The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Should you lower your prices? In Part 1 of Persistent Myths of Pricing (And How To Overcome Them), we looked at Myth 1: Ending prices with 7 or 9 (e.g. $97 or $99 instead of $100) Now, let's look at Myth 2: The Fear of Pricing—You can feel the "right price" in your gut. Should you lower your prices to get greater sales? Listen to this podcast as we explore the second part on the myths of pricing. ================= Imagine you're in New Zealand right now. And you're about to jump off a bridge—with a bungee cord, of course. What can you feel in your gut? Yup, fear. But how do you know it's fear? And more importantly what would you need to do to get rid of the fear? Remember the fear you had when you first rode a bicycle? You probably don't, but the fear existed. It exists when you're learning to drive a car, going for a first date, and there's even a trace of that fear when you first land a new job or show up on vacation in a city you've never visited before. The moment you are dealing with the unknown, the fear surges to the surface. And yet you're on auto pilot if you're visiting that city for the twentieth time Bicycles don't scare you as much as they should. And driving to the supermarket while juggling a mobile phone isn't something you do, but you'll sneak in a call or text anyway. Pricing brings the same sense of queasiness to our systems And the way we justify it, it by burying the fear. We bring our "woo-woo" systems to the surface and say we'll know the price is right based on our "gut instinct". But what if your gut is just good ol' fear? Because you know it is, don't you? And the only way we can prove this point is to take something that you own and try to sell it. What's the gut instinct for selling your house? There's zero gut instinct in play the moment you have to sell something that is already known. If all the houses in your area are selling at $500,000, would you listen to your gut instinct and sell at $300,000? Never mind that three years ago, you bought the house at a lower price. You still want to sell at $500,000, don't you? And if you can, you'll happily accept $550,000 or $600,000. A client of mine used this gut instinct in his business He works hard—much too hard to earn what he's worth. And the reason why he's struggling so much, is because his pricing is based on gut instinct. He has to put those products and services on sale, on his website. And when he puts those prices up, he feels like he's in the middle of New Dehli, and needs to find his hotel. He can't speak the language and though there are helpful folks around, he's not quite sure. His brain is racing for a situation that's a lot less stressful. A vacation closer to home, perhaps. There's no such thing as "gut instinct" in pricing We've used a dartboard to price our products and services for well over 12 years. It's a method where you put your prices on a dartboard, and you find some darts. Then you throw them on the board. And you have your pricing. If that sounds flippant, well, yes, it is. But it's a lot less flippant than using your "gut instinct". " Take for instance, the cartooning course. We started the course at no charge (if you felt like it, you gift an Amazon voucher). That course was $500 the next year, and today it's priced at almost $1000 (for about 20 weeks). The Photoshop course (to help you colour your artwork) is just 4 weeks and costs $500. The article writing course goes for 12 weeks and hovers at $3000. The headlines course goes for 10 weeks and costs $800. Want more? "The Brain Audit" has 185 pages and costs $139. The book on "Testimonial Secrets" has 125 pages and costs $45. The same applies for any course, product or service. No matter where you look, there's no logic to the pricing at all. And yet there's fear. Every time we've raised the prices there's enormous fear When we raised the price of the Article Writing Course, we moved it from $1,500—to where it is today at $3,000. How do you know how much is too much? When we sold the Protégé course at $10,000, how would we know if it was overpriced or if we were underselling ourselves? The answer lies in fear. You make these price decisions in a vacuum—dart-board style. And this is scary. Even if you're comparing yourself with the marketplace, the client is not doing the same tour of the marketplace before settling on your product. The only way out of this fear is to keep pushing yourself out of the comfort zone You read about the cartooning course we conducted, right? Why offer it free? My clients already know that I'm a good teacher. They already know I'm a good cartoonist. They also know that they should be paying a substantial fee for something that's going to take them on a six-month journey. And yet, I was unsure—fearful, even. So yes, you can let the fear get a hold of you. And yes, you can price as low as your "gut" will tell you. But remember, your "gut instinct" is your comfort zone It's the lowest possible price you can afford to charge. On

When you're giving away bonuses, it's easy to believe you don't need to give away your best product or service. The best information always needs to be sold—so you can earn a decent living. And yet, this podcast episode takes an opposite stance. You need to put your best stuff out in front—free. Yes, give away the goodies, no matter whether you're in info-products or content marketing; services or running a workshop. Giving away outstanding content is the magic behind what attracts—and keeps clients. Read: ww.psychotactics.com/myth-pricing-overcome/ Tell a friend: http://www.psychotactics.com/tellall ------------- "Don't go out in cold without your coat—or you'll get sick". Which one of us haven't heard our parents insisting on us wearing a coat? Almost every parent on the planet firmly believes that a cold is sure to descend upon you, if you don't have that coat on. And yet, you don't get colds because of the temperature outside. You get a cold from viruses—and guess what? Those viruses are more likely be indoors than anywhere else. So yeah, getting that jacket or coat on, is just a myth, but it sure keeps you warm. In pricing we also have myths that keep us warm And two myths prevail, causing us to lose out on charging higher prices over time. They force us to put on a coat, when it's perfectly good to go outside without one. Let's take a look and find out what these myths are, and how to overcome them. Myth 1: Ending prices with 7 or 9 (e.g. $97 or $99 instead of $100) Myth 2: You can feel the "right price" in your gut Let's start with Myth 1: Prices ending in 7 (E.g. $97 or $99 instead of $100) Back in the 70's or 80's, a marketer called Ted Nicholas is said to have suggested that prices ending with the number 7, do better than other ending digits. This means that, theoretically speaking, you'd sell more at $9.97 than $9.99. Sure, it's only two cents, but does it actually sell more product or services? The answer is that price rarely if ever depends on your magic figure. So we decided to test the pricing on our site at Psychotactics When we started out, way back in 2002, our prices all hovered around the $7 ending. But then we decided to test if the ending prices made any difference whatsoever. And you know where this is going, right? Yup, we ended prices with 8, or 2, or just any old figure that came to our heads. And we waited with bated breath. And nothing happened. The sales didn't go up, and they didn't go down So we started putting any price endings that came to our head. One of our best-selling books (it's sold over $500,000 worth of copies) sold for $109.22. Our courses and workshops had all sorts of odd price endings and it didn't make one whit of a difference. Yet what would you notice if you go to our website today? If you were to do a systematic sweep, you'd find to your surprise that most of the price endings are 7, 9 or 5. So how on earth did that happen? If the price endings don't matter at all, how did we end up with such oft-repeated figures? It's a factor of laziness, really. When creating a price point, it's easy to just not have to think about the price too much at all. And so we revert back to our 7 and 9, without much thought. So how do we overcome this first myth? First, recognise that it's a myth. That if you're spending time wondering if you should price your product with a 5, 7 or 9, you can go right ahead. In all pricing experiments online and offline, you'll find that a mere ending rarely has any bearing on sales. Some sites like Target will hover madly around the 7 or 9, but then slip in an 8 here and there. On equally large sites such as Expedia, the prices for an airline ticket can be $1331 or $791—or even $798 or $644. If you head to buy houses, say in Washington DC, you'll find that houses sell at round figures of 4,500,000 or 2,750,000. If you buy movie tickets, you'll find routinely that the prices may be $12.50, $14 or some round figure with not a 9 or 7 in sight. In fact, the closer you look around at different products and services, the more you find there's no logic for a 7 or 9 to exist. In fact, despite the widespread use of 7 or 9, scientific studies (and these are mostly retail examples) have shown the following: – At least among US retailers (where the study was done), there is no evidence of their effectiveness. – While the use of 9 as an ending increased demand, it was only for new items than any items sold in previous years (this suggests a novelty effect). – That in some situations where there is a "sale" cue, the 9 ending becomes less effective. – In cases where the retailer wants to create an impression of a sale, they price at the 7 or 9 price ending. When they sell "regular merchandise", the prices are always rounded prices, so that customers see the products as valuable and not underpriced. So with all this conflicting information, in which direction do we go? Most of us in either selling a product, service or training of some kind. Training or servic

It might seem like perseverance is a good thing. We've been told to persist in the face of odds. Yet, there are times when you should stop. How do you know when to stop? And why bother to persevere when failure is waiting around the corner? Find out why perseverance can be a real pain, and when it can be a blessing. Enjoy this episode on perseverance and yes, enjoy the music. In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The link between failure and perseverance Part 2: Is there a way to know when to stop? Part 3: Why perseverance could do with a coach To read this online: http://www.psychotactics.com/why-persevere-fails/ To tell a friend: http://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/ ===================== Should You Give Up? Or Should You Persist? When you get to your office and want to print some material, what do you do? You're likely to turn on your computer, hit the print button and then voilà, out come a crisp, laser-printed copy of whatever was on your computer screen. Back in 1969, an optical engineer called Gary Starkweather thought the same way. "One morning I woke up and I thought, why don't we just print something out directly?" Starkweather said. "But when I flew that past my boss he thought it was the most brain-dead idea he had ever heard. He basically told me to find something else to do. The feeling was that lasers were too expensive. They didn't work that well. Nobody wants to do this, computers aren't powerful enough. And I guess, in my naïveté, I kept thinking, He's just not right—there's something about this I really like. It got to be a frustrating situation. He and I came to loggerheads over the thing, about late 1969, early 1970. I was running my experiments in the back room behind a black curtain. I played with them when I could. He threatened to lay off my people if I didn't stop. I was having to make a decision: do I abandon this, or do I try and go up the ladder with it?" A Starkweather kind of decision is the kind of decision we have to make, when facing our lives, but also our business How do we know whether we should persist or give up? Will we meet with success or failure? And is failure one of the goals? Should we really accept failure as a benchmark that we're moving ahead? In this series we're going to take a hard-nosed look at three areas of perseverance. We'll examine 1) The link between failure and perseverance 2) Is there a way to know when to stop? 3) Why perseverance could do with a coach 1) Let's start with the link between failure and perseverance Imagine you were a company that failed repeatedly. You create a tablet device that was at best, disappointing. You try your hand at a peer-to-peer payment system like Paypal, and it fails. You start up an auction site similar to eBay, and that too needs to be shut down. You then get into the phone business but lose over $170 million in a single year. And ten solid years after you've run the business, your net profit is barely 2.8%. Should you give up? Well, this company chose to soldier on despite the odds Almost all of us are likely to have used the services of this company at one time or another. We're not talking about some unknown, nondescript company. We're talking about Amazon.com, the retailing giant. The reality is that Amazon's profit margin is wafer thin and has continued to be that way for an agonisingly long time. In early 2016, CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his gamble had paid off. He spoke excitedly about Amazon Web Services (AWS) which had reached $10 billion in sales and was now generating 52% of Amazon's total profit for that quarter. What this meant was that a single arm of Amazon, no, not the retail arm, but the cloud hosting section was the real winner. In short what Bezos was mildly gloating about was the fact that his perseverance had paid off. A similar perseverance experiment paid off in Cupertino, California In 1993, Apple Inc. launched the Newton MessagePad. The MessagePad, the first series of personal digital assistant devices, developed by Apple Computer and was a reasonably spectacular failure. Sales of the original MessagePad were weak, with Apple moving a mere 50,000 units in the product's first four months on the market. On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone was launched. Despite failing miserably on the NewtonPad front, Apple decided to go ahead with the production of a phone. And so far they've sold 821 million phones. The iPhone is now slightly over 68% of the entire Apple revenues while the Mac is just 8.89% And while it's easy to see these cases as big companies with deep pockets, history is full of artists, inventors, musicians, athletes—in fact, all kinds of people in all sorts of professions—who never gave up despite the odds. And there's one crucial reason why we should persevere even when there's no guarantee of success. The reason? What fails right away might work on an unrelated project In April 2105, Lynda.com was sold for $1.5 billion to LinkedIn When we look at that price tag,

Where do we draw inspiration from? When we try to beat resistance, we tend to look at what wehaven't done and what needs doing. Yet sometimes resistance can bepushed over with a simple concept of inspiration. Where do we draw that inspiration from? And how do we keep theinspiration constant? In this episode we look at inspiration, but also at the "lousycarpenter" and "trigger" concept. =============== It's said that a bad carpenter blames his tools But what's not said is what makes a good carpenter. A good carpenter isn't always the one who has the bestequipment. But a good carpenter makes sure he learns how to usethat equipment fluently. And there's a reason why you need to spendtime learning how to use the equipment. It's called tiredness. Let's take my early battles with InDesign, for instance InDesign is a layout program with which I do all my e-books andreports. I learned InDesign, but not quite well enough. So if I hadto do a simple task like updating the Contents Page, I had tomanually update it every time. If I added more pages to mydocument, I'd have to go back, and re-assign all the pagenumbers. And even if you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, youget this feeling of stupidity coming through. Stupidity and hardwork. And all because I refused to learn how to maximise theprogram's capability. But forget maximisation, let's just talk about fixing theimmediate problem No matter what you do right now, there's a better way to do it.And there's someone out there on the Internet who can help you finda better way. For all you know there are probably ten thousandtutorials and fifty videos on solving your exact problem. But guess what? You're doing the same old stuff in the same oldway. And resistance loves you for it. It loves that you have great tools and lousy habits Because if you did what I did with InDesign, it would take youthrice as much time to do the same job. Maybe even ten times asmuch. Well, guess what? If it takes you five minutes to do a jobvs. fifty minutes, which job is going to tire you out? No prizesfor guessing, but you've just opened the door for exhaustion tocome rushing through. And it's not just exhaustion but frustration as well. If you didtwo jobs side by side, and finished a ton of stuff vs. finishingjust one measly contents page, there's no doubt which one bringsmore satisfaction. The more dissatisfied and tired you are, the better resistancefeels It doesn't have to do any work at all. You've been a completenincompoop and done all the work yourself. You are the badcarpenter. You blame your tools when you should be working veryhard to maximise the power of the equipment you have. And let's face it, you need better tools as well If you're running outdated tools, it doesn't help. But we'reoften just glitzy-eyed for the best tools without ever puttingaside time to learn them well. But the question does arise: Mosttools are so complex. How do you get the time to learn them well? The answer lies in doing continuous sweeps, kinda like aradar If you try and learn something the first time, you only pick upso much. So you come back again for the second sweep, then thethird, then the fourth and so on. I spent a lot of time (about aweek) first trying to work out how to use InDesign. Now I know it well, but I still spend a good hour or two everymonth to learn tiny bits of stuff. And it helps me improve myproductivity. Of course, InDesign keeps getting better, so now notonly am I faster, but I'm equipped with superior equipment. And resistance doesn't like that one tiny bit It would prefer to see me swearing. It would love to see me frustrated with just doing a simplecontents page. But nope, I won't let it win. And neither should you. If you're a good carpenter you'll learn how to maximise yourtools Then you'll earn more, because you'll be in demand. And thatwill help you get the fanciest, most sophisticated tools that willput you head and shoulders above everyone else. And mostimportantly it keeps resistance away from your door. Next: How John Forde (and Sean D'Souza) Got Me To WriteArticles (http://www.psychotactics.com/john-forde-write-articles/) P.S. Do you sometimes wonder if planning books are written just forthe 'organised' people? So year after year you sit down and create a list of thingsyou want to achieve. Then suddenly it's April, and you'venot really moved ahead as you'd expected.And hey, thisphenomenon isn't new. It's not like you're not trying toachieve stuff, but something always seems to derail yourgoals. How do you stop it from happening yet again? Find out if Chaos Planning is for you. (http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/(

Is resistance a game? It can feel a bit like that when you're almost always on the losing team. But often the reason why we lose to resistance is because we don't realise how the brain works. And this brain stuff was studied by researchers at the University of Cincinnati. What they found was astounding. In just over 10 minutes, our brains start to waver and we lose focus. So how can we make sure we don't give in to resistance? Find out in Part 2 of the Resistance game. ============== Imagine you had two loans to pay back Loan A was $100,000 at 19% interest per annum. Loan B was $200 at 1% interest. Which loan would you pay back first? Loan A or Loan B? If you chose Loan A, then almost every financial consultant on the planet would agree with you. Except Dave Ramsey To everyone, but Dave, the logic is clear. Loan A has a much higher rate of interest. Logically you should pay back the higher rate of interest first. But as you'd expect, Dave disagrees. That's because Dave understands inertia better than most other financial consultants So what is inertia? I learned a funny definition in physics class at school. It went like this: A body in the state of rest or motion is inertia. Hah, that made me laugh. How can you be stuck and moving, and still be in the same state? But apparently that's how inertia works. And this is Dave's advice to people who are struggling with debt. First list all the debts on a piece of paper All debts need to go down. Student loans, credit card, mortgage, blah, blah. Then you need to rearrange the loans based on the size of the loan. So the smallest loan goes right at the top and the biggest one right at the bottom. And everything else in between (depending on the size of the loan). And then he instructs you to pay only the minimum payment on every debt–with one exception. After the minimum payments were made, every available dollar needs to be put towards the first debt on the list. Incredible as it may sound, Dave is telling you to wipe out that tiny, itty-bitty $200 debt with the pathetic interest, instead of taking on the painful big amount/big interest debt. Logically it makes no sense But your brain doesn't always work logically when it comes to inertia. While you're lounging on the sofa, watching endless and pointless political debates on TV, your logic is telling to get off your butt. It's telling you that the debates are endless (and did we say, pointless?). Your logic is also telling you that you should be doing some work or exercise instead of engaging in mindless drivel. So logic doesn't work. And the same applies to the debt. When Dave's clients wipe out the first debt it's not necessarily logical, but it creates a factor of momentum. First the $200 is wiped out. Then the $350. Then the $800. And so on, right up to the 'monsta' $100,000. The motion is what matters A body in a state of rest or motion is inertia. And going from rest to a state of motion is impossible if you decide to take on the biggest task first. Logic tells you that you should fix your website right now. Logic tells you that you should write that 300 page book. But Dave would say, "Go brush your teeth first." That simple act of doing something–anything at all–gets you off your caboose and into another state of inertia: a state of motion. So if you need to get something done, fool yourself -Don't go for a 60 minute walk. Instead put on your shoes and decide to walk for just 7 minutes. -Don't try to write a complete article. Just write for 14 minutes. Then stop. -Avoid trying to clean the entire bathroom. Just attack the sink. These tiny bits help you get to the bigger bits. Because even as you go for the 7 minute walk, you know very well that you're not going to turn around in 7 minutes. You'll go longer and further. But the goal always needs to be 7 minutes or 14 minutes or the $200 debt. The itty-bitty bits are important, more important in fact, than the bigger goals. When people say they feel inertia, they mostly refer to a state of laziness Of not wanting to do anything at all. But as my physics teacher would tell you: "There's inertia and there's inertia." And to get from one stage to another, you need to make the list in descending order of importance. Then attack the list. And as Dave would say: Start small. Acknowledgements Dave Ramsey's 'Snowball Debt' and 'Switch' by Chip and Dan Heath. P.S. Yes I know. You're headed to Google these names, aren't you? You think you'll find out more about this book and this method of reducing debt, aren't you? But you already have the tools. You have a piece of paper. You have a pencil or pen. And you have the methodology. So don't muck around. Get to work. You need to change that state of inertia right now. Next Step: Listen to or read Part 1: Can Resistance be Beaten? http://www.psychotactics.com/resistance-detests-groups/ ================================= 5000bc: How to get answers and move ahead in your business. http://www.5000bc.com/ Why Do Most Plans Fails?

Resistance seems like an overbearing force in our lives We want to achieve a lot, but as soon as we get started, resistance kicks in. But did you know there are ways around resistance? Resistance loves a loner. If you're working alone, you're just setting yourself for an encounter with resistance. Resistance loves to play the game of winner. We need to put resistance in second place. Here's how to go about the task of winning the resistance game. ============= Resistance loves a loner Because loners have limited energy. They start out on a project, all excited about what's about to unfold. Then, for some reason or the other, they lose their way. And that's when resistance gangs up on the loner big time. It's not much of a fight. The loner is already exhausted. One tiny tap on the head from resistance, and the loner falls into a heap on the floor. But this miserably one-sided bout could be avoided with the understanding of group work. In Africa there's a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. And resistance detests groups. And there are several reasons why a group helps you get a project done with far more efficiency and a lower failure rate. So how do groups help? 1) Release of Pressure 2) Exponential Learning 3) Support 1) Release of Pressure The toughest part of a project is dealing with the pressure. And a release of that pressure is needed to give you a breather. When you rant and rave alone, it's kinda depressing. When you're suffering alone, you think it's something to do with your talent, or your genes, or that you're a loser (yes, everyone feels super-lousy often enough). And having someone to just listen to your rant is amazing therapy. You rant, you've been heard and now it's time to get back to work, because you have a ton of mistakes to make, and learning to look forward to. 2) Exponential learning Mistake making is frowned in our society. We love to get things right the first time. And yet all of us know that it's impossible to learn without making a ton of mistakes on any project, no matter how familiar we are with the project. The problem is that mistake-making, instructive as it is, is also terribly depressing. When you're going round in concentric circles, your exhaustion builds up rapidly. However when you're in a group, you learn from someone else's mistakes, thus getting a bit of respite from the exhaustion factor. When a group shares its learning and mistakes, everyone learns and everyone gets a little samba in their steps because you're not just learning, but it's exponential learning. You're learning from four-five mistakes every day, and guess what? Most of those mistakes aren't yours. 3) The third factor is just one of support While resistance can take on a loner, it's a lot harder to take on a group. If someone falls, there's usually someone to pick you up. If someone is struggling, there's someone to help. If someone has questions, there are answers that help you move along. Working by yourself, you not only miss the ongoing support, but the struggle wears you out. And inevitably you give up. Now this kind of group support doesn't necessarily work for all kinds of projects Sometimes the project is just to clean your desk. You could do with ranting and group support, but it's an overkill. Besides it probably takes under an hour to get even the messiest desk tidy. But if this seemingly mundane desk has to go on over a longer period of say, six to eight months, then you definitely need the power of the group. In fact at Psychotactics, groups form a critical part of the project experience If we take just the Copywriting Course for instance, the three months of learning and implementation are physically exhausting. If you were to try and replicate the same pace by yourself, you'd give up in a week or less. But with a group, 75-80% make it to the finish line. When you consider the sheer intensity of the Copywriting Course, you should have the figures the other way around (namely 75% should fail to make it to the end). And yet it's the group that helps you through. But how do you work with projects where the group doesn't have a common goal? Admittedly it's harder to pull off a project where everyone is headed in different directions. When the African saying suggested you go a lot further with a group, they were indeed suggesting the group had a common goal. And if everyone in the group isn't headed towards the same deadline, or using similar tools etc., then they have nothing in common. Then it's relatively easier for the group to be counterproductive, as no one is learning from group-mistakes, and everyone has their own agenda. It's important for the group to set out a common agenda and at least have some common guidelines. So even if you have ten different writers, writing ten different types of books, they should 'meet' online every day and post their learning for the day, as well as a minimum of 800 words. If they're a group working on a

When it comes to feedback, almost of us hit a blank wall. Ask a client to "help you fix" your product or service and you get two or three small suggestions. So how about a 1500 word answer instead? What if you could get the client to go into every nook and cranny and give you feedback that would drive you crazy? Yes, of course it drives you crazy, because you have to go about fixing everything? Or do you? This episode on feedback goes deep into what you should ask, why and when you should ask for the feedback. And then how to cope with feedback when you can't fix things. It also talks about how feedback causes the clients to come back repeatedly to buy your products and services. Sounds exciting? Well go on, listen to the episode. And if you missed part one here is the link. Read and Listen: http://www.psychotactics.com/secret-feedback/ Listen: http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/86_Feedback-The_Secret_of_Returning_Clients-Part_2.mp3

Most of us are like crazy chickens, focused solely on attraction and conversion. They fail to see the biggest resource in our business—returning clients. If you're able to keep your existing clients and they buy everything in sight, you may never need new clients again. But what magic spell would cause them to buy everything in sight? Incredibly, the answer is "feedback". Wait, not testimonials—feedback. Feedback is that ugly sound of "complaint". It's screechy and seemingly yucky. But we're not just aiming for a bit of feedback, but feedback that's 1500 words or more. Yup, how do you get a mountain of the "yucky stuff?" Let's find out why you need to get deep into the world of feedback. And put your Teflon suit on. You're going to need it. Join us as we explore Part 1: How do you get feedback? And when do you get feedback? Part 2: Why safety plays a big role in feedback Part 3: How to copy with feedback =========== I'd been driving for about 5 years before I got to Auckland, New Zealand When we moved here, however, my Indian driving license wasn't valid and I had to sit for both the written and driving test. And I failed the first driving test within minutes. We barely got on the road, and down a slope when the assessor failed me. Ten minutes later, we were back where we started. As you'd expect, I was perplexed and wanted to know what I'd done wrong. He wouldn't tell me. "I'm not supposed to tell you what you've done wrong," he said brusquely. "You're supposed to drive correctly and when you make an error, I note the error and fail you, if necessary. And you've failed this test." This is often how we feel when clients won't give us feedback on our products, services or courses. But whose fault is it? Is it the client's fault or ours? In most cases, we're at fault, and this is because of a primary reason. We fail to figure out the difference between testimonials and feedback. We use the words interchangeably, and it gives the client the feeling they're supposed to praise you all the time. Praise is hard, because you want to reserve it for special occasions and anyway a constant stream of praise feels worthless. So the first task is to separate the concept of testimonials from feedback. The client should know clearly—and unequivocally—that they're not praising you, but giving you feedback. Then, they should know that you're going to do something with the feedback. So how do you get feedback? And when do you get feedback? Let's take a look at three main areas of feedback and see how we can ensure we get the feedback that we need. The three areas are: 1) The safety issue—and reward issue 2) The implementation issue 3) The specificity of your questions 1) Let's start off with the safety—and reward There's a video online called "Austin's Butterfly". It shows a group of very young children appraising the work of one of their classmates. Austin, who's probably in first grade, and has just drawn a butterfly. There's only one problem. The Tiger Swallowtail butterfly looks amateurish and the kids know it. At that tender age, they're not about to let Austin get away with such a terrible piece of art. Then something quite amazing happens. The teacher takes over and asks the kids to give feedback. One by one they pipe up, with their critiques, so Austin can take a crack at the second draft. They point to the angles, the wings, making the wings of the butterfly more pointy. They go on, and on, and the illustration improves with every draft. Six drafts later, the butterfly looks like something you'd find in a science book. The finished butterfly is so stunning that anyone—you, me, anyone—would be proud to call the illustration our own. And yet this article isn't about whether we can draw butterflies or not, is it? Instead it's about safety. The reason why those kids walked Austin through every one of those five subsequent drafts, is because they felt safe. So what made them feel safe? And how do you get your clients to feel safe? Incredibly that safety didn't start on the day of the Austin butterfly demonstration. It started long before the teacher walked into the room. Safety needs to be created miles before you get to your destination. So what do we do on Psychotactics? Notice the "What Bugs Me" on every page of the website? That "bug" is designed to create safety. Yet, you've seen organizations ask for feedback before. Why does that bug bring in over 200 clients writing to us every single year (that's about 2500 bugs since we started). The answer lies in the statement that accompanies the bug. The statement says: We'll give a reward of $50 for the best bug of the month. Have we been diligent about this reward? No, I can't say that we've been super-diligent in doling out the reward. But at a primary level, 99% of the clients aren't interested in the reward at all. They're just interested in us fixing the problem. We have something similar in our membership site at 5000bc. The moment you get into the Cave (which is our

What's one of the biggest "rookie mistakes" when putting a landing page together? It's the rookie, sitting down and writing the entire page at their desk. If you want a reasonably boring landing page, write it yourself. But what if you didn't write it yourself? Who would write it for you? Find out more in Part 2 of this series. ============== In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How do you find the ideal client? Part 2: What happens when you dig into a single problem? Part 3: What do you do with all the other problems? ============== There's a reason why I moved from PC to the Mac. In 2008 I had to do a series of presentations for a radio station. Since the clients of radio stations are always looking for ways to get the attention of their clients, the presentation of The Brain Audit seemed like the perfect match. If there's one thing I'm very possessive about, it's the slides for my presentation. I tend to make changes, simplifying the content and moving the slides around until the very last minute. Even if I have done the presentation dozens of times before, you can be sure I will be making changes at the very last minute. In this case, the terms of my contract prohibited me from making those changes at the last minute. The radio station was putting all their slides together in advance, so all slide decks had to be submitted the week before the presentation. This rattled me enough to show up three hours before I had to make my presentation. The technical crew was more than happy to let me go through a run through of my presentation on the big screen. As I clicked through the slides, I realised that something was wrong. The presentation I was seeing on the screen looked a bit like my presentation, but somehow it was different. The weird part was that it looked better than what I had done. After I had got over the shock of someone tampering with my presentation, I asked the crew how they had gone about changing the presentation. "We didn't do anything with the presentation itself," they said. "We just ran it through keynote — which is a presentation software for the Mac." That one idea was enough to get me hooked onto the Mac, even though I had used the PC for close to 15 years. The Mac had solved a problem that I didn't know existed. It had taken the best possible presentation I could muster, and made it far more beautiful than I could imagine. Since then, I have dumped all my PCs and stuck to the Mac. So does this make me the ideal client? It does not, because I wasn't aware of the problem in advance To find the ideal client, you have to find someone is already deeply aware of the frustration they are facing. If you find someone like me—someone who's surprised and delighted, you're going to get a very shallow rendition of the set of problems the client faces—and most certainly never get to the depth of the biggest problem. You have to find someone who already has a problem And the best place to start could be a random place like Facebook. Since everyone already has an opinion on Facebook, you may shortlist your ideal client based on a friend that responds to your question. You may have a tiny list of subscribers on your e-mail list, and if you send out a request, there's a good chance that at least a couple of responses will show up in your inbox. If you already have clients like we do, you're often still like a newbie, especially when you want to launch a new product or service. Let's say we want to launch a product on how to take outstanding photos with your iPhone In many cases it's easy enough to locate a great client, and it's more than likely that they would like to take great photos, but don't know how. Once you interview them over the phone, or in person, you'll quickly find a series of issues. – Taking great food pictures with an iPhone – How to improve your vacation photos – How to use manual controls with your software – How to shoot close up or macro photography – Great portrait photography with Your iPhone – How to dump the SLR at home and take outstanding photos with your iPhone. The problem is obvious, isn't it? How do you choose? All of these problems seem headed in divergent directions. The answer is: You don't choose. You get the client to choose.You focus on the problem at hand and dig deeper. The questions would hinge on the single problem: – Why do you want to take your iPhone instead of a Nikon? – What frustrates you when you take the Nikon? – Can you describe a day on your vacation? – What are the consequences of taking a heavy camera along? If you own a Nikon 7000 like I do, you'll find yourself leaving the camera back in the hotel room a lot. The Nikon 7000 is a great camera, but it feels like you're lugging a brick along—and when you take three months off every year, that's like lugging a brick for 90 whole days. So unless I'm going on a trip—like the time we went to see orcas in Vancouver, or camels on the road in Australia, I keep the DSLR—that's the Nikon—in the hotel room

Did you know that landing pages fail almost at the headline stage? We're all told to create landing pages. So why do they fail? The answer, it seems, can be found at any international airport. When planes land, they don't land all at once. They land one at a time. Yet on a landing page, we scrunch the issues together. We throw everything at the page. That's a mistake. And this episode tells you why it's a mistake and how to fix it. ======= In this episode Sean talks about Element 1: How to choose one problem Element 2: Defining why the problem is important Element 3: What to do with the rest of the problems Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Find out: Why clients buy and why they don't. Listen: The biggest "rookie mistakes" when putting a landing page together? Read or listen: How To Design A Sequential Landing Page—Part 2 ========== When you're at a derby, you notice something interesting. Every single horse bolts out of the gate all at once. But wait, that is not interesting, is it? That's what the horses are supposed to do. They are expected to race madly towards the finish line so that they can win the championship. Which is fine for horses, but terrible for landing pages. On a landing page, the first thing you present your client with is "the biggest problem". If you were to treat the landing page like the horse derby, then all the problems would try to outdo each other in the very first paragraph. Like horses thundering towards the finish line, they would all attempt to get ahead of each other. And this causes a problem for the client looking at your landing page. Suddenly that client is faced with a ton of information hitting him all at once. It's why clients leave your landing page; they become disoriented, but mostly overwhelmed. On any sales or landing page – your job is to present the client with the biggest problem. A client gets interested in your product or service because you're taking on a specific problem. And it's that problem that needs to rise to the surface. A landing page is more like a layered cake than horses at the horse derby. There needs to be a sequence of ideas presented one after another based on their importance. And yet, this restriction causes a real headache, because most products and services solve multiple problems, don't they? How do you choose which problem to use? And what do you do with the rest of the problems? Do you just drop them or do use them elsewhere? That's what we are about to find out as we go on this journey on isolating the problem. However, it's not a very long journey. We got three simple steps that will enable us to create a more precise landing page — and one that will get and keep the customers attention. We will find out where the customer gets confused and how to eliminate that confusion. The three elements we will cover, are: Element 1: How to choose one problem Element 2: Defining why the problem is important Element 3: What to do with the rest of the problems When I was about ten years old, I wanted to be a pilot. In fact, I can't remember anyone at school who didn't want to be a pilot. However, for most of us growing up in India, a trip to the airport was out of the question. This is because air travel was not as frequent or inexpensive as it is at this point in time. However, on the rare occasions that I did get to the airport, it was fascinating to watch the planes land and take off. But what was most interesting of all, was how the planes circled the airport. Planes circle for a reason; Air-traffic controllers exists for a reason. You too are an air-traffic controller when it comes to your landing page. In fact, it's pretty ironic that it's called a landing page in the first place, isn't it? Ironic, because so many of us are more than keen on making sure all those planes land at the very same time. Circling planes don't run out of fuel in a hurry, so why not let them circle a bit while you get the most one plane safely on the tarmac! So what are the "planes", anyway? The "planes" are simply the problems you're presenting to the client. When we say problems, a negative connotation pops to mind, doesn't it? But that's what you're doing on your landing—you're bringing to light the biggest problem so that you get the attention of the client. For instance, Let's take the headline from the product on pricing – called "dartboard pricing". The headline reads like this: How do you systematically raise prices without losing customers? Did you notice the "problem" in the headline? You can feel the pain of not raising prices, can't you? You know that you would like to raise your prices, but are holding back because you are not sure how your clients will react. It's possible that you will lose some of them, or maybe the entire clientele will walk out in droves. What we have done in the headline — and that little bit of explanation — is define the main "problem". When you read that headline, it seems

Why do we struggle to write? The ONE word? What's that? And why does it play such an incredibly important part in article writing? That's what we explore in this second part of what I've learned in article writing. We also look at why we struggle to write—Yes, we seem to get in our own way most of the time. How do we get others to help us? Find out more here. ========= In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness Part 2: Why when we sit down to write, we often get into a state of randomness Part 3: How can you be sure you have the right 'One Word' ? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resource 5000bc: If you suspect that your business could be bringing in a lot more revenue but you don't have a clue how to make that happen without hype or hassle, 5000bc is a must-have resource. Listen or read: Part 1 of Three Interesting Things I Know About Writing ============== Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness ALMOST half of the goals scored in football—or soccer—are virtually random! So says Martin Lames of the Technical University of Munich. Raphael Honigstein's new book, "Das Reboot" talks about the non-random side of football. It talks about how a well-prepared team can rise from the depths and win the match, even the tournament. And especially if that team is Germany—which is considered to be a world-class team, but was at the bottom of the football heap in 2000. Germany's randomness arose from complacency In the European Championships in 2000, they failed to win a single game—and even lost to the English team (which was considered pretty terrible in the first place). And yet, 14 years later, Germany would rout Brazil 7-1 and make its way to the ultimate prize defeating Argentina in the World Cup final. What Germany did—and did effectively—was reduce the randomness. Right after the 2000 Euro disaster, Germany's top professional clubs were ordered to set up academies—and this was a considerable cost to the clubs, so they actively resisted the directive. Ten years later, this move proved to be a boon saving the clubs millions of dollars in transfer fees, because more than half the players in the top division were academy graduates. In short, the moment they got rid of their randomness, the German team started to see results. A similar concept applies to article writing. When we sit down to write, we often get into a state of randomness And you know it's random because you can't sum up the article in one word or one idea. The moment you have one idea—it becomes that wall around your article. You know exactly what you're going to write about, what are the sub-topics under that main topic—and how to get the stories and case studies to support the piece. For instance, this section is about why the article can't be random. Instead of starting the article with a boring line that says: "The worst thing you can do is write a random article", the article starts with a story of disaster—well, a disaster for the German football team, anyway. Yet, most writers never sit down and write down their one word because they're not sure if it's the right word There is no right word. The word is what you want to communicate. In the introduction, the story was about the journey. Well, that's where the story of Isambard Brunel came to light. The second part was about the coach—and we ran right into Wolfgang Amadeus' father—Johann Leopold Mozart. The third part was about why writing for yourself is so very hard, and the two female conductors told their story. And finally, we have the story of randomness—and the German football team. When you have a single word to focus on—or a single idea—it's not hard to get stories But it also forces you to stay within the parameters of that single word. I have to stay within the walls of randomness as this part of the article unfolds. It becomes my binding agent. And ironically, the one word can be picked randomly. The one word in this piece could have been completely different. It could have been about "binding"—and the story would be different; the angle different. It could have been about "boundaries" and yet again we'd see different stories and a different angle? But isn't it cheating to decide one word and then write an article? No, it's not. Put yourself in the shoes of noted author and TV personality, David Attenborough. Do you think the TV crew goes into the jungle, finds whatever footage they can find, before returning to write the script? That would be a nightmare because you'd have to go through hundreds of mismatched shots to build a coherent documentary. As radio personality Ira Glass describes: "You write the story, and then you go out and ask the questions. You have the idea in your mind; the questions down on paper long before you get to the person you're interviewing. That way you get a coherent structure. And the same concept applies to article writing. If y

Writing isn't easy-but it isn't hard either The key to writing is to know what strategy to follow, so the road isn't bumpy all year long. This episode isn't about going down memory lane. Instead, it's practical advice I wish I'd had—Like how to choose the right coach or the right editor. Writing isn't all about you. Writing depends on the coach, the editor and the client. This podcast is about a strategy that's not commonly expressed and approaches writing in a more philosophical, yet practical way. In this episode Sean talks about Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 5000bc: There is a lot of information on the internet. You can read and learn from it. But in 5000bc the discussion is about you. About your specific problem. And how to go about your specific situation. And Sean is around answering all your questions. Find out more here—5000bc. www.5000bc.com -------------------------- Hi, this is Sean D'Souza and you are listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast. Who is considered the second greatest British person of all time? When the BBC did a poll in 2002, they expected somehow that Winston Churchill would be in that top ten list. But there in the second position was someone whose name was reasonably unfamiliar. A name that didn't belong in this century, nor from the previous century. A man who was born in 1806, somewhat mysteriously found his way to the second spot. His name? Isambard Kingdom Brunel—one of the most famous engineering minds of all time. And Brunel built a magnificent ship—and it was called the Great Western At the time of its construction, the Great Western was the longest ship in the world. There she sat at 236 feet, with one stunning goal in mind—to cross the Atlantic. The trip was to start from Bristol, in the UK, and terminate in New York city in the United States. The goal was audacious because no one believed in the commercial viability of such a long journey. In 1838, despite many technological developments, shipbuilders presumed that a ship had limited capability. They believed that no ship could carry both—commercial cargo as well as enough fuel—and make the long journey across the Atlantic. Brunel was a person who thought differently about long journeys For one, his heart was set on engineering. He developed a theory—a sort of formula that involved the amount a ship could carry and how a ship could be built so that it faced a lot less resistance from the ocean. Armed with his formula he set about building the Great Western, but then added more technological improvements.Instead of a ship, made mostly of wood. Brunel added bolts; he added diagonal iron reinforcements. He increased the strength of the keel and carried four masts for sails. And so the ship—the Great Western—embarked on her maiden voyage from Bristol with 610,000 kilos of coal, cargo and seven passengers. The Great Western on her maiden voyage to New York—powered by steam. A feat never achieved before! Despite all the plans and engineering, Brunel's ship hadn't got off to a great start In the 1830's there was a competition to be the first to cross the Atlantic powered by steam alone. The Great Westernshould have been well on its way, but ran into difficulties before leaving Bristol. There was a fire on the ship, a minor fire, but Brunel was hurt in the fire and wasn't able to make the journey. As a result of the fire, 50 paying passengers cancelled their trip. Finally, the ship made it out of Bristol's harbour with just seven people on board. What was worse is that it was four whole days behind it's competitor—another steam ship called the Sirius. The Sirius left as scheduled, leaving the fire-stricken Great Western still in dock. Now, the Great Western and her crew were well and truly behind—and Sirius would get all the glory. But Sirius' trip was anything but glorious Along the way to New York, Sirius ran into serious trouble. They started to run out of fuel. Her crew was forced to burn cabin furniture, spare yards—even an entire mast because they ran out of fuel. And they took 19 days to get across the Atlantic. The Great Western, in comparison, arrived like the queen of the seas. She took just 15 days and five hours and with a third—that's almost 200,000 tons of coal to spare. This is a story about journeys—a writing journey, in particular. I didn't want to write. My story is one of being nudged and pushed into writing. When we started out Millionbucks.co.nz (yes, that was our pathetic first shot at a brand name), I was writing for a fledging portal called MarketingProfs.com. Back in 2000, everyone was a fledging—and there wasn't as much content online, as there is at this moment in time. Which is why the founder of MarketingProfs, Allen Weiss, would e-mail

Whenever you hear the story of products and services, it's always a sugar-coated, goody gum drop story. You rarely get to hear the not-so-great side of things; the mistakes; the second-guessing. In this episode, you get to hear what's happening behind the stage. How—and why—we started the article writing course; how we decided to go to the Netherlands and do a workshop; and how we launched several of our products without a sales page. If you like back-stories as much as I do, you're going to love this episode. ============================= The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." Hi. This is Sean D'Souza, and you're listening to The Three-Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about how to work less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy the work that you do and to enjoy your vacation time. Billy Joel: I dreamt the song. I dreamt the melody, not the words. I had a dream, and then I remember waking up in the middle of the night and going, "This is a great idea for a song," and going back to sleep, and waking up, and not remembering what I dreamt and going, "What was that? I had a really good idea, a really good idea, and then I forgot." In a couple of weeks later, I'm in a business meeting talking to accountants or lawyers, some kind of boring stuff, and the dream reoccurs to me right at that moment because my mind drifted off from hearing numbers and legal jargon, and I just drifted off. Boom, it came right back into my head. I said, "I have to go. I have to go right now. I think I have an idea for a song," so the accountants and lawyers were, "Go, go, go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, go." I ran home, and I started playing the theme that had reoccurred. On my way home, I was thinking, "Okay. How am I going to remember this? Da, da, da, da. Da, da. Don't be crazy. Don't be stupid." They're called "[bail out lyrics 00:01:34]," but you have to use them to remember the notes, remember the theme you're saying that you came up with. I got home, and I ended up writing it all in one sitting pretty much about … It took me maybe about … I don't know, two or three hours to write the lyrics. I probably reshaped them a little bit in the studio, but yeah. I remember writing that very well. It was a dream that reoccurred, which happens a lot on me. What you were listening to is the backstory of Billy Joel and The Stranger. As I was listening to this on my walk yesterday, I thought, "This is a good idea. This is an idea where I can talk about the backstory of a product, a course, and a workshop." I can bring it to life to let you know what's the backstory instead of just hearing the success story. The reason why I thought it was so cool was my niece, Marsha, and I, we watched the series on BBC by David Attenborough, and the thought that gets us really excited is when they tell us the backstory, how they started, the trouble they run into, and I hope to bring some of that excitement into you all listening today by telling you the backstory about a course, a workshop, and a book series. Let's start off with the first one, which is the course, and let's deal with the article writing course. Part 1: We're going back to 2005. In 2005, there was no Article Writing Course. In fact, there was no plan to have an article writing course. You see, in the year 2000, I was writing an article maybe a week. I would struggle over it for one or three days, and then eventually, get it corrected and edited, and then finally, it would get published. By 2003, I started up 5000bc. For some reason, I promised the members at that time that I would write five articles a week. Did they care that I wrote five articles a week? I don't know, but that's what I promised, so that's what I did. Because I did that, I started to write every single day, and my article writing got quicker and better as the years ticked along. By 2005, I was pretty sure that anyone could do what I did, which is sit down, work it a few years, and then you could write good articles. Did I think there was a demand for an article writing course? No, I didn't think there was a demand for an article writing course. So then, why announce an article writing course? What we decided was that we're going to take a chance. We're going to put up a sales page, and we don't really care if anybody signs up this year, but it would be like an advertisement for the next year. That was our goal, to have an advertisement for the coming year, and the article writing course filled up. That was a big surprise, and if there's one thing that is streaming through this entire backstory, it's this factor of surprise. Now we have all the strategy at Psychotactics, but surprise seems to jump up at every point in time, so there we are. We have signed up all these people for the article writing course. There's only one problem. The problem is there are no notes. The problem is there was no audio.

Risk doesn't just come in one flavour, yet The Brain Audit takes away a ton of that risk. In this second episode on risk, we take a forensic look at what happens when you release a new version of your product or service. Is it still the same product or service? Or is the risk magnified many times over? And how do you overcome such an unwarranted risk? We also look at pre-sell and why it reduces, almost eliminates risk. Why pre-sell done right is like a soothing balm that doesn't seem to bother the client (or you) very much. This episode is loaded with the biggest reasons why clients don't buy, and why pre-sell works like magic. You'll love it, guaranteed (Ok, that was a joke). But really, you'll like it a lot! -------------------- In 'part 2 of this 2-part series' Sean talks about Part 1: What's the link between risk and pre-sell Part 2: How pre-sell works like magic Part 3: The big reasons why clients don't buy Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Read: How Pre-Sell Sold The Article Writing Course In Fewer than 24 Hours Listen and read: How A 3-Step Pre-Sell Creates Product Irresistibility: Episode 69 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems ----------------- If you've ever seen a Bollywood film (Hindi movies from India), you'll notice there's a lot of music and dancing. And a film release in India is like movie releases anywhere in the world of cinema. Trailers, interviews with the actors, publicity and the hoopla. It's all part of the strategy to ensure that the movie is a stunning success. While back in 1964, a movie would be release six to eight weeks before the film release. However, by the 1990s, the music was being released three months or more—before the official launch of the movie. But what's the link between risk and pre-release of the music? Since most Hindi movies are musicals, the songs are the primary reason most people go to the cinema. If the songs are catchy—and become hits, the movie's success is guaranteed. When you look at it, an overwhelming number of Hindi movies have a similar plot. There's a good guy, a bad guy, a romance between the hero and heroine—and lots of dancing and singing. There's so little variation in scripts that the only risk for the moviegoer is—will I be entertained? When they listen to the songs in advance, the risk is removed. Pre-sell reigns supreme and the movie is a super hit! So what is pre-sell? Pre-sell doesn't involve sales at all. In fact, it's a systematic dispensation of information. A simple example of pre-sell would be a wedding being held next summer. At first, there's no information at all. Then, one day the bride and groom-to-be announce they're going to get married. And now we have a countdown of sorts. There are announcements along the way and events. What you're getting is a drip feed of information that goes all the way to the wedding day itself. The reason you and everyone else shows up on the day—and at the event, is because of pre-sell. When you pre-sell, there's limited risk because the very act of pre-sell is drip, drip, drip One of the biggest reasons why clients don't buy is because they feel pressure. They feel they're about to make a decision they could regret. And it's more than likely their brains have been drummed with messages of "sleep on it, sleep on it, sleep on it". In most cases, sleeping on anger may help a great deal. If you're irritated and angry, it's a jolly good idea to sleep on it. However, when buying a product, or service, the information rarely changes from one day to the next. What holds clients back, most of the time, is the fear of making a decision they'll regret. The run up to anything reduces this pressure Take for instance the 2017 workshop in New Zealand. It's in beautiful Queenstown—in the South Island. Now you may have heard of the beauty of New Zealand, but you go south, and it rocks. Queenstown is incredibly beautiful, has stunning views, and there's one more thing you have to do when you're in Queenstown. You need to take the road to Glenorchy. It doesn't matter where you've been on the planet, and no matter how many amazing things you've seen—the road to Glenorchy is breathtaking. What you just heard was a pitch for 2017 But it didn't sound like a pitch, did it? And the reason it doesn't sound quite that way is because approximately 363 odd days stand between now and the workshop. As the workshop is mentioned more often, you start to feel this urge to visit the last stop before Antarctica—yes, New Zealand. You think, well, it's now or never. Sure it's going to be a long trip. Sure it's going to cost a small fortune, but it's a workshop—and you think—well, I can write it off as a business expense. What are the chances of me visiting New Zealand and finding a business reason to do so? In your head, you're selling the event to yourself. Now make no mistake. This place called Queenstown is no mirage. It doesn't matter how man

If you were to boil down marketing to a single word, it would be "risk". When a client is ready to buy they still hesitate. Even when there's a sense of urgency on their part, they still go through a series of steps before they come to a decision. What are those steps? Why do clients seem to back away at the last minute? In this two-part series, we examine the "big boy"?risk. And we find out how it sits on its end of the see-saw and dominates the buying process. We then use The Brain Audit (yes, it's a book you should read) to remove those barriers that cause risk. Find out for yourself how we get to the end point and do so much more than just risk-reversal! -------------------------- In 'part 1 of this 2-part series' Sean talks about Part 1: Why Clients Don't Buy (Understanding The Elements of Risk) Part 2: Why The Risk Factor Changes With Every Version Of Your Product/Service Part 3: How Pre-sell Dramatically Ramps Down Risk Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't) 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Read or listen to: How To Attract Truckloads of Clients -------------------------- Last month I decided to buy some software for sound editing. And with that decision, I started a merry dance. You know that dance, don't you? It's called the "should I, shouldn't I" dance. First, I spent an enormous amount of time reading up on what I was about to buy. Did it fit my needs? Was it just a duplication of the software I already had in place? Would it be easy enough to learn? Then, I delved deep into the testimonials. 20 minutes later, I was still reading—not quite sure what I was looking for, when every testimonial clearly seemed to signal the software was right for me. Almost an hour later, not entirely sure of my decision, I pressed the "buy now" button. So what was the price of the software? It was $350. And you think—"Ah, that makes sense You have to do a fair bit of research before plonking down that much money." And you'd be right. When faced with a slightly risky decision, we have to make sure we do our due diligence, don't we? I spent another hour going through the very same process: The features, benefits, testimonials, comparison—all while assessing whether I needed the product. The only issue was this new product was priced at two dollars and ninety-nine cents! So why spend the same amount of time and effort on a product that costs less than the price of a coffee? Welcome to the tangled universe of risk, where logic seems to go into a blackhole. Where we spend as much time debating whether to go ahead with a decision, even if a product or service is offered free. We explore why risk isn't always connected to money, or even the size of the transaction. And while it may seem that we behave unpredictably, our actions are remarkably consistent every time we have to make a decision. Worst of all, despite knowing it's pointless spending hours debating whether a $2.99 purchase is worth it, we can't help ourselves. We go through similar actions over and over again. If we're so hopeless when we're aware of our actions, how can we predict the behaviour of our clients? And how do we reduce or even eliminate risk? How do we get to the stage where the client doesn't even read your sales page and buys your product completely on trust—even when it's an expensive purchase? Let's dig into this crazy universe of risk—shall we? We'll delve deep into three topics – Why Clients Don't Buy (Understanding The Elements of Risk) – Why The Risk Factor Changes With Every Version Of Your Product/Service – How Pre-sell Dramatically Ramps Down Risk Part 1: Why Clients Don't Buy (Understanding The Elements of Risk) Modern see-saws are kind of boring. You don't even need someone to sit on the other side. They have all these fancy spring mechanisms so that—in effect—you could see saw your way to your heart's content. What the modern see-saw misses is the fun that came with understanding balance. As kids, the see-saw mechanism was quick to demonstrate how balance made an enormous difference. And when we decide to look at risk, we must first understand balance. Now if you've read The Brain Audit, you'll know that you need seven elements to take the client from "hmmm" to "yes, I want to buy your product or service". The first three of those seven are the problem, solution and target profile. The next four are objections, testimonials, risk reversal and uniqueness. What we're experiencing in The Brain Audit is a factor of balance. The first three elements of problem, solution and target profile balance out the next four elements. The first three elements are all about attraction—the next four are about risk. Risk, as you can see, is the big boy on the see-saw No matter how good you are at attracting a prospect, there's an enormous risk factor always lurking on the sales playground. To understand how we

When Jim Collins wrote "Good To Great", he did talk a fair bit about the Hedgehog Principle. But what he stresses more on, is quite another concept called "Preserving the Core and Stimulating Progress". Why does this concept matter so much? And how do you combine the Hedgehog Principle with this concept? And where does the big, hairy, audacious goal fit in with everything? This episode shows you how to tie all the elements together in a neat little bundle. Time to escalate that route to greatness, don't you think? -------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 2: The BHAG Part 3: Your Action Plan To Greatness Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Why Happiness Eludes You: 3 Obstacles That We Need To Overcome Find out: Do We Really Need To Start With Why? -------------- Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress Recently a client called Rosa wrote to us with a request. "I would have preferred to read the series on Dartboard Pricing in ePub," she said. She made it clear it was a request, not a demand. Which brings up a whole new set of problems for us at Psychotactics. Most business books are designed with text in mind and may contain a few graphics. Our books aren't designed that way at all. They have dozens of cartoons and under every cartoon is a caption. In The Brain Audit alone there are almost 100 cartoons and corresponding captions. In a PDF, this layout is easy-peasy. Create the book in InDesign and export it as a PDF and it maintains its design integrity. Try to do the same thing for an ePub and it's like stepping in poo. It's a tedious, frustrating process to get all the graphics to align the way they should The easier way is to just make a quick excuse, apologies and move on. After all, it isn't like 90% of our audience is asking for an ePub. It's just a stray request, isn't it? It's simple to ignore the request and get on with the important task of doing whatever it is we do. But that's where the problem lies, doesn't it? We've ignored the concept of progress. Almost all of us today read on a tablet or our phones. I know I do, my wife does, even my mother in law who ranted and raved about computers—she now loves her iPad. And PDFs work on tablet devices and phones, but they're super clunky. Sadly that's not the only problem Jim Collins talks about two elements: preserving the core and stimulating progress. And he goes to great lengths to stress the AND in between both of them. So all of us have to stand back and ask ourselves: What's our core? The core of Psychotactics has been the factor of "consumption". Any one can create attraction and conversion. It's super-hard to get clients to consume what they've bought from you. Books, courses, workshops—we spend hours, days and weeks trying to figure out how to achieve a skill. The cartoons, the captions in the book—they're not just a design concept. They're placed there as memory hooks; as a method of summary. They need to be exactly where they are in the books and courses. We could remove them and easily create an ePub like most ePubs, but that would fit in with our core. Collins says it has to be an AND. We have to preserve the core AND stimulate progress. This principle is clearly frustrating and pulls in opposite directions. When you're starting out, you don't have any legacy issues in place. You create a business the way you want to shape it. And the core and the progress moves along nicely. It's when you "grow up" that you have to worry about how all the past has to fit in with the future. The longer you've been in business, the greater the past, and the more the past has to merge with an ever changing future. Take Nokia for instance You can almost hear the sound of the Nokia ring, can't you? In the early 2000s, all of us would have at one point in time run into, or owned a Nokia. Nokia was no slouch in realm of being super-progresssive. They were into paper, then electricity and bounced from there to rubber, galoshes and finally were the most dominant phone manufacturer on the planet. In the early 1990's they had a clear and accurate vision of the future. They saw the coming of the cell phone, dumped all their businesses and stuck with the cell phone. And then, just for good measure, they invented the first smart phone. That amazing device you take photos with, use to find your way around and yes, make phone calls—Nokia was on the ball way back in 1996. They even built a prototype of an Internet-enabled phone at the end of the 90's. And then they got stuck in a loop They failed to see the link between their core—which was to make really simple phones—and the future. The future was software. The core of their legacy was hardware. They spent millions of dollars turning out failure after failure. They believed so much in their hardware that they just couldn't figure out th

There are two options in life: greatness or mediocrity. But greatness seems so elusive, even so pompous. How do you call your work "great"? How do you even know or benchmark "greatness?". And can a small business achieve greatness or do you have to be a dominant player like Apple, Disney and Walmart. In this episode we get right to the root of greatness and how the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins changed my life. But instead of the massive journey to greatness, this episode shows you a tiny path. A path most of us can manage with just a little bit of effort. A life of mediocrity is hardly worth living. Here's the pathway to greatness. ---------- Useful Resources / To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/79 / / Email me at: [email protected] / / Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza / / Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic ---------- Part 1: The Hedgehog Principle Part 2: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 3: Big, Hairy Audacious Goal—The BHAG Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Why Happiness Eludes You: 3 Obstacles That We Need To Overcome Find out: Do We Really Need To Start With Why? ----------------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." Around the autumn of 1890, Daniel Burnham was given a project. Burnham was an architect—an extremely well known architect—in Chicago. And he'd been given a job like no other. He was expected to turn a boggy square mile into what would be the spotlight of the world. He was put in charge of the World's Columbian Exposition. He just had one tiny problem—the Eiffel Tower. On March 31, 1889, Paris had had it's own Exposition. And it quickly surpassed the Washington Monument to become the then tallest man-made structure in the world. Burhnam had the unenviable job of surpassing the hoopla around the Eiffel Tower, but no one had a clue what to do. "Make no little plans", he said to his team of engineers, but they could come up with little to rival the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower. Of course there were proposals: a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in chairs (pretty much like today's bungee jumping). And Eiffel himself proposed an idea for the Chicago exposition—a bigger tower than the one in Paris. How could the Chicago Exposition outshine the now most famous monument in the world—the Eiffel Tower? It seemed almost impossible to come up with something that would rival the French monument. An engineer called Ferris has the answer. The ideas were going nowhere and the Chicagoans were pulling their hair out, when a 33 year old engineer from Pittsburgh came up with an idea: how about a huge revolving steel wheel? He came up with sketches, added additional specifications and then shared the idea with Burnham. But Burnham was not impressed. The slender rods of the wheel were too fragile. It would be madness to carry people to a height taller than the Statue of Liberty in such a fragile wheel. But Burnham wasn't just dealing with any ol' engineer. He was dealing with George Washington Gale Ferris Jr—who would forever be associated with the Ferris wheel. Ferris was so convinced his idea would work that he spent $25,000 of his own money, hired more engineers and recruited investors. And consider that $25,000 would be worth over $650,000 in today's money. Over a 100,000 parts went into the Ferris wheel. And an 89,320 pound axle had to be hoisted onto two towers 140 feet in the air. On June 21, 1893 when it was launched, it was a stunning success. As the exposition went through the next three week, more than 1.4 million paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride. George Washington Gale Ferris had literally reinvented the wheel. The year we moved to New Zealand, I had to reinvent my own wheel. You see, I wasn't in marketing. I had no plans of being in marketing. I was already an established cartoonist back in Mumbai, India and when I moved to New Zealand I pretty much expected to continue to draw cartoons. In fact I was so determined to take that cartoon career forward, that when we moved I had over 100 kilos worth of books shipped. These were no ordinary books. These were the books on graphic design and cartooning that I'd accumulated over the years. Plus, there were brochures. Before I left India, I had no idea what New Zealand held for me. So I printed business cards—as you do But also lavish four colour brochures, postcards and yes, stationery that I could use when I got to New Zealand. All of this material had to be shipped by air—not by sea—because I was in a big hurry to get going in this new country. Yet, almost a year later, I had to reinvent what I was doing—and it was all because of one book. That book, "Good to Great" has sold over 2

Storytelling has a lot of guidelines and rules. Yet, some of the critical elements slip under the radar. You don't realise storytelling elements and secrets that are hiding in plain sight. And storytellers can't always explain what they're doing?and so these elements of storytelling get left out. And yet, they're incredibly powerful. Like for instance, the concept of "anticipation" before the "problem". It's nowhere to be found? Unless of course you listen to this episode on how to tell riveting stories. Welcome to Goldilocks land! http://www.psychotactics.com/three-elements-storytelling/ --------- In this episode Sean talks about how to create stories that are very powerful. Part 1: How the 'The Wall' changes the pace of a story Part 2: The power in using the 'The Reconnect' Part 3: Why anticipation is so critical in storytelling Earlier Recording: Right click and 'save as' to download this episode Re-Release: Right click and 'save as' to download this episode Useful Resources and Links The Brain Audit: How to introduce your product in a language the customer understands Read or listen to: How to double your writing speed Special Bonus: How to design the pricing grid for your product --------- This is The 3 Month Vacation, and I'm Sean D'Souza. I was about 2 years old when I first had a bout of convulsions. It didn't start up as convulsions. I was standing there on the balcony, looking out on the road, and then I fell off the stool that I was standing on. As the story goes, I ran to my mother. She noticed that I was having convulsions, and she panicked. Now, panic would be the wrong word to use because what she did next was bundled me in her arms and ran with me to the hospital. To put you in the frame of mind of what India was when I was growing up, there were no phones or most people didn't have phones. They didn't have cars. You probably had a scooter if you were well off. That's just how things were back then. What she had to do was run a distance of 2 kilometers, maybe 3 kilometers to get to the nearest hospital. When she got to the hospital, they wouldn't admit me because I had meningitis and the hospital was not in the position to deal with cases of meningitis. Somehow, she managed to get them to admit me. At that point in time, they asked for the mother. Now, my mother was very young at that point in time and they assumed that she was somehow the sister. They said, "No. No. No. You have to get the mother." This is very odd in India because people tend to get married very early in India and yet they were insisting that they had to have the mother before they could go ahead with anything. There I was, not doing so well and the hospital authorities wouldn't go ahead without dealing with the mother. Now, she convinced them but once they admitted me, there was one more problem. The doctor wasn't so sure that I would survive the meningitis. He told my parents, and by that point, my father was there as well. He said, "I have to tell you this. Your son will either die or he'll go mad." What you just heard was the story of my youth. The question is, why did you keep listening? Why did the story work? What is it that caused you to pay attention and not move away from the story? In today's episode, we're going to cover storytelling elements: How to Avoid Boring Articles? The core of avoiding boring articles is to be able to tell stories, but stories are useful for presentations. They're useful for books. They're useful for webinars. They're useful for pretty much everything. What happens is most of us load up our information with facts and figures, and those are very tiring but stories, they encapsulate everything. We're going to learn how to create stories that are very powerful. The 3 things we're going to cover today are one, the wall; second, the reconnect; and third, the anticipation. Part 1: The Wall Let's start off with the first one which is the wall. Every afternoon, every weekday, I go through the same routine. I pick up my niece from school. She's now 11, that's Marsha. We speak about stuff in the car. We do multiplication tables. Recently, we've been doing storytelling. I usually when I asked her, "Tell me of story about what happened in the weekend." She goes, "Nothing." Then I say, "What happened in class?" She goes, "Nothing." This is the interesting part. You think that there's nothing happening in your life, but there is a lot happening all the time. Then, we have to zero in onto one little thing and make it interesting, just about anything becomes interesting in the way you dealt it. I said, "Tell me about your piano class on Saturday." Her little face brightens up and the smile comes on, and she goes, "I didn't practice before going to piano class on Saturday. Then when I got to the piano class, I was really afraid because I thought I would the play the piece really badly. But as it appears, I played quite well. In fact, I played it so well that the piano teacher said, 'I'm going to put you

When your client picks up your report, can you guarantee they'll read it from start to finish? No matter how good the content, there are precise elements that cause a client to completely consume the report. This episode delves into three of the most important elements that makes your report stand out and more importantly, get read. http://www.psychotactics.com/secret-getting-your-report-read/ ------------------------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What makes a report powerful? Part 2: What are tiny increments? Part 3: How to empower your reader Earlier Recording: Right click and 'save as' to download this episode. Re-Release: Right click and 'save as' to download this episode. Useful Resources and Links Dart Board Pricing: How To Increase Prices (Without Losing Customers) The Headline Report: Why Headlines Fail The 70% Principle: Why It Knocks Procrastination Out of the Ball Park ------------------------------------- Back in the year 2003 I wrote an article where you just had to take three steps to write a great headline. You could test the headline and you could find out in minutes that it worked for you, and it also got the attention of your customers. I wasn't prepared for how popular that article would be. As we were looking at the statistics of the Psychotactics site, we saw that the article got picked up over and over again. Then we decided, let's make this a report. Surprisingly, when I took that same article, which was just about 800 words, and I put it into a PDF and put some graphics and an introduction and some cartoons, it became close to a ten-page book. That is the headline report. This is the interesting part. The report was nothing more than an article. Can we all do the same? Can we just write an 800-word article, put it in a report, and make it powerful? Not quite. You have to understand why the report works. We're going to break up that headline report here today on this podcast. You'll see for yourself, there are three elements that make it work. Let's explore those three elements. What makes the report so powerful? The key factor is not the elements but the overall concept. The overall concept is one of empowerment. We are so hung up on the concept of information that we forget what we really have to do as teachers. As teachers we have to empower. We know we've done our job correctly when the client is able to do exactly what we're doing, and possibly even better. Frankly, when I was writing the headline report I wasn't thinking of this. I wasn't thinking of empowerment. I wasn't thinking of the elements. But when you deconstruct the report you can see there are three very specific elements that make it that empowerment tool. The first of the elements is tiny increments. The second is the length. The third are the examples in the report. Let's explore each one systematically. Let's start off with the first one, which is the tiny increments. What are tiny increments? About a month ago I got myself some recording hardware. It has all these buttons and it's very hard to figure out which button to press and when to press it. Of course you don't want to look at the manual because that's really badly written. Maybe you go online like I did and you go to YouTube. There are lots of tutorials on how to use it, but there is all this unboxing and then something else and something else. 35 minutes later, you have no clue what you're supposed to do. Then I found a video that was only three minutes long. The video only covered turning on the device. Now, it was three minutes long. How much can you learn about turning on a device? It's a little switch. But it was so cool. I could actually do it. It was a tiny increment. You don't have to put in a ton of information for people to be impressed. You have to empower. At the end of the video, what could I do? I could turn on the device. So I go to the next video. In the next video, they cover a little bit again. This is the concept of tiny increments. When we're teaching, we don't understand that the client doesn't get what we're saying. Let's say you've come to one of the Psychotactics workshops and we're doing an experiment. We're saying we're going to take steps now. I say, "Okay, let's take a step." Then you watch the people in the room. What do they do? Almost everyone will take a step forward, but someone will take a step to the left, or someone will take a step to the right, or someone will take a step back. Now we have all these permutations where people are going off-tangent. If they just take one step, they just make one mistake, you can pull them back and then say, "What I meant was take a step to the left." Now the whole group can go one step back, one step to the left, and now we're on target. When you have something that has a very tiny increment, the customer can only make a very small mistake. You can spot the mistake and pull them back, or you can show them that mistake in your report and pull them back. When you ha

The Three-Month Vacation, that's one of the things that make me really happy. But what else is required to keep that happiness level up? The key lies in identifying the obstacles. When we remove the obstacles, we know how to get to happiness. This may seem like a weird topic to take on, but check it out for yourself. Happiness isn't some weird pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It isn't some Internet marketer promising you endless clients. It's reachable, you know. So check it out. -------------------- Useful Resources Email me at: [email protected] Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic Transcript:http://www.psychotactics.com/three-obstacles-to-happiness/ ---------------- When I was 8 years old the highlight of my week was "coconut water". On Saturdays, I'd go with my father to get all the provisions for the week. There was no drive to the supermarket ten times a week. Instead, once a week, we'd get on the train, then walk into a market filled with fresh vegetables, meat, fish and fruit. And in the middle of this market was a guy who sold coconuts—and coconut water. Almost nothing brought a smile to my face as much as the thought of drinking coconut water on Saturdays. It was my moment of pure bliss. And that, just that, is the secret of life We go around trying to find the purpose of life, when the answer is right in front of us all the time. The purpose of life is to be "happy". Except I wasn't entirely happy with just the coconut water After we bought a ton of meat, fish and vegetables and headed back to the train station, we'd eat a potato snack dipped in a mixture of green mint chutney and tamarind sauce. Now that too, was my moment of bliss. So wait, this happiness story is getting weird, isn't it? I mean here we are trying to establish happiness, and it seems we're jumping from one point to another. And that's exactly the point! No one thing makes us happy. For me, my current moments of bliss are the walk to the cafe with my wife, the coffee, let's not forget the coffee. There's also the time I spend with my nieces. My painting, my work, the music on my podcast, single malt whisky—and yes, the 3-Month vacations. And yet, most of us never write down what makes us happy So do it as an exercise. Get out a sheet of paper. Make the list. It won't necessarily be a very long list. And the funny thing is that it will consist of rather mundane things like gardening, a walk on the beach—I even know someone who is super contented by ironing. Making the list enables us to know what we really want from life, so we can start heading in that direction. Because frothing, right in front of us are the obstacles. They're determined to reduce, even eliminate our happiness. So what are these obstacles? They are: – Inefficiency – Greed – Self-doubt Inefficiency? Really? Yes, really! Though you'd never expect to see inefficiency in a happiness list, it's the No.1 killer of happiness. That's because if you were to look at your list again, you'd find that everything that makes you happy, also takes time. Time that you're spending being inefficient Look at the software you're using. How efficient are you at it? Let's take for example the "Three Month Vacation" podcast that I create. Well, the podcast recording itself is just 15-17 minutes. And I can usually do it in one take. But each podcast is matched to music—often as many as eight different pieces of music (you have to listen to it, to believe it). And all this music, and production, and editing—well, it takes 3 hours. So the question that arises is just this: How do you save 10 minutes? Just 10 minutes in a three-hour exercise, adds up to 20 a week—about bout 100 a month. Which totals up to 1200 a year. That's 20 hours of happiness deprivation and for what? For inefficiency? That's a stupid, yes stupid, way to go about things isn't it? But we do it routinely—we stay inefficient We know that one of the best ways to get clients is to write a book, or a booklet. To create information that draws clients to you, instead of you chasing after them. And we know that the book can't just be "written". It needs structure. But no, no, no, no and no. We just sit down and write the book. And many, many hours later, we're not sure why we're struggling so much with the book. Or why a client is even going to read it. And we're stepping deeper in the doo-doo of inefficiency. So what are we to do? Well, we have a list of what makes us happy, right? How about a list of the things we do; the software we use; the books, video, audio we have to create? How about a list—and not a very long list, that enables us to see where we can get more efficient? Instead of slogging for a year over a book, would there be a way to write it using structure? That alone could shave off 10 months of twirling round and round. If you're using a piece of software, how about learning just two shortcuts a week? Just two a week! See how that brings inefficiency down to its knees, two shortcuts

Is the 10,000 hours principle true? And if it's true, what are your chances of success? And what are the biggest flaw? How do you take the concept of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hours story (He took it from a K.Anders Ericsson study) and reduce the number of hours? Is talent really attainable in fewer hours? http://www.psychotactics.com/expertise-fewer-10000-hours/ ----------- Hi. This is Sean D'Souza from Psychotactics.com, and you are listening to the Three-Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time. Have you ever watched a 16-year-old go for a driving test? They probably practice for two or three off and on, and then after that, they drive. Now, imagine they changed the rules of the driving test. Imagine they said that you needed 10,000 hours to drive. How many of us would be on the roads today? Several years ago, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called "Outliers". Within that book, there was this concept of 10,000 hours, and the concept was very simple. It said that if you wanted to be exceedingly good at something, you needed to spend at least 10,000 hours. As you can quite quickly calculate, that's about 10 years of very had work or 5 years of extremely hard work. The interesting thing about 10,000-hour principle is that two sets of people jump on it, the people that had already put in their 10,000 hours in something and those who hadn't; but what if you hadn't? What if you hadn't put in those 10,000 hours? Were you doomed to be always untalented? Understanding this concept of the 10,000 hours is very important, especially if you want to take vacations. You have to get very skilled at a lot of things very quickly. If you don't understand the concept, then you struggle for no reason at all. In today's episode of the Three-Month Vacation, we're going to cover three things. The first is, why is the 10,000 hours true? The second, what are the biggest flaws in the 10,000 hours? The third is, how do you go about shortening that process, so that you just do maybe a thousand hours? Let's start out with the concept of why the 10,000 hours is absolutely true. Now, nothing is absolutely true, but the 10,000-hour principle works for a simple reason. That is we don't know that we're making mistakes. If you take a guitarist, say someone like John Mayer, or Eric Clapton, or B.B. King, and you look at how long they spent with their guitar, they probably spent an excessive 10,000 hours. When you're starting out and when you're playing that guitar, you don't really know what mistakes you're making, and you don't really care. You're there just to play the guitar, and this is what a lot of artists do. This is what a lot of writers do. They spend enormous amounts of hours just fooling around, just playing the guitar, just drawing a cartoon, just writing something, and they make mistakes. They make a lot of mistakes, but the problem is they don't know that they're making a mistake. Take for instance my own life. When I started drawing cartoons, I was probably just out of school, and I was drawing cartoons that are pretty flat. One day, my friend, Howard, he said, "Well, there's something wrong with your drawing." I said, "What's wrong?" He couldn't explain, but he said, "They're really flat." It was then I realized that I wasn't using perspective. Until that moment, I didn't realize. I've been drawing for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours, but I didn't realize I was making a mistake. Several years later, I started doing commercial projects, and someone mentioned that my lines were too weak. Lines are too weak? What do you mean by lines are too weak? They couldn't explain, but I had to do my own research, and then I found that great artists have this variation in their life to take and attend. This is what most musicians, artists, painters, people who are talented at anything that you think are talented at something, they've spent thousands of hours just making mistakes. If you take the mistakes out of the equation, we don't have 10,000 hours. We have a thousand hours, maybe less. If you go strictly by the rulebook, you can fly a commercial aircraft after 1,500 hours. Now, admittedly, you're not going to get a job for 1,500 hours, but you can fly it. You can fly one of those big jets after having done just 1,500 hours. This is true for cartooning as well. This is true for writing. It's easy to say that it's true, but the proof or the footing is in the eating, so we decided to prove the point. In 2010, we started a course that we knew for sure no one or very few people to do, and that is to draw cartoons. People into the course is saying, "Well, I can't draw a straight line." The ironic thing is that to be a cartoonist, you don't have to draw a straight line. You have to draw wobbly lines all over the place. Nonetheless, within 6 months, those people that joined the course and stayed for those 6

Imagine you had a program that generated over $150,000 a year. Let's also imagine that this program always had a waiting list and that clients loved it. Would you stop the program, or let it run? In 2006, we started the Protege Program and by 2009, it came to an abrupt halt. But was it abrupt? And why did it stop in the first place? These stories and more show up in the Psychotactics story. There's not a moment of boredom as we head into the roller coaster of 2009 and beyond. Where we explore the crazy world of workshops, this time outside the safety of California. It's one nutty, exciting ride. Buckle up, because it's action-packed and full of lessons for your own small business. http://www.psychotactics.com/stopped-protege/ Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 2 "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." It was February 2006 I'd just started a crazy venture called the Protege. Well it was crazy for me at least. I'd written a sales letter promising that I would teach six courses in one year. The courses were Article Writing, Copy Writing, Information Product Strategy, Website Strategy, Core Marketing Strategy and PR (Public Relations). And no sooner than the Protege sessions started up when I had this idea of holding a workshop for the Proteges in California. There was only one problem This workshop was not part of what I'd promised. It was an extra workshop of five days. For the first three days we'd be working on Website Strategy and the next two days would be closed-door Protege sessions. So the problem that arose instantly was one of scheduling, money, effort and a few dozen assorted issues. For me it meant that I had to book a room somewhere in the U.S., book flights and do an entire workshop in slides in less than eight weeks. What's more interesting is that the workshop didn't exist. Notes didn't exist and neither did the slides. This was compounded by a few interesting facts The Protege year was something that was just dreamed up in a salesletter. No material existed for any of the six courses (today they all exist in audio/text, but back then I was creating it as the courses rolled along). So I had this cute little challenge of hosting live teleclasses (training calls), creating content on the fly, managing a forum with 15 proteges and preparing for a workshop all at once. Admittedly those were problems that were pretty rough but that was the least of my problems I also had a bit of a mutiny on my hands. I hadn't made the workshop a compulsory attendance issue (you could attend if you like to) but I sure stressed it was important. I also required each of the proteges to cough up an additional $500 for the workshop (it was just to cover the costs of the venue etc.) This additional payment didn't go down well. What made it worse was they had to travel to Campbell, California, stay in a hotel and had all of this additional expenditure—not to mention they all had to take at least a week off from work. They were not happy in the least. It was almost like a bit of bait and switch. But in my mind it wasn't bait and switch at all I really felt that those five days would be of immense help to the Proteges. For one there was the factor of learning in a compressed state (over five days). There was also the factor of connecting with each other because when people connect, they work better after the connection. To me it seemed quite sensible to have a meeting like this totally out of the blue (just kidding). But this sudden move kicked up a ton of dust and I then spent a fair bit of time on the phone, and via the forums and email sorting things out. Once things were sorted out the real work began We had to find a venue and get on with the job of getting the show on the road. Because Renuka's sister, Audrey lived in Campbell, she did some scouting around for us and we soon located a meeting room at the adorable Pruneyard Plaza just 5 minutes away from Audrey's house. And unlike the earlier workshops there was absolutely no drama at all this time around. All we had to do was land in San Francisco, and we were picked up from the airport. We were chauffeured around from Kinko's (where we got our binders and notes photocopied) to Costco and just about everywhere. In fact the hotel even picked us up at 7am from the house every morning and dropped us back every evening (I bet no one has ever done that before or since). And the workshop went like a dream. Oh I forgot to tell you how we made a profit on the workshop. So here's how we made a profit $500 per Protege wasn't even barely going to cover the airfares and costs of the workshops, and if you're going to do a workshop might as well make a profit. That's only part of the issue. When you're doing a workshop, you want to make sure you have a full house. Having just ten or fifteen people in a room is nice, but having about 25-30 people in the room really creates enormous energy in th

Imagine being a hostage at your own workshop! Imagine not having access to your own venue; having to take permission from someone else just to conduct your event. This is the crazy story of the very first Psychotactics U.S. Workshop. And while it's an entertaining story all by itself, there's a lot to learn as well. What went wrong with the strategic alliance? What did we do when the credit card company went bust? And how did a hurricane come to our rescue? Let's go on this on part one of this crazy roller coaster ride into Psychotactics land. http://www.psychotactics.com/crazy-workshop/ ================ In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What went wrong with the strategic alliance? Part 2: What did we do when the credit card company went bust? Part 3: And how did a hurricane come to our rescue? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don't) Another Psychotactics Story: The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand The Power of Enough: And Why It's Critical To Your ================ Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 1 "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." "You want a room for 150 people? Is that correct?" "Yes that's correct," I said. "150 people." And then I put down the phone. That was the booking I was making for our first ever Psychotactics workshop in the US. And I did some quick calculations. I had watched other marketers fill up rooms with 1500-2000 people. And I figured, naively of course, that I could easily manage to sign up at least a hundred and fifty folks. And if you know anything about workshops, you'll get to know one thing quickly: You don't have a workshop unless you have a room. Because that's the first thing a client will ask. They always ask you where you're going to host your workshop, and ask for the dates. And those dates need to be set in stone long weeks, sometimes month in advance. But hey, it wasn't like we weren't prepared. We were so nervous about this event, that it was critical we planned about six months in advance. It didn't help that I had never been to the U.S. before. It sure as heck was scary that I had an Indian passport. Now it's not like I wasn't already a permanent resident in New Zealand. I was, but you don't get New Zealand citizenship for five years, and so I was stuck with the Indian passport. And the passport matters. With an NZ passport I can just jump on a plane at five minutes notice. With the Indian passport, I needed a visa. I was petrified because I was selling seats at a workshop, and wasn't even sure I'd get a visa It's not for want of trying. I got in touch with the American embassy a few months in advance. They didn't process visas that much in advance, they told me. All I could do was buy my ticket, get the requisite paperwork and book an appointment to get the visa. There was only one glitch. They would let me know about the visa a week before I was due to travel. And that was only part of the "problem"… On the other front we had the issue of signing up clients for the workshop. This as you can tell, was no easy task. The price of the workshop was $1500 per person. That didn't include any meals, stay or travel costs. If a client was to agree to come to the workshop, they'd have to fly or drive to get to Los Angeles. And it's safe to say that you'd end up spending another $500-$750 on top of the price tag of the workshop itself. I somehow had to make this workshop too hard to miss. I had to make it enticing enough so that people would somehow decide they just had to be there. And so we did the Free 16-Week training course in advance. In case you didn't work it out, that's four months of training week after week (kinda of tells you how much in advance we were getting prepared). And every week we'd have an hour's worth of teleconferences. Each of the teleconferences had their own agenda. And their own set of complications. The complications arose from not knowing how many people would show up on the call It was the year 2004. And back then, if you had a teleconference, you had a lot of no-shows, but still a heck of a lot of people would show up. And when we announced the 16-Week Course we got over 2000 people signing up to the free course. Should we book 500 teleconference lines? Or 300? Or 150? It was not only difficult to take a decision on the numbers but it also cost a fair packet to reserve those many lines at a time. And don't forget, we were just getting started at Psychotactics. Every dollar was extremely precious to us. Throwing dollars on excess conference lines wasn't my idea of fun at all. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I booked 500 lines And roughly 150 people showed up for the first call. I instantly slashed the number of teleconference lines down to 150. Sometimes the call was packed to the brim. Sometimes not. But I figured I wanted 150 p

When you're speaking to a client or presenting your product or service, do you have a ton of "ums" and "ahs"? Do you find it frustrating, but don't know how to get rid of that irritation? And if you're recording an event, a whole bunch of ums and ahs can cause a major headache in editing?plus push up editing time and frustration levels. So how can you get rid of all your ums and ahs in under 15 minutes? http://www.psychotactics.com/speaking-professionally/ ---------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How to get rid of 'ums' and 'ahs' when podcasting or speaking in under 15 minutes Part 2: The sound of spit and how to get rid of it Part 3: Why you need variation in your voice Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Read about: Why A Relaxed Brain Works Faster Than A Tired Brain Preacher or Teacher? Why Our Clients Struggle To Learn Skills Quickly Other techniques: Why Variation Is The Hallmark of Outstanding Presenters ---------------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." This is The Three Month Vacation, I'm Sean D'Souza. We've been podcasting since around November of 2014. One of the things that I never seem to cover is anything to do with podcasts. That's not on purpose, it's just something that I've never covered. Today I'm going to have this very short podcast, no stories, just a little technique that will help you as you're going about creating audio or even speaking in public. Little Technique To Help Creating Audio There are a few things that we do when we're recording podcasts that are very frustrating. The first thing that we do is we cannot help it and we go um, uh, um. These ums and uhs seem to infiltrate our speech whether it's in a podcast or in an interview or just presenting to your client. On podcasts, you also get the sound of spit, yes? Moisture in your mouth. It sounds like [chump chump 00:01:06], like that. It's very frustrating for you, not so much for the listener. After awhile even listeners start to tune in to that spit kind of sound. How do we get rid of that? Finally the third thing about the podcast is just this variation in your voice. It's very easy to start recording and forget that there's an audience out there. You're never speaking to an audience, you're always speaking to one person and this is the mistake that we make. These are the three glitches that we make when we're podcasting. Today I'm going to get rid of all three of them. How to get rid of 'ums' when podcasting or speaking Let's start off with getting rid of all the um and the uhs that we have when we are podcasting or speaking to anyone at all. It doesn't matter whether you use a PC or a Mac, you've seen that spinning ball on your computer haven't you? When the computer's trying to access something, it's going through that, hey let's get to this something. You can't do anything and you're just sitting there waiting for it to do it's thing before you can continue working. That's approximately what your brain is doing, but at a much higher speed. It's a better processor, your brain. What it's doing is it's trying to access the information. Every time a speaker says um or ah or like, that's approximately what they're doing. They're accessing their database. How do you stop it? At all points in time, especially if you're not reading off the screen, like right now I'm not reading off the screen. My brain has to work out what I'm going to say next and yet there are no ums or likes or ahs coming out. The reason is, I'm pausing. I could say "Um what we need to do next is um" or I could say, "So … what we need to do next is …" It's a little break. You're noticing it now because I'm bringing it to your attention. That's all I do. Whenever I'm making a presentation, whether it's on stage or it's a webinar or any kind of recording, I'm conscious about the ums and the pauses. All I do is stop speaking. Just let your brain access the information it needs and let a natural pause come in. Now if your podcast is anything like this podcast, then there will be music in the background, and sometimes not even music in the background, but a lot of music, and the pause won't be noticeable. If you're speaking in public, it's critical to get rid of the ums. If you're doing a recording like this, it's a nuisance to remove all the ums. When I started out many years ago, when we did our first workshop in Los Angeles in 2004, there were ums and ahs all over the place. The more tired I got, the more ums and ahs just popped up out of the woodwork. I just had to learn to pause. I'm not saying that in a live workshop, which lasts two or three days, you're not going to get ums and ahs. It's just that you can reduce it dramatically. In a podcast or a speech like this where you're nice and fresh, you can eliminate it completely. Just practice that for 15 minutes. Just pause whene

Who's Doug Hitchcock? And in a world full of goal-setting exercises, why does Doug's system stand out? Find out why most goal-setting goes hopelessly off the mark and Doug's plan works almost like magic year after year. Find out not just how to set goals, but how to create a stop-doing list (yes, that's a goal too). And finally, learn why most goals are designed for failure because they lack a simple benchmarking system. Find out how we've made almost impossible dreams come true with this goal-setting system. http://www.psychotactics.com/goal-setting-successfully/ ------------------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why most goal-setting goes hopelessly off the mark Part 2: How to set goals, but how to create a successful stop-doing list Part 3: Learn why most goals are designed for failure because they lack a simple benchmarking system Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Chaos Planning: How 'Irregular' Folks Get Things Done Learning: How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn 5000bc: How to get started on your goal setting ------------------------------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." This is the Three-Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. Doug Hitchcock was my first real mentor and he had been bankrupt thrive. When I first moved to Auckland in the year 2000, I didn't really know anyone. I was starting up a new business, I was starting up a new life. I joined a networking group and within that networking group I asked for a mentor. Well, no one in the networking group was willing to be a mentor, but someone did put me in touch with Doug. The only problem with Doug was he had been bankrupt thrive. Now, when I say he was bankrupt thrice, it doesn't mean he was still bankrupt. He just pulled himself out of the hole three times in his life and there he was, at about 70 plus, and he was my first mentor. Before he starts to talk to me about anything, he asks me, "Do you do goal setting?" I'm like, "Yeah, I have goals," and he goes, "No. Do you have goals on paper?" I said, "No." He says, "We have to start there. We have to start with goals on paper." That's how I started doing goal setting, all the way back in the year 2000. Almost immediately, I got all the goal setting wrong. You ask, how can you get goal setting wrong? After all, you're just putting goals down on a sheet of paper. How can you get something like that wrong? You can't write the wrong goals, but you can write too many goals. That's exactly what I did. I sat down with that sheet of paper and I wrote down all my work goals, my personal goals, and I had an enormous list. That's when Doug came back into the scene, and he said, "Pick three." I said, "I could pick five." He goes, "No, no, no. Pick three." I picked three goals in my work and three goals from my personal life. You know what? By the end of the year, I'd achieved those goals. Ever since, I have been sitting down and working out these goals based on Doug's method. Doug may have lost his business thrice in a row, but he knew what he was talking about. Most of us just wander through life expecting things to happen. When they happen, we say they happen for a reason, but they don't happen for a reason. They happen, and we assign a reason to it. In this episode, I'm going to cover three topics. The first is the three part planning. Then we'll go the other way. We're create a stop doing list. Finally, we'll look at benchmarks and see how we've done in the year. Let's start off with the first one, which is the three part planning. Does the San Fernando earthquake ring any bells in your memory? Most people haven't ever heard of this earthquake, and yet it was one of the deadliest earthquakes in US history. It collapsed entire hospitals, it killed 64 people, it injured over two and a half thousand. When the damage was assessed, it had cost millions of dollars, and yet it could have been the disaster that eclipsed all other US disasters. That's because the earthquake almost caused the entire Van Norman Reservoir to collapse. The dam held, and yet, if it had collapsed, the resulting rush of water would have taken the lives of more people than the Pearl Harbor Attack, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, 9/11 and 1900 Galveston Hurricane combined. In barely 12 seconds, the top section of the dam had disintegrated and yet, the surrounding areas were extremely lucky. The reservoir was only half full that day. The aftershocks of the earthquake continued to cause parts of the dam to break apart. A few feet of free board was the only thing that stopped a total collapse. This total collapse is what many of us come close to experiencing as we try to clamber up the ladder of success. We try to do too many things and we don't seem to go anywhere. In effect, this is like water cascading down a dam. There's too many things and we hav

What's wrong with this statement? Instead of wondering when our next vacation is we should set up a life we don't need to escape from.? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, is there? And yet this entire line is based on a myth. And that's not the only myth that circulates so well and widely. Another myth is that a business has to grow; has to increase clients; has to increase revenues. But is that why you really got into business? Did you set out to create a life that's work, work and more work? Join us as we explore three big myths, and destroy them: Myth 1: That your business needs to constantly grow bigger. Myth 2: Somehow you'll have more time, and your business will be on auto-pilot / Myth 3: That we need to set up a life where we don't need to wonder about our vacations. / / Yup, incredibly silly business myths. Let's take them head on and get some sanity back into our lives, instead. http://www.psychotactics.com/three-business-myths/ ================ In this episode Sean talks about Myth 1: That your business needs to constantly grow bigger Myth 2: Somehow you'll have more time, and your business will be on auto-pilot Myth 3: Vacation is the enemy and work is everything Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources The Power of Enough: Why It's Critical To Your Sanity Three Obstacles To Happiness: How To Overcome Them 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems ================ The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. Imagine you're a band, but not just any old music band. Instead, you're the most popular band in the whole world. You've sold over 200 million records. You're in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and probably only five or six bands have sold more than you in the entire history of pop. Barry Gibb has never done this before, never taken the long walk to the stage by himself. Speaker 2: Is it important for you to do this? Barry: Yeah, it's everything to me. It's all I've ever known. I don't know how to do anything else. Speaker 2: t went pretty well, though. Barry: I can't get a job. Speaker 2: He's the only surviving member of one of the 20th century's greatest vocal groups, and this night, at the TD Garden in Boston, he's about to begin his first ever solo tour. You have to ask yourself why. Why would Barry Gibb, with all his success and all the money that they've earned over the years as the Bee Gees, do his first solo tour. It's not like he needs the money or the fame, because they're the only group in history to have written, recorded, and produced six consecutive number one hits. As Barry Gibb himself boasted, "We weren't on the charts. We were the charts." In that spring, as he hit the road across North America for six solo shows, every show was costing him half a million dollars a night. He said he would be lucky to break even. But that's not the point. "I have to keep this music alive," says Gibb. To me, that's what embodies what I do. I want to keep the music alive. I think this is true for most of us. Most of us aren't really looking for this magic pill. We're not looking to double our customers, triple our income, do any of that kind of nonsense. What we're trying to do is keep our music alive. We're trying to get some purpose in our lives. The money, the fame, all that stuff's really nice, but does it matter in the long run? At the height of The Beatles' fame, John Lennon said, "Work is life, you know, and without it there's only uncertainty and unhappiness." When you look at someone like the guy who runs Uchida, a little restaurant in Vancouver Island, the restaurant is only open from 11:00 to 2:00. When you get there you eat some of the most delightful Japanese food I've ever eaten, and I have traveled to many places, including Japan. That magic is expressed in his work. He gets to work and he stays until the restaurant closes at 2:00. It doesn't open for dinner because from 2:00 to 9:00 he's preparing the next day's meals. Every day the meal is just so amazing. It's different every single day. It's a big surprise, and it's always amazing. Today I'm going to talk to you about three myths about business. We've run Psychotactics for the past 13 years, but the business goes back a long way when I used to be a cartoonist. I'm going to bring to you these three myths which I think are important. I think they're important because everyone is talking about the other side, about more money, more customers, doubling your income, doing all that stuff. As I said, that's really nice, but is there a flip side to it? That's what we'll cover in today's episode. First up on the menu today is the fact that you have to grow. That's myth number one. Myth number two is that things get easier as you go along. Myth number three is that you have to create a life that you d

In the last three episodes we considered what makes a product or service irresistible. In this episode we tidy up things with a complete summary. Hooray!

When you're so focused on a sales page, it's easy to forget that that sales page/landing page is just one tiny step in the whole sequence. There's a sequence that precedes the landing page. Most of us that create products or services ignore that sequence. We assume the product or service alone should have the spotlight. Which, as you're probably guessing, is a mistake. You need all the steps that come before the landing page. The landing page is the event? What comes before? Let's find out in this episode on the steps involved in creating an awesome buildup. ---------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How do you create a build up for your product? Part 2: Why you have to create a 'moment in time' for every product? Part 3: What is the one biggest reason our product launch fails? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Something cool to read: Why "Failure" Is Just A Pre-Sell For Success More cool reading: How Pre-Sell Sold The Article Writing Course In Fewer than 24 Hours The Irresistibility Factor: A complete summary of this three part podcast. ---------- What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 3 of 3 Build Up "You do realize, you will never make a fortune out of writing children's books?" These were the words Joanne Kathleen—better known as J.K. Rowling heard from her agent when she first put forward the idea of Harry Potter. By 1999, Harry Potter was a global phenomenon. But how you take a phenomenon and make it even more phenomenal? You put it in a cage—that's what you do! At Waterstone's in Birmingham, the third in the series, "Prisoner of Azkaban" was in a cage guarded by two mannequins dressed like Men in Black. The kids—and their harried parents—could see the book, but they couldn't get at it. All over the globe, a similar rollout was in progress to create a build up for a particular moment in time. That moment was the release of the next Harry Potter book. Let's assume our products and services don't have the cult-status of Harry Potter In such a case, how are you supposed to create this moment where you get clients to sign up for a product or service? The wrong way to have a launch is to shout, "Surprise" and present your product or service to the client. The right way to do it would be to create a build up. A build up that may have started weeks, months, even years ago. When you see a Psychotactics course sell out in less than an hour, there's something important you don't see You don't see the pre-sell in action. And yet if you were to read this article, you'll spot the fact that the Article Writing Course is coming back around June next year. You'll also get notifications of the fact that this extremely popular course is getting a big upgrade. It's Version 2.0 of the course with brand new notes, audio and assignments. Bit by bit the information trickles out, with very few specifics until the date gets closer. Build up is critical for both products and services If you're a web designer, and you sit around waiting for something to happen, well, something might happen. But it's also likely that nothing might happen as well. That clients don't come rushing to you. If you're a copywriter, it's the same scenario. You're waiting and hoping, and hope is a pretty iffy strategy. When you look around you, the biggest names in the business don't play the game with iffiness in mind. If the big new Bond movie is coming out, you'll hear about it for weeks in advance. You'll see videos on YouTube, magazines splashed with the actors from the Bond movie. They'll be eating, drinking, be on the brink of affairs, separation—and who knows what else! But they're building up for the event. To make something—anything— irresistible, you have to create a moment in time Like a lunar eclipse that causes everyone to dust off their telescopes at the precise time, you have to control the build up. Bit by bit the information needs to peter out from you to your clients. Almost without exception, clients should know of your product or service—and the day of the launch. It's this rigour that allows a product or service to become an "instant success". Pre-sell involves buildup and the biggest reason for failure are that we're too trigger-happy. We expect to launch something and then it needs to take off like a rocket. And yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but by and large you're going to struggle a lot if you don't go through the steps of pre-sell and build up. It's the patience and planning that counts. The steps to a launch are: 1) Work on a date of the launch well into the future 2) Create steps along the way—and what you're going to drip feed to your clients. 3) Keep adding different elements until the clients get caught up in the fever of the product or service. That's when the product or service becomes irresistible. This brings us to the end of the three elements that make your product or service irresistible. So let's summarise: The Ir

When we think of exclusivity, we often see sales pages that seem to have these ticking clocks. They're creating urgency by forcing our hand. And as small business owners, we often buy into that urgency. Yet, you don't need to resort to these cheap gimmicks when you have the twin factors of exclusivity. So how do you use these twin factors to your advantage. Here's Part 2 in a series of 3 on "How to Create the Irresistibility Factor". In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Power of Product Exclusivity Part 2: The Benefit of Working with Smaller Numbers Part 3: The Myth that you have to be Big to be Successful Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't) Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game ================= What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 2 of 3 The Power of Exclusivity There's an anecdotal story about the late Gary Halbert. Gary Halbert was one of the best known direct-mail copywriters on the planet and so he decided to have a copywriting workshop. Even those he charged nose-bleed prices for the workshop, it was absolutely full. So he hosted a subsequent workshop. That too was full. He was on a roll, so another workshop was announced. Yes, it was full again. And then it went quiet. Deathly quiet, in fact. You've probably figured out the reason why the workshops stopped filling up My guess was that Gary ran out of people to attend his workshop. But remember this—Gary was super well-known. He had a list of thousands of subscribers. What he ran into was a problem of exclusivity. The workshops were being held at such a high frequency, that it seemed easy enough to put off attending the next workshop, because another one would always show up. This is why we last had the Psychotactics Headlines course in 2013—then nothing until 2015 The headlines course is extremely popular—and hence full every single time we announce it. It's not hard to see why, either. As a business owner you've got to send out newsletters, possibly make a presentation, write sales letters for your product or service, and if you produce podcasts or webinars—yes, you need headlines. Almost all marketing activity is directly linked to writing great headlines. Instead of guessing whether a headline is outstanding or just average, you know precisely why it works and how to fix it. The question to ask is this: Should you conduct the course on a frequent basis? The answer depends on whether you want to create exclusivity or not If you want a product to be exclusive, you have to create scarcity, because scarcity creates exclusivity. This exclusivity is exactly what Studio 54 used to their advantage. It's what caused people to want to jump that "velvet rope". There was a sense of desperation to get into Studio 54 night after night. If you don't or won't have exclusivity around your product or services, you're telling clients they can have it at any given time. As you can tell, that lack of exclusivity reduces urgency. The client can come in any ol' time and get the product or service—and often they do. They put off the purchase until later. At Psychotactics, we haven't tried to reinvent the wheel… Instead we work on just two parameters to create a factor of exclusivity. 1) Reduce frequency 2) Work with small numbers. Reduce frequency If you look at the courses we host online (for e.g. the Article Writing Course, headlines course, copywriting course etc), they're all held with a substantial gap. That gap is at least a year apart. It means if you miss signing up for the course, you have to wait at least a year, sometimes two. There's no guarantee that the course will be held on a recurring basis, and this creates a factor of exclusivity. Let's take the Article Writing Course for instance. Let's just say we're going to have a course in May next year (and right now we're in November). When will we have the next course? We don't know for sure. All we know is it's not going to be in June, or July, or August—or even in that year. But won't that drive clients away to the competition? There's always a possibility that the clients would want to learn a skill desperately and hence head elsewhere. And yet, that's not what a lot of our clients do. They're clear they want to do the course with us, and so they wait for the announcement and they sign up. As you're reading this information, you are clearly being pre-sold for the Article Writing Course being held next year. You are aware that there's a sort of sales pitch in what you're reading and yet you're also keen to know why the course is so exclusive. Why would clients wait? Why would they pay a hefty fee of $3000 for the privilege? Why would they sign up for something that's known as the "toughest writing course" in the world? It's not like clients won't try the competition. Even if you have the

How do you make your product or service irresistible? With tens of thousands of similar products or services in the market, can you use simple techniques to create a great offer? This episode shows you two psychological methods that we can't turn down?as humans. We love both the buffet and the specialty. No matter if you're a small business or a big one, you can use these techniques and increase your product and service sales. In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Buffet vs. Specialty Principle Part 2: How Studio 54 put out a buffet of fantasy Part 3: What does this mean for you when you're selling a product or service? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 1 of 3 Imagine you're Frank Sinatra. No matter where you go on the planet, people know of you. Doors open magically for you. People can't help but gape in wonder as you show up at an event. So imagine a place where the great Frank Sinatra can't enter. It's inconceivable, isn't it? And yet it happened. When Frank showed up at Studio 54, he was turned away. So was the president of Cyprus, the King of Saudi Arabia's son, Roberta Flack, and several young Kennedys. Even the famous movie star, Jack Nicholson was unable to enter on opening night. Studio 54 was like no other place in New York From the moment it opened its 11,000-square-foot dance floor, it was packed with celebrities dying to get in. Olivia Newton-John, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Dolly Parton, Mick Jagger, Tine Turner—you get the idea—they were just some of the visitors to Studio 54. Almost every night since it opened its doors on April 26, 1977, it was packed to its capacity—almost 2000 people a night. If you considered yourself cool, you wanted to get into Studio 54—but there was no guarantee you'd get in. There was someone stopping the flow… This someone was at the door Studio 54 night after night. He'd show up at the door at 11:30 pm and get on a step stool above the crowd. He'd pick who could get into the club that night—and who was to be turned away. His name is Steve Rubell, part-owner and the person who made sure the Studio was one of the most irresistible places in New York! So what made Studio 54 so irresistible, when there were so many cool places in New York at the time? And what makes any product or service irresistible, even without star power? Let's take a look at three core elements. Buffet vs. Specialty Exclusivity Build Up Buffet vs. Specialty Principle If you were to go to Lynda.com you'd be faced with a buffet. On Lynda.com there are hundreds of tutorials on software, business and creative skills. In 2004 alone, there were over 100 courses on the site. And that course number has gone up exponentially. For the past few years, Lynda.com been adding more than 18 hours of content, almost every single day of the year. That means you're likely to run into thousands of hours of tutorials topics such as Photoshop, computer animation, 3-D animation, photography—in all about 224,413 tutorials to date. That's a huge buffet, don't you agree? And as humans, we're primed for buffets. We love the "eat all you want" concept and it's even better if the "food" is of an extremely high quality. This means that a potential client of Lynda.com can access all their content for just $250 a year. Immediately you see why this kind of deal is incredibly irresistible. If you decide to learn a program like InDesign, you can easily do so, because there are at least a dozen courses on InDesign alone. If you want to learn to work with WordPress, hey, there's a mountain of video instruction already in place. No matter where you look, the volume and quality of content tantalises you. Which brings us to our first principle—the buffet principle If you're offering your clients an enormous amount of something, they're instantly drawn towards it, whether they can consume it or not. When given a buffet option, few of us can stop ourselves from feeling the need to buy the product or service. When you look at 5000bc.com, you get a buffet option 5000bc is the membership site at Psychotactics.com. The moment you get to the sales page at 5000bc, there's a feeling of a ton of information at 5000bc. There are cumulatively, hundreds of articles on topics such as copywriting, web design, branding, lead generation etc. Which is why most clients tend to sign up to the membership site at 5000bc. It's more than likely they've been a subscriber at Psychotactics for a while, bought and read The Brain Audit, possibly even bought some other books from Psychotactics—and then they're exposed to 5000bc. And the buffet concept kicks in. At $259 a year (remarkably similar to Lynda.com), clients can get not only a ton of curated content, but also have the opportunity to ask me dozens of questions—some of which are answered within hours, if not minutes. This concept of a buffet becomes impossible to resi

Success is good. Focus is good. Until it's bad. Incredible as it may seem, focus can cause a massive blindspot in our business. So what's the option? Surely it can't be distraction? Actually it's a mix of both that's required. Using the concept of "spinning plates", you can avoid the blind spot of success and the mindlessness of distraction. ----------------------------- Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Once upon a time in New York's Catskill Mountains lived a man called Rip Van Winkle. You've probably heard of this story. I heard it when I was a kid. I've kind of forgotten what the story was all about. As the story goes, one autumn day he wants to escape from his wife's nagging so he wonders up the mountain with his dog. He hears his name being called out. He sees a man with antiquated Dutch clothing. This man is carrying a keg up the mountain; he wants help. They proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of the noises. There are a group of bearded men who are playing nine pins. Rip doesn't ask how they know his name but they offer him moonshine, which is a kind of whiskey, illicit whiskey, not legal. He decides to drink and then he falls into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, it's pretty strange. His musket is rotting; it's rusty. His beard is a foot long. His dog is nowhere in sight. He returns to the village and he finds he recognizes no one. His wife has died. His close friends have fallen in a war; they moved away. This is often what happens in business, especially if you've got a successful business. You get a blind spot. You start focusing on what works for you, and then you work at it and you work at it, and it works even better for you. The longer you work at it, and the more successful you get, the more you have a blind spot to everything else. Now, almost instantly you're wondering where is this going. Focus is supposed to be good, right? If focus brings success, then what's the problem with having the blind spot? There is a downside, and that's what this episode is all about. It's about understanding that you can have focus and you can have success, but that you can also have a blind spot. In this episode we're going to explore three elements. First is the concept of the Rip Van Winkle effect. The second is the opposite, which is the danger of not having that focus. The third is the solution. How do we solve this problem of focus and not focusing at the same time? Let's start off with the first, which is understanding the concept of the Rip Va Winkle effect. If you look around you, you will find that a lot of blogs have shut off their comments. Why have they done this? This is not just little blogs, but big blogs and mega-sized blogs. They've just shut off their comments. Why is this the case? The obvious reaction is maybe they've decided that they're big enough they don't need the comments, but that's not true. Everyone likes to hear back from their customers. Nothing boosts the ego more than having 50, 70, 100, 200 comments on a single post that you made. Remember, when people comment they also send it off to Facebook and Twitter and every other place. Why turn off that channel? Why turn off the chance for people to experience your blog at a different level? The reason is very simple: that group has moved on. When you look at the most of the blogs today, even the really big ones, they have far fewer comments. It's embarrassing, so they have to turn it off. Same thing with Facebook. At one point in time you could effectively run a business off Facebook. Slowly but surely, that tide is changing. Suddenly you find that Facebook has all these restrictions in place. Suddenly there are too many people looking at your stuff, but not the people that you want, so the tide keeps changing. If you made a successful out of blogging Or Facebook or any other medium, then it's very simple for you to focus on that medium and not pay that much attention to everything else, so suddenly someone comes around and says, "Hey, podcasting is a big thing." You look at them with skepticism because you tried podcasting four or five years ago and now this stuff, whatever you're doing right now, is still working for you, so you get into that moonshine mode. You fall fast asleep, and that becomes your blind spot. This is true even for us at Psychotactics. We had a blog going around 2003 before blogs became popular in 2005; we dropped it. We had podcasts going around 2008-2009 before podcasting became popular; we dropped it. We never really stepped onto YouTube or Facebook or Twitter in a big way, or even a small way. The reason why we did that is because we had a blind spot. We had courses that were filling up super fast. I mean every single course fills up in less than an hour. We've had workshops in New Zealand, in the US, Canada, Netherlands, the UK, and they all fill up almost instantly. Of course we send out a newsletter weekly. We've done so since 2002 without missin

There's a difference between the "four-hour work week" and magic. You can create revenue in a short week. You can't create magic.Magic is what we all want to create with our work. Most of us love our work. It gives us purpose and satisfaction. And yes, we'd love a "three-month" paid vacation—or just any vacation at all. And that's the goal. The goal is to work hard, but to also have a great time. http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/ ===== I don't mow the lawns. I outsource it. I don't do my accounts. It's what keeps my accountant in business. I bake my own bread, cook my own food, but at least half of the time it's all outsourced. In fact, when I think about it, a good chunk of my life is outsourced. I don't build my own computers, code my own programs, generate my own electricity. I didn't even bother to weave my own carpet. So yes, you could safely say that outsourcing is a good part of my life. What I don't outsource is magic It's magical to write my own articles. Do my own books. Draw my own cartoons. Answer my own email. When I think about those who keep yearning for a "four-hour" work week, I find it incredibly weird and unsettling. I think of Leonardo da Vinci spending only four hours a week, painting. I think of Michelangelo goofing off on David and just putting in the least amount of time. I think of the wine I drink and how it would taste if the wine maker decided not to put in 50-60 hours a week. I remember the movies that moved me, the food that tantalised my taste buds, the books that have elevated my senses. I think of all the magic the world has seen, felt and experienced over the years and a "four hour" workweek makes zero-sense to me. You can create money in four hours You can't create magic. Money isn't magic. It may seem that way, when you're slogging in a job that you have no control over. A life that seems to pull and push you in all directions. At that point, money and magic may seem like one and the same thing. And yet it's not. Work is magic Work well done, is something we all yearn for. And try as you may, you can't outsource the important stuff in life. So when some internet marketer comes along and tells you that a four-hour work week is magical, they're just equating work with money. That somehow you could work for four hours in a week, and make all the money and you'd be happy. I can assure you that you'd be happy for a while, but then you'd seek magic. And magic yup, that takes a lot more time and effort. I wake up at 4 am every day and have done so for many years I don't have to wake up. We've done well over the years. We have a business which attracts really phenomenal customers. Some of them have been with us for over 12 years (considering we're Internet-based, that's like a hundred years). Our workshops are always full. Our courses often sell out in an hour or so sometimes 20 minutes. We've banked enough, own enough, travel three months in a year. Truly speaking, if we were to stop working now, we could go for at least another 20-30 years, living our comfortable lifestyle. So why wake up at 4 am? Why put in 99 cartoons in a book when people are happy to just buy text? Why bother to re-write, re-engineer our courses by 20-30% every year? It's all extra work, isn't it? More hours in a day, month and year that seems to slip by increasingly faster. The answer lies in magic You can outsource some stuff, and you should. But to create the Mona Lisa, David and some fine wine yup, that's going to take a chunky 50-60 hours a week. Get used to it!..to continue listening to or reading the podcast Right click and save-as to download this episode: Four-Hour Work Week A Waste Of Time?

When we sit down to write a landing page, we usually have a ton of confusion in our heads. We have so many elements on that landing page. What should we put first? What should we leave out? The sales of our product or service depends on us having incredible focus. So how do we get that focus? The answer lies in the "pebble system". The moment we apply the "pebble system" we are able to prioritise what's important to our client—and to ourselves. The sales page gets crystal clear and we stop going around in circles. So what is this "pebble system" and how do we use it right away? -------------------- Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/64 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- Improve your planning (with chaos): http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos Write your home page/about us page: http://www.psychotactics.com/web ---------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How To Find The Confusion On Your Sales Pages Part 2: How To Use The Pebble System On Your Sales Page Part 3: How To Expand The Sales Message Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 1) How To Avoid Dragging Out A Well Known Story (And Boring The Reader) 2) Why Stories Are Great For Sales Copy3) How to put that Zing-Kapow in your articles (with story telling) -------------------------------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." This is the Three Month Vacation, and I'm Sean D'Souza. Every evening at about twilight in New Mexico and Arizona, thousands of bats stream out from caves. One of the most famous of them all, at least among biologists, is the Mexican free-tailed bats, because they're known for their hunting sprees. Like all animals, bats communicate with each other. But these Mexican free-tailed bats, they not only communicate; they also confuse. Aaron Cochran is a biologist who's at the Wake Forest University. He was studying the hunting habits of Mexican free-tailed bats in Arizona and also in New Mexico. What he found was that his ultrasonic equipment was picking up two completely different sounds. When the free-tailed be able to was trying to communicate it was one sound, and then, the moment they had competition in the area, they would send out a send that was totally different. What these bats were doing was jamming the signals of other bats. Usually when a bat is hunting, what it does is it sends out a signal. It sends out what is called a feeding buzz. That bounces off the prey, and then they know, "Hey, it's time for dinner." What these free-tailed bats were doing was jamming the signals. It reduced their capability of capturing moths from 64% down to just 18%. This confusion, this reduced capability is a lot like what happens on our sales pages. When we are trying to write sales pages, we're trying to get too much information across. It sounds like there's one buzz and a second buzz, and now there is confusion and we miss the point. Today what we're going to do is we're going to stick to the point and we're going to use pebbles. We're going to use pebbles to figure out how we get to exactly what we want to say to the client, and then how we continue to say that over the rest of the sales page. The three things that we're going to cover are, one, we find the confusion. The second is we use the pebbles. The third is we expand each issue all by itself. Let's start out with the first one, which is finding the confusion on your sales page. Part 1: How To Find The Confusion On Your Sales Pages About two weeks ago I was on Facebook. I learn a lot through Facebook, despite what I say. Yet, I was watching this video by this conductor called Alondra de la Parra. I was so taken by this video that I saw on Facebook that I went to YouTube. On YouTube, there she was directing the Paris Orchestra. One of the songs that really got to me, one of the pieces that really got to me was "Huapango." I started listening to "Huapango," and then to another piece, and another piece, and another piece. Before I knew it, I had three albums of Alondra de la Parra. Of course I was driving Renuka crazy because I was playing this music all day long. Now the interesting thing about this music is it's classic music, and like a lot of classical music, it requires an orchestra. An orchestra is complete confusion if you let it be. That's what a conductor does. A conductor has to stand up there and somehow know that music in advance, and push and pull so that instead of cacophony we have music, we have this beautiful-sounding orchestra all playing together, but somehow separately at the same time. Your sales page is not difference. It's got to have all of this information, but it's got to play something louder than the other. This is why you have to first find

Why do we learn so slowly? Is it because we're not good learners? Is it age? Or is it something quite different? The problem of learning (and teaching) is dependent on the concept of Teacher vs Preacher. When you're a preacher, you give the feeling of a ton of information, but there's no true learning, no true application. A teacher, on the other hand, is completely tied to getting the student to apply the skills. When you're creating info-products, writing books or articles, this what needs to be kept in mind. Are you a teacher or a preacher? And are you following a teacher or preacher? Here are three benchmarks to watch for! -------------------- Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/63 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic The Brain Audit: http://www.psychotactics.com/brain -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Responsibility Factor Part 2: The Three Step Benchmark To Teaching Part 3: When Does The Student Become The Teacher? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources Audio and Transcript: How To Incredibly Speed Up Your Skill Acquisition Free Goodies: Why Clients Buy And Why They Don't Audio and Transcript: Deconstructing Why Bad Habits Succeed (And Good Habits Fail) ---------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." This is The Three Month Vacation, I'm Sean D'Souza. If you were to step into India today and go to most Indian households, you would be surprised at what you saw at the doorstep. You would see a Swastika. Yes, the very same Swastika that the Germans used in World War II, the same Swastika that came to be hated by everyone who saw it then, and today. What is a Swastika doing on the doorstep of so many Hindu households? The reality is that the Swastika comes from the Sanskrit word Swastik which means good luck. It has been around for thousands of years. While it's prominently found in Indian culture even today, it was also found in ancient Greece, it can be seen on the remains of the ancient city of Troy which existed over a thousand years ago. The Druids and the Celts they also use the symbol, the Nordic tribes, the Christians, the Teutonic Knights. The Swastika goes back a long way. In modern history, Coca Cola used it, Calsberg used it on their beer bottles, the boys' scouts adopted it, and the girls club of America, they called their magazine Swastika. It was used on playing cards, and even by the American Military Units during World War 1. It can be seen on RAF planes as late as 1939. And then, Hitler came along. He took something that was wonderful and incredibly powerful and made it something evil. He took something that was empowering and twisted it in his own way to make it work for him. He changed the meaning of the word. That is the kind of thing that happens very often when we look to learn. When we look around we see that people call themselves teachers, but in reality they are not teachers, they are just preachers. When you get this kind of information in the form of video, and audio, and PDF, you think, well, I am being taught by someone, but in reality, all you're doing is getting a ton of information. You're getting a preacher instead of a teacher. While it might sound like just words being twisted or replaced, there is a very big difference between a preacher and a teacher. How do we know what makes a preacher thus as a teacher? That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to look at three things, the first is the responsibility factor. The second is the three benchmark system. The third, the ability for the student to become the teacher. Part 1: The Responsibility Factor Let's start out with the first one which is the responsibility factor. If you try to learn a language like Spanish, or German, or French, it will take you many, many months to get there. In every classroom, you have the bright students and the not-so-bright students, or at least until Michel Thomas came along. Michel Thomas was a language teacher, and he didn't believe in bright students, and dull students. He believed that the responsibility lay with the teacher. He made a bold claim, he made a claim that you could learn the fundamentals of grammar in any language within 10 hours, and then he set about proving the fact. The BBC followed him around for several days. If you look up Michel Thomas on You Tube, you will find a three part episode that shows you how he taught these students. Students who were told by their teachers that they were not supposed to learn a language, that they were stupid, that they were dull, that they should never bother to try and learn any language. He sat them down in a classroom. In a week or so, they were already speaking the language. This is the language, the very same

When you're giving away bonuses, it's easy to believe you don't need to give away your best product or service. The best information always needs to be sold—so you can earn a decent living. And yet, this podcast episode takes an opposite stance. You need to put your best stuff out in front—free. Yes, give away the goodies, no matter whether you're in info-products or content marketing; services or running a workshop. Giving away outstanding content is the magic behind what attracts—and keeps clients. -------------------- Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/62 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Concept of Consumption Part 2: Why Package Your Free Content Part 3: Why You Must Feel Pain Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources 5000bc: Where smart people come together to help each other honestly Goodies: How to design a visual "yes-yes" pricing grid for all your products The Brain Audit: Why clients buy and why they don't -------------------- The Transcript "This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them." What are the three benchmarks that you need to create this magic? Many years ago when I started my cartooning career, I used to get all kinds of jobs. What I really loved was the plum jobs, the jobs where you had this fabulous stuff that you could do and used to get paid really well. I would spend hours and days and weeks doing those kinds of jobs. Then you had the recurring jobs. These were tiny cartooning assignments which didn't pay very well, so I'd just work very quickly through them because well, they weren't paying that much anyway. One day, my neighbor, who happened to be an art director of Elle Magazine, he stopped in and said, "Sean, why are you doing such a bad job with these cartoons? Why is it that this work looks so shoddy?" Of course I said, "Well, they don't pay much." He said, "I don't really know how much they pay when I look at your work in the newspaper. I only look at the work and I say, 'This work is shoddy. This work is sloppy. As a reader, I'm not supposed to know how much you get paid. I only see the end result.'" This is true for us as well. In today's world, where we're giving away free stuff, we look at the stuff we're giving away and we think, "Wait, we need to put in all our efforts into creating great products and great services. But if it's going to be free, then we need to pull back about it. We can't put in all the effort into free." My art director friend would tell you, "I don't see it that way. It cannot be shoddy. It cannot be sloppy." That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to cover how you need to make your free product as valuable or even more valuable than your paid product. What are the three benchmarks that you need to create this magic? Part 1: The Concept of Consumption The first thing that we're going to cover today is the concept of consumption. The second thing is how it needs to have that unhurried look, that unhurried texture, that unhurried feeling. Finally, we need to feel pain, real pain. Let's cover these three topics. Let's start off with the first topic, and that is one of consumption. In case you didn't already know it, Netflix has been monitoring your behavior for a very long time. Netflix is big time into consumption. The reason for that is very simple. The more they get you to come back and watch serials and movies, the more likely you are to renew your subscription month after month, year after year. For ages, the television industry has suggested that the pilot episode is the most critical of them all. If someone watches the pilot episode, they're going to watch all the rest, or at least that's how the philosophy went until we ran into Netflix. Netflix started pinpointing the episodes for each show season in which 70% of all users went on to complete the entire series. Here's what they found. When they looked at Breaking Bad, the hook was not episode number one; it was episode number two. When they looked at the prison comedy, Orange is the New Black, they found that episode number three was the one that made the difference. In some cases, it was episode number eight that made the difference; in some, four; in some, three; in some, five. What they found, however, was that people wanted to get to the end, and that if they got them to binge watch, they would watch all of them one after the other. What does this tell us about our clients? What does this tell us about our reports and our newsletters? It tells us that people are a lot more willing to give us a chance than we think, if we can get them to the end. This is why consumption becomes so critical. When you look at all of those signups, you know those little boxes that s

Starting up is always rough—and especially when you're a small business that at first has no clients and no credibility. In this episode, 5000bc member, Christopher Cook talks to Sean D'Souza about how to get over the inner chatter. How to get past those starting blocks and whether it's possible to be superhuman. -------------------- Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/61 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems?(http://www.5000bc.com/) Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don't) (http://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/) Goodies: How To Win The Resistance Game(http://www.psychotactics.com/free/resistance-game/) -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why Roadblocks Are Universal Part 2: Why Talent Is Not Inborn Part 3: How To Successfully Get Rid of Self-Doubt -------------------- The Transcript This is indeed The 3 Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. Back in the year 2000, I was still a cartoonist and I was doing both cartooning and marketing at the same time. At that point, I decided that I wanted to be the best in the world at marketing, but that meant that I had to start up. I had to start up all over again. I don't know much about marketing. I hadn't read that many marketing books and this whole factor of starting up was hard enough just as a business. I was also new at New Zealand. I just moved in from India and so it was like a double start up. Often people ask me this question, "How did you manage? What was the start up like? Does this internet marketing thing work just for some people and not for others? These are the questions that Christopher C was asking me and this interview is about that. It's about debt start up, the obstacles. It's a whole bunch of questions that Christopher C decided, "Let him answer it," so here I am answering it. Interestingly, as I was going through this whole interview and listening to it, it seemed like almost a compellation of many of the podcasts that I have done before. We're covering topics like roadblocks and mindset and routine and you probably heard it before. It's just a different version of it you could say. It's on Skype, but it's still live and we started out with roadblocks. Christopher asked me what the roadblocks are, what do I see as roadblocks in day-to-day life. The thing with roadblocks is that most people think that it only happens to them and it's not true at all. Part 1:Why Roadblocks Are Universal The first thing is that roadblocks are universal. They don't care about you and don't care about me. Their only real purpose in life is to teach you a lesson. When people don't learn the lesson the roadblocks pop up again and again and again. When you learn that lesson, they disappear and other roadblocks show up. If you don't deal with the roadblocks in the first instance, they pile up and they become bigger and bigger and bigger and that's the part that people don't get. They think that somehow the roadblock is going to disappear and it doesn't disappear. It's there specifically to teach you a lesson. I'll give you a simple example. We have several websites. Over the years, we've made them very popular or they've become popular and so they attract hackers. In 2014, 3 of our websites attracted hackers. They didn't really tear it down, but they created enough havoc so that we had to change our whole system. We had to from Dune to WordPress. We had to move all the stuff across and now we're in the process of redesigning all 3 websites, which is it might seemed like just a simple project but considering the size of our websites that's about probably conservatively a year, a year and a halfs' work and this is working very quickly. We ignore that. We ignore the hackers. They've been sniping away and then we'll just fix it, a little bandage here and there. Then eventually they came in a big way and got us blacklisted on Google and all those kinds of things. That's when we had to pay attention and this is what I see as roadblocks. I see that everyone has them and if you don't do something when you have the time to do it, which of course we don't, then they will come back again. Part 2: Why Talent Is Not Inborn The second question is something that I've heard many times before and that is, "You, Sean, have natural talent and skills and I don't have these skills and I don't have this talent. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I don't believe in inborn talent." That's a completely different topic, but the question was, "You seemed to be superhuman that is Sean, you are superhuman. You get so much stuff done. You draw cartoons. You cook. You write books. You do workshops. You do all of this stuff." This is not me praising myself. This is just what Christopher brought up. He said that

What is the meaning of life? This utterly vast and philosophical question pops into our lives with amazing frequency. But is it the right question to ask? What if we move the words around a bit and asked another question. Like: What gives your life meaning? Hmm, that changes things a bit doesn't it? And even when we change the words, we may still move towards the specific. So why does the abstract help more? Find out in this episode. http://www.psychotactics.com/meaning-of-life/ ---------------------------------- The Transcript What gives your life meaning? It was 6:20 AM. I was close to the beach, halfway through my walk, listening to this podcast on Transom.org. There was this reporter who was asking older people how they went through their lives. They were 100 years old. She started out with this question, which was: What is the meaning of life? I've grappled with this question before, and it sounds very philosophical, but then somewhere in the middle, the question changed. Those words just interchanged somehow and it became: What gives your life meaning? I had to stop. I had to stop on the road just to absorb what that meant. Just by that little interplay in the words, suddenly the whole sentence, the whole construct changed. It was amazing to me. As you tend to do, you tend to try to answer the questions. I tried to think of the people in my life and I tried to think of the things that I do. Then I realized I was going about it the wrong way. In today's podcast we're going to cover three elements as always, but the way I'm going to cover it is, I'm going to talk about me me me. I'm going to talk about the three things that give my life meaning and why I approached it the wrong way. But I think it is the way that we need to approach it. Of course you might choose to borrow these, or you might choose to bring up your own three elements, but this is the way I think that you've got to approach the question: What gives your life meaning? Part 1: Space I think the right way to approach it is to go through an abstract sort of thinking. The three things that give my life meaning are space, deadline, and elegance. Let's start out with the first one, which is the factor of space. About a month ago, it was August in New Zealand. Well, it was August everywhere, but it's wintertime here in New Zealand. I had this little piece of paper in my pocket. I'd been carrying it in my wallet for well over a year, maybe a year and a half. This piece of paper had been given to me by my doctor. I'd done my annual checkup the year before and I was supposed to get the blood test done. I had been procrastinating for quite a while, as you can tell. That day I decided I'm going to park the car and I'm going to walk to the lab and get the blood test done. I wasn't expecting anything. I'd been walking every day. I'd been eating sensibly, I think, drinking sensibly. Yet, the very next night I got some news from my doctor. He said, "Your cholesterol is high." I went and looked it up, and I found that there was no real linkage to what you eat and cholesterol, but there is a very distinct relationship between stress and everything, not just stress and cholesterol but stress and everything. That is when I started taking the weekends off. Now we fool ourselves. We say we're taking the weekend off but we check email and we work for a couple of hours, or do this and do that. Suddenly, the weekend is not really off. I found this to be true for me. I used to get to work, even on the weekend, at 4 AM because I wake up at that time. Before I knew it, it was 9:00, 10:00. I put in five or six hours on the weekend, on Saturday and Sunday. Of course I had my excuses. The podcast takes so much time, and we're doing this course, and I have to write this book. When I got this report, I suddenly realised the importance of space. I realised that there is no point in me doing this stuff on a consistent basis and driving myself crazy, and that the weekend was invented to give us space. Now we take three months off, and you know that, but these minor breaks become very major breaks on the weekend. I had to find a practical use for this, because at the same time we have courses going on, like we have the headline course going on. Now our courses are not about just information. They're about practical usage. Clients will come in five days a week and they'll do their assignment every single day. This is a problem for me, because in the US it's Friday, but here in New Zealand it's Saturday. That means I have to look at the assignment on a Saturday. That's what I was doing. I convinced myself it was only going to be a couple hours here or there. I had to then go to all the participants and say, "I'm going to take the weekend off, but my weekend, is it okay if I take it off?" I had to take their permission. No one had a problem. I don't know I was expecting that they would have a problem, but no one had a problem. This is the concept of space. I've had to use this

The reason why we find writing to be such a tedious task, is because we don't understand the barriers that get in our way. Instead, we write, edit, write, edit — and drive ourselves crazy. One of the ways to get over the barriers is to use the Captain Kirk and Mr Spock method. What is this method all about? Find out in this episode of the podcast. -------------------- Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/59 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How to use the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock method of writing Part 2: The power of preparation Part 3: How to decide on your 'One Word' Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don't Article and Audio: Three Unknown Secrets of Riveting Story Telling Live Workshop: How to create amazing stories—and connect them flawlessly to your articles, newletters, podcasts, etc --------------------- The Transcript Imagine you're the athlete who's trying for the Olympic gold in high jump. You look at the newspapers that day and there is the Los Angeles Times and they're saying that he goes over the bar like a guy being pushed out off a 30-storey window. Then you flip to the next newspaper which is The Guardian and it says, "He is the curiosity of the team." Then you pick up the magazine Sports Illustrated and it says, "He charges up from slightly to the left of center with a gait that may call to mind a two-legged camel." We're talking about Dick Fosbury here, the guy who first did the Fosbury flop. While all these newspapers and magazines seem to make fun of Dick Fosbury, it's unlike he had a great opinion of himself either. It's unlike Dick Fosbury was arguing with their comments because at college someone bet him that he couldn't get over a leather chair. He couldn't jump over that leather chair and he said he tried, but not only did he lose his bet but he also broke his hand in the crash landing. In 1968, when he arrived at the Mexico Olympics he was relatively unknown and yet days later he not only captured the imagination of the Mexican public, but also the rest of the world. He sailed over the bar at 2.24 meters, which is 7 feet and 4 inches. It wasn't that he sailed over because that wasn't the world record. It's that he did it by overcoming the obstacle with his crazy jump which was called the Fosbury flop. What's interesting about the Fosbury flop is that no one ever did that kind of flop before. No one ever tried to get over the bar in that manner. It was considered extremely weird, extremely camel-like and yet today it's extremely weird to see people jumping over the bar as they did back in 1968. Today the Fosbury flop is the way people jump over a bar at the Olympics in any sports stadium. What Fosbury did was he looked at the obstacle and he said, "Let me get over this in another way because there's no way I'm going to be able to do it the usual way." That's really what this podcast is all about. We're going to look at writing and why we struggle with writing, why we have these obstacles with writing. If we go about it the way we've always done, that doesn't seem to work for us because you're going about it the same way that I used to do back in the year 2000 where I would look at the article and then try to write it and then spend a day, spend 2 days writing that article and getting very frustrated and not knowing what was going wrong. We have to look at the obstacle that bar and look at how we can over that bar in a completely different way. That's what this podcast is going to cover. We're going to cover 3 things. The first thing is about editing. The second thing is about preparation and the third is about the one word or the one term. As always, we'll start with the first, which is editing. Part One: Editing I love making a rice dish called biryani. It is a dish meant for kings. It has all of these yummy elements. If you've ever eaten a biryani, you know exactly what I mean. Here's how you go about making a biryani. You have to get all the things together, like spices and the yogurt and other stuff like saffron and ghee, which is a clarified butter. When you get all of those things together, you got some onions. In fact, you got a lot of onions and then you caramelised the onions. When all of that is done you, marinate it. A few hours later it's time to cook the biryani. I put it all in a dish, which we call handi. You would call it a saucepan. Before I turn on the flame I have to do one very important thing. I have to seal the handi or the saucepan with dough so that it becomes like a pressure cooker and the meat cooks in it and the rice cooks in it and all the flavours cook within it and it's all sealed you can't get in. Did you notice the problem? Sure, you did. It was the dough. It sealed

Storytelling struggles without a catalyst. And yet a catalyst doesn't have to be in your face. It can be quiet, almost introspective. So how do you create powerful catalysts for your stories? And then once you have the catalyst in place, how do you connect the story back to your article, podcast or presentation? -------------------- Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/58 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this storytelling episode Sean talks about Part 1: What is a catalyst and why you need it in your story Part 2: What is the point of a story Part 3: How to use storytelling in your presentations, articles and sales letters Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links Live Workshop: How to create well-told stories that create a bond with your audience without sounding unprofessional Article Writing Article: Why We Struggle To Write Articles: The Myth Of Unique Content Story Telling Goodies: Coming Soon. Email Renuka for more details. [email protected] ---------------------------------- The Transcript This is The 3 Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. In 2003, I stopped watching TV. It wasn't like I didn't like TV. In fact, I probably liked it too much. I'd spend two, three hours every single day, watching TV. It didn't seem like two or three hours; it seemed like just might be half an hour. I'd switch it on at six o'clock in the evening, then it would be seven o'clock, then eight o'clock and then nine o'clock. And of course, there was the morning news. In effect, I was spending three or four hours watching completely crazy stuff. At this point, my brother-in-law Ranjit moved to New Zealand. He lived with us for several months before finding his own place. In the month before he left, we had a conversation. It wasn't a conversation really. It was more like a bet. He said that I watched too much TV, and I said, "No, no, no, you watch too much TV." We took this bet, and the bet was that the next person that switches on the TV loses. We didn't say what that person loses, but right after that discussion, not one of us touched that remote control. The TV sat in the corner for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. Ranjit moved out, and it still sat in the corner. We didn't switch it on. A few months later, we put the TV in the closet and eventually we just got rid of it. What's the point of the story? What we're listening to here is this unfolding of the story, but right at the core of it is a catalyst and that catalyst is causing us to move the story forward because that catalyst has speeded up some action, and that's taking us towards an endpoint. When we look at the same story without the catalyst, it becomes very boring. Let's run that same story once again. Let's say, my brother-in-law, Ranjit wasn't around and that one day I decided to stop watching TV and so I kept the remote to the side. That was it, 13 years have passed, and I haven't watched TV. It's not as interesting, isn't it? That one little factor that came into play, which is my brother-in-law stepping in, the bet and then both of us being very pigheaded about it and not watching TV that's what causes all the drama. You've got to have a catalyst in your story, but you also have to get that story to an end point, and that is what we're going to cover in today's podcast. We're going to look at this understanding of the catalyst, which could be an active catalyst or an inactive catalyst. The second thing that we look at is what is this catalyst leading to, why are we doing this whole story thing in the first place? What is the endpoint? The third thing that we're going to look at is how are you going to use this storytelling in your presentations, in your articles, in your sales letters? We'll take a look at some of those things. Part 1:What Is The Catalyst Let's get started with the first thing, which is understanding the catalyst and how it can be active or inactive. If you look at the rating of all the podcasts, you'll see a little C symbol on it. That C symbol, it stands for clean. It means that you'll never get any bad language on this podcast, you'll never hear any swear words, you'll never hear anything that you would hear on another podcast. All of this goes back to one moment in time when I was in school. I didn't use any bad language and then suddenly when I was in the sixth grade, I decided that every third word had to be a swear word. I don't know how it started. I don't know why it started, but the moment I'd get on to the playground with my friends at school, I would start to use the swear words. One day, my brother showed up, and he's standing there and he's watching me. I'm playing and using all these swear words. Suddenly I realize, "Oh, what is he doing standing there?" He's got this evil grin on his face, and he goes and

No matter where you go, you run into people with the same problem?time. Whether you're a small business owner, or run a big company, it's all about time, and getting things done. A lot of time saving can be done without too much effort on your part?and by simply using software. Software that does very smart stuff is what we all need. Here's the list of three core areas where I use the software. -------------------- Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/57 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- Software and Hardware Mentioned In This Episode: Mac Default Folder: http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/ Text Expander: https://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/index.html Dragon Naturally Speaking: http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm Mailbox: http://www.mailboxapp.com Evernote: http://www.evernote.com Dropzone: http://www.mailboxapp.com Plantronics DSP400: Plantronics DSP-400 Digitally-Enhanced USB Foldable Stereo Headset and Software -------------------- In this episode Sean lists three core areas where he uses software to save time. Part 1: How to handle repetitive tasks Part 2: What are the factors of communication Part 3: How to store all your ideas Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links Read about: The Four Critical Zones Required to Speed Up Your Learning Episode 3: Unusual Time Management Ideas (Audio and Transcript) Chaos Planning: Why you should Forget Business Planning and Goal Stting ----------------------- The Transcript This is The 3 Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. It was almost the end of the Second World War when Boeing came out with a plane that was called the B-29. It was the first ever high-altitude bomber. It could fly at over 22,000 feet. It's one thing to have a plane that can fly at such heights, but you also have to be able to predict what's going to happen to the plane at that height. These planes they were at a Pacific air base and 2 Air Force meteorologists were given the job to prepare wind forecast so that they could figure out how they could get that plane going in that height. Using the information that they had, they decided that the speed was 168 knots. However, their commanding officer could not believe the forecast. He thought that they had overestimated the speed of the wind. He thought it was too high. However, on the very next day the B-29 pilots reported wind speeds of 170 knots and that moment in time was when the jet stream was discovered. The question is how do you get to jet stream, because when we look at very successful people what we're seeing is that they're flying at these very high altitudes at very high speeds. While our lives might be completely different from these people, what we have in common is the factor of time. They have the same 24 hours as we do and they make use of their time. Today I'm going to talk about time yet again, but this time I'm going to focus on software. We're going to look at how software can make your life a lot better and a lot quicker and, of course, you have more time to do the things that you really want to do. In today's broadcast we're going to cover 3 elements. One is repetitive tasks; the second is tasks that involve communication; and the third one which is tasks that involve storage in finding things. This is where we come to a fork in the road because many of you might be using a PC and I'm using a Mac and I switched from a PC to Mac in 2008 and I have never looked back. There is going to be some overlap. You're going to get some of the software that is available both in PC and Mac, but what you've got to understand is the concept. The concept is more about repetitive, about communication and storage software. You'll find that on a PC. Don't be too stressed out that this is like a Mac presentation. Let's start off with the first one, which is the repetitive task that I have to do every day. Part 1: Repetitive Tasks The first thing that you have to do every single day no matter whether you're a PC or Mac is to find folder. You save something and you need to find a folder and on the Mac you get something called Default Folder. This is one of the best tools that I have found. What this does is immediately it gives you a little heart option and that makes it a favorite, which means that when you've got sudden folders that you use on a regular basis you can assign a little heart to them and then every time you save it you click on the heart, those folders show up and goes to box. My set up is across computers. It would be this folder and subfolder and I would spend a few seconds maybe 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds trying to get to that folder and what Default Folder does is it takes me there in 1 second. I can also set up Default Folder so that it very quickly gets me to that folder by pressing a shortcut and this is

Storytelling has a lot of guidelines and rules. Yet, some of the critical elements slip under the radar. You don't realise storytelling elements and secrets that are hiding in plain sight. And storytellers can't always explain what they're doing?and so these elements of storytelling get left out. And yet, they're incredibly powerful. Like for instance, the concept of "anticipation" before the "problem". It's nowhere to be found? Unless of course you listen to this episode on how to tell riveting stories. Welcome to Goldilocks land! -------------------- Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/56 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about how to create stories that are very powerful. Part 1: How the 'The Wall' changes the pace of a story Part 2: The power in using the 'The Reconnect' Part 3: Why anticipation is so critical in storytelling Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links The Brain Audit: How to introduce your product in a language the customer understands Read or listen to: How to double your writing speed Special Bonus: How to design the pricing grid for your product ----------------------------- The Transcript This is The 3 Month Vacation, and I'm Sean D'Souza. I was about 2 years old when I first had a bout of convulsions. It didn't start up as convulsions. I was standing there on the balcony, looking out on the road, and then I fell off the stool that I was standing on. As the story goes, I ran to my mother. She noticed that I was having convulsions, and she panicked. Now, panic would be the wrong word to use because what she did next was bundled me in her arms and ran with me to the hospital. To put you in the frame of mind of what India was when I was growing up, there were no phones or most people didn't have phones. They didn't have cars. You probably had a scooter if you were well off. That's just how things were back then. What she had to do was run a distance of 2 kilometers, maybe 3 kilometers to get to the nearest hospital. When she got to the hospital, they wouldn't admit me because I had meningitis and the hospital was not in the position to deal with cases of meningitis. Somehow, she managed to get them to admit me. At that point in time, they asked for the mother. Now, my mother was very young at that point in time and they assumed that she was somehow the sister. They said, "No. No. No. You have to get the mother." This is very odd in India because people tend to get married very early in India and yet they were insisting that they had to have the mother before they could go ahead with anything. There I was, not doing so well and the hospital authorities wouldn't go ahead without dealing with the mother. Now, she convinced them but once they admitted me, there was one more problem. The doctor wasn't so sure that I would survive the meningitis. He told my parents, and by that point, my father was there as well. He said, "I have to tell you this. Your son will either die or he'll go mad." What you just heard was the story of my youth. The question is, why did you keep listening? Why did the story work? What is it that caused you to pay attention and not move away from the story? In today's episode, we're going to cover storytelling elements: How to Avoid Boring Articles? The core of avoiding boring articles is to be able to tell stories, but stories are useful for presentations. They're useful for books. They're useful for webinars. They're useful for pretty much everything. What happens is most of us load up our information with facts and figures, and those are very tiring but stories, they encapsulate everything. We're going to learn how to create stories that are very powerful. The 3 things we're going to cover today are one, the wall; second, the reconnect; and third, the anticipation. Part 1: The Wall Let's start off with the first one which is the wall. Every afternoon, every weekday, I go through the same routine. I pick up my niece from school. She's now 11, that's Marsha. We speak about stuff in the car. We do multiplication tables. Recently, we've been doing storytelling. I usually when I asked her, "Tell me of story about what happened in the weekend." She goes, "Nothing." Then I say, "What happened in class?" She goes, "Nothing." This is the interesting part. You think that there's nothing happening in your life, but there is a lot happening all the time. Then, we have to zero in onto one little thing and make it interesting, just about anything becomes interesting in the way you dealt it. I said, "Tell me about your piano class on Saturday." Her little face brightens up and the smile comes on, and she goes, "I didn't practice before going to piano class on Saturday. Then when I got to the piano class, I was really afraid because I thought I would the pl

When you're writing articles, it's easy to get locked into the mistake of simply starting up the article. That's a mistake—a big mistake. Outlining is what counts most of all, and yet outlines are hated with a vengeance. Is there a way to create outlines so you don't drive yourself crazy? And how do you create outlines for products, workshops etc? Let's find out in this episode on outlining, in The Three Month Vacation.- ------------------- Note: To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/55 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What is the 'Concept of Curiosity'? Part 2: The Three Part Outlining System Part 3: What is the Extraction Method? Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links 5000bc: How to help you layer out distractions, and focus on the things you want. Read or listen to : How To Get Ideas When Writing Article. Special Bonus: How to increase your prices using the 'Yes-Yes System'. The Transcript This is The Three Month Vacation, I'm Sean D'Souza. In the Antarctic summer of 1912, a rescue party set out in search of Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition team. Scott and his group of explorers had been missing for over eight months. Now, when the search and rescue team found Scott's body they were horrified at the irony. All of Scott's men were dead, but not just lying in the snow a million miles from nowhere. They died just eighteen kilometers from a supply depot. This supply depot would have given them all the food and the heating they needed. This depot could of saved their lives. Instead, there they were frozen to death in the unrelenting snow. What was even worse was what Scott and his team knew when they died, and that was that they had missed their opportunity to be first at the South Pole. Roald Amundsen got there first. Now, the difference between Scott and Amundsen could be attributed to many things including bad luck, but the core of Amundsen's team was based on planning. Amundsen's team had no friends, they just had experts that would know what to do when things went wrong, and of course there were details. Amundsen labored over the team's clothing, the ambiance of the prefabricated Norwegian cabin, the supply chain depots. He just went over everything in great detail. In the end, luck played its role, but the better planner won. Amundsen was not only the first one to get to the South Pole, but he also managed to get back safely and to glory. His guide through the entire process was planning the journey. Outlining is about planning. When I was growing up I didn't have any outlining lessons. I don't remember going to school and doing any outlining, but I do know that when we do the article writing course we run into a lot of people that have these problems with outlining. Something happened at school that caused a lot of people to absolutely hate outlining. If this hate is so great we miss the opportunity of doing better work and quicker work, and so we have to get over this hate of outlining, because it's critical not just for your day to day planning, your weekly planning, but it's also critical for books and podcasts and webinars, and yes of course for articles. Today I'm going to talk about articles, and how you're going to use outlining, or three methods that you could use to create an outline, without all of that hate of course. One of the biggest objections to outlining is the fact that we don't have time, and this is critical. When you don't have time, that's when you have to outline, because outlining saves time. We spend about a third of our time outlining in different ways. Whether it's a plan for the week or the month, or if it's a book that I'm writing, or an article, or even this podcast it has been outlined in great detail, and that's what enables me to go start at 5:00, by 5:45 I'm done. The second element, which you probably haven't considered is doing the outline on paper. I always leave the office, I always go some other place, maybe to the library, maybe to the café, but you want to do the outlining on paper. This saves you an enormous amount of time. Again, because you don't have to deal with phone calls, or technology, or Facebook popping up. It's just you and the paper. Now that we've got these couple of things out of the way, what are the three things that we're going to cover today? The first thing that we're going to cover is the concept of curiosity. The second is the three part outline, and the third is extraction. Part 1: Concept of Curiosity Let's start off with the first one which is curiosity. Let's say I throw three words at you, and those three words are organic sourdough bread. Now, what is your reaction? Immediately what you have is a factor of curiosity, so you say, "What is it? How long does the bread last? What's the best way to kee

It's easy to pick up bad habits. Knowing what causes bad habits to succeed enables you to make good habits meet with similar success. In this episode we dig deep into the trio of trigger, routine and reward mechanisms. And how every one of them play their role. But then we go deeper into the world of groups and how the groups matter. If you've struggled to maintain good habits on an ongoing basis, this audio (and transcript) will show you the elements you have to put in place to succeed. ==== Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/54 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about To create a good habit or a bad habit you have to have three core elements in place. Part 1: How a good habit start with the cue Part 2: Why routine is important Part 3: Why no reward leads to failure Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer.-------------------- Useful Resources and Links 5000bc: How to get helpful and specific feedback for your complex marketing problems? Episode 14: How to Get Things Done: The Power of The Trigger Resistance: How To Win The Resistance Game The Transcript This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. You've probably heard of Batman. Now how does Batman get summoned by the police commissioner, who happens to be Police Commissioner Gordon? Apparently Batman was being summoned by a pager. Every time there was a crime in Gotham City that pager would go off in Batman's pouch and he would have to respond to a crime. Now you compare this with the bat signal. The bat signal is a distress signal that appears in various interpretations of the Batman myth. According to Wikipedia it is a specially modified Kleig searchlight with a stylized symbol of a bat attached to the light so that it projects a large bat on the sky or the buildings of Gotham City. No one knows for sure how that pager got thrown away and this elaborate bat signal came into play, but one thing we know for sure: that pager was no match for the elaborate bat signal that came up after one of Batman's encounters with The Joker. Batman said that he was no longer happy to get this pager and skulk around in the shadows. He wanted this elaborate bat signal that would be projected on the building, that would be projected in the sky. That was his trigger. Most of us don't have such an elaborate trigger every time we want to achieve something. Let's say we want to go for a walk every day or maybe we want to wake up every morning and do yoga. Maybe we want to learn how to draw or write or do something and learn a scale or a language. We seem to fall by the wayside simply because we don't have the trigger. Is it just the trigger? In episode number 14 I covered this concept of the trigger, but since then I've realized that it's a lot more. In the Power of the Habit by Charles Duhigg he specifically talks about three elements that need to be in place. In this episode we're going to cover those three elements, and then we're going to add the fourth missing element that makes the big difference. To create a good habit or a bad habit you have to have three core elements in place. They are a cue, a routine, and a reward. What makes that cue, routine, and reward more powerful, especially when you're trying to get a good habit rather than a bad habit? That's the power of the group. In this episode we're going to look at what is a cue, what is a routine, what is a reward, and how the group helps tremendously. Let's start off with the first element, which is a cue. Part 1: The Cue Let's go back to 1900. In 1900 one of the biggest problems that America had was that most people didn't brush their teeth. Not a few people but most people. Now imagine you are someone who manufactures toothpaste and you want to get an entire country, probably the entire world, to use toothpaste. What do you do? If you're lucky you have someone like Claude Hopkins around. Who was Claude Hopkins? Claude Hopkins was one of the first advertising geniuses of our time. He wrote the book Scientific Advertising. If you haven't read that book, you should read it. As the story goes, Mr. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with an amazing new creation. It was a minty, frothy toothpaste named Pepsodent. He somehow had to convince everyone that they needed Pepsodent. He has to create this habit from nothing at all. He has to create a cue. He had to create a trigger. What was that cue or trigger? In the book The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg goes on to talk about how this trigger came about. It seems that Claude Hopkins signed on to run the ads on Pepsodent but he had to go through a pile of dental textbooks. In his autobiography he wrote about how it was terrible, dry reading.

Haven't you visited a web site and left shortly after reading an article? Why did the site fail to get you to sign up? Or why didn't you buy a product or service? The answer lies in the content of your articles and the way you structure them. Article writing is about creating a solid "next step", so that clients follow one of three sequences. What are those sequences? Find out in this podcast on the "next step". In this episode Sean talks about The 3 successful ways to creating a next step with your articles.Using these steps you will sell more products or consulting or workshops or whatever it is that you want your customer to go ahead or go forward with. Part 1: The importance of the 'Editorial Next Step' Part 2: The 'Sales Next Step' and how it causes resistance Part 3: The 'Embedded Next Step' and how to use it. This is The Three Month Vacation, and I'm Sean D'Souza. Christmas for me was the most fun time of the year when I was growing up, and that was because as a kid, there were always presents and gifts. Then as I grew up and entered my 20s, we used to go dancing. In Mumbai around Christmas time, we have this very unusual setting where whole football stadiums are allocated for Christmas dances and New Year dances. Several months before Christmas rolls along, you have to the buy the tickets to the event, you have to book your table and then it's the night of December 25th, and you have to put on your best suit and your tie and get your partner and go to the dance. The music would start at about 9 o'clock at night and go until 6 in the morning when we'd stagger home after this night of revelry. It was at one such dance when I met my wife, Renuka. Because we used to go in a group, I didn't really know the names of all the girls that were around and I suddenly didn't know Renuka's name. All I know that she was wearing a red dress and because of the red dress, I called her Santa all night. Well, that caused a problem because I didn't really ask her name and then the dance was over and she went her own way and I went my own way. I happened to have her sister's phone number so I did call up their place and I was about to ask for her when I couldn't remember the name. What do you do on the phone? Do you ask for Santa? I very quickly put the phone down and I let it go. There was no next step. Having a next step is extremely important when you want to go ahead with anything in life. The same applies to article writing. When you're writing an article, you think, "Well, I'm creating all these credibility," but that's not the end point. The end point is the next step. Where are we going to go from there. Today, we're going to explore 3 ways in which you can create a next step with your articles so that you can create even more credibility and then that finally ends up with either selling more products or consulting or workshops or whatever it is that you want to go ahead or go forward with. In this episode, we'll look at the 3 methods. The first is the editorial next step, the second is the sales next step, and the third is the embedded next step. Let's start looking at the first one which is the editorial next step. Part 1: Editorial Next Step What is the editorial next step? In every article, your goal is to get the reader to experience a new world. The reason the reader gets to your article at all is because you're taking them on a journey, and this journey depends on what you're covering in the article. Now you may be showing the reader how to increase prices without losing customers. You may be showing them how to fix a roof on a garden shed. You may be asking them to watch a specific video. In every case, you're setting out to change or at least to nudge the customer into doing something. Now that is your goal right from the start or you wouldn't have written the article in the first place. Let's say you've written the article and the most obvious thing that you want to do is you want to direct the reader to go forward to the next step. Now this step has no sales edge to it. There's nothing that you are selling, no products or services or workshops. You're just creating a deeper sense of credibility, and the way you do that is just to put a little link at the end of your article. It's the most obvious one but a lot of people don't do this, and that is either read more articles on pricing strategy or read the continuing series on how to create more durable roofs or watch this video and you'll see how the soil erosion is affecting our planet. The point is you are really not trying to sell anything. You were just moving them to the next step. When you write your article, you have to ask yourself, "Do I have a next step? Are they doing something as a result of reading that article?" When we look at our own website or our own blogs, we'll have an article and then we won't have a next step. When we look at us posting our articles on someone else's blog, what we'll have is some kind of footer information and that

How do you dramatically increase your rate of learning? And why do we get stuck when we're trying to learn a new skill? Strangely the concept of boxes comes into play. We move from beginner to average—and then we spin in that middle box, never moving to expert level. So how do we move to expert level? And how can we do that without instruction? Interestingly, there's an answer. Listen to the episode to find more about not just how to learn, but how to teach as well. ----------------------------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Understanding the three boxes of learning Part 2: How construction and deconstruction plays a role in learning Part 3: How you can start using this accelerated learning system, today. Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. ----------------------------------------- Useful Resources and Links Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance GameDaVinci Cartooning Course: How to draw cartoons to liven up your website, blog or presentations?Story Telling: How to craft amazing stories----------------------------------------- So how do you subscribe to this free podcast? To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS The Transcript This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. It's a relatively unknown fact that the world's best chicken sexers come almost exclusively from Japan. Now chicken sexing is simply about telling the male chick from the female chick. For poultry owners, especially commercial poultry owners, this knowledge of which is a male chick and which is a female check is very important because that enables them to feed the female chicks and basically get rid of the male chicks, which are unproductive. In the past, the poultry owners had a problem. They had to wait for about five to six weeks before differentiating male from female. When you have a problem there's always a solution, so from that problem you got the Zen Nippon Chick Sexing School. It began courses in training people how to accurately discriminate the sex of a day-old chick, not five or six weeks but day-old chick. People were able to discriminate instantly. Of course you had all these experts who over time became very good at distinguishing the male from the female. Well, then you came along. What are you going to do? How many months or years are you going to spend trying to learn this skill? As it appears, you can do it extremely quickly. But you can't do it through traditional methods, which is where someone tells you exactly what you have to do. Instead, it's more a factor of the brain taking over. We see something very similar unfolding in the Psychotactics cartooning course. If you went into a café and asked about 10 or 15 people, "Can you draw cartoons?" there's a very good chance that almost all of them will say no. Yet within just a few weeks of starting the cartooning course you will find that people are drawing cartoons like Snoopy and Sid from Ice Age and all these complex cartoons with relative ease. How does this transformation occur? What's really working? What is causing this factor of accelerated learning? That's what we're covering in the episode. Because accelerated learning enables you to do the very same task at a very high speed. Therefore you can go on more vacations. Yes, I know, everything ties up to the Three Month Vacation. You want to get very good at your skill and be very quick at it. That's what this episode is all about. It's about accelerated learning and how we can get there in a fraction of the time. To understand this concept of accelerated learning we have to look at three elements. The first is box one, two, and three. How do they play a role and what causes us to get bogged down, and how can you move past that? Then in the second part we'll look at construction and deconstruction, and how that is important. Finally, we'll look at the practical usage of all of this stuff that we're going to look at today. How are we going to actually use this so that we can learn but also teach, because we're all teachers. Let's start off with the first element, which is understanding box one, two, and three. Part 1: Understanding Box One, Two, and Three Let me tell you the story about my hairdresser. His name is Francis. Now Francis grew up in Samoa and he was brought up by his grandfather. His grandfather was a fisherman, but he also cut hair. Now Francis was 11 years old when his grandfather got him into their saloon, or what he considered to be a saloon. Francis was not allowed to touch the scissors. He was only allowed to sit there and watch or sweet the floor and watch, but all he was doing was watching and watching and watching. No matter how many times Francis asked, his grandfather said, "You're not ready, Francis. You're not ready." Francis went through several years of just sweeping the floor and watching. Then one day when he was 15 he came home from school and

How many hours do you work on vacation? You don't. But then what about the e-mails? How do you deal with clients? Are you supposed to just close down your business? This episode shows you how we deal with vacations at Psychotactics. We've been going on our "three-month" vacations since 2004 and have had to work out a few "tricks". And you can use them too—and ensure a splendid vacation, instead of just "work by the beach". -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Secret to handling email on holiday Part 2: How to handle social media while on holiday Part 3: How to deal with clients if there is an emergency Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources About Time management—The Carpe Diem Method of Finding Work (And Vacation) Time 5000bc—How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems? Bonus Book—How To Win The Resistance Game Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic Products under $50: http://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/ So how do you subscribe to this free podcast? To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS The Transcript Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from psychotactics.com, and you're listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time. This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. In February of 2005 I had no intention of checking any email. That was because we were on our vacation in the South Island. Now New Zealand is a set of islands, as you probably know. There's the North Island where we live, and the South Island. In the South Island, it's truly breathtaking. It's got rivers and mountains and glaciers, and there we were at Fox Glacier. Now Fox is an amazing glacier because it's in close proximity to both the rainforest and the ocean. Now that's pretty rare with a glacier, but the ice flow on Fox Glacier is also amazing. It changes as much as three meters a day, so it's a pretty crazy place to be, and there we were walking on the glacier. When we had done that walk, we came down to check email. I didn't check email for several days, and there was this little hut right next to the glacier. Yes, there's email everywhere these days. I switched on the computer expecting nothing much, and there it was: an email telling me that our entire membership site was non-existent. This is the power of email. It can take a perfectly good day and make it an absolutely rotten one. In today's episode we're going to cover this topic of no work on vacation. We're going to look at email and how to deal with email in vacation mode, and then how you deal with social media, and finally what do you do about clients while you're on vacation. Let's start off with the first thing, which is dealing with email. Part 1: Dealing With Email Imagine you're having a great day and then you get a phone call. It says a child is in hospital, your child is in hospital. It doesn't matter how happy you were at that moment. Your mood changes. Immediately you want to take control. Immediately you want to be with that child. Immediately you're transported right back to that situation that in a way you can't control, but need to be there. Now email isn't quite the same situation, but it still has that power. It still has that power to pull you back into that work mode. You're sitting somewhere having a margarita enjoying the sunset, and then you read email and your mood changes. You're back in work land. It can be a good email, a bad email, a frustrating email. It doesn't matter. You're no longer where you are and you're some other place where you shouldn't be, which is back at work. How do we deal with this at Psychotactics? Remember that incident at Fox Glacier where I read that email? It made me feel terrible. I'd just gone up the glacier. I was in this absolutely stunning mood. Then I had to read that email. The point is that I couldn't do anything. That website was down. They had erased it down to zero pixels. Then they did a backup of that website, the one that they erased, so we had nothing. Then clients started writing in telling us that the website was down. Then I had to write back to clients. I spent several hours at that little hut responding to email. How do you deal with such a situation? How do you control this so that you're not completely dealing with work the whole time that you're away? Because you need to leave email at home when you go on vacation. Here's how we do it. For one, we don't check the primary email. We get someone else to check email while we're away. Here's how it works. When that someone else is checking email, they're getting rid of all the stuff that really takes up a lot of your time, so any spam, any offers, all that just goes in the trash straight away. Now on a day to day basis I probably read it be

How did you get to New Zealand? That's the question I get most of all from clients. And there's a story, a very interesting story behind our move from India to New Zealand. Here it is?and with some cool music too. How did you get to New Zealand? That's the question I get most of all from clients. And there's a story, a very interesting story behind our move from India to New Zealand. Here it is—and with some cool music too. In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What I was looking for, when I was 13 years old Part 2: Getting to New Zealand Part 3: What were the early years at Psychotactics like? Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links The Power of Chocolate: The Power of Psychotactics Chocolate Marketing Episode #8: The Power of Enough—And Why It's Critical To Your Sanity The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don't -------------------- So how do you subscribe to this free podcast? To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS The Transcript Hi. This is Sean D'Souza from Psychotactics.com and you are listening to The Three-Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less, instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time. This is The Three-Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. One of the questions that I get most of all is how we got to New Zealand. What caused us to leave India and to get to New Zealand? What were the early days like? These are questions that subscribers at Psychotactics want to know all the time. This is the 50th episode and so I thought that's good idea. Let's puts in the Psychotactics story here so that you can listen to it and enjoy it. Part 1: What I Was Looking For, When I Was 13 Years Old When I was 13 years old, I had a thought. I wanted to live in a place that was half-city and half-country. Mumbai or Bombay as it was called back then, was very polluted and noisy, not good enough for me, obviously, and I wanted to move to a place that was half-city and half-country except I didn't know about New Zealand. I've never been to New Zealand, probably never even seen any photos of it, but in my mind, I was clear that it had to be half-city and half-country. I say half-city because I love the city. I like people. I like going out and seeing people, and I like the energizer level of the city, but I love the country as well, and I thought if I could find a place that was half-city and half-country, that would be great. I wasn't thinking of New Zealand. I wasn't even thinking of leaving India. I was thinking of moving to a place like Bangalore which is in South India. It's called the Garden City. As I grew up, Bangalore got more congested and busier, and it became just another city, so we started looking out for other countries. We looked at the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These are mainly the immigrant countries. Canada was very cool. I went to the Canadian Embassy and they said, "What's your profession?" I said, "I'm a cartoonist." In that documentation that they gave me, there were six different types of cartoonist to choose from, and I thought, "Wow, this is a very sophisticated place," because when you go to most of these places, you don't find cartoonist listed as a profession. We didn't go to Canada. We didn't fill out any forms. We didn't do any of that stuff. We did the same with Australia. We went to the embassy. We got some forms. We didn't do anything. Then, eventually, a lawyer came from New Zealand. He was an immigration lawyer and he looked for our papers, and he said, "No." He said we didn't have enough points to get to New Zealand. He said that we needed to try later, but it didn't look good, and so, we gave up. We just gave up just like that. Part 2: Getting to New Zealand Then, I was walking down the street several years later, grocery shopping, and I ran into this friend of mine. Her name is Joan. Joan says to me, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I'm grocery shopping." She said, "No, no. What are you doing in India? Weren't you supposed to go to New Zealand?" I said, "Oh, yeah. We were supposed to go, but we did all these paperwork and they said that we couldn't go." Then, she said, "You should try now." She gave me a card and I contacted the immigration lawyer, and that was the start of our merry dance with Indian bureaucracy. I don't know if you've been in a bureaucratic country, but Indian bureaucracy is way up there. You have to go to the police and to the passport department, and you're going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and spending enormous amounts of time just in this back and forth movement. Anyway, nine months passed, suddenly, late at night, almost midnight, we got a call wherein we have 12 months to make that trip to New Zealand. That's when something amazing happened. Everything became lopsided in our favor. I know t

How do you avoid losers as clients? How do you completely sidestep the clients that don't pay, cause trouble and push you around? Surprisingly, the answer lies in testimonials. There are elements of testimonials that cause clients of a certain kind to get attracted to you. So how do you harness that latent power of testimonials? And how do photos, details and tone come into play? Find out in this podcast. -------------------------------------- In this episode Sean talks about The whole concept of testimonials and why we are more like elephants. He covers: Part 1: How photos act as a mirror on your website Part 2: Why you need to explore the detail in your testimonials Part 3: What is tone and how does it affect your testimonials Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. -------------------------- Useful Resources and Links 5000bc—How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems? Learn more about Testimonials—The Secret Life of Testimonials Psychotactics Newsletter—Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing newsletter-------------------- To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS The Transcript This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. African elephants are one of nature's most amazing communicators. They rumble, they roar and snort, scream, and they trumpet. Yet most of their communication is never heard by humans because it is on the level of infrasound. Infrasound is an extremely low frequency rumble that falls way below the hearing range of human, and yet humans can feel t sound. Michael Garstang, a meteorologist at the University of Virginia explains how elephants communicate. Many of the rumbling calls occur at the level of infrasound. This is a very low frequency rumble that's below the audible hearing range of humans, he said. Humans can hear the upper end as a rumble, although you're not hearing it in your ears. It's more like feeling the vibrations in your diaphragm. This feeling, rather than hearing, is what we encounter when we run into the concept of testimonials. Today we're going to look at this whole concept of testimonials and why we are more like elephants. We're communicating through this infrasound, this low level. We can see the testimonials but we're not exactly paying attention to what's written there or what's presented to us. Instead, we're kind of communicating in a completely different way. What are the way that testimonials communicate that we're not aware of but we can feel? The three elements that we're going to look at today are the photo, the detail, and the tone. Let's start off with the first one, which is the photo. Part 1: The Photo If you were to go to a dating site today and start to look at the photos, you would find that something very interesting starts to fall into place. That is you are choosing some people's photos over other people's photos. Why do we do this? It's because we recognize something within the photos, and that something draws us to that person. Now this doesn't just occur on dating sites. If you go to a marketing site, and let's say you look at the site where you have all these promises like become a millionaire overnight or get these results very quickly, look at those photos. As you scroll down to photo after photo after photo after photo, you find that you don't really like many of those people, but you haven't read any of the testimonials. You've scanned them but you haven't really read the detail in the testimonials, and yet the photo is sending this low frequency message. This photo is telling you these people aren't like you. They are different somehow. They're more greedy or they want quicker results. They don't want to work for it. Even if you had not a single word of text on that page, you would still feel uncomfortable. Then you could sense someone who wanted that kind of result, who wanted to be that millionaire overnight, who wanted all those quick results. They would find those photos very appealing. This is what happens with photos. Photos send out this message, which means when you're putting your photos of your clients on your website, you can't just take the clients that give the best testimonials. You've got to put clients that are very, very reliable, clients that are ethical, clients that you like, clients that you want to work with in future. Those are the photos that you want to put on your website. Why? Because it's like a mirror. There is a message that's coming out from those photos. That's why on Psychotactics we have photos of people that we like, clients that we've worked with, clients that we've gone out with, clients that we would love to have all the time. The results have been very clear. People often get on our courses and they say, "How do you get such great people in your courses?" They come to our workshops and they go, "Wow, this is amazing. What kind of filtration system do you have in

Is it really easy to build a cult-like following for your brand? Yes, but the core of that branding lies in the "adjective". Yes, that very same grammar lesson you had at school. When you look at the biggest and most well-defined brands in history, you find they are defined by a single word. Let's take Volvo, for example. The word "safety" came to mind, didn't it? That's the power of the adjective. Let's learn more in this episode of the Three-Month Vacation Details To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/48 Email me at [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What is the adjective and how one little adjective can define your business? Part 2: How we get to this adjective and the biggest mistake you can make Part 3: How do we expand it further so that it becomes your whole DNA Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. -------------------- Useful resources and links Free Uniqueness Series: How to find your uniqueness Uniqueness Stories: Why Uniqueness Stories Are Better Than Slogans Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game The Transcript This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. When I was growing up in India, all plywood was sold the same way. You went to a store and you picked some plywood. Then you took it home. There was no branding; it was all very, very generic. At some point, a company called Kitply, they decided that they didn't want to be generic anymore. They decided they wanted to charge a premium on this plywood. Now why would you go and pay a premium on plywood when you could just enter the store, get your plywood just like everybody else? Well, Kitply, they wanted to do something different. That is exactly what they did. The Indian coastline, it's about 7,000 kilometers; that's about 4,500 miles. When you have a coastline that is so extensive, it also means that you have a lot of water around you. Water means humidity, and humidity means disaster for plywood, at least the plywood that you were getting in the store at that point in time. After you spent all this money on a carpenter, which is what most people did, they got a carpenter across and they built cupboards and they put the plywood in the cupboards. Then the rains would come. In India, you don't just get rains; you get rains in June, all of July, all of August, and a bit in September as well. That plywood would get all the moisture sitting in it. After a while, it would start to warp. Your beautiful cupboard, all your furniture, it would have this warped plywood. It would drive people crazy, but there was nothing that you could do until Kitply came up with a solution. They made their plywood waterproof. But Indians are a skeptical lot, and rightly so. If you've got a monsoon that goes on for several months, you want to be sure that the plywood is exceedingly good. So, Kitply not only said that their plywood was waterproof, but that it was boiling waterproof. Now no one was going to take boiling water and throw it on the plywood, but it made a point. What is the factor that caused Kitply to stand out? Incredibly, we have to go back to a grammar lesson, because what we're doing here is just looking at the adjective. What we're going to cover in this podcast are three elements. First is what is the adjective. Second: how to pick it. Third: how to refashion your product around it. Let's start off with the first one, which is what is the adjective. Part 1: What is the Adjective Now, I don't have to tell you what an adjective is. You did that in grammar class. But here's the point. When we started out the article writing course it was very difficult for us to position it against other article writing courses, because ours is almost $3,000 and, well, the others are $400 and $500. Some are even free. What we did was we put one little adjective. We called it The Toughest Writing Course in the World. That changed everything. Because not only did it change us, but it changed the perception of all the customers that were going to buy into that course. They knew that it wasn't a stroll in the park. They knew that they were to expect a lot of work and effort going into that course. That one little adjective made all the difference. This is what you need to do for your business as well. You need one little adjective to define your business. What is this business all about? When we look at a brand like Volvo for instance, immediately an adjective comes to mind, doesn't it? It's safety. Now Volvo hasn't really pushed this concept of safety for a long, long time, and yet we remember it. We remember it because of that one adjective, which was safety. If you go and read any of a dozen books, you'll find another case study showing up, which is Domino's Pizza. Now Domino's Pizza has not advertised its speed for a very long time. That is because every pizza parlor wi

Imagine you got on stage and you had an eager audience ready to buy. Of course there are a few obstacles. The first obstacle is that you have just an hour to convince the audience to buy. The second is you're not the only one selling products?there are others. The third obstacle is that a good chunk of the audience doesn't know you that well and aren't on your list. So three big problems to deal with. Now you may never have the desire to get on stage, but the issues are similar when you're selling a product or service. You have very little time to convince a prospect. You're battling it out with others selling similar products and services. And you're a bit of a stranger to the audience. / / So how do you overcome these issues, and win? Notes: To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/47 Email me at: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Art Of Preparation And The Importance Of Pre-Sell Part 2: The Importance Of The Document Before The Event Part 3: The Whole Factor of Urgency Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Useful Resources and Links Black Belt Presentations: When you make a presentation, wouldn't it be amazing to completely control the room—without turning anyone off?Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game Psychotactics Newsletter: Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing business newsletter The Transcript This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. I was speaking at a conference in Chicago to about 200 to 300 people. I had just finished my speech and I met this guy in the corridor. He was rushing. I asked him, "Why are you in such a hurry?" He says, "I have to go upstairs and get my credit card." I said, "Why do you have to get your credit card from upstairs? Why don't you have it in your pocket?" This is the story of how we sold $20,000 worth of product at a conference. This is digital product. This is not physical product. This was The Brain Audit and the membership to 5000bc. I was asked this question by Alison Beere from Cape Town, South Africa, and you want to know the answer. You probably think that the answer lay in the speech. There might have been some triggers in the speech. There might have been some information that caused them to act. Sure, there would have been some urgency, but what was it that caused all these people to buy? What caused them to trust me after speaking to them for just over an hour? Why did we manage to sell more than all the other speakers on that day? These are the questions that we need to answer, and not because you want to go out there and sell 20,000. Of course you want to do it, but you have to understand that sales is not a one-time hit. That's what it looks like. If I put this on a sales page, that's exactly what it looks like. It looks like a one-time hit. It looks like I went there, made the speech, and they bought everything. As we're about to find out in this podcast, it is a matter of preparation. Whether you're selling a very small item off your website, a course, or in our case, this $20,000 day that we had, it all involves preparation. What are the steps that you have to get all of these ducks lined up in a row? How do you make things work for you? Let's find out But wait, wait, wait. Let's not go into how we did that just yet. Because we have to go back in time to 2003 when I was in Sydney, and I bombed in a big way. I sold very little, just enough to cover the cost of the airfare. What was the difference between the two events? Why was that guy so eager to get his credit card? Okay, enough teasing. Let's go into the main section of today's podcast and let's cover the three points. What are the three points that we're going to cover? The first is the preparation. The second is the document before the event. The third is the very tight deadline. Let's start off with the first one, which is the preparation. Part 1: Preparation If you had been a subscriber of Psychotactics you would have run into a statement that almost sounds like hype. That is that we sell out our courses maybe within half an hour, sometimes 20 minutes. Now these aren't just $20 courses. These are courses that go up to $2,000, $3,000, and yet they fill up in 20 to 30 minutes. We do with this without any joint ventures, without any affiliates, without any publicity, without any advertising. It's done with a very small group of people, and yet time after time, all the way since 2006, the courses have been consistently filling up. Not that it doesn't make me nervous every time I launch a course. I still think somehow this time it will be jinxed, but it just keeps going. What's really happening? The first thing is the prep work. It's what I call presell. When I went to this event in Chicago it was completely different from the event in Sydney. When I went to Sydney, I had great slides, I had a great pr