Welcome back. If you are watching on YouTube, take it all in because this is probably the most color you will ever see me wear. For those of you that are listening, I am quite literally head to toe. Not head to toe. My headband is definitely still black. We had to reel it in at least a little bit. Can you imagine if my headband was also red?

No, we’re not going to take it that far. Um, I am almost head to toe in bright red. This is a new set from Paragon Fitwear. This is the brand that I’ve been working with. I’ve been collabing with for Sheesh. Five years? Four years. A while. A long while. Um, I don’t do a lot of, like, brand collaborations. I pretty much, at this point, work with Legion for supplements, which they just launched.

Creatine gummies, I just did, like, a little taste test on my Instagram story. And Paragon. These are, like, the two companies that are, like, my ride or dies. So, they do not sponsor the show. I’m just mentioning it. This is where, literally, if you ever see me in a gym, Outfit, or any athleisure at all, it is 99. 9 percent of the time from Paragon.

So, anyway, I’m not here to just tell you about, uh, in fact, we’re talking about something completely different. But, I mean, it wouldn’t be an episode with me if I wasn’t starting with some kind of random bullshit. So, anyway, hello! Hope you’re all doing well today. We are talking about the EAST framework today.

This is a framework developed by the Behavioral Insights team. They did this in 2012, I believe. Yes, 2012. And I used this inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification Inside Level 2 as another framework to use. Um, and I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second, but um, I’m going Make sure that you are including and this is based on essentially a summary of research findings and frameworks are really great in general for that very reason because it takes academic speak and jargon that is often confusing to apply.

I mean, if you don’t have any training on how to decipher. an empirical article, like if you just went to like Google Scholar, PubMed, something pulled a paper on behavior change, it’s difficult to pull from that and go, okay, now what do I, how do I use this to apply it to the real world? And in fact, that is why I left academia and am sitting here speaking to you fine people, because I care so much more about actually applying.

The science to the real world and getting into the hands of people who are doing the work versus doing the research and publishing it and putting it into a journal and crossing my fingers and hoping that someone’s going to read it and apply it. So today I do not do any research myself. I’m no longer in the lab, but I take research from other people and apply it for you all.

So. Again, the EAST Framework, developed by the Behavioral Insights Team in 2012, it’s essentially a simple outline that was developed to inform policy development and for practitioners to follow. And we can take this framework and translate it into Behavior change understanding and knowledge to be used with ourselves and with our clients and for those of you who maybe are just tuning in for the first time or just getting to know me, most of what I do is applying behavior change and mindset science to health and fitness coaching practices, but it doesn’t just have to be health and fitness.

I won’t mention health and fitness quite a lot as far as my examples go, but if you’re a life coach, if you’re a mentor, if you are helping people with their behavior in any form or fashion, this content is going to be helpful for you. Okay, so the EAST framework, it’s composed of four aspects. E is for easy.

A is for attractive, S is for social, and T is for timely. Basically, if you want a behavior to be more likely to happen, then you should be considering those four things. Easy, attractive, social, and timely. This is a simple science backed framework, but please keep in mind that when it comes to behavior change, this is not the full picture of what influences behavior change.

behavior. This is a really simple framework. It is based on science, but it is not everything about behavior change. There’s a lot more that goes into it when it comes to like motivations, belief systems, things like that, much of which we do talk about on this very podcast. Um, but this framework is really great as far as like giving you guidelines to follow and something to essentially assess what you’re doing with folks in your coaching practices, in your interventions, in your programs, whatever, but it is not.

Everything that you need to know from a behavior change standpoint. All right, let’s break it down. Starting with E for easy. This is pretty self explanatory, I do think. Um, we are more likely to do something when it’s easy to do. When there’s less friction involved. If something feels like a hassle, it’s less likely to get done, right?

We know this, but like how often are, like some of the stuff like I am saying in these podcast episodes, I understand when I say them, I’m like, this is so simple. And sort of like, duh, right? But at the same time, I’m curious, like, how many of you out there that are coaching other people, trying to help people change their behaviors, their lifestyles, whatever, how often are you actually sitting down and going, like, okay.

Does, the way that I’m explaining this, does this plan, does how we’re setting up this, like, series of events for this person, is it actually going to be easy for them? Is it actually hassle free? Is there not a lot of friction involved? Like, you’re probably not actually sitting down to evaluate it. So, please keep in mind, I’m not just saying, like, of course it needs to be easy, of course it needs to be timely and social and attractive, like, That is not the point of this episode and is not the point of the framework.

You should actually be sitting down to evaluate and assess these things and not just like sit here and listen and go, duh, I already knew that. Because chances are you’re actually probably not taking the time to assess every step of the way when you’re working with a client to see if you’re actually paying attention to these things.

Okay? Okay. So clearly there is some more foundation, some groundwork. That I needed to like, there that I, that I skipped over, but okay, back to easy. So ways that you can do this, and this is coming from that, the Behavioral Insights team. I have some notes here from that team specifically when they developed this framework.

Again, this is based on tons and tons of research in this area of behavior change. So something that they suggest is using defaults. Some of this came from like, if we’re thinking about defaults when it comes to, there’s a pre checked box on the form for like organ donation, right? People are more likely to sign up for organ donation if the box itself is checked already.

You have to uncheck the box if you don’t want to do it. Something like that, like that would be a real true default. So then I had to start to think like, well, how could this be, um, translated to Coaching practices or just behavior change in general and just knowing that we have a strong tendency to want to stay with the default option or like what maybe we’ve already done in the past because that’s just like it’s easier, there’s less friction, requires less thought, like we’re always trying to.

Seek shortcuts and save mental resources, like this is just how our brains work. I believe like there’s a term, it’s like cognitive misers is what we are. So how can we work with that? When you think about your clients and maybe their default routines, things that they’re doing automatically every day, like relatively automatically, how do we then maybe fit some of these?

behavior change practices, new habits, new behaviors into their default settings. So think about that. Another big thing is just to reduce the hassle and the friction, which I sort of already mentioned already. How can we make the things we want to do as easy as possible and make the things we don’t want to do as difficult as possible?

Like, that’s really, that’s all there, that’s, that’s what there is to it, right? Um, from a health and fitness perspective, if you’re trying to Reduce your snacking on unhealthy options. Put the healthy options out on the counter. Make them easier to access. Put them in front of your face as soon as you open the fridge door.

Take the unhealthy options and put them at the top shelf so you have to use a stool in order to get to it. You know, little things like that can make a really big difference. And we actually have a ton of research to support those things. Um. I don’t have this written down and I am a little bit worried that I’m going to butcher it, but there was a, there’s a study and this is like back in the depths of my brain right now.

Um, it was children, children, like elementary school, I want to say again, like don’t fully quote me on this, but this is essentially the, the idea of the study was they’re trying to have the kids at school not opt to drink . and buy chocolate milk and instead be more likely to grab like a water or white milk.

And they essentially rearranged the refrigerator, the container where you get, pick the milk out from. And before it was kind of like scattered all over the place, so here’s white milk, here’s chocolate milk, here’s water. And instead they moved the chocolate milk all the way to the back, so it did require kind of like a stretch, a strain if you will, to grab the chocolate milk to reach over the other options.

And just doing that. Increased. And he was like decreased. I really should have run this down. And I’m sorry. And this is where I will tell you that I don’t know the exact details, but I’m essentially just trying to paint the picture for you. It decreased the chocolate milk sales by something ridiculous.

Like I truly it was somewhere between like 40 to 60 percent like crazy. And that’s just because friction was introduced to the chocolate milk purchase, right? So how can you essentially do that with your clients, with yourself, for those behaviors that you’re trying to change or, or do more of. It could work either way, right?

Um, so like, another example could be when clients apply to work with you, like kind of going back to that idea of like the pre filled forms. Is there a way to already fill out some information in that form for them so they’re having to do less work in order to actually put their application through for you?

So maybe it like save their data and pull it over from something else or something we do at. KJO is when people apply to work with us, they, their first, the first thing they have to do, and you guys can see this on the website, kjocoaching. com, you click any of the buttons, there’s a pop up, a box that asks for their name and email first, so it’s It’s super simple, super easy.

Just all you have to do is put in your name and email and then you click a button and that button then takes you to the full application form. So it reduces the amount of friction to get the process started because all it’s requiring you is to put in your name and email versus like, I’m. immediately faced with this, like, longer application, and I don’t have time to fill all this out right now, and then people opt out, right?

Um, the beauty with this is that when they put in their name and email, we still have the ability to contact them, and we can see that they started the application. Even if then they get to that next screen, and then they see the full application, they’re like, I don’t want to do this right now. But now we’ve captured their information, so we have the ability to reach back out and touch base and make it easier for them again.

So, That’s an opportunity for you and how you can kind of like leverage this. I’m like, I’m honestly constantly thinking about ease and making things easier for people, reducing the friction when it comes to sales and marketing specifically. Like how can you make this process as easy as possible for your prospective clients, prospective buyers to purchase from you, to learn more about to take that first step.

Keep that in mind. Um, The last thing that I have down here for easy coming from the behavioral insights team is to simplify messages. Keep it simple. Like, this is such an important one, and it’s great that so many of you have fancy fitness language at your disposal to talk about, you know, mechanisms of hypertrophy and all of that jazz.

It’s amazing. But it doesn’t mean you should always be using it with your clients. Sounding smart is not actually the smartest thing to do when it comes to behavior change. Clients are much more likely to do things if it feels very clear and concise and, again, easy. Simple. Loading them up with a 20 minute Loom video about, again, yeah, mechanisms of hypertrophy or teaching them the frickin Krebs cycle and carbohydrate utilization, like, just, just don’t.

Just don’t. Unless you have a very advanced audience and you are actually teaching these things, it’s not actually going to be helpful. Something that I’m always doing, like, even like, Instagram post sales pages is constantly like what I will often do is like write out everything that I would ideally want to say in and I’m not, I’ve honestly gotten a lot better about not using a lot of jargon myself and that was hard for me.

That was a hard habit for me to break coming out of academia. Have you sat down and read like a research article? It’s not. Flowy, pretty language. It’s like dense and, uh, academic. It’s dense and academic. And I had to really try to, like, break free of that when I spent more time writing sales pages than empirical articles and Instagram posts, right?

And blog articles rather than research articles. Um. So, I’m constantly doing this and I will often write out everything and then go back and pare it back down and see like how can I make this shorter, how can I make this more concise, how can I make this more simple, how can I potentially turn this into an acronym and make it even easier to remember, which is beautiful because we’re talking about an acronym right now, the EAST framework, right?

So, yeah. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Alright, A of the EAST framework is for attractive. And I don’t mean like good looking in this case, right? Um, however, when it comes to sales and marketing, like we’re talking about ad creative or again, sales pages. Yes. Like attractive. Good looking is important because when someone lands on your website or they see an ad, like that’s a first impression, you better be good looking.

Okay. So that does, that is important. Like a visually appealing. Advertisement or Instagram posts like I’m sure some of you have been to other people’s Instagram pages or websites and just immediately been like, oh, this does not look good. And that does, whether you realize it or not, influence your perspective of their ability to provide the service that they say they’re going to, right?

I mean. Especially if you are in, like, the sales and marketing space, like, don’t, please don’t be, like, a graphic designer or tell me that you can build out me this beautiful sales funnel and then I go to your sales funnel or I check out your page and it’s, like, could use some help, you know? Um, but it, it kind of goes for everything and I don’t want you to, please, please, please don’t get hung up on this either if you’re like, oh my god, Kasey told me my Instagram needs to look perfect, otherwise nobody’s gonna hire me, that’s not what I’m saying, but do make sure it’s attractive.

Um. When it comes to, like, visually, yes, like, that’s important. And you’ll be more likely to take action on something if you, like, see an advertisement that catches your eye, obviously. So if we’re trying to get someone to do something as in click this, click this link, click this ad, do this thing, then yeah, I mean good looking, like, visually appealing, attractive.

But attractive also in other forms, too. Like, Incentivizing someone to want to do something. So you can incentivize someone to leave a review if they get a gift card. You know, so we’re trying to get them to do a behavior, a. k. a. leave a review. They get a, actually, I have a great example of this. Did you know, if you leave a review on this podcast, and screenshot that review, and put it into the form, which we have linked in the show notes, Then you are eligible to win a free workshop from me.

Every single month we do this. Every single month we’re picking a reviewer. I am trying to get you to do a specific behavior, leave a review, and I’m incentivizing you to do that. So, I’m making the behavior more attractive by giving you the opportunity to potentially win a workshop. So, that is, that is a great example, um, but we want to be careful with this one because It’s all fun and games to, to gamify the situation in this way, but it also makes it a very extrinsically motivated thing.

If you’ve not listened to the episode on motivation and know the difference between extrinsic, intrinsic, and everything in between, I do suggest listening to that episode. Um, especially when it comes to health and fitness behaviors that we’re trying to make more habitual and just do because we want to do it.

We don’t want to always have this incentivization, especially from an extrinsic perspective, that you’re doing this thing for something outside of you, not like for yourself or for your own enjoyment, right? So we want to be very careful with that and not gamify things all of the time. Um, personalization.

This is another way to make a behavior seem more attractive, which is the A of the EAST framework that we’re still on here. So when working with clients. This, this should be obvious, right? When we’re talking about like personalizing nutrition plans and training plans and things like that. Personalizing something makes it more attractive, which is why it’s a selling point, right?

If you can say I’m going to personalize this strength training for you versus giving you a templated program that I give to all my clients, which one sounds more attractive and therefore more likely to want to do? The personalized one, right? So, It can be really obvious when something’s not personalized too and it feels like a templated response, like an email response, or that clients aren’t getting personalized attention and it feels like they’re just like, One person on a spreadsheet of a hundred different clients, they can feel that, and they can feel when it’s not personalized in it.

Your coaching services become unattractive very quickly. So the more you can personalize, the better. And the last thing I have for attractive is fun. How can you build community? How can you make challenges? How can you better build the relationship between you and your clients, which is part of the GROW model is something that I teach all of the time.

Do I even have an episode on the GROW model yet? Man, we got to do one of those. Um, that, that’ll get on the docket here soon to break down the GROW model for you guys. This is the framework, more frameworks. Um, This is a framework that I operate from inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, inside coaching practices, and so much of everything that I do has been built off of this GRRRL model framework, so, um, Anyway, make it fun!

Because fun is more attractive! People are more likely to do things when they’re fun. And there’s lots of ways to do that inside your coaching practices. Again, challenges, building community, creating relationships, all of it. Fun! Attractive? More likely to get done. Alright, and we’re on to S, which is social.

Whether we want to admit it or not, our behaviors are influenced by what other people say and do. And the Behavioral Insights team, who created this framework, the EAST framework, suggests that we focus on a few things underneath. So I’m going to talk a little bit about the first one, which is kind of social, this social aspect.

The first one is social norms, because we want to do things that other people are doing and it feels safe, it feels comfortable to follow social norms rather than going against the grain. That is just the truth of the matter. Some of you may think in your head, like, no, I want to go against the grain and I like doing that.

Yeah, that’s, I get it, but like when we’re working with other people, you have to understand that social norms are at play and people are going to feel more comfortable doing what’s considered normal. We see this all the time with clients who are having a hard time, you know, cutting back on drinking or having, like, going into situations where food is abundant and everybody’s going up for seconds and them saying, like, no, like going against the grain in those situations doesn’t feel comfortable and it’s hard to do.

So instead, how can you Mention maybe what your other clients are doing in order to help encourage a behavior in a current client, right? Even just a little mention in your, like, voice memo response, email response to a client check in, just saying, like, Gosh, you know what? I’ll All of my clients, almost, are doing this thing and it’s been really helpful for them to hit their macros or whatever, just like little mentions of that, like how can you help encourage a behavior based on a norm that maybe you see amongst your other clients or you can, you can pull on that you’ve

You can also add yourself into groups where, like, the social norms of that group are aligned with the behaviors that you want to change. So, you know, talking to clients, too, about how they could potentially find new groups of friends. Not necessarily get rid of their old friends, you know, unless that is That is the necessity there.

Um, how we can essentially seek out social norms in other groups and then put ourselves in that group and now suddenly we’re working with this idea of social norms because we want to do the things that the other people are doing. And if you put yourself in a room full of people that are doing things that you would like to be doing, Mm, mm.

Works out, right? Um, that works really well too. I mean, if you’re thinking about yourself, for those of you who are business owners, which I know a lot of you are, things like masterminds often get like a bad rap. Um, I’m in an amazing mastermind group right now. And Being in the room with like 30 plus other stu stupid successful business owners and so many people that are quite far ahead of me in even just like amount of experience, time that they’ve been in business, things that they’ve tried.

The social norm in that group is, like, growth mindset oriented, always trying out new things, perseverance, like, all of this stuff, like, it’s like, don’t, like, never give up type of attitudes. Like, that’s the norm of the group. If you are not doing that, like, you’re the odd one out, you know? So Finding groups and putting yourself into rooms where the norms are aligned with the person that you want to be, the behaviors that you want to adopt.

It’s honestly like a hack, truly. Behavioral Insights team knew it. The next one is social networks. So, notice how the networks that you are part of inform your behaviors. Whether that’s like, Work relationship, friend groups, church, um, even the people that you follow or are like connected to on social media.

Introduce. new ideas to your network and watch how they may want to get behind it as well. So you could be sort of like the ringleader of setting these new social norms or leveraging networks of people to kind of like rally behind new behaviors, ideas, and kind of getting together as a group to do it.

And the last one that they have listed here is commitment devices. So we often We tend to fall prey to something called the intention behavior gap, which I’ve mentioned before on the podcast. And we know that we do this, right? We know that we often intend to do something, but then Actually doing it is quite different than that intention, right?

So we do try to close this gap with certain commitment devices to keep, to bridge that gap between intention and action. So these are things that help us stick to doing what we say that we want. to do. And these don’t have to always be social in nature. These, this is falling underneath like the social category of the EAST framework, but those are the kinds that are encouraged by the behavioral insights team.

And this is again, based on research. So examples could be obviously signing up to work with a coach, right? And this is so great because you could go to your prospective clients and say like, we have lots and lots of research to support the utilization of. And the utility, the value of commitment devices, and that is signing on for something that will essentially commit you to doing the thing that you say you’re going to do.

And what do you think a health and fitness coach is? A health and fitness coach is a perfect example of a social commitment device because you’re getting the accountability from another person. Um, I’m taking Spanish lessons and my girl, Nancy, Profesora, Nancy, she is my commitment device. I have tried so many different apps and games, freaking Duolingo, all the things to try to get back on my Spanish game and I’m just not very good about doing it.

It’s not enough of a commitment device for me. But if I have Nancy on my calendar, we, we have Zoom Spanish lessons one to two times per week. I’m not going to not show up, right? I’m gonna go. So Nancy is my commitment device to practicando mi español. Okay, last aspect of the EAST framework is T for Timely.

I like this one a lot, personally, because it’s also part of my, one of my frameworks, which is the Smarter Goal Setting Framework. There’s an entire episode on that one, too, if you go back and find that one. And I talk about how I, I changed the T from the original SMART goal framework, which is time bound, to timely instead, and it was actually really cool for me to come across the EAST framework and go, Oh my god, that T is the same as my T!

We have the same T! We’re, we’re both on to something with the same T, which is timely. Um, and it’s essentially this idea of Considering the timing of when behaviors are being prompted or encouraged in our coaching practices, like, understanding when in time are your clients going to be most receptive to the message, to the thing that you’re talking to them about, that you’re encouraging them to do.

Like, being aware and tapped in to the timeliness factor of when they may be most receptive. Same thing goes for sales and marketing. Consider what’s going on in the world and what people are up against. Um, for instance, right now, like, weight loss drugs are all the rage. They’re freaking everywhere.

Everyone’s talking about, um, GLP 1 agonists and, um, I don’t even know. What is it? Monjaro? What are the names of all of them? Isn’t there like a Wigo, Wigovi? What is the most popular one? I’m totally blanking on it. Um, either way, whatever. Um, oh, it’s gonna bother me though. And all of you are probably like driving in your car saying it right now.

This is, this is the answer, Casey. I can’t hear you. I’m sorry. Um, anyway, that’s like what’s. So, being timely with what you’re talking about from a health and fitness perspective is understanding like what people are up against, what other messages that they’re hearing. So, being timely with those messages in your content, in your conversations with them.

Um, another thing that I can bring up here is a concept called habit discontinuity. I teach on this inside the health mindset coaching certification and it’s essentially this idea that we believe that. When life gets shaken up, we have massive changes, you start a new job, a new relationship, you move to a new city, that that is the worst time.

To be introducing new habits and behaviors, but according to this concept of habit discontinuity, it’s actually one of the best times because you are breaking yourself free of your usual day to day autopilot type of life, like, this is what I do when I wake up in the morning in this space, I get in the car and I drive to this place.

If some of that changes. And your life is different. That’s actually a great time to start re evaluating your priorities and your goals and what happens in behaviors you want. To be present in your day to day life. So, this is understanding the timeliness of your life, of your clients lives. And during those times, you’re not just the support system to help them stay grounded and like, keep doing things the same.

Actually, what you should be doing, according to this concept, is Helping them recognize that this is a really great opportunity for them to evaluate how they actually want their lives to be. Because they’re no longer stuck in this usual autopilot that they have been probably for years. And things are now changing, so like, let’s ride that wave of change and see how we want to, how we want to let the chips fall and not just let them fall on their own.

So, that said, that wraps up each part of the EAST framework. Easy. Attractive. Social and timely. Keep in mind that this is not intended to be a complex or comprehensive tool to change behavior. Instead, it is just a simplified framework using research on behavior change to inform you when you are working with people to change their behavior or pick up a new behavior, change a habit, drop a habit, etc.

The main focus of this framework is choice architecture, which is essentially that point in time when someone has to make a decision to do something or not do something. So it really is just all about like that moment in time and does not consider motivation, belief systems, um, what’s going on, like the intricacies of what’s going on underlying someone’s behavior to do something or not do something.

You’ll find all of that stuff in many other episodes. On this podcast and of course in depth inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification if that’s something that you want to dive into for yourself or for your clients. So, my friends, to sum it all up, the things you want to consider when you are wanting to help encourage behavior change or help someone change the way that they are currently doing something.

How easy is it? How can you make the behavior even more simple? How attractive is it? Is there a way that you can create more desire, more appeal to do the thing? How timely is it? And how can you adjust so it’s maybe more desirable to do right now based on everything else that might be going on? And how social is it?

How can you add more of a social component, make it more fun, a fun challenge, a relationship builder in some way? I’m also realizing that I just spelt. E A T S. I spelled EATS instead of EASY. So, anyway, EASY. Attractive, timely, and social. If we want to say the EATS framework. I think, I do believe. However, EATS actually works better for talking about health and fitness behaviors.

So, maybe we should have changed it this entire time. But the EATS framework is not my framework. It is from, again, the Behavioral Insights team. Um, And yeah, I hope that was helpful. Just things to consider if you are wanting to change your own behavior, if you’re helping clients change their behaviors.

And we will wrap it up there. Please let me know how you enjoyed this episode. If you hated it, I am happy to receive that feedback too. Your girl’s got a pretty strong growth mindset. I can take the feedback, okay? Let me know. Um, but otherwise, we will leave it at that and I’ll see you in the next episode.