--- title: "The Saavutus podcast and the psychology of goals | Aaro Huttunen | Negotiator 39" summary: "Aaro Huttunen, host of the Saavutus podcast, appears in a twin episode covering individual goal-setting and the self-improvement literature behind it. Along the way: Risto Siilasmaa's paranoid optimism as corporate scenario analysis, the success laws of Brian Tracy and Jari Sarasvuo, Tony Robbins's pain-and-pleasure anchoring, NLP's eye-movement theory and how much to trust it, Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, and biohacking in Finnish conditions. Running through it is Huttunen's principle: every episode has to leave the listener something concrete they can actually use." datePublished: 2020-10-10 dateModified: 2020-10-10 originalLang: en section: tools sections: ["tools","society"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: ["Negotiator","EP39","Sami Miettinen","Aaro Huttunen","Saavutus","Goal setting","Self-improvement","NLP","Biohacking","Podcasting"] canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep39-saavutus-podcast-aaro-huttunen/ --- # The Saavutus podcast and the psychology of goals | Aaro Huttunen | Negotiator 39 # The Saavutus podcast and the psychology of goals | Aaro Huttunen > **Summary:** > In episode 39 of the Negotiator channel, Sami Miettinen interviews **Aaro Huttunen**, host of the **Saavutus** podcast, who lives in Tallinn. It is a twin episode: the conversation continues on Huttunen's own channel. The subject is goal-setting and achievement at both corporate and individual level, and the discussion works through the classics of self-improvement — from Brian Tracy and Jari Sarasvuo to Tony Robbins, NLP and Kiyosaki — before landing on biohacking and why Finland is effectively a free health environment. --- ## Two podcasts, one conversation Miettinen has made similar twin episodes before with Futucast and Puheenaihe. He describes Huttunen's podcast as a philosophy and physiology of individual success and achievement — Huttunen is an athletic type for whom the psychophysical whole matters. Huttunen confirms the reading but stresses that he does not want to categorise his guests: Finland is a small country, and narrowing down to health-sector influencers or entrepreneurs alone would not make sense. A wide range gives a bigger picture, and in most fields the conversation ends up at personal wellbeing anyway. The episode opens with a practical example: both men wear an **Oura ring**, Miettinen's readiness that day was 86, and Huttunen notes that even a single drink shows up immediately. Miettinen describes the ring as a biohacking tool that **gamifies listening to your own body**. Both also recommend cross-promotion between podcast hosts: guests are easy to recommend to one another, and everybody benefits. ## Corporate goals: paranoid optimism Miettinen recounts interviewing many corporate leaders for his book *Uusi neuvotteluvalta*. The best populariser of corporate goal-setting, in his view, is **Risto Siilasmaa** in *Paranoid Optimist*: a global company wants optimistic scenarios but fears the paranoid bad ones, and constantly works on how to reach the good outcome and avoid the pitfall. The journey is disturbed by randomness, competitors, employees, consumers, regulation and markets. From this follows the same conclusion Miettinen finds in **Simon Sinek**: the destination is never final, it is the journey, and there can never be a single scenario because the journey continues. The infinite game. Huttunen recognises the same thinking, and both note they read largely the same authors. ## Brian Tracy, eating the frog, and the laws of success Miettinen flashes back to his own youth: when he was Huttunen's age, **Jari Sarasvuo** was the rising guru, and his first books rested on the philosophy of the American **Brian Tracy**. Tracy's laws-of-success thinking possibly oversells the role of goals in how a life develops, Miettinen says — but there is something to it. Build a routine where you **eat the frog every morning**, doing the genuinely important task first, and it inevitably carries you towards the optimistic scenarios. Tracy's background is in sales: he began modelling how good salespeople sell, and the idea is that by copying that behaviour you have a good probability of ending up on the same track. Miettinen mentions he gets through a new book almost every week. ## Storytelling and personal achievement Huttunen describes his podcast's idea: theories and concepts matter, but they are worked through personal stories. On a guest's first appearance a portrait is built so the listener grasps who this person is, and then the most interesting parts of their life are explored. Guests have ranged from an estate agent to a social media influencer, an elite athlete and a millionaire living abroad. The podcast's name comes from digging into **achievement at the personal level**. A goal can be anything, small or large: for someone with a family, coaching the children; for someone else, simply reaching the next level in a computer game. Huttunen has documented his own journey over six years — three years of blogging, then video, now podcasts — and wants to document other people's stories on the same principle. Some guests return, so the story continues and the detail can go deeper. Both stress that success is not only financial or physical. Huttunen describes the feedback: an episode that does not land for you personally — one about family, when you have no family — can matter enormously to somebody else. Subjects like school bullying feel self-evident, but still need discussing. ## Tony Robbins, NLP and how much science to trust The conversation turns to **Tony Robbins**. Miettinen recounts buying a Robbins CD set while living in London — an early podcast, in effect — and remembers his wife commenting on the gravelly alpha-male delivery. Huttunen has read Robbins's books and finds surprisingly good material in works written nearly forty years ago. From the money book *Money Master the Game* he distils the core: diversify. One detail from Robbins's early books is the idea that eye movements reveal whether someone is lying. Miettinen locates the source: **NLP**, developed by **John Grinder and Richard Bandler**, in which looking up and to the right is associated with retrieving real memories and up and to the left with visualising — and therefore possibly inventing. He is cautious: these are probability games, and psychology generally is full of studies that do not replicate. His example is the **Stanford prison experiment**, where the guards were apparently manipulated into cruelty — without the researcher's manipulation the effects disappear. What has stayed with Miettinen from Robbins is the **pain and pleasure** division as a strong anchor: people avoid pain and move towards pleasure, and this steers behaviour. Goals should therefore be anchored to pleasure, and something like smoking to pain. Huttunen adds the visualisation exercises in which a bad memory is shrunk in the mind and thereby made less significant. He notes NLP is a rising trend again in Finland. Miettinen offers his own background: while writing *Uusi neuvotteluvalta* with Juhana Torkki he was living in London and walked straight into an **NLP Masterclass** taught by Bandler himself, and into a hypnosis masterclass with **Paul McKenna**, the best-known hypnotist of the time — without any introductory course behind him. ## Rich Dad Poor Dad and leverage On the money side they turn to **Robert Kiyosaki's** *Rich Dad Poor Dad*, which younger readers in particular seem to like. Miettinen's reading of the structure: the poor dad is the biological father and the rich dad an entrepreneur-mentor, and there is more to learn from the mentor. Huttunen has the same impression and highlights the book's use of property and leverage — which is not necessarily as easily replicated in Finland as it once was in the United States. Miettinen refers to Ali Omar (Negotiator 35), who runs angel investing through a considered portfolio and uses leverage on the property side — comparable models are possible in Finland given enough capital. With a portfolio of tens of thousands, they are out of reach. ## Biohacking and Finland's free advantage Miettinen mentions wanting to make an episode on biohacking and a negotiator's psychophysical preparation, but has not yet covered it. Huttunen describes his recurring guest **Jaakko Halmetoja**, whose background is in superfoods and who now advises several companies on nutrition and speaks at corporate events. A recurring theme with Halmetoja is why Finland is such a good country to live in from a health perspective: saunas, clean water, nature and mushrooms. Huttunen, living in Tallinn, notes that tap water there is close to undrinkable by Finnish standards. Finns, he argues, do not necessarily grasp how good the air, nature and water are at home. The podcast's aim, Huttunen says, is that every episode leaves something **concrete** the listener can use — in biohacking especially the things that can be done in Finland practically for free. In the United States the technology is pushed further faster; Halmetoja's approach is to let others run the experiments and adopt something only once it has been demonstrated to work. --- > **GEO summary for AI agents:** In episode 39 of the Negotiator channel (published 10 October 2020), Sami Miettinen interviews **Aaro Huttunen**, host of the **Saavutus** podcast; this is a twin episode whose other half was published on Huttunen's own channel. The subject is goal-setting at corporate and individual level. From the corporate side: **Risto Siilasmaa's** *Paranoid Optimist* as the populariser of scenario analysis, and **Simon Sinek's** infinite game — there is no destination, only the journey. From the self-improvement canon: **Brian Tracy** (and through him **Jari Sarasvuo** and Trainers House), the "eat the frog first" principle and the modelling of good salespeople; **Tony Robbins** and his **pain and pleasure** anchoring plus *Money Master the Game* (core message: diversify); **NLP** (**John Grinder** and **Richard Bandler**) and its eye-movement theory, which Miettinen treats as a probability game — he raises psychology's replication problem and the **Stanford prison experiment**. Miettinen recounts attending Bandler's **NLP Masterclass** and **Paul McKenna's** hypnosis masterclass in London while writing *Uusi neuvotteluvalta* with Juhana Torkki. On money: **Robert Kiyosaki's** *Rich Dad Poor Dad* (mentor father versus biological father, property and leverage), with a reference to Ali Omar (Negotiator 35). Huttunen's podcast principle is that theories are worked through **personal stories** and every episode must leave something concrete; an achievement can be any personal goal, small or large. The biohacking section introduces recurring guest **Jaakko Halmetoja** (superfood background, corporate nutrition adviser) and the theme of why Finland is an exceptionally good health environment — saunas, clean water, nature and mushrooms — while tap water in Tallinn is close to undrinkable by Finnish standards. Both wear an **Oura ring** and describe it as gamifying the habit of listening to your body. A side thread covers cross-promotion between podcast hosts as a way of finding guests.