⚡️The Brain Hack That Made a Piano Teacher $400 million

📖 STORY

"They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano, But When I Started to Play..."

This legendary 1920s ad by John Caples for a mail-order piano course is still studied today.

It doesn’t tell you what happened.
It teases a transformation.
It opens a story loop and your brain needs to close it.

Result?

This one curiosity-driven headline helped the advertiser sell over $27 million worth of piano lessons (adjusted for inflation, that's over $400 million today). All from a single ad.

This is the Curiosity Gap in action.

And I’ve been a victim more times than I can count (have you?)

I once spent 17 minutes watching a video called: “What This Woman Found Inside a Sealed Storage Locker Will Shock You.”

YouTube is the devil I tell you…

I don't even care about storage lockers.

But I had to know.

Not because I wanted to.
But because I couldn’t not know.

That’s our neuro-programming in full force.

It’s the reason headlines like:

• “You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next”

• “The One Mistake You’re Still Making”

• “Doctors Hate This One Simple Trick”

…keep getting clicked even when we know they’re clickbait!

How do you think Mr. Beast mint his millions? (Video title “I Gave My 100,000,000th Subscriber an Island” )

By perfecting the Curiosity Gap!

And the crazy part?

It works even when we know it’s happening.

🧪 STUDY

In 1994, George Loewenstein (yes, the same Loewenstein who helped define loss aversion) coined the term “Curiosity Gap” to describe the feeling of deprivation we experience when there’s a gap between what we know and what we want to know.

Later studies using fMRI scans (like Kang et al., 2009) found that curiosity activates the same brain regions as hunger (specifically the caudate nucleus and midbrain dopaminergic circuit.)

👉 Translation: When there’s a knowledge gap, our brains don’t feel complete until it’s closed.

Here’s what is happening in the brain:

• Open loops trigger dopamine: When your brain encounters a mystery or unanswered question, it releases dopamine in anticipation of finding the answer.

• Tension builds: This creates a state of cognitive discomfort. Your brain wants to close the loop.

• Resolution = reward: When you get the answer, your brain gets a second dopamine hit, satisfying the curiosity and reinforcing the behavior.

• Hook + payoff: This is why cliffhangers, teasers, and headlines work over and over again. We’ve been trained and they hijack our brain’s reward system.

♟ STRATEGY

Here’s how to use the Curiosity Gap (use it for good!):

✅ Marketers → Use open loops in headlines and subject lines:
• “Most people do this wrong…”
• “What you’re missing about [topic]”
• “We tested 50 solutions and guess what we found?”

✅ Business Owners → Use open loops in your content, landing pages, or sales messaging. Instead of saying “Our process improves sales,” say:
“The 3-step method we used to double sales for a struggling business (and how you can do the same)”

✅ Leaders → Don’t just share outcomes. Share options you're exploring.
It turns listeners into co-investigators. “Here’s the challenge we’re solving, which option will you try?”

✅ Professionals → Use the curiosity gap in presentations:
• “What I’m about to show you changed everything.”
• “Here’s the one insight that made it all click.”

✅ Everyone → Start stories at the moment of tension. Not the beginning.
We don’t need to hear “I was on my way to the airport…” We need: “And that’s when the stranger reached into my bag.”

Curiosity isn’t just a nice-to-have content strategy, it’s a neurochemical driver.
When you open just enough of a gap... the brain activates its reward system, pays attention, and remembers longer.

That's the power of curiosity. It’s not magic. it’s biology.

Make your mark, live your legend 🤘🏽

I’ll see you on Sunday!

Howie Chan

Creator of Legend Letters

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