The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Imagine you are a prisoner of war. You're thrown into an isolation space, not just for a week, or month, but for an entire year. All the while you're being tortured and despair seems to be around you. Should you continue to stay optimistic? James Stockdale thought otherwise. The optimists don't do well at all. What does well, you may ask and how you keep going if you don't have optimism? Find out the paradox that made Stockdale survive and thrive.

Travel can be good, bad or even ugly. But in our travels through India in Feb 2020, we ran into a sense of warmth that needs to be shared. Get yourself a coffee or tea as you settle in for some really heartwarming stories.

We all get into argumentative situations. Yet, these situations almost always leave us worse off than before. How can we learn to negotiate instead of creating confrontation, and end up even better off than before? That's one of the three things I learned last year. To find out more, you know what you have to do. Listen to the podcast!

Many times when we are asked to show our work, we're quite reluctant. There's a reason for this reluctance. It's more than likely that the work is quite shoddy. And yet, what if we changed our perspective and had a goal to create a ton of "rubbish". If the concept sounds bizarre, it's not! In this short piece, you'll hear how top professionals encourage the steps to great work—by creating a fair bit of rubbish along the way.

Does a 100 year old book on advertising still apply today? In part two we explore the second of Hopkins' principles: tell your full story. If you ever tire of the slightly ridiculous drone of "hustle, hustle and hustle", you might want to step into the past over a cup of coffee and cake. And read the wisdom of yesteryear as the world hurries by.

Does a 100 year old book on advertising still apply today? In this two-part series we delve into concepts that are not just relevant, but crucial in marketing. Find out the principles that have lasted almost a whole century and how they can be useful to you, today. And tomorrow too. Probably the next decade or two as well.

Pre-sell is notoriously difficult for most entrepreneurs. It feels greasy and icky at times. And that lack of enthusiasm dooms the sale from the very start. But what if there were a way to sell without selling. Instead, all you'd need is a story. A simple story with tiny little details could easily achieve the goal of selling a product or service in advance. But how do you go about it? Let's find out.

Most of us are more than likely to get going by having a to-do list. Yet, we at Psychotactics do things a little differently. We start with the breaks, to begin with (and there's even a "Julia story" that explains why). Plus we also include a stop-doing list. To find out how and why this weird planning system may work for you, listen to this episode.

The first line of an article drives most of us insane. And as if that were not enough, we are called upon to write an interesting first line. How do you nail that first line every single time? Here are three—not four—just three methods that will excite and surprise you.

How do you find the most authentic food in a foreign city, minutes after you've landed? How do you find seats on a plane where people won't bump into you while you're sleeping? These and some other nifty tricks are what you're about to learn about in this episode.

Most of us have tried and are unable to keep up with the onslaught of information that comes our way. Add the deluge of distraction and it seems like a losing game. Or does it? You'll be amazed at how tiny tweaks can make a considerable difference to both learning and implementation.

Would you be able to write a newsletter on a weekly basis and keep it going for the next 20 years? How do you even get topics, let alone write consistently for all of this time? The answer lies in somewhat of a strategy, but mostly a structure. If you use a similar structure, you'll find that twenty years is just a starting point and that writing will be a joy, instead of a dread. Here's how we made it to the 20-year mark!

Would you choose between mastery or fluency? Many would opt for mastery, but it might just be the wrong choice to make. If, instead, you work with fluency, you can get incredibly talented while spending just five minutes a day. Is such a fabulous really possible? Let's find out.

How do you make your articles or sales letters more interesting? Analogies and stories always increase the drama and attention span. Yet, it's hard to find and craft interesting stories on a regular basis. Or is it? Find out how you can use three simple and effective ways to craft a ton of great stories and analogies.

Let's say you come up with what you believe is a great uniqueness for your product or service. How would you know if it's great or not? The answer is deceptively simple: every client needs to echo your uniqueness over and over again. But how are you supposed to hear that echo? Interestingly that echo is located in the testimonial. But not just anywhere in the testimonial, but in one really interesting area. Listen to find out and then do the same for your products and services as well.

Why do some books, courses or workshops end up becoming so addictive? Is it the teacher, the system, the information, or is it all of the above? In this podcast we look at why your business needs a bit of movement through three precise stages. Those stages are information, results and elegance. Elegance is hard to resist, but how do we get there and how long does it take? Is there any guaranteed way to get to elegance? Let's find out in this episode.

When we think of business, marketing tactics and strategy comes to mind, doesn't it? Philosophy does exist but it may be a bit on the back burner. Yet, for us at Psychotactics, philosophy looms large. Here are just a few nuggets that you can ponder over and see how they apply to you—and how you can use them in your life and business.

One of the most mind numbing tasks is to get a client to pay for the job you've completed. Clients tend to be slow with payments or just default. But is there a way to avoid such a mess? There's not just one, but three separate ways to go about it. Let's find out how you can get paid without all the bother—and well in advance, too.

We tend to believe that we're more overwhelmed than ever before. Yet look around you and you see people who are doing twice or thrice as much. It's hard to admit it, but often their work is of a higher standard too. How come they're not overwhelmed? Is it because they're more talented, or is there something that we're not quite seeing? Let's find out in this episode.

Remember when Google started? Or Amazon? At Psychotactics we started a few years after these giants. It's perfectly normal to assume that we got in at exactly the right time. But you and I know there's no right time, and that opportunities are always presenting themselves. Which is why when clients ask: What would you do if you were starting today—my answer is remarkably similar. Find out why the strategy of 2020 is not that different from 2000.

Most of us think we have to be incredibly special, or at least different to stand out in a crowded market. Yet, at least at the starting point, it's the mundane that gets the attention. If anything, being unique or different seems to be backfire. How do you use the power of mundanity to break into a market and then how do you sustain that momentum?

If you and I look around, we see product or services just like ours everywhere. Instantly we get a feeling of having missed the bus. The market is clearly saturated and there's little or no point in us having to create more content, or product or services. Or is it? One of the most surprising—even surreal—experiences is dropping into this seemingly saturated market, and finding out that it's a big, fat myth. Why is it such a myth? Let's find out.

If you've ever wondered if your headline is lacking some oomph, it might be because of an incredibly simple omission. It's the lack of contrast. Contrast works in real life with colours, textures or flavours. Not surprisingly, it works with headlines too. Here are three common questions about headlines. And they have surprisingly interesting ideas.

The advice about "free vs fee" is clear. Free should be avoided at all costs because you will just be taken advantage of, while others get paid. Yet, this seemingly black and white advice has shades of grey as well. As a startup, payment isn't the only or even the best option. Find out how and when free can work to your advantage.

After the home page, the second most-visited page on many sites is the About Us page. Yet almost all the About Us pages you visit are drab, long winded or don't give much detail at all. If you already have an About Us page going, here are three quick fixes that will dramatically improve the visual and the text on your site.

If you've used some sort of learning techniques all your life, the core principles of learning should not mislead you. Even so, we get hoodwinked and it's important to look at why we struggle with learning. Here's what I've learned about learning so far.

Do you often get stuck when trying to come up with article topics? One of the reasons why we tend to struggle is because we get stuck at the "topic" level. However, when you write headlines, not only move along to the sub-topic level, but headlines give you more precise direction. To find out how to use headlines—even not so good headlines—listen to this podcast.

We tend to learn in sequence. Chapter one, two and three. But what if we broke the sequence? Would that enhance our learning? In this rather sequential piece, you learn how I tend to break quite a few rules to get the results I want, and you'll find it works very well for you too. Tah, dah, time to jump the queue and learn in a whole different way.

Almost all of us feel like impostors from time to time. And we even have an official sounding name for it. But the impostor syndrome is an unfair burden to carry. What if we're just beginners? And what do real impostors look like anyway?

You'd think you'd need to be someone great or at least do something wonderful. Yet, you're a source of inspiration. How do you inspire? It's remarkably simple —and here's a short piece on how you need to go about it.

You've heard that it takes about 21 days to create a habit. But what if that weren't true at all? Could it be possible to create a habit overnight? Or even in the next few minutes? Let's find out.

It might seem that it's always up to us to change our habits. And that idea might be quite incorrect. Instead, what if something around us changed and our habits changed with it? Instead of us taking the blame all the time, this series is about how to look at habits differently and achieve lasting goals.

Researching an article is so frustrating because it's time-consuming. But there are ways to beat the pressure—and the pain. Believe it or not, there are ways to be productive with zero last minute research. This episode shows you how to make advance research work for you, as well as in situations where you have no research at all. Sounds too good to be true? Well, listen to the episode.

(Rerun of episode #220 Coaching Series Part 1 of 3). The toughest part of coaching isn't necessarily coaching itself. Instead, it's the niche, isn't it? How do you go looking for the right niche? And how do you know when you've found one that's rewarding as well as profitable? We go back in time with the British Cycling Team and what turned them into champions, and how their coach played a role. We also look at how Pilates went from being everything to everyone to finding a solid niche. Listen and enjoy.

It seems natural to keep an eye, even get obsessive about your competitors. However, it's a poor strategy for many reasons. In this episode we make the case for why the competition doesn't really matter as much as you think. And why focusing on them could possibly cause clients to desert you, instead.

How many books do you read in a year? Most people boast about how they read hundreds of books a year. That's what I used to do as well. Until I found that I wasn't really absorbing any information. So is speed reading a bad idea? Well, not entirely, but you need to know when to use it and why. Find out how speed works for you and more importantly, when it fails.

We're all told we should start with the end in mind, but we still get lost along the way. Why do we go off track? Could there be some barriers that show up a lot before the end? Let's find out we can stop focusing so much on the end and work on those barriers that blocks our progress.

Do you pre-sell if your audience is away on vacation? Should you pre-sell if you're unsure of a full house? These and other questions are what's on this Part 2 of the pre-sell podcast.

Which product should you pre-sell? Should it be the $20 product or the $2000 one? And why do silos matter so much? In this episode we not only learn why the $20 product might matter more, but also how you can promote a product almost endlessly without ever promoting it all.

Most of us believe that to cope with information, we have to speed up. But we've all tried that, haven't we? And it doesn't seem to work at all. This episode is about why we are so obsessed with trying to keep up. And how you can do quite the opposite and still be a lot smarter. Click here to read this episode: Information Overload

Many coaches and trainers struggle to get precise results for their clients And it's not for want of trying, either. They work very hard, probably too hard, and yet the clients don't get the results they seek. The question is: how we go from mediocrity to excellence? Find out the guidelines to becoming a good coach.

Is there a fun way to get unstuck? From all the experiences we've had so far, getting stuck is a real pain. The more we try to get unstuck, the more we seem to dig a deeper hole. But what if there were a few fun ways to get unstuck? And what if they were quite different from what you've tried so far? Let's have a look.

Why are some sales pages so confusing? Is it because of the message or rather because there are way too many messages hitting you all at once? A sales page needs a powerful message to get the client not just interested, but to keep reading. And yet sales pages often miss that goal. But there's a way to start the sales page from getting off to a false start. And it's called "isolating the problem". But how do we go about this isolation process? Let's find out. shall we? Click here to read: Why The Top-Half Of The Sales Page Goes Wrong (And How To Fix It)

As writers, we count words when we are creating a book or writing an article. We look at completing a fixed number of words per day—800 words. And yet, that system can be counterproductive to finishing your article. Professional writers seem to follow another method, one that ignores the output and instead focuses on the article writing process. How do they do it? And what have we been doing incorrectly? Let's find out how to fix this problem and finish our articles. Click here to read: Why Writing 800 Words Every Day Could Be Hindering Your Article Writing Progress

Luck it seems, is fickle? Or is it? How come some people are lucky (or as the case may be, unlucky) all the while. There is indeed a system and it may be off a bit, like weather forecasting, but by and large it's quite predictable. Let's dump the "hard, hard, hard work" mantra for a while and find out how to make luck stick. Read online: Can We Really Systemise Luck?

If you reached the top of your game, would you credit it to hard work or luck? Most of us quite easily slide into crediting our success to hard work. But what if hard work isn't necessary? What if we've been slogging for no good reason at all? Let's find out more in Episode 1 (yes there are two episodes) in this series on hard work vs luck. Read online: Hard Work Vs Luck: Which One Is More Dependable?

Naming a book or info-product is often a royal pain in the neck. And that's because most of us tend to sit down at our desk hoping for inspiration to strike. The weird bit is that inspiration is often in some other place altogether. It's right in front of your nose, but often you may not see it. Let's go on a treasure hunt and find out how to get an enticing book title in next to no time. Read online: How To Create Intensely Catchy Book Names (Without Too Much Of A Struggle)

How to avoid embarrassing time overruns when making presentations? Timing your presentations are crucial yet all the practice in the world may not help if there's an external issue. An emcee may cause confusion, the sound system might cause delays. And all of these unexpected issues eat up into your time. But some presenters keep to their time, nonetheless? What method can you use to avoid this issue of overruns? How do you design your presentation? Let's find out, shall we? Read Online: How To Avoid Time Overruns When Making A Presentation

What is the biggest headache with transcription? Well, there are many, aren't there? Errors bug me no end, and they seem to make a lot of them. There's also the cost, the turnaround time and other issues. But what if there were a service that solved all of these problems? Better still, what if there were a service that you could just dictate into, like normal speech and find that it put the right punctuation in place? Here we go into the fantastic world of transcripts. You'll be amazed, because I sure was! Click here to read the article: Coolest Transcription Service

You know how you're told to make lemonade when life hands you lemons? Well, what do you do with overripe bananas? You make Filos! This episode is about the times when we should have given up because the failure seemed so great. But they are also stories that show you what happens when you persist. You'll enjoy these stories about 5000bc and Psychotactics. And it's all about failure, and how things turned out on the other side. Read the transcript here: Failure Through Different Lenses.