A New Kind of Poor

Here’s your latest issue of Influence Anyone—where you get a strategy each week to influence human behavior for good from Howie and the Behavioring Company team.

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Here's a question few people ask themselves:

Can you be successful by every metric and still be poor?

This week, we unpack the most expensive behavioral science mistake smart, capable people make without realizing it. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with whether anyone remembers you when it counts.

(If you want the deep dive, keep scrolling 👇🏽)

Benjamin Disraeli was born over 220 years ago and served as UK Prime Minister in the 1800s. He once said:

"Most people die with their music still in them."

Nearly two centuries later, that line still stops people cold because the problem it describes still haunts many people.

He’s not literally talking about music. It's about potential that never found an audience. Ideas that never got heard. Expertise that stayed invisible, despite being really valuable.

We often think of poverty as financial. But there's another kind of poverty that doesn't show up on your bank statement.

Being poor in impact. In visibility. In influence. In significance.

Here's the one that costs the most: you are not memorable.

Why? Because opportunities don't go to the best person. They go to the person people remember at the moment of decision. You can be world-class at what you do and still lose to someone less qualified — simply because they're the one who comes to mind first.

What you should remember: Talent that nobody recalls is talent that doesn't get chosen. Memory creates opportunity. If people can't recall you at the moment it counts, you don't exist to them.

As promised, influence in 60 seconds.

Let me tell you about a phenomenon most professionals don't know about but every hiring manager, buyer, and decision-maker operates on constantly.

It's called the availability heuristic.

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified it decades ago. The concept is simple: when your brain needs to make a decision, it reaches for whatever comes to mind most easily. What's most available in memory is treated as most important.

The 95/5 rule in marketing, popularized by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn's B2B Institute, reveals that at any given time, only about 5% of your target market is actively ready to buy. The remaining 95% are "out-of-market" and simply not ready to make a purchase today. And the person, the company who ultimately wins the contract isn't necessarily the best. It's someone the buyer thought of first when the need arose, and it felt the least risky.

It's why a candidate gets a job offer not because they had the strongest skills, but because someone in the room said, "Hey I saw that person speak at the conference three months ago"

It's why referrals go to the colleague who shows up consistently. The one who's visible and memorable, not the one who's technically superior but hidden.

Familiarity creates trust. Exposure creates preference. Recall creates opportunity.

Here's the uncomfortable implication: you can spend years becoming world-class at your craft, and someone far less qualified can outperform you in the market simply by being more visible and more memorable.

That's not a theory. That's how the brain works.

There's another layer to this.

Psychologists call it the Von Restorff effect: distinct things are remembered; average things fade into the background.

Your brain cannot retain everything it encounters, so it filters constantly. It ignores what's ordinary and flags what's unusual. This is why you remember the one person at the conference who said something unexpected. Why you recall the ad that felt different from every other ad. Why one story stays with you while a hundred other statistics vanish.

Now think about how most professionals show up.

They use the same language as everyone else. They describe their work with the same titles, the same credentials, the same template as everyone in their industry. They water down their opinions to avoid controversy. Because blending in feels safe.

And here's where it gets painful.

Thousands of years ago, standing out from the tribe carried real risk. Being rejected could mean being cast out. And being cast out could mean death. Your nervous system hasn't forgotten this. Psychologists call it the spotlight effect — the persistent belief that others are watching and judging your every move.

Spoiler: They're not.

Everyone is too focused on their own spotlight to notice yours.

But the fear feels real enough to keep smart, talented people invisible. Blending into the background, year after year, waiting for their expertise to speak for itself.

But it doesn't.

You don't need to be Richard Branson. You don't need to stunt your way into the news or build a media empire.

But you do need to make a deliberate choice: stop relying on your work to be found, and start creating conditions to be remembered.

Here's a practical frame:

1. Own a clear, repeatable message. If someone who met you six months ago can't describe what you do in one sentence, you have a memorability problem. The brain can't recommend what it can't recall. Give people a phrase that sticks and use it consistently.

2. Show up where decisions get made. Recall requires exposure. That means being consistently visible in the spaces where your buyers, clients, and collaborators think — before they need you. Don’t show up everywhere. Just the right places, on repeat.

3. Be specific enough to be distinctive. The Von Restorff effect works in your favor when you hold a clear point of view, say something different, or connect your work to an idea that matters.

The goal to be clearer, more consistent, and more memorable than you are right now.

Try this today: Ask three people — a colleague, a client, a friend outside your industry — "If you had to describe my work to a stranger in one sentence, what would you say?" Vague or inconsistent answers mean you've found your starting point.

Memorability is one of seven behavioral science patterns quietly making smart people poor. The other six are just as real:

Each one comes with the research, the experiment, or the story that makes it impossible to forget (and there is a bonus number 8). That's what the episode is for.

🎧 [Listen to Episode 84 →]

Most people die with their music still in them.

Not because they weren't talented. Not because the world didn't need what they had to offer.

But because nobody knew it existed.

You have something worth being remembered for. The question is whether you'll create the conditions for people to remember it or spend another year waiting for your expertise to speak for itself.

Build your presence with the same intention you built your expertise.

The world doesn't always find the best person.

It finds the person it remembers.

You’re one of the few people who’ve made it all the way to the end of this newsletter. Amazing! Know that this newsletter is written by me, a human to you, a human.

If you reply with an answer to this question: Do you ever feel like the music is still in you, and nobody has heard it yet?

I will send you a little something special 🎁

Alright, people of influence, I’ll see you next Sunday.

Change behavior, change lives 🤘🏽

Howie Chan

Creator of Influence Anyone

​Follow me on LinkedIn

P.S. Research shows the brain is 22 times more likely to remember a fact when it's wrapped in a story. This week, the most important story you could tell might be your own.