The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Hype works exceedingly well, even when the client knows they're being duped a bit. But what if you can't stand hype? Does that mean you roll over and play dead? Here's how you can avoid hype completely, if you wish to do so. And if the hype is so great, that it can't be ignored, you can use the hype like mental judo to turn the tables and to achieve precise results for your clients. How to Avoid Hype and Still Get Clients

In business the advice we get is to hang in, no matter what happens. Yet, to me that sounds like the wrong advice. You definitely need to hang in a bit when things get slightly tougher than you expected. But there's a time for quitting as well. How do you know if you should quit or soldier on? When Quitting Is the Smarter Option

We may often hear ourselves saying, we have a long to-do list. Or things that we still haven't completed. Or worse, we may talk about how we have no time. Often, it's just a matter of issues that can get resolved with a touch of philosophy. There's work to be done as well, but the philosophy needs to come first. In this second part of the series, let's find out how philosophy can come to our rescue and serve our business—even save us time! The Philosophy of Psychotactics

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. The Psychotactics Marketing Philosophy

So much effort goes into the launch of a product, but what happens next? How do you handle the calm after the launch? How do you keep selling products on an ongoing basis? These are the questions we tackle in this episode as we get rid of the "post-launch" blues. Click here to read the full transcript.

When we price a product or service we often use the ending 7 or 9. As in $27 or $29. Is there any basis for using such an ending? Yes, there is, but does it help to sell more products or services? This is the journey we go on, as we explore the crazy world of pricing. How to set prices shouldn't be voodoo and yet it is. Let's go on this trip by first removing the silly myths. Click here to read the full transcript.

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. Click here to read the full transcript.

Most of us have grand plans to succeed. Yet, almost the moment we start there are a million distractions in our way. Chaos lurches around in our doorway and there seems to be no way out. At Psychotactics, we had managed to get around most of the chaos but then I was in charge of mentoring my niece. As she moved from Year 6 to Year 7, it seemed like we were hit by an okinami of chaos. What did we do to find our way out? How did we manage to avoid the madness that we had no control over? Find out in this episode of The Three Month Vacation. Click here to read the full transcript.

How do you maintain a high productivity level when switching tasks? How do you get the brain and body to handle the transition? And how do you manage the transitions with a minimum amount of fuss? Click here to read the full transcript.

When you create or find your uniqueness, do you need to test it? Incredible as it seems there's little point in doing any testing at all. In this episode you'll find out why testing is practically impossible and how instead of wasting time on research, you should follow three steps to make sure your uniqueness occupies a permanent part of your client's brain. Click here to read: Three Steps To Getting Your Uniqueness Recognised

Objections aren't something we necessary think about when writing articles. We're so focused on the main content that we might see no need to contradict ourselves. Yet, it's this very contradiction that makes the article more robust and removes those chunky holes. Let's find out why objections are crucial in our articles. Click here to read the article online:

One of biggest problems with any sort of prospecting is the dead silence right after clients love what you've said or done. You'd think they'd call immediately, but there's not a peep out of them. Is there some flaw in the system? And how can you overcome this obvious glitch? Click here to read online: Coaching Series 3/3: Why Clients Nod But Don't Call ________________________________________ How do you Find Prospects? Red Bull has the highest market share of any energy drink in the world, with 6.302 billion cans sold in a year. However, it almost never got started. Before the launch, part owner, Dietrich Mateschitz hired a market research firm to test Red Bull's acceptance. The result was a complete let down "People didn't believe the taste, the logo, the brand name. "I'd never before experienced such a disaster." But Mateschitz believed the product would do well if he placed it in the right market. Which is precisely what he did His insight was to target not just students, but trendy students in universities. Instead of selling the brand to them, he'd pay them to throw a party and supplied them with free cases of Red Bull. What Mateschitz was doing, was two masterful acts all at once. He was seeking out the kind of clients he'd want, and instantly demonstrating the application. For someone starting out in coaching it might seem like an uphill task to get clients No one knows you, no one knows your brand, and no one even cares. Sounds pretty much like Red Bull doesn't it? But just like Red Bull, you've got to know how to work your way around such a dismal scenario. The first stage would be for you to decide on a specific audience. Before you get close focus on a single person, namely a profile, it's important first to find an audience. Take Mike Jara's audience for instance Mike deals with the issue of stress management. And that's a pretty broad audience. On any given day, you're likely to run into people who are wound up. Even so, it's not quite the audience you (or Mike) is looking for. Instead, Mike has chosen to talks to teachers. They have a pretty stressful day, not just in the classroom, but with the prep work and the assignments after the last kid has gone home. The stress gets in the way of sleep, causing the teachers to be even more sleep deprivation. When they get back to work, after a restless sleep, they're edgier than ever before. However, without the audience in mind, the message goes quickly off track When Mike started the exercise of getting a message across, his line went like this: Start your mornings with abundant energy. Ditch the coffee and grab yourself a hot cup of habits. Not only was the line a bit confusing, but it instantly brought up objections. Most people drink coffee, because they like the taste, but also because it's a break, and often a social gathering of sorts. They don't see coffee as the enemy. If Mike were to look for prospects with a line like that, he'd be likely to get little or no response, which would be a shame, because there's nothing wrong with Mike's offering. When looking for prospects, it's not enough to have a great product or service. Instead, you have to get started with the target audience, then move to the target profile, and that's when you avoid the noise factor and get a clearer signal. When I started out as a coach/consultant I thought I had a great line I'd say something like this: "Reactivating dormant business clients". I was so chuffed with my line that I got a designer to design my stationery, which included a thousand business cards. Months later, I found barely little or no interest in what I had to offer. However, I also got lucky because I was introduced to a networking group. This group met on every Friday, which meant I could test out which lines worked best. Even so, I got nowhere in a hurry. What changed everything for me was a live situation As part of the group exercise, I had to visit every member of the group individually. They, in turn, had to explain their product or service to me. I'd listen patiently, while some people took as much as 10-12 minutes to explain their marketing message. I'd then reassemble the concept in my brain, and put it forward to the member. "You explain it better than me," they'd say in astonishment. Even so, I was not convinced. I was the guy who "reactivated dormant business clients." Plus I had all these sunk costs in the stationery. I wasn't about to go all nuclear on the existing message. It took over a dozen people to point out what I did before I was cured of my stubbornness. Eventually, I started talking to people about how hard it was to get the attention of a client in a few seconds, and almost immediately those very people would stop what they were doing. They'd look up and pay attention to what I was saying because I'd hit a chord with them. I'd narrowed down my audience, and had managed to craft a message that appealed directly to that very audience. Prospecting may seem like a frustratingly

We all struggle to find niches when trying to get into the coaching game. But is it really that hard? Or have we been looking in the wrong places? This episode shows you how you can find dozens of niches, all of which have great power and are profitable now and for years to come. Click here to read online: Coaching Series 2/3: How Niches Can Easily Be Found in Recurring Client Problems ________________________________________ In 2010, Gillette blades dominated the market at 70 per cent. Six years later, they were down to 54% How can Gillette get back into the game? Phil Masiello is one of the reasons why Gillette is losing market share. Masiello founded 800razors.com and sales at his company were up to about $2 million annually before he sold it. However, Masiello is only one among many competitors. Harry's, Dollar Shave and other smaller razor and blade companies are all responsible for the drop in Gillette's market share. It's Phil Masiello, himself who has the best advice for Gillette. "Gillette makes a great shave," Masiello said. "Nobody has ever complained about the great shave of Gillette and Schick. People only complained about the price. You take the price difference out, all of a sudden they are back in the game." Notice what Masiello is pointing to? It's the "recurring problem". If you've ever bought Gillette's blades, the only thought that crosses your mind with every purchase is: how can five pieces of plastic and some metal cost $40 per pack? In New Zealand, each blade is priced at the whopping price of $8. 15 zillion shaves later; you think of the same problem over and over again when buying new blades. The recurring problem exists in every industry, without exception Take for instance the role of a media planner in an advertising agency. What is her recurring problem? It's ROI or a return on investment. A media planner's job is to decide where to spend the client's money. Will it be on social media? On TV adverts? Or some place else? What she decides then trickles down to the copywriters and designers and everyone else in the agency. The teams will need to either need to make more TV commercials or instead, radio spots, depending on where the ROI is best. And the biggest problem with media planning isn't the spending of the budget, but the perception of the clients and the agency. If you were asked: On a scale of 1/10 how high would you rate newspapers with regards to ROI? What about TV? Or radio? Or would social media be a better choice? Perception isn't reality, and when a firm did painstaking research, they found something mind-boggling. See the figures below. What's the recurring problem? Yup, it's perception. And this kind of recurring problem shows up consistently when you're coaching clients. Usually, the same problems turn up again and again. Take, for instance, the Article Writing Course. All of our coaching is done online via a forum and through assignments. It's not what you'd call a traditional system of phone calls, Skype calls or in person. Even so, it's not the medium of coaching that is valid for this discussion. What's important is in identifying the recurring problem. And the recurring problem is that our clients, at least, are keen on getting new clients, and they realise that articles are one of the better ways to create authority and hence, get clients. But they struggle with speed. Writing an article takes so long that they get exhausted. And you know what happens when you get so tired, right? Your output isn't that great. The coaching system we have in place is therefore built around speed. By the end of the coaching program, the goal is to write magazine-quality articles in 90 minutes. If you're training a netball team the recurring problem might be different Nerves and pressure situations on the court is almost endemic among young players. As Leanne Hughes, once a netball player herself, says: "Playing in the circle is tough. You don't want to miss that goal and lose the game by one point. How do you calm the nerves when you need to deliver that shot? The recurring problem is getting the shot even under extreme pressure. This precise idea is what enables a buyer to lock into whatever it is you're selling as a coach. And in turn, it prevents you from saying something silly like: "Oh, I'm a netball coach" when asked what you do for a living. One more example and then it's time to move on through the series. Joseph Ch'ng runs training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Clients learn to be NLP coaches just like him. But what's the recurring problem that shows up? Joseph has found that coaches aren't always in the right frame of mind to coach others. To get into that state of mind—a meta state—as he calls it, is essential. And that's a recurring problem that he sees with many coaches. As Joseph says: Meta State is a peak performance state. A state of being in-tuned, open, connected. Clients respond well to coaches who are in this state and as a coach you get far more i

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. Click here to read online: Coaching Series 1/3: How To Start Up With A Great Niche ________________________________________ Hand washing is not exactly the activity you'd indulge in if you wanted to win the gold medal at the Olympics. Yet, that's exactly what the British Cycling Team did at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They hired a surgeon to teach the athletes to properly wash their hands, in order to avoid illnesses during competition. The team staff were utterly fastidious about food preparation. They even brought their own mattresses and pillows, so that the athletes could sleep in a familiar posture every night. What does all of this have to do with coaching? It might seem totally weird, even slightly crazy, but these were just some of the methods Sir Dave Brailsford, head of British Cycling used to turn his scrappy little bunch into world champions. British Cycling went from a terrible 76 year record of just one gold medal, to 7 out of 10 gold at the Beijing Olympics and then 7 out of 10 at yet again at the London Olympics. They've even won three out of the last Tour de France competitions, with only Italy interrupting their successful run. Surely Britain didn't sprout champions overnight Something else was in play, and that something else is simply the teacher, or a coach. And there's a remarkable difference between being just someone who coaches others, and one that coaches to get precise results. The coach who works with a specific goal in mind takes great performers and transforms makes them unbeatable. If you look at almost any great artist, performer, athlete or professional, it's easy to seduce yourself into believing in inborn talent. In almost every instance, you will find it's the coach and their methods that take the client from a seemingly ordinary level to something quite stupendous. Without a coach, a person has to go through the gruelling method of having to figure out all the mistakes and fix it themselves. When you look at the 10,000 hour principle, what you're seeing is someone who doesn't have an outstanding coach. A coach can not only reduce the learning curve, but can make learning fun and addictive. In this series, we'll take apart not just what makes for good coaching, but the elements of coaching. Let's get started. How do you define your Niche as a Coach? Around the time of the California Gold Rush, one man, Samuel Brannan was known as the richest man in California. Contrary to what we might believe, Brannan didn't quite make his money panning for gold. He'd decided early on that he'd never make much money in the gold mines. Instead, he was reputed to have gone down the streets of San Francisco, shouting, "Gold, there's gold down the American river". So where did Brannan's riches arise? His fortune arose from a strategic move. He owned the only store between San Francisco and the gold fields. He stocked his store with the picks, shovels and pans he could find paying barely 20 cents for each pan and selling it for $15 each. In scarcely nine weeks, he had made over $36,000 (in today's terms that would be 1,080,077.47). In short, Brannan put himself in a position where it was hard, even impossible for him to fail with his insight. When starting up as a coach, it's not easy to have such clear insight. In many cases, you're in transition yourself. You're often trying to find your own feet, your own space and voice. You do know one thing, though. You know that you can't be like everyone else rushing off with their pans and shovels. You instinctively know you've almost got to swing the other way and find a niche. But how do you go about creating a niche? Let's start with luck, shall we? When I first got to Auckland in 2000, I got thrust into coaching by accident—twice. I wasn't into coaching at all, but instead was drawing cartoons on Photoshop. A client who'd come over watched in awe as I got rid of all the icons on the screen. No tool bar, no colour picker, not even a menu bar. "Where is everything"? He asked, amazed partially at the speed of my method, but more because I seemed to be working almost magically. I explained I was using shortcuts and he was so impressed that he offered me $1000 to train his daughter. And I had my first accidental coaching session "How to use Photoshop faster than graphic designers"—that was my temporary slogan. In a week, his daughter went from never using Photoshop to teaching graphic designers how to use shortcuts as well. With my new found slogan, I managed to pick one more client—yes, another graphic

One of the biggest hurdles in writing, has nothing to do with writing at all. It doesn't have anything to do with time, either. Instead, it's an understanding of energy. Without a clear view of how energy works, we're likely to start off strong and then find ourselves stranded. Is there a way around this energy hurdle? What causes an energy loss? Let's find out in this episode. Click here to read online: Writer's Block: How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash

How do you speed up your writing process and what causes it to slow down to a crawl? Surprisingly, discussion and feedback play an incredibly powerful role in unblocking Writer's Block. The more you're stuck, the greater the reason to invite discussion and feedback. The moment you do, it causes you to explain the concepts in a way that catches you totally by surprise! Click here to read online: Writer's Block 3/4: Why Discussion and Feedback Are A Writer's Secret Weapon (And How Professionals Use it to Their Advantage) ________________________________________ C) Discussion and Feedback If you drop me in Kyoto or Paris, I'll walk happily for hours. However, the moment I have to exercise, I detest the very concept of walking. And yet, day after day, year after year, we go for a walk. It's healthy of course, and I actually learn stuff or listen to music, but the most crucial part of the walk is the part right up to the traffic lights. It's about a ten-minute walk from our house to the lights, and that's when I talk to Renuka about what I've been reading or watching. And there are days when Renuka is "sleep walking", so I'll get nods, but some days she's wide awake, and we have a discussion. If I'm lucky, she'll disagree with almost everything I'm saying. Discussion is a great way to get prepared to write an article I remember the author, Malcolm Gladwell drumming home this very point. He tends to find a friend either in person or over the phone, and they discuss the topic. If the friend doesn't respond well, Gladwell knows the idea either needs tuning or needs to be dropped entirely. If the person gets interested or goes off on their version of the story, Gladwell knows the premise is interesting. It struck me that this method is what most writers tend to do instinctively, yet the ones that struggle don't do it at all, and it puts them at a significant disadvantage. If you keep your article under wraps, it's your own secret This secretive nature of ours tends to boil down to one aspect—and it's called insecurity. Sounds harsh, I know, but it's just because we're insecure about our topic, or that we'll be called out in some way. Feedback rocks our boat so much that we feel happier to simply get on with the job of writing, and avoid this discussion bit completely. It's sobering to note that discussion and exposing your ideas to the world is how great science is done. Scientists don't tend to work in a bubble They postulate an idea, or do some research and publish a paper. That paper is examined by others in their field, and they come up with holes in the research or idea. The holes might be so large that the scientist has to go back to almost the starting point if they want to ratify their idea. Is this method frustrating? Is it a big blow to the ego? Of course. It is Renuka is not the only source of feedback and discussion. I'll get on WhatsApp and chatter away with a private group. I'll have discussions via e-mail or Messenger. And often, I'll post a rough idea on the forum in 5000bc. If you're wondering why there are so few holes in a lot of the articles or books from Psychotactics, then wonder no more. Those holes existed. If you look at the courses, e.g. the Sales Page course, it's in Version 3.0. That tells you that the course material of 1.0 and 2.0 had holes. The same applies to the Article Writing Course, or any course, any article—just about everything we do. This article too will have holes in it, and we know this to be true, because the moment I post it, someone will ask further questions or have clarifications needed. Or, as the case may be, they may disagree with some point or the other. But feedback is about holes and the discussion is often just for the sake of clarity When you have an idea or a topic you want to cover, it's a bit premature in your head. When you put it down on paper, on chat, or in a verbal discussion, you have to be more precise in your argument. It forces you to think of analogies. You might say: "You know this topic we're discussing is exactly like the Barbie case study. Remember how…" And that discussion will spur case studies and examples, but it does a lot more. When explaining something to someone else, you also tend to bring up analogies. You say, "It's a lot like a roundabout, instead of a traffic light. Both systems regulate the traffic, but one works without any punishment or and yet is far superior in traffic control." When you explain yourself, you can't help but try and pull up a series of analogies. The discussion becomes the groundwork for all the analogies, stories, case studies and examples you could insert into your still to be written article. Whether you choose a forum, chat, the phone or a walk in Kyoto the result is similar You're going for a little stroll with your ideas. And along the way, you meet other ideas or even run into that snarly feedback guy from next door. You haven't started to write yet, but you're beginning to percolate, which is far more i

Most of us are content to learn a great deal about what's happening in our industry, but is that causing a blockage when it comes to writing? When we go into the depths of writer's block, we find that you need cross pollination not only across industry, but across styles as well as media such as video, audio and text. Find out how a lack of cross pollination could be causing your writing to freeze up.

If you're already good at writing, do you need an outline? It might seem one more barrier and yet it's the first element that creates this so called Writer's Block. Find out why outlines are a map that quickly get you to your destination. Click here to read online: Writer's Block Series 1/4: Why the Lack of Outlines Even Stops Professional Writers In Their Tracks ________________________________________ If you give employees a bonus, will they work harder? This is the seemingly obvious question that Michael Sturman had to contend with. Sturman, a professor at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, decided to find just how much pay and performance mattered. And as you'd expect, he found the obvious. People who are paid above the market rate, do a much better job. As you'd imagine, he found that even a 1% raise, can tend to boost employee performance to about 2%. However, when the same 1% bonus was linked to a specific task, the job performance spiked as high as 19%. Turn that statistic around, and we can speculate that the employee had been working at 19% lower than their potential. When writing articles, it's easy to work way below your potential as well And most writers feel their potential is reached when they do fancy research or when they sit down for hours to write. However, a lot of potential is wasted long before you sit down to write a single word. A lot of the potential lies in the stages of preparation. Let's look at three critical elements that cause a fair bit of chaos: The Lack of Pre-Work The Scarcity of Input Understanding Energy Management When Writing 1) The Lack of Pre-Work The moment I sat down to write this article, I was a little lost. I'll tell you why. I hadn't done much pre-work. I fully intended to outline it, work out the story that was needed, and add a lot of notes. However, when it came to writing the article, I did what most writers do. I sat down at the computer and hoped I'd get lucky. And luck can be pretty fickle under the best of conditions, but it seems to take special pleasure in taunting the article writer. The problem with article writing is that we don't see it as several tasks Writing an article is more like an expedition than a casual walk in the park. To get a well-written article out, you need the story, or possibly more than one story (just like the pay-performance story above). Then you've got to have at least one point in that story that's exceedingly curious. The opening paragraph can cause enough grief for a writer, but it doesn't stop there. You need to know the points you're going to cover, have case studies and examples, need to understand at least one or two of the main objections, the headline, and yes, the list goes on and on. I've written about 50 articles a year for about 18 years That is roughly 900 articles, and this doesn't take into account course material, books and over 100,000 posts in forums. In short, it's a heck of a lot of writing. You'd think you'd get really good at writing with all of this experience, right? And you do. But we're not talking about writing at all. We're talking about preparation. Without the ingredients, an expert chef can make a dish relatively quickly, but there's a lot of fumbling and bumbling before that meal is ready. However, with the smallest amount of preparation, that dish, even in the hands of a newbie, can be so much better, so much tastier. Easily the most critical pre-work lies in three main areas The first is the outline. I didn't have any outlines to write in school, so I can't share the hatred of outlines. However, on the article writing course, most clients start off with resenting the very thought of outlining. They come around when they realise that the outlines they did at school were terrible and that outlines for article writing are more like a laundry list of what needs to go where. But even among the converted, the additional step of outlining seems like another 10-15 minutes of work that can be avoided. And it can't I did that this morning when I sat down at my computer. And like that expert chef, I can manage to write when I'm half asleep, but I still waste enough time that I could have simply spent with a quick outline on a Post-It. I did outline the points, of course, but failed to make any notes and had to work out what I was saying as I went through the article. And that's just one element we're talking about. The outline, the story, the objections, the headline—they're all work in progress. Yes, even the headline Though it's a spindly one or two lines, having a raggedy working headline in place keeps the article on track. In this very article, I went up to check the headline thrice, to make sure I wasn't wavering. And all of this back and forth is wasted time and wasted energy. If you're good at a task, you can wing your way through it, even on really rough days, but if you're prepared, it's a whole different ball game, isn't it? However, the preparation stage isn't confined to the outlin

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. Click here to read online: Want to get paid a lot in advance? 3 Methods to get paid earlier than ever before ________________________________________ What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs, And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. Wouldn't it be a bit of shame that we have no time to look at sheep and cows because we're trying to get paid on time? There's no foolproof system to get paid every time, but if you pay attention to how other industries work, you might never have to chase payments again. There are three core methods to use: – The Construction Company Method – The 100% Payment in Advance Method – A Downpayment in Advance Method Let's look at all three to see which one works for you. 1) The Construction Company Method When we were building our office—which is next door to our house—the builders followed a slab system of payment. Every stage of the construction had a pre-payment attached, and it looked a bit like this: Foundation: Pre-payment 1 Rough framing: Pre-payment 2. Rough plumbing and electrical: Payment 3 On and on it went through the insulation, exterior, interior, carpeting and exterior driveways. If we wanted the next stage to proceed, we needed to make the payment to keep our builders "motivated". This slab system of payment is one of the finest both for the client and the person doing the job. It makes sure that both parties are incredibly motivated to go ahead with the process. As a service provider, this is often an excellent system to follow because it ensures both parties move ahead systematically However, there's also a bit of a downside if one of the parties decides to walk away. Let's say you start working on a client's website and the payments are going well when the client suddenly runs into some sort of difficulty. Maybe she's had a personal problem and can't pay the rest of the sum, or perhaps she's just really slow with sending her text and images across. No matter what the problem, you're stuck because you can't proceed with the job. The happy news is that if you've worked out your payment structure well, you'll won't run into a loss because you've covered what you've done. By no means is this a foolproof system because your project might need to do a lot of core work at the start, and then not a lot in the middle and at the end. It means you'll have put in a lot of effort and not been paid for it. But wait, no one said the slabs had to be equal, right? If the first slab requires about 45% of the work, then that's the first payment the client needs to make before you get started. If the second slab is just 10% of the work, then you get the client to pay accordingly. However you decide to break up the slabs, it's important you get paid for the proportion of work you're putting in, which means you've got to do some groundwork and estimation in advance. However, that's just the first method of getting paid. The second seems harder because it's 100% in advance. But is it really harder? 2) The 100% Payment in Advance Method My father ran a secretarial college for over 25 years and it wasn't an easy life. He'd leave for work before 7 am, to make sure he opened all the doors and windows, turned on all the lights, and had his first cup of masala tea long before the first student showed up an hour later. All day he'd be at work, returning home about 8:30 at night. It was a time-consuming job, but the one thing he didn't spend much time on was collecting money. He'd always get the student's money in advance If you wanted to be on a course, or learn a skill such as typing, you had to pay before you got started. This simple act of payment in advance is incredibly common for schools, colleges and not surprisingly with a lot of the things we buy like electronics and petrol. But will it work for you as a business? It depends on two factors. Your confidence and the demand for your product or service. We may assume, for instance, that a restaurant will charge you once you show up and finish your meal. That's not the case with David Patterson, at San Francisco's restaurant which goes by the name of Coi. If you cancel 48 hours in advance, you won't be charged However, should you tip over into the last 48 hours, your credit card is charged the late cancellation fee of $275 per guest, and that's just for the tasting menu and doesn't include wine. There's also a 20% service charge. Will you be charged the service charge if you don't show up? It's not clear, but what's more than clear is that they treat all sales as final, just li

Most of us are quite obsessed with stashing away case studies, examples and stories. However, it's not enough to simply put it away. You have to be reasonably familiar with the story. And how you get to be familiar? You focus on one point in the story. Why does that one point matter? Let's find out.

This is not a regular podcast episode but a quick announcement about Fritoon... Your chance to receive a funny cartoon direct to your inbox every Friday. Visit psychotactics.com/fritoon , to sign up! Enjoy

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. Click here to read online: How to research an article (without killing your productivity)

Readers often get lost in an article and hence abandon it. However, there are pretty simple, yet powerful methods to let the reader know exactly where they are in the article at all times. Plus when you use these techniques, you push the reader forward as well. Here's how you go about using these "Transition Techniques". Read on the website: Transition Techniques

Websites are daunting projects but even the casual listener is astounded to learn that a website took three years to complete. Of course there's a story, so here we go with the tale. Read on the website: New Psychotactics Website Story ==== Back when I was in university, my friend, Shelly Brown sent me a recording of a rap band called Run DMC I listened to the music patiently, then decided rap had no future. As you can see, I'm a lot worse than most people at predicting the future. Even back in 2008, I had friends in the industry, who were talking about mobile as being the next big thing. But there we were in the middle of 2015 with no intention of creating a mobile-friendly site. I figured mobile had no future, so why bother with a new website when the existing website was doing just fine? However, what prompted me into action was a little chat with a client This client was into some sort of search engine optimisation, and he suggested it would be a good idea to create a new site as well. While we'd designed all the earlier sites, I was clearly out of depth when it came to mobile, which is why I left the entire task of design to the client. The design he produced was so horrific, so hard to describe, that there was no choice but to abandon the project. But now we'd been bitten by the redesign bug. And so, on July 27, 2015, the first website sketch was done. It would be another three years and ten days before the website went live. Planning is priceless but plans are useless I don't think we'd ever decided a fixed date for the release of the website, but shortly after a burst of initial designs, we ran into a whole bunch of barriers. The first was the Headlines Course, that started up in August. In 2015, I decided to add headline trainers to the course as well, which complicated my life a bit. When the course was done, we got an unexpected invitation to go to Nashville. There was no point in making such a long trip just to attend a seminar Which is why we decided to have a workshop of our own on the topic of storytelling. This meant notes needed to be written, slides had to be created, zillions of cartoons needed to be drawn for those slides. And yes, the website went into the first session of deep freeze as we conducted our workshops in Nashville and then Amsterdam. Which brought us right into 2016 and the promise of a renewed resolution to get the website going. However, remember how I wasn't clued into mobile? It had been over six months, but I was still working out how mobile designs worked differently from earlier websites. Which meant that the very pretty looking Photoshop designs looked gorgeous in the program, yet terrible on the site itself. Plus we were so much in love with our sidebars that we wanted them on the new website as well until we saw how messy it all looked on mobile. While I was spending inordinate amounts of time on websites like Squarespace, March came along, which brought about the biggest challenge of 2016. As you're probably aware, we tend to treat our courses like software Every now and then we'll do a major update even if a course is selling extremely well. I'd grown tired of the Article Writing Course and Version 1.0 had to somehow move to Version 2. In theory, this rewrite shouldn't have been a problem. I'm pretty adept at writing, as well as at creating course material. But there's also a factor of laziness. If I can procrastinate, I will, and the only way to get going is to announce that we're rolling out Version 2.0. The challenge was to write the course material while the course was in progress We tend to send course material at least a month in advance, and clients got Version 1 of the audio and notes. While they were working their way through the new course, I moved everything around. And by everything, I really mean everything. Assignments that were in Week 8, were moved to Week 3. Whole sections of the course were chipped away, while others were completely discarded. It may not sound like a lot, but every assignment takes over 3 hours to write because it includes complete step by step instructions as well as detailed examples. Then to add to that workload was the notes and the re-recording of the audio series. All of this was happening while the course was in progress. To say I was fried after all of this activity was putting it mildly I remember a whole week of headaches. My sleep wasn't so good either, and my head felt like Neil Armstrong could take a walk on it. By the time we headed to India in July, on vacation, my blood pressure was up, and so was my cholesterol. To talk about or think about the website was not much of an option, yet that's exactly what we did when we got back from our break. And the website might have still been ready to go by end 2016, but we had two painful technical problems One of those was our broadband connection. The broadband connection and other issues. If you drive around parts of Auckland, you're likely to see signs that say, "fibre

It sounds bizarre to make your own products, courses and services redundant, but it's a very sound strategy that's been used by companies such as General Motors, Apple—and oh, we've done it for almost as long as Psychotactics has existed. What's it about? Let's find out in this episode. Read on the website: The Cannibalisation Strategy ======= In 1923, Alfred P. Sloan took over a company that was far behind its closest competitor The company in the first place was the Ford Motor Company with a monstrous 60% of the market. General Motors, in comparison, was lagging far in the distance at just 20%. Part of the reason was Ford's Model T, which was far more affordable than what GM was offering. Sloan decided General Motors could never win a price war and so he rolled out a completely different strategy GM rolled out not one, but five different brands. Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac—these were all from the same company but had their own identity and were pitched at different economic brackets of US clients. When we look at what he did, we see a cannibalisation strategy Let's see: how would we describe a cannibalisation strategy? The concept seems more straightforward to understand when we think of software or a specific software like Photoshop. For the past 25 years or more, Photoshop has been through thousands of changes and had about 27 versions. Each version cannibalises the earlier version. Today the program works through a subscription model and upgrades without fanfare, but until quite recently, a new version of Photoshop would effectively be the death knell for an earlier version. It meant that Version 8, would cannibalise Version 7, which in turn cannibalised Version 6, and so on. What Sara is referring to is a concept called cannibalising your product When we brought out The Brain Audit, it wasn't designed to be a version—as in Version 1.0. We were so new to the business that we were happy just to have a book that clients were buying. Nonetheless, the earliest version of the book needed an update, but we called it an upgrade (just like they do with Photoshop). The Brain Audit went from Version 1 to Version 2. And then to Version 3 and finally sits at Version 3.2. With every iteration or upgrade, existing as well as new clients bought into the product. The Brain Audit was cannibalising the previous versions, and all the time, we were getting newer clients and earning revenue. Which is General Motors did very effectively The strategy to overcome Ford was built around how the client would operate. At least in the case of their cars, they'd come back to buy a higher priced brand as soon as they could afford it. What we'd call the upgrade is essentially a concept of cannibalisation. When Sloan took over as president of GM in 1923, Ford was the dominant player in the U.S. auto market Ford's Model T cost just $260 ($3,700 in today's dollars), and Ford held 60% of the U.S. car market. General Motors had 20%. Sloan realised that GM couldn't compete on price, so GM created multiple brands of cars, each with its own identity targeted at a specific economic bracket of American customers. The company set the prices for each of these brands from lowest to highest (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac). Within each brand, there were several models at different price points. By 1931, a mere eight years after Sloan took over; he combined some excellent financial management and cannibalisation strategy to turn the tables on, Ford. GM had a 43% stake vs Ford's 20%. What do we learn from this seemingly simple concept? When most of us create a program—whether it is a service, a product or course, we're super happy for a while. Then we tend to get bored and want to create something entirely new. And I do this as well. I'll create an Article Writing Course, and then I'll be itching to create a storytelling course, with the fancy name of "Traffic light storytelling". No one is suggesting you stick to one product endlessly. However, when you go back and cannibalise your product, you create two markets—new buyers and existing clients. The Article Writing Course is no longer on Version 1.0 And clients have not only bought the new version home study, but they may also come back to do the new course online, as alumni. Take the copywriting course as well. That's going through a metamorphosis as we speak and later this year, Version 2.0 will be available. The storytelling course we talked about earlier? That's been done live in Nashville and Amsterdam, but guess who's keen when I announce a newer version? It doesn't mean we don't create new products, courses or products. But it does mean that the existing products and courses are given a significant upgrade. When you get down to writing your course or even offering a service look at it as Version 1.0 And when Version 2.0 is on its way, offer it to clients. And you'll experience what Apple does with its phones every year, or what Photoshop did for y

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. Here is the website link: Ignore Competition === There is a story about an author who wrote a book The book was incredibly cheap, and as a result, he was able to sell several thousands of them. The competition looked at the increasing volume of sales and decided they could do the same. However, to their frustration they found themselves losing money. The reason why they had such significant losses, was because the book production cost more than the price that it was being sold for. And in this little tale is the story of competition. Most of us are reasonably obsessed with our competition We don't start out that way. When we start out, we are in awe of the people who have already made it. We don't consider them to be "competition" at all. They seem so far ahead of us that they are more like people we admire. We don't feel we need to compete against them. However, in time we make more significant progress, and we see that we are on par with them in several respects. That's when we decide that they are officially competition. It also makes perfect sense to watch what the competition is doing, so that we are not left behind. Which is precisely the point where things can start to go wrong Let's say you're a competitor of Psychotactics. And you notice that we are selling home study versions of the Article Writing Course, the Sales page course etc. And you decide, "Well, I have the same courses, and let me create some home study sales for myself as well". All good so far, and let's assume you sell a few home study versions, but your sales are crappy. You're possibly selling 2-3 copies a month, and that's it. You are convinced something is wrong with your system and you keep trying to copy what we're doing. You spend hours trying to tweak your website, trying to track down where we're posting and copying what we're doing. You probably did your due diligence in every area, except one. You possibly forgot to ask: What is our goal? Simply trying to monitor the competition is fine for inspiration, but if you don't know why the competition is doing what they're doing, you are simply creating a nasty scenario for yourself. Remember the author who wrote the book? What was his goal? His competitors assumed it was the profit margin from the book. In reality, the author was also losing money, but his goal was not to earn from the sales but to build a client list. That client list then bought other products and services from the author, which is how he made his real fortune. When it came to the home study versions, we too had a strategy Back in 2016, I decided to write a brand new version of the Article Writing Course. That was Version 2.0, and it was built from the ground up. I didn't refer to the earlier notes or audio. I took what I knew (based on the knowledge we'd gained in the last ten years) and put it in the course. By the time I'd completed creating the new version, I was exhausted. So tired, in fact, that I didn't want to do any courses until 2017 Courses form at least a fourth of our income, and not doing the live courses online meant that we'd have to forego that income. It's at this point, that my wife, Renuka, came up with a strategy to sell home study courses instead. Remember, we were already selling home study courses, but they weren't doing so well. The primary reason for the not-so-great sales was that we were promoting the live courses and had no bandwidth on the newsletter to also promote the home study versions. However, once I got super-tired in 2016, there was little choice. It's at this point, that we also made a radical choice We decided to sell only 35 copies of the course even though it was digital. It may not make sense to restrict a sale of a digital product, but we wanted to create urgency and scarcity (something you should do too). In essence, I got taken off the live course schedule for a whole year, and that was our first move. The second move was to create the waiting lists with the urgency and scarcity Two quick moves that from an outsider point of view are almost impossible to decipher. How are you supposed to know that all these micro decisions were taken along the way? How would you know if we got results or not unless I were to reveal the results to you? But if you're a competitor, how can you know all of this detail? It's impossible to know, and so you copy, but it's a blind copy. You're spending so much time and energy trying to work out what we're doing when in reality you should be working on your own product or services. If you really want to monitor the competition, you have a full-time job Sure you can find gaps in their products and services. And yes, you can find out where they'r

When it comes to testimonials for our product or service, we assume clients have to get to the end. Or do they? The reality is that it's a mistake to wait until the end because anyway clients aren't giving you a review of the entire product or service, but only a small section. But what structure and system do you follow to get a testimonial—or even to get the client to respond to your request? Let's find out in this episode on pit stop testimonials. Read on the website here: Pit Stop Testimonials -------------------- How do you know if the fruit is ready to be picked? According to monk and philosopher, Matthieu Ricard, here's how you do it. "You reach up to the fruit and touch it. You don't have to pull and break the branch to get the fruit. You just touch it, and it falls in your hands." Which is fine when you're dealing with fruit, but what do you do when your course, product, workshop or consulting is still unfinished? One of the most frequent questions I get is one about testimonials And clients ask: How do I get testimonials if my product is new? Or they may make a comment which goes like this: The course I created is so new that no one has completed it yet, so it will be a while before I can get these testimonials done. I have one student who is in part 3 (of 3), so hopefully, she will be ready soon. It's easy to see how you can wait forever to get a testimonial—or do you? Let's take both the situations and deal with them separately. Situation 1: You have a brand new product, course or service Situation 2: The product, service or course is not brand new, but no-one has finished it yet. Situation 1: A brand new product or service When I was young, I'd occasionally get to see a movie before everyone else. Movies were only ever screened in the cinema, and to get to see a movie, days, often a few weeks in advance was a rare treat. However, my father seemed to know people who did these early screenings which got us into the movie theatre in advance. However, there were other people in the same cinema hall. Who were these people, I wondered. My father told me they were movie reviewers. They'd get to see the movie in advance; then they'd critique the movie in their newspaper or magazine columns. Not a lot has changed in terms of advance reviews Movies still run private screenings so that they get reviews as do books, software and pretty much most products you can think of. In most cases, if you have something physical or even digital, someone can go through it and give you a review. You may or may not have a list of clients or subscribers. If you do, you can ask them to review your material. If you don't have the list, you may well be able to ask on social media, in forums, or in your networking group. Some of this review process can start earlier than you'd expect Most of us tend to finish our books, tie up the courses, go through from start to end in a training program. And you don't necessarily have to go to the end. You can get someone—even a friend—to help you while you're still putting that course or book together. They can not only be a source of feedback and information, but they can then give you that testimonial. To give you an example, let's say I was putting a course together on cooking Indian food At this point, if you go to the Psychotactics website, you'll see a recipes page with yummy food photos and recipes, but there's no mention of any recipe book or course. Let's say I wanted to create a course or book. I could invite a friend, or people from my networking group, members from 5000bc, or anyone who was interested. Take my friend, Els Jacobs, for instance. We communicate almost daily through Facebook messenger. And I send her some recipes, and she tries them out and gives me her feedback. Now let's say I wanted to get that book or course going, I could get Els and others like her to be on a sort of beta program where they tested the product and gave their feedback. And here's a question for you: Do you think they'd be likely to provide a testimonial sooner than later, even though the product isn't ready? It's easy to believe that a product needs to be complete before you get your testimonial However, let's assume that your product is ready for the market. In such a case, you have to get some early reviews, so that you can put the product on your site or in your marketing material. In such a situation, you have to reach out to someone you know—or some group that you belong to. However, this is precisely the point where things tend to go wrong. You try to get people to review your product, but no one is interested. Several requests later, you've received no response at all. Why should this be the case? Part of the reason is you're asking for too much When you ask people to review your book, your course, your entire long and winded consulting program, you're asking me to put my life on hold, to meet your deadline. Most people simply ignore such requests, because they're already busy. Even the

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 how we can stop focusing so much on the end and work on the barriers that block our progress. Click here to read this article on the website. --------- There's something incredibly fascinating about the way chefs work. A chef doesn't tend to cook for one person. In a single night, that chef might need to go whip up anywhere between 50-200 meals. And we're not even necessarily talking about chefs you see in fancy kitchens. You can walk into any food court or even roadside food stall, and it's the same story. There's flavour, taste and texture, despite both the volume and variety of the food. It got me thinking: What makes the chef so very proficient at what she or he does? The answer, strange as it seems, is they don't tend to worry about how the dish will turn out. Instead, they seem to obsess about the preparation—the prep work—instead. Let's say you have to make an Indian dal (dal are split pulses or legumes) You're going to need onions, tomatoes, some chillies, ginger and garlic paste and about five-six spices. It's at this stage that the professional and the wannabe seem to have plans that are diametrically different. Let's take the act of chopping onions How do you chop an onion efficiently? Here's what you do: • You cut the onion from head to toe, not through the belly. • If you follow the first instruction, the peel comes off way faster than if you went through the belly. • You then hold the half of the onion, chopping methodically and evenly (but only three-fourths of the way) • Finally, you cross cut the onion, and you get chopped onion that's precise and cooks evenly. A similar amount of preparation is involved in the skill of article writing, as well A wannabe writer will look far into the future, towards how the article is written. That writer might even spend hours wondering how to start the article. But that's not what professionals tend to do. Professionals head right into the zone of prep work. They know it's the preparation—the onions, the tomatoes and the spices of the writing—that's what matters. They work on getting topics together. They then realise that topics are too broad, so they move to the sub-topic and even to the sub-sub-topic stage. When that phase is complete, they get into the act of outlining. Some scribble outlines in a matter of minutes, some colour their outlines with explicit detail. What is the wannabe writer doing at this stage? The wannabe is doing triple somersaults about what's down the road. They're eager to get past all of this nonsensical planning, outlining, topics and other blah, blah. All of this prep work is somewhat of an obstacle, and the sooner they get over it all, the more likely they are to get to the finished work. But any professional will tell you that the endpoint tends to be the most straightforward bit. All of the energy goes into the prep work. And this brings us to a critical point The prep work can be truly exhausting. Writing an outline can take anywhere between 30-60 minutes. That's on top of the time taken for the topic or sub-topic. And that's not counting the story you're going to need for the First Fifty Words. All of this prep work is truly frustrating at the best of times. Which is why the pros always focus on reducing the energy needed for the prep work. They know that if they can shave off the time taken to write a decent outline, they'll go from 60 minutes to 30, from 30 to 20, from 20 to ten—and even possibly just a few minutes. If they work on getting stunningly fast at their preparation stages, the end product takes care of itself If you want to find someone who struggles with their writing, drawing, cooking—or any skill—look at their preparatory stages. They're slow. They're inefficient. They may still turn out a great product, but it's mind-numbingly energy-dependent. By the time they're done with their project, they have to rest, take long breaks. They dread starting up another project of a similar nature. I was that person If you look at my drawing today, you'll think I was always this good at cartooning. And the thing with cartoons is that it leaves a trail. Even if you don't consider yourself much of a critic, you'll see giant strides all of a sudden. At one point, back in 2000, I was already a good cartoonist, but if you look at the work today, it seems remarkably superior. It's easy to put all of this down to practice because most of us don't see the prep work. But today, I put in more prep work than ever. I'm continually adding reference material to my iPad. There are over 800 images that are like ingredients for when I finally start to draw. I'll have several cartoons in stages of progress, all waiting to see the light of day. I'll toss out ideas to my wife on our walk and see how she reacts, or I'll send it to friends via messenge

It's one thing to get attention, but how do you use it on sales pages? And what about articles? Can we use it there as well? In this second part we see how the power of objections work for sales pages, when creating information products and also with articles. It's real, it's practical and it works. Here we go!

Most of us avoid controversy because it brings up too much pushback. But what if you were able to get your very controversial topic across and delight your clients? Let's find out how to ramp up that curiosity and controversy-level without alienating your clients. Click here to read online: Ramp up curiosity. ------- Do you know the exact date the Earth was created? If you lived in the 18th century, you learned that the world was created on Saturday, the 22nd of October, 4004 BC. And not just any moment on 22nd October, but "on the beginning of the night". This idea of the Earth being just 6000 years old is preposterous to us living in an age of science, but back in those times, the only geology textbook was the word of an Irish bishop and theologian called James Ussher. It was in this world that James Hutton came up with his theory of the Earth James Hutton is called the founding father of geology. In 1747, Hutton had just graduated from medical university. He was a bright young man, but his sexual exploits and drunkenness got him in trouble. He got his lover, Miss Eddington pregnant. This scandal caused her to be rushed away to London to give birth, and Hutton went into self-exile from Edinburgh to a small family farm in Slighhouses, Scotland. It was at this remote, damp, seemingly boring place where he came up with the theory of how the Earth was formed. While observing the side of a hill, he noticed bands in the cliff face. Over time, he realised there were possibly hundreds of bands of sediment laid one on top of the other, compacting itself into rock. Hutton's great insight was that the creation and destruction of land wasn't one day in October, 4000 BC, but instead a remarkably slow build up over time. Today, in the world of science we have a term for this slow build up of land. It's called "sedimentary rock". He mulled over these ideas for over 15 years, trying to drum up enough courage to put them forward. Then in 1785, he presented his radical idea to the Royal Society of Edinburgh The Society rejected his theory almost immediately. And as if that were not enough, the members of the society branded him an atheist. Hutton was God-fearing, and he must have felt the sheer weight of how his ideas were being rejected out of hand. History is full of instances where ideas were too controversial to be accepted. Ignaz Semmelweis concept that washing hands saves lives was considered to be bizarre, Alfred Wegener came up with the concept of continental drift and was thoroughly rejected. Nicholas Copernicus was sidelined because he stated that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. And we too are faced with scepticism when we present an idea. While our ideas might not be as earth-shattering as these great scientists, they're still very important to us. The only problem we have is that our concepts are controversial. They're ideas that are very hard for clients to digest, and therefore we tend to stay on the safer, more boring side of life. But what if there were a way to present your controversial idea? And what if you could do it in various media. Would it be possible to create an info-product that went against the grain? What about a webinar or seminar that was a bit different from what clients expect? In this series, we'll look at books, articles, and even sales pages and see how you can take on the biggest and most controversial point and give it the spotlight. And we'll do it by using the power of objections. Let's find out how objections work and how and when to use them to maximum effect. Let's do this in three parts. Part 1: Why you should not discard a controversial idea Part 2: How examples, case studies and practical demonstration reduces pushback Part 3: Three real life applications: article, sales page and info-product. 1: Why you should not discard a controversial idea What caused the slow decline of newspapers? If you were to ask this question to most people today, the answer would likely be quite prompt. Most people are likely to say: It's the Internet. The news online is free and can be accessed at will. It can be tweaked to your taste, has video and other interactive content—plus, it's searchable. It's not hard to see that the Internet was the most dominant factor in the decline of the newspaper industry. Except there's a neat little graph that tells a different story If you started the graph back in 1945, you'd notice how the trend heads south. 1955 has fewer readers per household but is better than 1965, which in turn is better than 1975. As you hurtle through the years, the readership drops precipitously as we get to 1995—and the Internet as we know it today didn't even exist back then. In his book called "The Content Trap", professor Bharat Anand, brings up a concept that we'd consider to be quite odd, if not outright controversial. However, the very nature of the controversy is what jolts your audience to life If you were to read an article on "how to increase prices", you'd be l

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.

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.

Is it hard to get a client? Sure it is, but how many of us "lose" the client within minutes or days? We may not realise it, but without a very clear on-boarding system, clients simply get confused and leave. Or they feel unsafe and don't consume your product or service. The question is: how do you get an on-boarding system in place and what does it entail? Let's take a sneak peek into what's possible. Click here to read online: Onboarding is Crucial -------------- There are three distinct stages before we order a meal in a restaurant. The first stage is when you're standing outside the restaurant, deciding whether to go in. The second stage is when you get welcomed into the new space. Finally, it's when you first get acknowledged after sitting down; you get a glass of water, and a menu. All of this happens so quickly that we don't realise that every stage is essential. More so, the very same steps have to play out when you're getting a client into a new space, like a membership site, course, or even an offline store. The first stage is before they enter your site or course. The second is how you greet them and the third and equally crucial stage is how you make them feel within "minutes" of entering that new space. These three sequential steps are what you'd call "on-boarding". Every stage of on-boarding is vital because if we were to go back to the restaurant, would you be happy if no one received you once you entered? And having been assigned a table, how long would you wait before stalking off when you got no service? All of these ideas and this very sequence seems particularly vivid when we think of restaurants, yet we fail to roll out these systems when clients sign up. The importance of onboarding can be boiled down to a single term: safe zone Standing outside the membership site, course or workshop, you are trying to gauge if you're making the right decision. Once you do get in the door, it's equally important to feel as if you're in a safe space. You need someone real to step up to you and take care of you. Instead, what you get is an automatic e-mail that confirms you're in the membership site and then it's just a bunch of weekly e-mails that don't have the slightest personal touch in place. Now wait a sec, no one is saying you shouldn't use automation What's about to follow is how automation doesn't become a crutch but is a handy companion that allows a small business to keep in touch with clients and prompt them to consume what they've purchased. However, depending on automation alone is a mistake. At some point very early after the client has shown up to your "restaurant", a real person (that's you) has to make yourself available. If you're surprised at where this article is going, it's only because of how a large part of the internet works. They take a hands-off method and wonder why there's constant churn. Which is why they then have to do constant advertising (which in itself takes time), joint ventures etc. to make sure their membership site doesn't look barren. At 5000bc, we like to see ourselves as a restaurant. And here are some of the things that we do within less than a month of a client joining the site. • Tiny increment autoresponders • Cave Guides • Taking Action • Contact individually • Chocolate • Buddy • Country welcome • Video conference • Tags In this episode, we will look at three things. 1. Tiny increment autoresponders 2. Cave Guides 3. Taking Action 1: Tiny increment autoresponders Have you noticed how there's a lag when you're talking to customer support on chat? Let's say you get to a site. On the right-hand side, you see a little button that signals you can talk to someone. You click on the chat button and almost immediately you get a response. It may say something like, "Hi, I'm Maria", how can I help? You automatically assume Maria is around and start to type your question. It then seems to stall you for a while, asking for your name and possibly a phone number, just in case you're disconnected. Then, there's a lag after you type in your details. So what just happened? I'll tell you what. You were talking to a machine. All that "Maria bit" of chatter was an automatic back and forth and once you got past a certain point, it handed you over to a real person. And for the most part, no one is wiser, or unhappy, but it allows the transaction to go ahead pretty flawlessly. This is what automation can do well, if used intelligently. Which is why we use autoresponders. It makes sure a client gets into 5000bc and then continues to gain from it. Some clients jump right in, introduce themselves and are off the mark right away. Others may not enter right away, and things go on the back burner. It's easy to buy something these days, fully expecting to use it, but then other distractions take over. Hence the autoresponders. There are seven that show up in the client's inbox, over a period. The welcome Meet others Next step Cave Guide Handy tools Two questions What you expected Every

Testimonials are extremely powerful in solving problems that range from getting the clients you want, to finding your uniqueness. How do you use testimonials to increase conversion or just change behaviour? Let's find out in this episode and get these mysteries out of the way.

We might be generous, but are we rushing the act of giving? Often we give people what we want, instead of what they would like to receive. Can giving be less rushed? How can we improve our generosity? In this episode, we find out how we did things wrong, and how we've tweaked the way we give.

Chaos comes visiting every day. Are we prepared to receive it? The reason for stress is a lack of planning on how to deal with chaos. Let's find out how it's done.

What happens when your book finally goes out into the world? Gladwell has been attacked time and time again for his chapter on the 10,000 hour rule. But was the attack justified? Or was it all wrong? How do you defend yourself against something you're innocent of, in the first place? Plus, a bonus on how much time it takes for a book to get traction—and more—in this episode.

Choosing the title of a book seems to be an almost impossible task. Is there a method or science behind a title that works vs. a title that's just "meh?" And interestingly, when does a "meh" title work just fine. We go deep, but not too deep into how to create evocative titles. If you've ever struggled with a title, here's a system that will work almost every single time.

Most of us aren't really sure how to know if our articles are really good, or even if an idea is good. It gets more complicated when we have a story that we love. Does everyone love it too? Malcolm Gladwell shows us how to get precise feedback and do it in a casual manner. Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Or read it online: Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell ------------------------ What I learned from Malcolm Gladwell- Part 1 When I was in university, all I wanted to be was like Christopher D'Rozario. Chris was the creative director of an advertising agency called Trikaya Grey. However, I soon wandered away from that dream and then wanted to be like Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. But even that dream went into deep freeze as I transitioned to wanting to be a writer and ran into a book by Malcolm Gladwell called "The Tipping Point". It was my tipping point in a way I loved the way Gladwell wrote, and for the longest time I yearned to know how he came up with so many cool stories. His research seemed exhaustive and to be like Gladwell was one of my big priorities. Then, like everything in life, you move on, and life pulls you in its own current. Even so, recently I watched a series made by Masterclass.com about Gladwell on Writing. I went in expecting to learn interesting stuff. I wasn't disappointed. And here in this series, I would like to share with you, six things that jumped off the screen—so much that I made a note of them, even drew some cartoons for a quick reference later on. What are those six points? Candy vs the main meal How to gauge reader interest with conversation The power of juxtaposed titles Why you need to walk away from drafts What to do when your story enters the world And finally, how to read 1) Candy vs the main meal In 2008, I switched to the Mac after almost 15 years of being on a PC. When people asked me why I'd tell them the story of my presentation I'd been doing a series of presentations for the clients of a radio station. Now, I'm like a helicopter mom when it comes to my presentations, but on this occasion, they wanted the slides in advance. To make sure nothing went wrong, I arrived a whole hour before the event and tested the slides. To my horror, everything looked different. "Who's tweaked my slides?" I asked the technician in charge. "We didn't change anything," said the guy in charge. "All we did was load your presentation through the Mac software called Keynote. When I looked closer, I realised I was looking in admiration at the slides, rather than frustration. If all they did was run a Powerpoint through Keynote and it improved so much, it sure was my signal to fall head over heels with the Mac. This is akin to what Malcolm Gladwell calls "candy" "There's a difference between the meal and the treat," he says. "It corresponds to the way people talk about things and think about things". When people talk about things, they tend to strip it down to something smaller, something enjoyable, even tweetable. The reason, Gladwell continues, "Is because the way you think about something is complex, may have several parts, may or may not be contradictory. Or parts of it may even be remarkably difficult to explain. The things you talk about are those you can talk about. The things that are easy to remember or get across. And usually, they're short—tweetable." Which is similar to the story of the migration to the Mac I didn't want to move to the Mac. I had a whole suite of programs on the PC, including costly Adobe software and painting software like Painter, which were all purchased for the PC. Moving to the Mac would mean I'd have to ditch all of that software or buy new versions all over again. Plus, there were programs like Corel Draw that at the time (if I remember well) worked solely on the PC. To have to make all of these changes were frustrating. When I explain my story about the Mac, there's a lot more that I'm not even expressing in this piece. Instead, I strip it down to the smallest, most interesting story. The story of how my presentation became went from Cinderella to Princess in glass slippers. In effect, I'm giving you the candy version. The candy version is a snippet, but no ordinary snippet. It's a way for the writer to give you something to talk about as well as something to think about. The information—whoa, that's clearly the cerebral, thinking stuff. The candy, in a story, article, webinar—the candy is the fun stuff. Which is why if you look at The Brain Audit, you'll see loads of candy. Let's say you want to talk to a colleague about The Brain Audit. To get the colleague to read the back page of the book, or even the introduction would be too much. But if you have candy, it allows you to talk about the "seven red bags" story. You're not dragging out all the words from the 180 pages of the book. Instead, all you're telling is a short 3-4 minute story. Instantly, you have the floor and the att

It's very hard for most of us to slow down, but what happens when we slow down to a complete standstill? This little snippet is our story of how we got back and were stuck for two whole weeks. Here's the first little snippet.

What happens at 4 am? That's a question I often get at Psychotactics, because I've been up for well over 25 years at 4 am. Well, that's how the question started, but you also get a bit of a peek into how the day unfolds. This isn't a business podcast. Instead, it's a view into the world of the 4 am crazy person (that's me). Hope you enjoy the journey.

When a client buys your product or service, they obviously like it at some level, right? So why is it so very hard to get feedback? The answer may not lie in the act of feedback itself, but instead in trust factors, formats and follow up .Find out how the simple act of feedback is quite a bit more complex than it seems. And how to make it easier to get the response you need to grow your business.

Finding or creating a uniqueness is hard enough all by itself. But how can your small business create a stunning uniqueness as well as defend it mightily from your competition? Tah, dah, you bring on the power of difficulty, both for you and for them. What's the power of difficulty? Find out in this episode that will immediately give you the chance to get ahead of your competition, especially in a noisy marketplace.

Why would clients trust you when you're new and you goof up? This is an incredibly insightful question as clients can be skeptical. Yet, it's incredible how much enthusiasm and results can play a part. Find out how to get a bad start and still get great results. ========== Thanks for this series. I have a question about the initial story. Why do you think those 10 people bought despite your "not perfect" performance? And why did they show up in the first place? Because repeat customers are great, but you have to sell something for the first time to be able to do a second sale, a third sale, and so on. The 10 people bought because they knew me. That's the short answer. However, that's an incomplete answer, because it's easy to say: Well, no one knows me. However, bear in mind that I was a new immigrant into New Zealand, so I didn't know anyone. When I joined the networking group, I got to know them all, one by one. And of the twenty people that showed up, ten signed up. They were the ones that knew me best and felt I could help them move forward. In every situation, you're going to get a few people The networking group I was part of, had 35 people. Out of those 35, we got 20 to attend. Out of those 20, about 3-4 might have been friends of friends. Those people didn't sign up for anything. The ones that did sign up were those that knew me. And I went with the first ten. I'm sure if I had another event, I could have gotten another set of people to first attend the session, then to sign up to the recurring class. As I mentioned in another post, this method can be used even with a bunch of strangers For instance, the cafe I go to had "barista classes". You'd go to one class, they'd then sign you up for several follow up classes. I went to a restaurant in the city and they served pasta, but they also have pasta making classes. And both starter and advanced. In short, the answer is to get the trust, give skill or information, or even get them to eat something, and you're more likely to get clients to come back. But you have to have the system in place, first. When you say "they need enthusiasm and a result", do you mean a result you obtained or a result you promise? They are very different when you are starting. The former is much harder, because since you are starting, you hadn't had clients yet. To sell something—anything—you first need "enthusiasm". Why? Because sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another. Without enthusiasm, you struggle to sell. Which is why if you tend to tell people how difficult things are, they never buy from you. In fact, they avoid you. But if you're really enthusiastic about a product/service, people buy on enthusiasm alone. Most clients can never know what they're buying. I'm not saying "they don't know". I'm saying "they can never know". Even when the product is clearly spelt out. Let's say you're buying a phone. Or a car. Or a house. Your brain can only process a few details and a lot of detail is based purely on the enthusiasm of the purchase/ person selling the product. For instance, if you get to the sales page workshop that we're having. You may read the sales page. But what are we really doing? How will it be done? How much do I stick to the syllabus? Who will you be sitting next to? What kind of seating formation will we have? There are more questions than answers and they don't even relate to the workshop contents itself. So you can never know. Clients will buy based on their need of course, but they could easily buy some similar course online at a tinier price. The reason why they make the journey is because of enthusiasm (the enthusiasm that has been transferred to them from me). But there's also the second aspect: results. You can always guarantee results. Even at the most basic level you can guarantee results. For instance, you asked why people came to the follow up events my first presentation of The Brain Audit was not very good. The reason was because they got a result. Before that evening, they didn't realise that there were seven items to tick off the list (the seven red bags of The Brain Audit). They also didn't realise that the problem was more important than the solution. Those changes got them to sit back and pay closer attention. And those are results. When you look at the Headline Report on our site, that also delivers results. In 10 minutes you are able to write 3 types of headlines. It's not a headline course. It's not exactly headline university, but there are results. Starting out is not a barrier to getting results. You have to break down your big topic (e.g. everything I know about headlines) into something small that anyone can get, and deliver results.

Smaller lists work amazingly well, but there's a big task at hand You not only have to keep clients coming back, but prevent them from leaving as well. How do you do that? At Psychotactics we have many methods and it should give you some ideas as to where you can begin. If you have some ideas, do send them in. ---------- We'll focus on just three things that we can do with our tiny list 1- The first purchase: why you don't need thousands, or even hundreds of clients on your list. 2- How to willingly get clients to buy a second, third, fourth, even ten times in quick succession. 3- Monitoring the connectedness of your community. What makes a society feasible? No doubt, a lot of elements go into the making of a society, but two of the key components are: Are the rest a lot like me? Are they completely different from me? Our lists are small in comparison to most others in our field Our list now hovers around 25,000 people, and probably 5000 people open their e-mail. The membership site at 5000bc has just 600 members. Our workshops allow for just 35 people at a maximum, but often we'll have boutique workshops like the Landing page workshop, and admit only 15 participants. When you consider the size of other lists, and especially those who've been around as long as we have, you'll see there's a marked difference. But how come we're able to do this whole three-month vacation bit, take weekends off, etc. It's because of our belief in the small list, but there's a greater driving force We have community in the sense that's easier to manage when you're smaller. It wouldn't be over the top to state that we've personally met close to one fourth of our members in person. We've interacted with clients via e-mail several times, and on 5000bc, possibly hundreds of times. Even so, the community aspect only tends to work, if the client is willing to pitch in. And they only tend to pitch in, if their two questions are answered reasonably well. Are the rest a lot like me? Are they completely different from me? If the client feels socially overwhelmed, they will not participate in the community. Social overwhelm doesn't come from abnormally large groups. Instead, as one client told me: "I feel about 15 people is all I can manage". Which is why you need to keep your clients to smaller groups, and for our workshops and training, we might take 35 people on the course, but split them into groups of 5-7 people. That avoids the social overwhelm. Then, we give them structure to introduce themselves to each other and to get to know each other. They get to know the likes, the dislikes—and this reduces isolation. The reason why a society exists is because the group members don't feel extremely different from each other. This fosters a sense of identity with your tribe. And in doing so, it also answers the question: Are the rest a lot like me? When a group is small, and get to know each other, they tend to stay longer The more the connectedness, the more they're likely to pitch in and help one another. Whether you're in business online, or have an offline service—say a clothing firm, or a bakery—there's always a chance to get your audience together. Lulu Melon, the fitness clothing store, for instance, has yoga classes every weekend. Others like the lawyers I worked with, would have seminars and then cheese, and really good wine. And if you're sitting in a land of 64 million sheep, far away from the rest of the world, you can connect with your audience, as we have over the years. To make this work in small groups, we use a ton of methods. Methods we've used so far: A) Offline meet-ups B) Online meet-ups C) Courses online and workshops (but restricted to groups of 7 people) D) Taking Action forum and Cave Guides E) Chocolate from New Zealand A) Offline meet-ups The toughest bit about workshops is all the preparation involved. It's exhilarating for me, as an extrovert, to conduct a workshop, but it's also a fair bit of work because we promise skill, not just a seminar filled with information. Then, to make it harder for myself (and apologies for the "me, me, me") is I promise to give the notes a whole month in advance of the event itself. This sudden decision was only half the trouble. A workshop needs a proper venue, it needs catering, and because we're pedantic. We fly in at least three-four days in advance to make sure everything's just right. And yet, workshops are astounding at creating communities. Clients who come to workshops get a greater ability and tend to participate more in the membership site at 5000bc. And yet, as you can tell, workshops are well, a lot of work. Which is why we decided to have offline meet ups. B) Online meet-ups A meetup doesn't need a venue. Any cafe will do, though we go to extra lengths to get a nice venue, where possible. It requires no notes, little or no planning and I can sleep well the night before. Believe it or not, a meet up achieves a similar result as a three or five-day workshop when it comes

Does a big list guarantee success? You know the answer to that one, already, don't you? Your small business isn't going to grow exponentially because you suddenly have a big list. Yet, in many ways, a smaller list has the potential to do better than a big list. Find out how to start ignoring the sound of "big lists" and work with a tiny list, instead. -------------------- Does a big list guarantee success? You know the answer to that one, already, don't you? Your small business isn't going to grow exponentially because you suddenly have a big list. Yet, in many ways a smaller list has the potential to do better than a big list. Find out how to start ignoring the sound of "big lists" and work with a tiny list, instead.

Is there really a cure for perfectionism? How can you make your work far superior in a shorter amount of time, often moving ahead of your peers? The answer lies in nature. In this episode we look at two different kind of plants: the monkey puzzle tree and the campion flower. The monkey puzzle tree stands for perfection, but the campion flower is able to make 120 dramatic changes while the monkey puzzle struggles with perfection. Interesting? Find out more in this episode and get rid of your perfection sooner than you think. Read the article online: https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/overcome-perfection -------------- You've probably heard of the Monkey Puzzle tree. The Monkey Puzzle tree is a conifer that grows to 40 metres (130 feet) and may live for hundreds of years. Yet, there's a bit of a problem because the tree doesn't reach sexual maturity until it's 40 years old. Compare the Monkey Puzzle tree with a Campion flower and the flower looks puny at just a foot or two. But here's where it all gets very interesting. The Campion flower reproduces within just four months. This means that while the Monkey Puzzle tree goes through a single generation, the Campion flower goes through 120 generations. And with every generation, there's a possibility of a genetic mutation. That mutation that may give it some slight super power to help it survive and thrive. The speed of the lifecycle means one very crucial thing: The species can adapt to rapid changes in the environment. There's a far greater chance of them getting better, hardier, different and possibly superior. Perfection, on the other hand, doesn't allow for speedy turnarounds Many of us like the idea of perfection, toiling away at our work, in order to reach a seemingly impossible goal. And like the Monkey Puzzle tree, we put ourselves at a disadvantage that's may seem hard to measure. But in reality, it's relatively easier to measure, and that's exactly what we've done on our courses like the Article Writing Course; or when training our niece, Marsha. We've seen speed work better when learning to cook or learning to draw cartoons. And yet this isn't a clarion call for shoddiness. In this series we'll explore the importance of speed vs. perfection, while also giving a nod towards really outstanding work. But is it all about speed? Doesn't a lack of speed play its role? All of this information is about to follow, so stay tuned, little Campion flower. How speedy progress reduces drain on energy Marsha, my niece, was struggling in maths in Year 4 and seemed to be almost at the bottom of the class. Four years later, she won a distinction in maths for being among the top performers in the class. This year (five years later), teachers routinely call on her to evaluate and help with corrections of tests, plus she often gets called to the board to demonstrate how she solves a problem. And you might have an inkling how Marsha was able to make this dramatic turnaround Yes, there's hard work, and there's good mentoring. In fact, on IXL alone (which is an app for maths learning), Marsha has solved over 18,000 problems. Staggering as that figure might seem, there are two ways to get anything done. The first way is to be slow and methodical. The second way is to beat the clock. In a Psychotactics course, clients are trained to beat the clock When you're conducting a live course at a venue, it's easy to monitor what clients are doing. However, the moment you conduct a course online, it's impossible to tell how much time and effort is being put into a project. You don't get to see the drafts, the cancellations and the huge volume of edits. All you ever see is the finished work. However, on Psychotactics courses, we have a simple bunch of questions that need to be answered every single day. One of the questions are: how much time did you take to finish this project? In order to answer the question, it's important for the client to monitor the time. Which is why it concerned me deeply when one of the clients wrote her answer, after doing her article writing assignment. "Three hours". Three hours? Three hours for an article? I'd imagined my instructions were clear enough. That you needed to get the job done as quickly as possible, but I wasn't counting on the perfection monster. It's not hard to imagine the state of that client.—let's call her Candidate No.1. Perhaps she started the assignment at 9 pm, after an incredibly hard day. At midnight, the article is still not perfect, but she's too tired to argue with her drooping eyelids. She hits "publish" and the article is done. On the other hand, we have Candidate No. 2 who rigidly follows instructions and stops typing the moment the clock strikes the 90 minute mark. Whose article will be superior? The article of Candidate No. 1 or No.2? The answer is that they're both not very good. When you're just starting to learn to draw, write, dance or draw cartoons, you know approximately where your ultimate goal lies. As

Are habits a matter of routine? You'd think so, wouldn't you? Yet, there's a bigger factor in play that goes beyond a cue and routine. It's called the Reward. There's just one problem: how do you put a reward? And how do you know it's the right reward? What should you do if you want to motivate a client, instead? All these answers wait for you in this episode, plus a hidden factor that goes beyond cue, routine and reward. Check it 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. ======== Writing Salesletters or Articles? How to Ditch The "Tired" Analogy I remember how I always groaned when my father started to tell his story of "how he drew a kingfisher", when he was just a boy in school. I loved the story, but I'd heard it so many times, that the thought of escape always crossed my mind when he'd start up that story. The reader experiences a similar "groan moment" the minute you start up on an analogy that they've heard before. Analogies like how you learn to ride a bicycle, drive a car—these are tired analogies These analogies are boring for the reader, no matter if you use it in a sales letter or in your article. So how you decide when to ditch the analogy? Or better still, how do you improve it so it's not so "tired" after all? Let's take an example In the book, The Brain Audit, there's an analogy of standing near the airport carousel waiting for your bags to be unloaded from the flight. So what's interesting about that situation? Well, for one it's not something that you hear about a lot. It doesn't have that ring of "when you learned to ride a bicycle". And so, by merely changing the example, your analogy becomes slightly more interesting. But what if we wanted to make it even more interesting? This is where the power of the personal story comes in. Imagine yourself waiting for the bag. What happens? What happens next? What ups and downs do you go through just waiting for those silly ol' bags? In The Brain Audit, the bags aren't just bags—they're "red" bags. And there aren't just "red" bags, but there are "seven red bags". And the story rolls out where one of the bags goes missing. As you can tell, this isn't just some tired analogy, but something that's slightly riveting. You want to know what happens next. You want to know how all of this then reconnects to the story. So the key to writing better analogies is to write a personal story first Put yourself at the airport. What did you do? What happened next? And next? And yes, I know I said this already in the last paragraph, but can we have some ups and downs as well as you're relating the analogy? In fact, the moment you dip into a personal story, even a tired story of riding a bicycle comes to life. About the best way to sidestep a boring analogy is to use a personal story. In fact, let's take an example of a personal story. Only an idiot would learn to cycle like me. Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. Not me. I decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time I fell—and I fell a lot—the mud would graze me badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you're tempting gravity all the time. Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with me. But what if you don't want to tell personal stories? Well, turn the personal story into a "YOU" analogy instead. Tell the personal story but without using "I". So the story would work like this: Why would anyone be insane enough to find the most difficult cycling course? Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. But imagine you decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time you fell—and you do fall a lot—the mud would graze you badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you're tempting gravity all the time. Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with you. Notice how the analogy isn't tired, isn't personal and still seems like an amazing analogy? If you're ever reaching for a tired analogy, the first recourse would be to simply find something that's unusual—like the "seven red bags" story. However, an even better strategy is to write a personal story because personal stories have this inbuilt oomph factor. Should you feel shy about revealing the personal story to your audience, all you have to do is simply tweak it a bit. Put in the "you" into the story and you have a great analogy. Analogies can be used not just in articles, but also in books, presentations and sales letters Some of the best writers and marketers know the power of the story and analogy. And they use it very effectively to drive home several points throughout their marketing or editorial material. And they mix it up a lot with analogies and stories, while the amateurs simply write yucky, boring stuff. Tired analogies are for lazy writers. Be not sloppy. Be not boring. Put in the power of story in your analogy and let the "groan" go away, today! Next Up: The Power of Story Telling Do you know how to put that Zing-Kapow in your articles (with story telling)? Find out right here in this three-part series on Storytelling! .

Why do clients leave? It seems odd, doesn't it? When you ask a client why they join, they seem to suggest it is all about information and content, but then they inexplicably leave. They seem to suggest they need either better content, or they need time to implement the content. But that's rarely the case, as we've found out. The need is far greater and we've all experienced it. Clients leave for a very obvious reason that you're never going to find in analytics software or surveys. Listen to find out more. Read the podcast online: Why Clients Leave. --------------------------------- Ok, so it has always bothered me why clients leave. And when that thought crossed my mind, I was sitting in the cafe—the very cafe I'd been avoiding for well over a year or more. So now I had two thoughts: why do clients leave? And why did I return to the cafe? In case you're wondering, the answer is not "coffee". And if wasn't the coffee, then it had to be something else, right? But let's leave the cafe for a second and go online—say to a membership site, instead Let's say you belong to a membership site and the membership fee comes up for renewal. Why do you stay? Or why do you leave? The obvious answer is: it's the product or the service, right? And yet when we look at membership sites all over the place, there's really no shortage of content. No matter how grotty the site, there's usually way more content than you can browse, let alone consume. Videos, audio, articles, reports—they all swarm around you with increasing intensity. If the content were really the problem, you have no problem, do you? So let's take another angle There's too much content, and you really can't absorb it all. You've had your fill, and you now need to buckle down and focus on your business. Even if you have received advice and answers to your questions; even if your business has indeed gone ahead, you still need some breathing space to implement all of that information. We say it, but we don't mean it, do we? None of us has time. We didn't have time yesterday, or last week, last year, or even in the last decade. Time marches on to the sound of a jiggling rumba beat, and there's no way we can stop that time parade. So it can't be the focus or the time off, because the moment we've left the site, that information will cease to exist, but some other stuff will replace it. And that's when I finished the foam of the coffee, and I got my "bfoto" Yup, that's short for "blinding flash of the obvious". People, clients—they don't leave because they need time to focus; or because they're not getting enough content. Most of the time they don't even leave because they need the money. Unless the relationship with the site or the coach is just crappy, it makes more sense to get good advice and pay the fee. If it's not the money, or the content, or the time, what is it? It is the "people". To get back to the cafe story above, we were regulars at the cafe about two years ago. However, back then, we knew a lot of the people at the cafe and by people I mean the staff. Then the manager, Justine, left and took some of the staff with her. Suddenly the place wasn't so appealing, even though nothing much had changed. Two years slipped by, and we avoided the place. One day early this year, the current manager invited us in. She assured us we'd get great service and the coffee we were used to. And suddenly we're home again. We got to know the current staff, they know us, and it's like nothing's changed. The bfoto—or blinding flash of the obvious is just "people" When asked why we buy products or services, we often give a logical reason. We reel out the features or the benefits, but in reality, it's the people. It's the reason you and I have a preference for a particular petrol station, when all petrol stations have the same product, at approximately the same price. It's the reason why we don't care for rotating hairdressers or barbers, choosing as far as possible to go to the same one every single time. I know it's evident that people matter, but how does this play out when you consider the field of marketing? And what are you supposed to do if clients are starting to leave even when you're doing your best? The plot thickens. Stay tuned. We noticed something very odd in the courses we conduct online The online courses, like the Article Writing Course, is remarkably difficult, and rightly so. You're trying to compress a skill that usually takes years, into just 12 weeks. This intensity means you're going to have several sleepless nights, have to do assignments, interact with the group. Wait, interact with the group? Isn't learning about the teacher and the student? What's this group nonsense about? And if you look at the data, the data speaketh plainly. It says: those that interact with the group do two things consistently. The first being they finish the course and show a far higher skill level than those who don't interact with their group. The second point is that clients,