling of agency

•empowerment

competence includes:

•conﬁdence in one’s abilities/knowing one’s strength’s

•feedback from others on one’s performance

•learning and growing skills

•self-actualization

•doing meaningful work

•getting into ﬂow

relatedness includes:

•interacting with others

•connecting with people and connecting people

•giving to others/being generous

•feeling loved

•emotional security

•acknowledgement and support (mentorship)

self-esteem includes:

•your ‘set-point’ or natural (genetic) conﬁdence level

•something you can work on through cognitive
behavioral therapy, meditation or medications

•not inﬂuenced from the outside world, but apparent
when triggered by events from the outside world

the pillars of happiness

• autonomy

• competence

• relatedness

• self-esteem or set point

from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA) 2007.

what is really important about knowing these pillars
is to understand what works AGAINST happiness
as much as what creates it.

contributors to fear

•ignorance

•misinformation

•insecurity

•inexperience

•fear-mongering

•mistrust

pew internet research noted that the majority of
people ages 50+ who are not online are not online
because of the scary stories they hear.

what leads to confusion

•paradox of choice

•noise ratio

•lack of clear information

•secretiveness

•half-truths

what causes loneliness

•isolation

•distrust of others

•fear of rejection

•lack of acceptance

•insecurity

what leads to lack of control

•loss of control over the circumstances of one’s life

•loss of agency

•withheld information

•secrecy

•uncontrollable circumstances

remember maslow’s hierarchy of needs

you
can’t
get here

without
all of
these
being
taken
care of

barriers to happiness

• fear

• confusion

• loneliness

• lack of control

• struggle for survival

hell bent on delivering miserable experiences

very consistent in helping their customers feel like

in order to be an agent of happiness, you need to
either create the environment for it or you have to
intervene in the barriers...

which means where there is the axis of misery,
there is the opportunity to make $$ making people
happy

(the bar is set amazingly low)

these companies have ﬂourished in the void where
the axis of misery entirely misses the point.

exercise: name an experience that made you
miserable. Could you build a business that does
the opposite? Discuss.

so...it’s one thing to remove the barriers to
happiness, it’s a whole other thing to

ﬁgure out the basic principles of

and be aware of them when we are designing our
websites, products or services, then we can

we need to take the stuff that leads to people
feeling autonomous and build it into what we are
doing...

5 ways to create feelings of autonomy

1. give people tools to personalize their experiences

2. build tools that democratize previously inaccessible industries

3. offer clear and attractive choices

4. be open and transparent

5. don’t lock people in

5 ways to increase feelings of competence

1. create ﬂow...simple entry point to more complex systems

2. allow ways for mentors to interact with newbies (create rewards)

3. build consecutive levels of achievement into the experience

4. plant ‘easter eggs’

5. don’t talk down to your customer

“ﬂow” - mihaly csikszentmihalyi (cheek-sent-me-high)

The ﬂow state is an optimal state of intrinsic
motivation, where the person is fully immersed in
what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone
has at times, characterized by a feeling of great
freedom, enjoyment, fulﬁllment, and skill—and
during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-
self, etc.) are typically ignored.

achieving ﬂow

• skills acquired along the way

• clear goals

• feedback provided along the way

• user control

• facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as
possible from so-called reality

5 ways to increase relatedness

1. build in multiple ways for customers to interact

2. have many collaborative experiences

3. create simple ways for customers to share with a friend

4. design for generosity

5. create online/ofﬂine meeting experiences

makes customers happy by

• WOW customer service (autonomy)

• comments/shared feedback on shoes (competence)

• twitter, blogging interactions (relatedness)

• 10 core values (all of the above)

create fun and a little weirdness

be adventurous, creative and open
minded

build open and honest relationships
with communication

build positive team and family spirit

the core values of zappos.com lead to an
incredibly rich set of relationships - with customers,
vendors and even competitors

customers employees

win + win + win = win

vendors zappos


• giving choice in style of notebook - but not too much choice (autonomy)

• connecting the experience with turn of the century intellectuals (competence)

• moleskinerie (relatedness)

• social object (relatedness)


• creating a tool for simple spurts of self expression (autonomy)

• ability to learn more advanced functions (competence)

• api allows people to build and be more creative with the core (competence)

• simplicity of tweeting questions and getting instant answers (competence)

• following others gives stream of consciousness (relatedness)

• learning about others day to day mundane to deep thoughts and emotions
(relatedness)


• holding regular PIBB chats, VIP program (autonomy)

• the ability to follow others and form groups around gathering knowledge
(competence)

• give thanks (relatedness)


• plugin architecture and templating system allows for total personalization
(autonomy)

• open source and transparent (autonomy)

• really simple hosted solutions all the way to self-installed (competence)

• lots of easter eggs (competence)

• sphere plugin, promotion of popular blogs, comment systems and trackbacks
(relatedness)

exercise: applying the principles of happiness to
YOUR company

would say if he were alive today to see his

turn into the much more active

whatever his reaction, I bet he’d be delighted with
how the free market has been moved by the

of your business relies on the

licensing:

http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue

about those rockin’ images:
• Many are from iStockphoto.com (totally cool site) except
for:
• kissing couple: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teointarifa/490408075/

• robots with penny: http://flickr.com/photos/frogmuseum2/240455686/

• web 2.0 montage: http://flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/

• wiki chalkboard: http://flickr.com/photos/teemow/29921948/

• moleskine: http://flickr.com/photos/confusedvision/226129765/

• twittering: http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/420074166/ (http://
www.laughingsquid.com)

• zipcar: http://www.zipcar.com

• southwest airlines: http://flickr.com/photos/smartjunco/421611105/

• skype cards: http://flickr.com/photos/ndm007/284882959/

• misery license plate: http://flickr.com/photos/mollyeh11/931046867/

some references
• Craig Newmark Quote: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/
2004/08/15/NEWMARK.TMP

• Avant Game: http://www.avantgame.com

• Cruel 2 B Kind: http://www.cruelgame.com

• Microformats: http://www.microformats.org

• OpenID: http://www.openid.net

• Creative Commons: http://www.creativecommons.org

• BarCamp: http://barcamp.org

• Coworking: http://coworking.info

• Ma.gnolia: http://ma.gnolia.com

• API (Application Programming Interface): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

• Friend Wheel: http://apps.facebook.com/friendwheel

• Great internet stats: http://pewinternet.org

• Whufﬁe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whufﬁe

• Porn addiction recovery: http://www.no-porn.com/

Tara Hunt

tara@citizenagency.com
415.694.1951
skype: tarahunt747

www.citizenagency.com
www.horsepigcow.com

Happiness as Your Business Model

Happiness as Your Business Model

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