Hugh Massie

Henry Harrison: I want to welcome to the show Mr. Hugh Massie—Executive Chairman and Founder of DNA Behavior. Entrepreneurs, business, and finance is always our topic, and we’re fortunate to have Hugh on because he’s a repeat entrepreneur. Welcome, Hugh. Hugh Massie: Great to be with you, Henry. I’m really excited for the discussion. Henry Harrison: You’ve had a long career across different ventures. You’re focused on DNA Behavior full-time as Executive Chairman and Founder, but you also have a venture capital company, you founded a wealth management company, and you had about 10 years at Arthur Andersen. You’ve been deeply involved in Entrepreneurs’ Organization, including international leadership, and we have mutual friends—from Australia to Atlanta to EO. Here we are. Hugh Massie: It’s an interconnected world globally, Henry. Nowhere to hide anymore. Henry Harrison: Nowhere to hide—there you go. Tell us what you’re doing now. This is a fascinating company. You founded it in 2001, long before people were talking about a lot of this. Hugh Massie: DNA Behavior is a behavioral data analytics company, and we built our own psychometric system—like DISC, StrengthsFinder, Kolbe, Myers-Briggs—tools designed to measure a person’s talents or strengths. We also measure how people deal with money. That came from my wealth management firm, where I wanted to hyper-personalize the experience for clients. DNA Behavior started around personalization and helping people become financially self-empowered. For me, wealth management wasn’t just “here’s an investing strategy.” It was understanding the person first—what matters to them in life—then the money follows. Another area is behavioral economics. People have decision-making biases. But we’re each different, so we have different levels of the same bias. Take loss aversion: everybody has it, but it isn’t the same ratio for everyone. That’s true for all biases. What I realized is that when people are under pressure—often caused by money and relationships—they revert to natural, hardwired behavior. I saw clients “flip.” At a cocktail party, you see one behavior. Under pressure, you see a different set of behaviors and decisions. I thought, I need to understand that. My aha moment came when someone asked what I was passionate about, and I immediately said: I want to help people become financially self-empowered. After reflecting, I realized that was behavior—and it aligned with my personalization goal. That was 24 years ago. Back then, people had to complete a profile, and it took about 30 minutes. We reduced it to 10 and a half minutes with technology, but it’s still friction—people have to do it. Two years ago, during our annual leadership team meeting, I asked: what if we change our goals? What if we have a billion people in our database? At the time, we had about 2.5 million. The answer was AI. We said, okay, we need to build a digital scan—complete the profile automatically without people doing it. We’d built a model in 2017 but never deployed it—technology and the client at the time didn’t proceed. We dusted it off, reverse engineered our system, and now we have 275 million people globally with behavioralized data. That number will continue to increase. So we’ve shifted from being more consulting, team-building, advisor-coaching focused—since many clients are in wealth management—to being far more about behavioral data. Behavioral intelligence is the new layer: using behavioral data alongside demographic and transactional data for better outcomes. Henry Harrison: I saw your website, DNABehavior.com. In one of the videos, it looks like there’s a dashboard—maybe a heat map for management and individuals. Am I understanding that right? Hugh Massie: Yes. What you’re seeing is essentially a heat map. A starting point—no matter the business size—is to begin with the CEO and leadership team. Ideally, they complete a profile in 10 and a half minutes and learn their DNA: talents, money attitudes, how they want to be communicated with. But we can also digitally scan them. I did this recently with a senior leadership team at a firm with 15,000 advisors. We scanned the CEO, COO, and head of product, then showed how we could heat map the whole organization by understanding every advisor’s behavior—then connect that across to clients and see how advisors are matched to clients. Where should leads go? How do you build effectiveness? That’s what can happen now. The old model required thousands of profiles and a huge effort. Now it can be done digitally. It provides a different view of the company through the lens of employees, advisors, and clients. That’s the game changer. Henry Harrison: Give me a real-life story. I heard a talk recently about how irrational people can be in decision-making, and how marketers use things like decoy products. People are irrational in different ways. How does that connect to your work? Hugh Massie: With behavioral biases, we’ve learned a lot and keep naming the same concepts in new ways. In some ways, research can’t go much further unless we personalize it. Most applications have been one-size-fits-all—assuming we’re equally irrational. The next step is understanding who the person is, so the presentation of options changes to reflect their motivations and how they process decisions. Some people respond to lifestyle benefits. Others focus on retirement and security. Others focus on goals. You can’t change every product option for every person, but you can change how it’s presented so people can connect and decide. That’s the future of behavioral economics—whether it’s financial planning or something else. If you’re trying to change behavior—like getting people to take public transport up a ski mountain instead of driving—understand the person, then present the reasons in the way they need to hear it. Henry Harrison: Do you have a measurable client example—something that shows the value? Hugh Massie: Here’s a business-owner example many EO members will recognize. Two partners meet at university. They start a business—one is sales-driven and strong-willed, the other is operational and execution-focused. They grow revenue to about $5 million. The sales-driven partner wants to expand and needs financing. They prefer a bank loan rather than equity. But the operational partner—more security-focused, higher loss aversion—doesn’t want to sign the personal guarantee. Both spouses weigh in. The result is conflict. They start arguing about everything and seeing the worst in each other. They completed our profile process and saw each other’s strengths and the wiring behind the conflict. Deep down, they had love and respect for each other, but the financial arrangement couldn’t stay the same. They adjusted in a way that addressed both of their needs. That’s why we measure talents and money behaviors together—they’re inseparable. Money is infused into everything, and it needs to be understood and handled. Henry Harrison: That’s a strong case study. When you say “scanned,” what does that mean? You have a wide network of people in your database. Hugh Massie: There are two ways to reveal someone’s behavioral style. The first is the traditional way: complete the profile yourself. It takes about 10 and a half minutes, and you get the reports back. That accuracy is about 97%. The scanning process uses public data. If we know your name, the company you work at, and your role, we can create an identifier and feed that through prompts to public sources to gather signals—work history, career history, things said publicly—and use that to complete the questionnaire. Digital scan accuracy is currently around 70% to 75% for most people. For some it’s higher. There’s more information out there than most realize. Digital scanning is useful to reduce friction and get a head start—especially for sales, marketing, onboarding, or identifying risk. But for a high-stakes situation like business partners, I’d still have them do the full profile for the highest accuracy. Henry Harrison: It makes sense. In wealth management, firms want to understand clients’ goals and risk preferences, and you can provide a dashboard beyond just a coffee meeting. Hugh Massie: The key is you get to more pinpointed understanding earlier, which lets you engage differently. Most people communicate the way they’re wired, and they miss the mark with others. Trust doesn’t build fast enough. A sales person might connect well with 40% of people and have a black hole with the other 60%. Advisors connect deeply with some clients, not all. Often it comes down to communication. Why not increase engagement across the board? The behavioral insights show you who to adapt for, how to communicate, and what deeper motivations might be driving decisions. Henry Harrison: You moved to Atlanta. I went to Emory—great city. How is your team structured—Atlanta or distributed? Hugh Massie: Key leaders are in Atlanta, and we’ll add more there as we recruit. Operational teams are in four countries. UX and software development is in Pakistan. Database work is in India. Analytics is in Sri Lanka, and they’re excellent—many educated in the UK. We also have some in the Philippines. We have executives in Australia and other places to run markets and distribution. Going forward, I’ll likely build more of the executive team in Atlanta for culture building. Not micromanagement—culture sharing. We also do more culture work online now. Our culture is built on “know, engage, and grow”: knowing people, engaging them, and growing them. Our secret sauce is profile sharing. In my wealth management firm, I always shared my profile first before asking clients to do theirs. Leaders go first. If a CEO says they won’t do a profile or share it, I’ll say we’re not going to serve the company. The clients who’ve stayed with us long-term bought into that transparency. That’s part of protecting the “soul” of the company—why you’re different. Verne Harnish talks about that. For us, it’s “knowing me, knowing you.” Henry Harrison: Privacy is a topic. People hesitate because they don’t want to be judged or worry it could be used against them. Hugh Massie: That’s real, especially in organizations with low trust where tools get used to push people out. That damages psychological safety. We don’t store sensitive personal details—no financial account information, no passports, no driver’s licenses. We don’t need that. We’re focused on personality and behavior. There’s already a lot of information out there about all of us. Still, the bedside manner matters in how you introduce and use the insights. The tools shouldn’t be used destructively. Henry Harrison: And the goal is win-wins—helping people understand themselves, helping teams work better, helping companies align communication and roles. Hugh Massie: Exactly. We all talk about authenticity and better employee and client experiences. The question is how far you’re willing to go to build it. Henry Harrison: You’re an interesting mix—software business and people business. You seem like a natural people person. Growing up, were you? Hugh Massie: If you look closely at my DNA profile, you’d say I’m results-driven and numbers-oriented. My mother would say that too. The entrepreneurial spirit was there as a little boy—playing with Lego, the ideas were always there. Arthur Andersen was a “meal ticket” decision: training and experience. It was a great experience, and I could have gone further. But the entrepreneurial spirit kept burning. I was already doing deals on the side. I had to decide. I also learned that there wasn’t psychological safety there, and I knew I needed that in my business. Personalization became part of my approach early. Even in tax advice, I’d realize one person needs a two-page diagram summary and another needs the 50 pages of research. Everybody can provide advice—the question is whether the client understands it and feels confident making decisions. I had to work on empathy. I was in Singapore at one point and got direct feedback: if I treated locals the way I was treating them—not rude, but demanding—I wouldn’t get promoted. That was a major lesson. Behavioral profiling gave me a pathway to adapt—still being myself, but becoming more approachable. It’s ongoing work. Henry Harrison: There’s an intentionality to being a good person, even when you’re agitated or under stress—don’t take it out on others. Hugh Massie: Compassion is important for leadership, along with courage and accountability. Leaders manage the tension between results and relationships. It doesn’t have to be soft, but it doesn’t have to be a roughhouse either. People need to know you believe in them, give them tools and resources, and set them up for success—don’t force people into roles they’re not suited for. I saw that recently in our business. A younger team member stepped up when someone left, and designed a new app in under a week. In the past it would have taken months. It shows what’s possible. Henry Harrison: If someone wants to reach out, what’s the best way? Hugh Massie: Go to the website and look around. You can also find me on LinkedIn—Hugh Massie in Atlanta. Henry Harrison: Fantastic. I admire what you’ve built. Thanks for coming on the show. I think people will love it, and I hope they reach out and get help from your business. Hugh Massie: Thank you, Henry. I enjoyed spending time with you and look forward to getting to know you better over the years. Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript has been edited for clarity, readability, and flow. Filler words, repetitions, and minor grammatical inconsistencies have been removed, and formatting has been adjusted for easier reading. The substance, intent, and meaning of the original conversation have been preserved.