The Three Month Vacation Podcast

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,

The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve-wracking decision. Is it going to drive clients away? Or will it work? The odds are it will fail if you don't consider "segregation" and "creating attraction". This episode shows you exactly what those two terms mean when it comes to waiting lists. Let's roll on to the episode, shall we? Click here to read online: Why Waiting Lists Fail ======== Commitment Would you wait 14 years to join a Disney Club? Apparently so, because Club 33, in Disneyland has a 14-year waiting list. Originally intended as a place for Walt Disney to entertain investors, the club now has a nose-bleed $25,000 joining fee plus a recurring $10,000 a year membership fee. Oh, and you still have to pay your tab for the food and drink. But surely all this waiting is excessively nutty behaviour, isn't it? We wouldn't ever get obsessive about a waiting list, would we? And yet we do get on a waiting list all the time, though on a modest scale. You may not think of going to your hairdresser as being on a waiting list, but if you've made an appointment, that's just what it is. The reservation you made at the restaurant next week, that's also a waiting list. That flight in October, the hotel bookings—they're all waiting lists. Waiting lists are everywhere, but we don't quite seem to notice because they're part of our everyday lives. And when you book or put down your name, the commitment increases Or does it? If we look at the hotel you booked, there's a reason for that specific choice. The flight, the tennis match, the restaurant booking—they're all a form of commitment. Some of them you might need to pay for, in advance. Some of them, you pay for later, but the reason for being on that list is because you and I seek a level of satisfaction. However, we are more likely to show up, pay for, or join something if we're already on a list than if we're not on that list. Nonetheless, a waiting list by itself doesn't work. If all you do is slap on a form on your website, it's unlikely to get any attention. However, if you create the demand for it, the corresponding commitment goes up as well, because potential clients have both something to gain and to lose. If they get into Club 33, for instance, they have additional status, plus other goodies such as immediate fast passes, upgrades on Disney cruises and behind-the-scenes tours of Disneyland attractions. If your eyes glazed over the attraction—and the loss factor, in the case of Club 33—then clearly you're not going to get on that list even if you owned half of L.A. At this point we are probably clear, a factor of attraction is what we're going to need to get a commitment of any kind In the case of a famed club, restaurant or event, the attraction can be a foregone conclusion. In the case of your course, workshop or book launch, you need to spell out the detail of why the client should even bother getting on that list. However, you don't have to list everything that the client is likely to get. Clients are pretty smart and know a good deal when they see one, but can quickly get overwhelmed with dozens of reasons. Instead, picking one reason why someone should get on the list is extremely important. For instance, even with the home study versions, we expressly communicate that there are only 25 copies. When a to-be buyer realises the scarcity factor, they understand they can't get the product any other way and hence sign up. But what if you're a complete newbie? If you are, pay close attention to the previous paragraph. Even a completely unknown business can focus on one big idea that will convince a client to commit. Let's say you've just decided to sell a physical product like a water bottle. There's nothing fancy about water bottles, but let's say your bottle is designed to enable the person know for sure, how much water they've consumed in a day. That's a single point. It solves a problem, and the potential client is likely to be more eager to want to know when the product is out so they can buy it. Or let's say you have a camera—a video camera—that is likely to help you edit video as if you were operating a two or three camera set up. That one point is likely to get most people who shoot video to pay very close attention to your list. As you'd expect, it works just as well for a training session or a digital product. You'll need to pick ONE point from your product that's super-compelling. Let's say, for instance, I'm laughing a book on "talent" for example, or a book on how to "make nutritious Indian food, 10 minutes after you get home", I'd be harping on a single point. And that point alone without a ton of details about the book is likely to be enough to get you on a list. Once you're on a list, it doesn't mean you'll go through with the commitment Many reservations get cancelled and changed along the way. However, the greater the loss factor, the more likely the client will go through the entire process. Therefore, even if you'r

A waiting list seems to be both a barrier and an enticement The problem with waiting lists is that they fail, and fail miserably if you don't get the elements right. So what are the elements that contribute to a really smart waiting list? Let's find out in this episode, shall we? Click to read online: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work: Episode 183 ======== Why do most of us prefer Friday to Sunday? It's odd when you think about it, right? Friday is a working day (in most countries), and Sunday is a day of rest. Yet we wait with baited anticipation for Fridays. The reason is probably apparent to you by now. Friday clearly and consistently holds the promise of the weekend that is to follow. We all know what follows Sunday, don't we? Anticipation—that's one of the big reasons that you need to have a waiting list Anticipation creates an enormous amount of drama in our minds. If you have to wait for something, there's a pretty good chance you're going to value the product or service a lot more than if you hit some magic button and got an instant delivery. We create waiting lists for three core reasons: The first reason is the anticipation The second is to create a barrier And finally to get a commitment. Let's take a deeper dive, shall we? 1: Anticipation In 2010, some British ministers came up with an incredibly interesting, if slightly preposterous idea. If you were going to apply for British citizenship, you had to learn to queue. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister at the time was dead serious when he suggested that to-be citizens would need to learn to queue. He said: "The simple act of taking one's turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea. It is central to the British sense of fair play, and it is also better for everyone. Huge resentment is caused when people push in." There you go—anticipation in a nutshell And you know something, the British are spot on when it comes to creating anticipation. We like stuff better when we have to wait. Tali Sharot, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London gives a simple example of how anticipation works. Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy The behavioural economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity, any celebrity. Then he said, "How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a superstar if the kiss was delivered immediately, in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years? He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days. They were willing to pay extra to wait. Now they weren't willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an ageing celebrity. But three days seemed to be the optimum amount. So why is that? Well if you get the kiss now, it's over and done with. But if you get the kiss in three days, well that's three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait. The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen. Anticipation made them happy. A waiting list is all about anticipation, isn't it? No matter whether you're about to sell a product, service or training, it would do us all a bit of good to create a waiting list. And waiting lists work for a simple reason: it creates a feeling of scarcity—even if you're not exactly well known in your field. Take the example of Joseph Pilates, for example. When Pilates started out his studio, he wasn't just an unknown; he was also an immigrant to the US with a German accent. That didn't exactly stop Pilates from creating a waiting list. He started his exercise regimen near a niche audience—dancers. Despite being brand new in the business, Pilates never agreed to see a client right away. The client was always put on a waiting list, a few days or a week or two after the initial contact. Waiting in that "queue" as it were, created anticipation for the client. When the day rolled along, they were eager to get started. In the case of a kiss, that anticipation needed to be relatively quick However, that's not always the case. A few years ago, I bought a cigar-shaped Nakaya pen from Japan. If you're into fountain pens, you can bow now, because the Nakaya is easily one of the most revered pens. Solar orange in colour, the nib is fashioned to your writing style, and yes, the nib is made from 22 karat gold. It comes with its own fancy box and a whole lot of razzmatazz justifying its price. And as you'd expect, you can't just walk in and buy a Nakaya. That would ruin everything, wouldn't it? The joy of owning a Nakaya is in telling this story. The story of how I was told I'd have to wait for at least nine months. Nine months turned to a year, and if I'm not mistaken, it took yet

How do you instantly grow your small business? How do you become "rich" overnight? These are the frustrations we have to deal with, almost every single day as we wade through the temptations of the internet. It almost seems like a lottery, doesn't it? But people win the lottery, don't they? And so we fancy our odds too. Yet, there's a hare vs tortoise race in play here and usually, it's the hare that seems to burn out. How can you enjoy the race and have a good life and yes, become an "overnight success?". Find out in this episode. Click here to read online here: How to Become An Overnight Success: Episode 182 ============ Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right? Richard Lustig doesn't agree. Despite odds of 175 million to one, Lustig has won the lottery seven times, and claims he's won over a million dollars so far. When you hear the repeated success of Lustig, it's easy to miss the sub-text in his wins. The first point of the sub-text is that he's been playing the lottery since 1992—that's well over 25 years. Plus he has a strategy. He goes after the smaller prizes, like the $100,000 lotteries, completely avoiding the $40 million jackpots. Are you going after the $40 million jackpots in your business? You know what I mean, right? Let's say you've managed to make the break from a job to your own business. That move, wonderful as it is, hasn't brought a lot of relief because you still have to commute to and from meetings with clients. And now you're keen on hitting the jackpot. Well, what's the jackpot? You want to reduce or eliminate that commute completely, don't you? And while it would be ideal, that's not what a "gambling man" would do. A "gambling man" would reduce their odds of losing. Instead of five days of commuting, maybe you can whittle it down to four. Four may not sound like much until you get into the percentages—yup a 20% increase in home-time, isn't it? In the months to follow, reduce that by yet another day, and you have a 40% improvement over the start of the year. A similar sort of phenomenon plays out when it comes to earning revenue online Let's say you're earning twenty three dollars online. What next? Oh, that's easy. Most people would like to go from twenty three to two hundred thousand and twenty three. It sounds bizarre right now, as you're reading it. No one in their right mind is likely to achieve so much of a monetary gain, so quickly. Even so, it's a lot like playing the lottery, isn't it? You see others playing, they seem to be winning; surely you have the same odds too. Our world, your world is inundated with success stories Everyone is making more money than you, everyone is spending more time on vacation (yes, I'm guilty) and everyone seems to be winning the lottery, except for you. It's not like there's any shortage of avenues, either. Some make their fortune via podcasting; others on YouTube; the third through some SAAS (software as a solution) offering. We all have this multi-pronged attack of the different types of media that will make us our fame and fortune, and the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine. But a gambling man like Lustig may tell you a different story He's spent the past 25 years hacking away at the lottery. He's picked the smaller wins, because the odds are so much better. It's all about structural change, making sure that he gets ahead bit by bit. And to be fair, his gains are pretty average by a wage standard. By his own admission, he's won a little over a million dollars over twenty five years. That's a pretty modest $40,000 per year. You can easily beat those odds in your own business, but your goal must always be structural. I guess it's time for an example, right? When we bought our first house in New Zealand, it was priced at $230,000. I'd read a book about how to whittle down that mortgage in a few years (In New Zealand it pays to wipe out the mortgage quickly). Our expenses, barring educational courses, was about $3000 per month (and that included the mortgage). We set about aiming to turn that mortgage into a big fat zero. In the first five years, we bought three houses in Auckland, totalling well over a million dollars. In ten years, we paid off every last cent on those loans. Would anyone in their right sense try and pay those loans in three months? How about six months? Ten years seems pretty quick by any standards, but we learned what we had to do, and we went about it systematically. We applied the same rigour to our business In the year 2000, the business was just a website with a dozen articles. No one bought anything, hardly anyone read much of anything. We simply buckled down, went for dozens of meetings with clients. And out of those dozens, sometimes hundreds, we got ourselves our first client; a sofa store. The second client was a law firm. The third was a division of Quickbooks. We paid the mortgage, we budgeted our expenses and the only big blow out was education. I bought a ton of stuff on

Is negotiation a skill? How do you win when your back is against the wall? When negotiating will aggression help or should you use something else, like questions? Questions play a role, but nothing does the job quite like calibrated questions. In this second part of negotiation strategy we find out exactly the questions you need to ask to get the information you need to get your negotiation to work out stunningly well. You can read the article online here: https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ ---------------- The three negotiation concepts we'll cover are 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. If you're a cartoonist and want a job as a copywriter, how do you get that job? This was my dilemma around the age of 20. I'd finished university, and my dream was to become the top copywriter in the city I lived in—which was Mumbai, at the time. There was this peculiar problem, of course: I didn't know much about copywriting. To smoothen my entry into the world of advertising, I did a class, which loosely promised a job in an ad agency, but it was just a hot-air promise. No one got a job, or not at least one with the big agencies. And I was impatient. I can't remember the details, but there I was sitting in front of the creative director who was leafing through my cartoons. She looked up and said: "You know there's a difference between cartoons and copywriting, right? I agreed, but it wasn't a time to be coy. As most negotiators will tell you, there's a way out of any negotiation, if you know what to ask. When FBI and other international negotiators get on a scene, the situation is already way out of control. Their job is to somehow, get a nutter to give up hostages; and to surrender. In short, their job is simply to win in a situation where winning seems implausible or even impossible. Which is why Chris Voss talks about calibrated questions Calibrated questions are easy to dismiss as everyday open-ended questions, but they're pretty precise in how they get the discussion moving forward. They're designed first to acknowledge the other side (that's always super-important). Once that acknowledgement is achieved, calibrated questions get you to introduce ideas and requests that would generally seem pushy. It edges you forward. Instead of getting all riled up, a question that's calibrated swings the problem across to the other person. In the book, "Never Split the Difference", the author gives a range of questions you can choose from However, most of the questions he recommends you work with, are simply "HOW" and "WHAT" questions. Quite by chance, this is approximately what I did back at that early meeting with the creative director. I asked her: What can I do to be a part of this agency? How about I work for free for a month and then you can decide if you want to pay me, or I can decide if this agency is a good fit? The questions seem pretty mundane, and even silly when you think about them, but they get outstanding results. Voss insists that calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart. It brings the problem to the fore and completely defused the conflict. Calibrated questions aren't random at all. Once you have a conversation going, or if you've decided how that conversation should move, you design what and how questions that make the other person think it's their idea. Of course, when I was sitting in front of my potential boss, I had no idea I was asking intelligent, let alone calibrated questions, but they were "how" and "what" questions and I was hired. Without pay for a month, as you'd expect, but I had a job in Leo Burnett, one of the largest agencies in the world. The same kind of questions apply to most negotiations because they get the other side to explain their situation You start with "what" and "how" and completely avoid the "why". Why is very confrontational so barring rare situations (which Voss describes in the book) you stick closely to "what" and "how" questions. Which is what I did when we were negotiating the fence issue earlier this week. • What about this is important to you? • How can I help to make this better for you? • How would you like me to proceed? • How can we solve this problem? • What are we trying to achieve here? • How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in a hedge instead of a fence? Notice the tenor of those questions? They're all about the other person and their agenda. And you almost appear subservient. You're not even asking "what can "WE" do to make this better. You're asking what can "I" do? And only once you've moved along do we get to "we" solving the problem. Or "we" trying to achieve a goal. The scene outside my dining area was complicated. The builder didn't want to leave out the space that was owed to his

Imagine you're dealing with a terrorist or hijacker who has captives and threatens to blow up everything if you don't agree with his demands. How would that knowledge help when negotiating with a boss, a client or perhaps your own kids? And how are you supposed to remember the negotiation steps? That's exactly what we'll cover in this episode—you'll get to hear how we applied the negotiation skills we learned (and got to a perfectly great settlement). Listen away! Read the episode online: https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiate-win/ ======== "The auction's on," said the auctioneer, "would you give $520,000"? "I've got $520, now $525. The bid is at $530 would you give $550?" The year was 2005. We had decided to buy a three-bedroom house in Auckland to separate our work from our home. It seemed like a good idea to have a separate residence and a dedicated workplace. We thought it might even be a good idea to hire staff. And that's how we were in the middle of this auction. Except for one tiny fact The auctioneer wasn't having a good time. It seemed like just one person was bidding. For about 5-7 minutes, there was a spurt of bidding—many voices—and then suddenly, the only voice you could hear repeatedly was my own. The situation might have seemed bizarre to anyone who was standing around because I was bidding against myself. "$565", said the auctioneer. I nodded and added "$567". Then before he could recover, I shouted out, "$567,500. No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than I was off, but this time not in multiples of thousands, but in $500. Potential buyers must have been in a tizzy. Only a fool would keep increasing his own price; they must have thought to themselves. But there I was, moving steadily ahead, bidding $500 at a time. At one point, the auctioneer realised that the price was moving up in smaller multiples than he expected, but there was simply no opposition. As far as the assembled crowd was concerned, they were dealing with an escapee from the mental asylum. Pretty soon, the negotiation was over, and the house was ours (at a price very marginally over our initial budget). The auctioneer had been out-negotiated. Instead of the auction being a battle between two or more parties, it fizzled off at a much lower price than he might have normally received. But why did that occur? In every negotiation, both parties have information. The core of what makes one party gain the upper hand isn't logic. Instead, it's emotion. Emotion and information Two weeks ago, I started listening to a book that I'd bought way back in late November. We went on our vacation to Sri Lanka shortly after and I had a bit of catching up to do. However, I heard an interview with the author, Chris Voss, and I was taken with the concepts he brought up on the call. I was so excited that I started listening to the book shortly after. And that's what this series is all about. It's a look into "Never split the difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it", by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz. It's important to mention both Voss and Raz because they're both outstanding. Voss has a wealth of experience, and this is real-life experience with murderers, bank robbers and terrorists. They're the kind of people who demand a ransom and casually murder people. Voss walks us right through this minefield of ego and terror. However, Raz, Tahl Raz is the writer, and as a result, the book is spectacular. I rarely marvel at a book's structure, because by and large books tend to be more about information, which can get tedious. However, this book is masterful in the way it has been constructed. It brings up a concept, explains the concept, tells a story, gives examples and then goes on to succinctly summarise the contents of the chapter. I love this book for two reasons It's elegant in its construction and detail. But more importantly, negotiation is part of our lives. If you want to get a better price from clients, a higher salary, or even want your kid to go to bed, you've got to negotiate. But negotiating is one thing: winning is another. In this book, you're going to find out how to win without the other person feeling bad. No, it's not win-win in any way. You go in wanting a specific solution to the problem, and you win. And the other party doesn't feel like it has lost. How's that possible? I know, you're itching to know what makes this book so cool. In fact, you're probably trying to ditch reading this and go and read the book yourself. Well, hang in there What you don't know yet, is that I've read this book once, listened to it twice and listened to a couple of interviews as well with Voss. This piece will distil the core stuff that makes the difference. Instead of leafing through the entire book, you'll get a few core concepts that you can use right away. And then you can go and read the book and the concepts will be more enduring. Sound good? Well, keep reading. The three concepts we'll cover are: 1) Going too fast—and why you

Is it really possible to get a surge in sales with products? And are product sales similar or different from services? In this episode, we go exclusively into the sale of products. But more importantly, you get to see where you need to dig to create the power of your headline and how the consequences that follow make a massive difference. Listen and read this episode. You'll enjoy it. To read online: How To Increase Sales Using The Brain Audit: Episode 179 ============ You've probably never heard of Ben Curtis Ben's a client and a self-described fan. In an e-mail addressed to both Renuka and me, here's what he wrote: "I am a massive fan! I listen to all your podcasts and reread sections and chapters of the Brain Audit over and over. I am constantly applying your tools in every way possible. I am using your advice and information in exactly the way you hoped people would from your book. I also purchased the "Applications for the Brain Audit" too. I am constantly using those tools for headlines, marketing material, and websites." But it's not all hunky-dory, rah-rah Ben also has a bit of a bone to pick with me, in particular. And here's how he puts it: "I'd like to make a suggestion, recommendation, or at least make you aware of something when you're writing content." "It's not that anything is wrong (I love it), I just wish there was more relatable or direct content for people who have products. That's what I do, and many other people have products too. I have products to sell either online or in retail stores, or both. In the Brain Audit, there were two examples– Website Strategy Workshop and Allergy Clinic. Both are service-based businesses. It was difficult for me to try and write with a product in mind when there were only two examples, and both were services. I'm was very happy to stumble upon the Applications to the Brain Audit because I was dying for more examples. I just started it, and already love it. However, I noticed the same thing here. The 15 case studies in Chapter 2 are all still service businesses and not directly relatable or useful for myself. It's difficult to model after the examples when none of them are products. I know that what you write can apply to many industries, but I am talking specifically about examples for products. There are 15 examples, and there wasn't a product based business." Ben's got a point, don't you think? Well then, it's time to correct this grievous mistake, because it gives us a chance to dive deeper into The Brain Audit. Well, here we go. Let's look around the room for some products and play a game of "I spy". What do I spy? It starts with the letter M. It's a product, and it's a microphone. Except that I already have six microphones, so why bother with another one? Let's find out, shall we? In this series, we'll go through the stages of how to get—and keep the attention of the client. Stage 1: We'll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem. Stage 2: This stage calls for us to drive home not just the problem, but also the consequences of ignoring that problem. Stage 3: We'll do an instant check after we've gone through the first two stages. We didn't start off needing or even wanting the products because the products have been randomly chosen. Has that desired level gone up just a little bit? Let's find out. Let's start off with three different products. And as you'd expect, I spy something with my eye, and we know, it starts with the letter m. M as in "microphone". Stage 1: We'll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem. Microphone? Let's look at the microphone that I recently bought. What problem could it possibly solve? Why buy yet another microphone when there are plenty lying around? As you're probably aware, every product solves many problems, and since we're on that trend of reasoning, every product must have many features and benefits. Let's list the benefits and features of this microphone, shall we? • Let's start with the weight: It's just 10 g. That's just 0.35 ounces. That's light, don't you agree? • The usage time on a single charge is 6 hours. That solves a problem too, of having to change batteries all the time. • The operating temperature is from -10°C to 50°C. Which means it would work well in a desert, which is freezing by night and boiling by day. • And finally, it has an operating distance of 65 feet or 20 metres. That's a fair distance away. But what problem does it solve? Let's say you're keen to shoot videos of yourself as a speaker. There are two reasons why you'd need to capture the event. The first reason would be to capture the information for a showreel for your clients. The second reason would be to see and hear yourself so you can improve your technique. However, you've always needed a slightly sophisticated set up with a cordless mic. But imagine a microphone so small that it's just a clip-on. And once you have it on, you can be a whopping 65 feet away and record perfect video—but more importantly, the au

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. Read the article online: How To Sell A Product When There's No Scarcity Factor ------------- Do you like cold pizza? Apparently, some people do. They eat pizza, leftover pizza, the next day and they thoroughly enjoy it over breakfast. Some people eat it as a snack, while others may eat it for lunch or dinner. What's the point of this pizza discussion, you may ask? The pizza analogy is to demonstrate that barring some exceptions; pizza is almost always treated as some kind of food. A similar sort of concept applies to selling a product. Often, people believe that selling a product is entirely different from a service. Or that selling training, a workshop or course, for example, must somehow be different from selling info-products online. The reality is sales is sales—pretty much like pizza. There are various situations in play, but by and large, whether you're selling a dump truck, a $20,000 course or a pizza, the principles are remarkably similar. You launch a product or service when it's ready. You get a few, possibly a fair number of sales. And then what? This article is about the "then what" that occurs right after you've done your launch And the reason for all that "pizza preamble" is because the example you're about to read about involves a digital information product, namely, The Brain Audit. When we launched The Brain Audit back in 2002, we had no clue what we were doing. To put things in perspective, Google was just four years old, YouTube didn't exist, and hardly anyone bought anything online, let alone an e-book that was twice the cost of a hardback that you could get in a bookstore. We launched The Brain Audit, then we waited. And nothing much happened. A similar concept might apply to whatever you're selling, whether it's a product or service. You'll launch the product and wait, but find that nothing seems to happen. How are you supposed to keep selling the product/service for years on end? Do you create scarcity all the time, or will it get old and tired? Will clients get fed up with your tactics? This series outlines the things we've done with The Brain Audit, just because it's our most enduring product However, just to give you a framework so that we're all on the same page, we've sold services too. We've sold consulting, both one on one, as well as group consulting. We've sold seminars and workshops, courses like the info-product course or the Article Writing Course. And as you'd expect, e-books, videos and audio—both digital and physical, as well as to sell a membership site like 5000bc. In short, while this story is mainly about The Brain Audit, it's really a "pizza story". You can quickly and efficiently apply these steps. And they are steps. They take time, often months and years. But that's the reason you're reading this article, aren't you? You've created a product or service, and you don't want it to languish on the bottom shelf, do you? You want it to sell on an ongoing basis. Let's find out how we rolled out The Brain Audit. Let's go all the way back to 2002, shall we? Stage 1: You've launched the product; now what? The moment after the launch can often be a thud. Nothing happens, simply because nothing is supposed to happen. All the clients who intended to buy your product at launch stage bought your product or service. Those who hesitated, stay in the wings and what you're faced with, is an unreasonable amount of nothingness. This is true for any product, like software, a new kind of shampoo, or for that matter a workshop announcement. There's a bit of a spike at the launch, and then there's nothing. We were faced with this nothingness factor when we first sold The Brain Audit Except our launch was a bit different. We simply put up a sales page, and one person came along and bought the e-book. It took us totally by surprise. And so we'd sell a book here and a book there, often selling twenty or thirty books speaking at local events in Auckland. Nonetheless, the slow pace of sales can't be sustained forever. There are two primary reasons why an increase in activity is essential. The first and I think the most important is that a client that doesn't read your information will often go elsewhere. To me, getting that client to understand that information was far more important than just seeing yet another sale. Nonetheless, the sales matter too. Which is why both of these factors are vital. Your product partially brings a client into your "fold", your way of thinking but it also helps create revenue. Even so, there's a lot of "nothing" that happens once you've launched your product. Which is why you need to prepare for both the drip and the next launch The drip is your newsletter or any method you keep in touch with your clie

How do you sleep in an exceedingly noisy environment? How do you beat jet lag? These are some of the questions we've had for years. This episode shows you how we've stumbled on a few nifty tricks to make travel so much better. Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/travel-tips/ =========== My friend loves egg curry And though I've learned over the years to make complex Indian dishes like biryani, peeling a humble hard-boiled egg seemed to be beyond my control. So here's what I did. I tapped the egg dozens of times so that it looked pretty much like a parched field. Six eggs probably had six hundred fragments with that insane tapping of mine, and it took me about half an hour to peel six eggs. Then I went on YouTube and found that all you had to do was tap the egg once on the kitchen bench and roll it forward and the entire peel would unfold in a matter of seconds. That's tip. A nifty tip. And since we travel so much every year, we've picked up some of these goodies along the way. Let's take on four of them. Some of them we've been using for years, and some we picked up just on this vacation to Sri Lanka and India. Here are the four, all in a row. 1: How to entirely sidestep jet lag 2: How to sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without earplugs) 3: A travel app that sorts out your entire sequence (especially if you have a complex set of journeys) 4: Why travel agents are invaluable (even though you can book everything on the Internet). 1: How to completely sidestep jet lag In 2010, we conducted a series of workshops based on The Brain Audit. It seemed simple enough. The first three- day workshop was in California, the second just outside Washington D.C and the third in Vancouver. There was just one problem. All three workshops were in a span of approximately two weeks. This meant that we had to fly economy (we fly exclusively business now, but back then we flew economy) from Auckland to California. That's a distance 10,492 km and 12 hours. We conducted our first three day workshop in Campbell, California and then flew to Washington D.C. You see the problem unfolding, right? The time difference between Auckland and California can be between 3-5 hours. You land in a different time zone, have little or no time to get used to the difference and you're off to Washington D.C, which is three hours ahead. And Vancouver? Yes, Vancouver is three hours behind. All of this meant that we were zipping back and forth between time zones, and bear in mind we had 3 workshops to conduct and no time to get used to jet lag. Except there's where our first nifty trick comes into play It's called No-Jet-Lag. They're tiny little pills you take every two hours on the flight. So if our flight was 12 hours long, we had to take 6 of those pills for the journey. There's just one problem: homeopathy isn't supposed to work. The dosage is so tiny in any homeopathic prescription that most doctors will tell you that it's a sham. Do we care? Of course not, because for years we've been having these pills on flights, stepping out on the other side and getting right into the time zone. To give you an extreme example, we were speaking at an event in Sweden in 2017 Sweden is the "polar opposite" of time zones for us, because there's about a 12 hour difference. We flew from New Zealand to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Stockholm and the entire trip, if I recall, was 39 hours door to door. The day after we landed, I was to give an hour-long presentation at around 3 pm. If you do your calculations correctly, that's 3 am New Zealand time (plus you do have to wake up, shower and go through some practice runs). We don't have the time or the energy to argue with whether homeopathy works or not All we know is that we travel a lot every year, crisscrossing the globe for work, but mostly on vacation. International travel is tiring and No Jet Lag won't help you with the tiredness. It's like being in a car. If you travel 12 hours, it feels like 12 hours. However, you don't feel like you've changed so many time zones. For me, especially, this is important, because more often than not, a Psychotactics workshop will be three days long. It's one thing to get on stage and give an hour long speech, but quite another to be on your feet (and awake) for three whole days. There are no doubt, many methods to beat jet lag One ex-air hostess said she doesn't eat or drink anything on the flight. Sorry miss, but we love our champagne and the food helps us pass the time on these very long trips out of New Zealand. We've used No Jet Lag since 2004, and it's worked just fine for us, so we'll stick to our weird little formula. There's one downside, however No, it's not to do with the ingredients. Instead it's more to do with keeping to a plan. Before I leave, I set alarms on my phone to go off every two hours until we reach our destination. That way I can be sure we don't miss the two-hour cycle. Apparently, you can take it every four hours if you're asleep, but not ma

What is the hallmark of great content? When you start writing articles, you get advice from all sides. But there's advice you don't want to hear. It's advice that goes against the grain. And yet, it's this advice that forms the hallmark of great writing. So how do you get from average to great? You take the road less-taken. It's harder and yet far more satisfying. Here's advice you probably don't want to hear.

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere This is an elaboration/review of the book by Pico Iyer. How do you slow down? What do you mean by going nowhere? And how can we slow down with our busy business and family life?

Which is the most frustrating part of an article? Yes, it's the First Fifty Words. We get so stuck at the starting point that it's almost impossible to go ahead. But what if there were not just one, but three ways to get your article going? That would be cool, wouldn't it? Well, here you go. Not one, but three ways to start your article instantly.

Why do some landing pages work while others fail? The core of a landing page lies in picking a target profile. Yet, it's incredibly easy to mix up a target profile with a target audience. And worse still, the concept of persona comes into play. How do we find our way out of this mess? Presenting the target profile mistakes we make and how to get around them quickly and efficiently. And create a landing page that attracts the clients we want.

In this episode we look at the relationship between energy management and time management. In the modern age we are expected to be on the go continuously; working while on holiday, being ever available for phone calls and e-mails etc. By the time we get to the end of the working day we often find we have no energy. Is there a way to not only have energy for work but also remain energized during our time outside of work?

Listen in to find out how you can receive a surprise Christmas gift!

Which is the most frustrating part of an article? Yes, it's the First Fifty Words. We get so stuck at the starting point that it's almost impossible to go ahead. But what if there were not just one, but three ways to get your article going? That would be cool, wouldn't it? Well, here you go. Not one, but three ways to start your article instantly.

Many of us believe that smartness comes from learning the skills in our own field. And yet, that's only partially true. We can never be as smart as we want to be, if we only have tunnel vision. So how do we move beyond? And how do we find the time to do all of this learning? Amazingly it all comes from limits. Find out more in this episode.

Even if you have the best idea in the world, analysis-paralysis can stop you in your tracks. You feel frozen, not sure what to do. So you research. Then you do some more research and educate yourself even more. But that doesn't get you very far, does it? Even famous people like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would get stuck in this mode, just like you. But they still went on to create great art. So how do you create great "art" as well? Find out and beat the analysis-paralysis once and for all.

When writing headlines, you often get stuck. Can grammar come to the rescue when under pressure? Find out how grammar class helps you write outstanding headlines in a jiffy.

In 1970, two psychologists did a very interesting experiment called the "The Good Samaritan experiment". It was meant to determine whether we're kind other some conditions and oblivious at other times. What makes us kinder, more generous? Is there something that's been under our nose all along that we've been missing? Let's find out. You can read the transcript here: #167:The Incredible Power of Kindness (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Business) ------------------- A few months ago, my brother in law's house was burgled. What do you say to someone when their house has been burgled? What do you say when you run into a friend, and you find she's lost her father? We live in a world that's filled with kindness, or else we wouldn't function on a day to day basis. However, as one writer wrote: We're only one generation away from anarchy. We're all born selfish. Kids hang on to their toys and bawl at the need to control the entire ice-cream stand. We have to be taught to be kind. And kindness comes in different forms It's not just about charity or letting the other driver cut into your lane on the motorway. In today's episode, we go all philosophical, simply because of a book I'd been reading (which I didn't complete, of course). It's a book by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. Sandberg and her husband, David were on vacation to Mexico. David was on the treadmill exercising when he collapsed and died alone. In her book, Option B, she recounts the horror that inhabited her brain at the time of the accident, and for months later. This episode isn't about business. It's about kindness and its many forms. Let's find out how we can be adults in a world of "kiddy tantrums". And how we can be kind as children, in a world of jaded adulthood. Here are three things we'll cover. I promise it will change the way you look at kindness from now on. 1) Not asking what we should do, but doing something instead 2) Telling someone how they changed your life and being very specific 3) Slowing down, because kindness can be heavily dependent on how much you slow down. 1: Not asking what we should do, but doing something instead. In 2010, my father in law; Renuka's father, passed away. I don't remember much about the day. What I do remember was the act of our friend, Cher Reynolds. Somewhere after the funeral, Cher showed up to the house with muffins. "I baked these muffins", she said. Cher then stayed a while and left. So why did the incident of the muffins stay in my head? I only realised it when I read Sheryl Sandberg's story. The difference between Cher and so many people is that Cher left out a question that so many people tend to ask in times of crisis. When there's a disaster, death or sudden misfortune, we feel helpless. And our helplessness shows because we all make a similar sort of statement. We say: If there's anything we can do to help, please let us know. On the face of it, such a statement is exceptionally kind. In effect, we're writing a sort of blank cheque. We're saying we'd go completely out of our way to help, no matter what the request. And yet in its kindness, the statement becomes a bit unkind. It's asking the person who's under enormous stress, to let you know what they need. The stress is so high that the person is often cut off from reality and can barely function. It's at this point that we misguidedly ask them to "think up a list of what they need". Author Bruce Feiler writes, "that the offer while well-meaning, shifts the obligation to the aggrieved". Cher didn't ask if she could bring muffins Instead, she took a decision, made the muffins, drove halfway across town and gave the muffins. In the book Option B, Sandberg talks about her colleague Dan Levy. Levy's son was sick and in hospital. That's when a friend texted Levy with a message that went like this: What do you NOT want on a burger? Levy could see how the friend has not dumped the obligation. "Instead of asking if I wanted food, he made the choice for me but gave me the dignity of feeling in control". Another friend texted Levy saying she was available for a hug if he needed one. She added that she would be in the hospital lobby for a whole hour, whether he came downstairs or not. Kindness comes from specific acts, writes Sandberg "Some things in life can't be fixed. They can only be carried." My brother-in-law and sister-in-law weren't the same people I'd met just a few days before the incident. They were shocked beyond belief that someone had violated their space. It's at times like these that we sip from our cup of helplessness and ask that question, "how can we help?" It's at this time that we have to step up and act. That's just the first act of kindness, however. There's more. Like letting someone know how they changed your life. And be specific about it. 2: Tell someone how they changed your life and be specific At the end of every Psychotactics course, we do something quite unconventional. We ask for feedback. What's so unconventional abou

What causes clients to keep coming back? Is it information? Or could it be entertainment? For too long we've treated teaching and learning as an activity that needs endless slides, pages and work. But what if clients get better results having fun? And what if you had a ton of fun as well? Let's find out how to speed up client learning with some pretty minor tweaks in your e-books, courses, presentations and webinars. Click here to read the transcript on the website: #166: How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment ===================== When my mother-in-law, Preta, was in her twenties, she was teaching at Sunday school. Like most Sunday schools, the kids were there to learn about the Bible. However, my mother-in-law decided to teach the girls how to sew tiny dresses for their dolls. Within weeks of her starting up, all the girls wanted to be part of her class. Ironically, this made the other Sunday school teachers jealous. They complained to the "higher authorities", and Preta was called in to explain herself. "We've heard you're not teaching them about the Bible, and instead only involving them in play", said the person in charge. "You can come in and test the knowledge of the kids," retorted my mother-in-law, "and you'll find they know they're well-versed in their Bible studies". You can clearly see the wisdom of play in this story, can't you? You can also see how people in charge resist it a lot, even though it's apparent that we all have a maddening streak of playfulness we can't seem to shake. That when learning something, we want the trainer to bring a sense of joy into our learning. Instead, most education is soulless, incredibly dull and it's not surprising that clients drop out. The problem is that we're pretty sure we're guilty of this callous training and teaching as well. But what if we were to make fun the core of our system? What if we postponed designing the information-based section and thought about the fun elements, instead? What if fun wasn't an afterthought but part of the entire structure of learning? How would we do things differently, if this were the case? In this series, let's look at: In this series, let's look at: 1) How to create Infotainment 2) Why we need to understand the goal 3) How to place the fun elements in your training 1) How to create Infotainment If you were in charge of getting a kid to write, would you start with "slimy, oozy eyeballs?" Here is a story of Jen Jackson from Seattle. She'd started a small English tutoring business aimed at kids that were being homeschooled. One of her students was Michael, Michael clearly despised writing, despite being able to read well. His mother tried "everything", but her methods weren't working, so she called Jen to help Michael write. Except for the fact, that Jen didn't make Michael write at all. The two of them read joke books, challenged each other to tongue twisters and did everything but write. The second meeting involved fun drawing games and drawing a monster. Still, no writing was included. It was only the third session where a Monster Cafe was created, apparently to accommodate Michael's monster. That's when Michael wrote out a short menu that included slimy, oozy eyeballs. In the sessions to follow, Michael went on to create many menus for different monsters. Today, Michael is not exactly prolific, but he willingly writes short paragraphs and is eager to keep improving. When we read this story, we can see how entertainment has led to information success, can't we? Yet, as an educator it somehow feels scary. Even if you embrace the power of entertainment as the doorway to learning, how are you supposed to implement it? If you did what Jen did, wouldn't Michael's parent look at you funnily, wondering if you were just wasting their time and money? What are you supposed to do when you're not dealing with kids, but adults instead—and in serious fields like marketing or finance? The core of entertainment is to take the pressure off, completely Let's say you wanted to learn Photoshop. If you've never looked at Photoshop before, that sounds a bit intimidating, doesn't it? So how do you make it fun? You look at the what causes people to freeze. Incredibly, it's the computer and Photoshop itself. When I'm showing clients how to use Photoshop for the first time, I usually take them to a cafe—without the computer. We sit down and work our way through some core shortcuts. If the client wants to learn to draw, what alternatives would they need? Wait, you're reading this, so you can easily play along. Let's say you want to get the brush tool. Which letter on your keyboard would you press? Yes, you're right, it's the letter B. What if you wanted to change the opacity of the brush to 30%? What number would you press? Some clients say 30, but of course, the answer is 3. What about 50%. Yes, it's 5. And 70%? I'm teasing. Of course, you know the answer. Let's move on to the brush size. If you wanted to incre

Procrastination is bad, right? Well, not quite. If you break up a project, you're likely to find most projects have five distinct sections. To get to the end of the project, you're going to need a form of managed procrastination. But how do you go about this form of procrastination? And why is it seemingly better to keep you focused? Let's find out in this episode, shall we? Read the transcript online: #165: How to use procrastination to your advantage --------------- Imagine you're sitting down late at night to get ready for your presentation the next day. And you find your slide deck is empty. That's precisely what happened to me when I was conducting a workshop in California many years ago. Usually, I'm very thorough, making sure everything is in order at least four-five days before we board the flight. This time, however, I'd somehow put off what I needed to do, confident I'd have enough time when I got to the U.S. When preparing for workshops, I go through my slides anywhere between 10-15 times, and complete full run-throughs at least thrice, on the day before. So how come the slide deck was empty? Our workshops usually span three days or more, and the slides for Day One were just as they needed to be. But who looks for Day Two slides on Day One? Not me, at least. Which brings us right to the evening of the first day, when I sat down to prepare myself for Day Two. That's when I realised many of the slides had incomplete information. Procrastination doesn't have a good rap. And rightly so. Just because we've pushed something out into the future, doesn't mean it's gone away. In fact, there's a good chance that unfinished task is a mega-energy drainer. If I have to go for a medical checkup, and I can see that white slip in front of me, it bugs me. If you need to finish writing that chapter in your book, you spend enormous amounts of energy just pushing that task out on a future to-do list. However, there are times when procrastination can be good for you. In this series, we'll cover three points: 1) How Deadline-Based-Procrastination Helps Formulate Better Thoughts 2) How Procrastination Can Help Manage the Email Deluge 3) Why Procrastination Can Be Good For Energy Levels (And When It's Bad) 1) How Deadline-Based-Procrastination Helps Formulate Better Thoughts In 1966, there was a study on the Ju/'hoansi bushmen that wander around the borderlands between Namibia and Botswana. It found that the bushmen only worked seventeen hours a week, on average, to find their food. An additional nineteen hours were spent on domestic chores and activities. In all, their 36-hour week might seem pretty excessive when you consider that most working people aim for a 40 hour week. However, our week is a lot longer Even back in 1966, a comparable week in the United States was roughly double. 40 hours were spent at work, and about thirty-six, on average, on domestic labour. Today, adults employed full time in the U.S. report working an average of between 47-50 hours per week. That's more than a whole working day as compared with 1966. All of this extra work only means one thing The working brain of the Ju/'hoansi and the busy business owner in Beijing, is similar. But the demands on energy, distractions and travel have made procrastination an imposing part of our lives. Even if you were to go back just to my father's time. He ran a business, a secretarial college and while he put in a long workday from 8 am to 8 pm, he didn't have Facebook or a mobile phone. Once he got on his train at night, he'd be eating roasted peanuts and nodding off as he made his way back home. In comparison, we have to battle all sorts of crazy stuff, just to get through the day. It's inevitable that as our energy depletes, our procrastination levels skyrocket. Even so, procrastination can be a great ally when it comes to formulating thoughts Take this article for instance. I write most of my articles within 5000bc, right in the forum, on forum software. Which means every member of 5000bc can see the progress of the article. This article, for example, started on 19th September. It was just an announcement of the article. By the 20th, I'd only managed the three topics I was going to cover. As the 21st makes its way to another sunset, four paragraphs are in place. And then there's a "to be continued" added to the unfinished piece. If you look at this form of article writing, you can either consider it to be procrastination or progress. I think it's procrastination and it's good when you're trying to maximise your creativity Creative work, according to Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, there are five steps to getting to a sort of finish point. They are: Preparation Incubation Insight Evaluation Elaboration When you and I look at that list, there are five whole levels of procrastination Tiny tasks would blur those five elements together in a matter of seconds. However, the moment you have to write an article, compose some music, or even put

Some days you just feel fed up of your work. You know you shouldn't. You love what you do, but you can't shake the feeling. You almost have to drag yourself to work and you don't know how to turn the day around. That day can quickly turn into a second day. Before you know it, the week is a puddle of frustration. But there's a way out of this mess and it's incredibly simple. You can turn your day around in 30 minutes. Let's find out how. You can read the transcript on the website: #164: How To Transform A Miserable Day Into A Happy One, In Under 30 Minutes ---------------------------- How to turn a miserable day around in 30 minutes: Episode 166 Some days you just feel fed up of your work You know you shouldn't. You love what you do, but you can't shake the feeling. You almost have to drag yourself to work and you don't know how to turn the day around. That day can quickly turn into a second day. Before you know it, the week is a puddle of frustration. But there's a way out of this mess and it's incredibly simple. You can turn your day around in 30 minutes. Let's find out how. Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. Sean D'Souza:Three Month Vacation How to turn a miserable day around in 30 minutes How to turn a miserable day around in 30 minutes Fed up. Fed up. Fed up. I said it thrice on my walk this morning. And then Renuka pointed out that I was saying it yet again, as I reached the cafe. If you know me well, you probably know I'm always darting around at a squillion miles an hour. As a friend, Kimberley Carroll once said to me: "Sean you're a mad person. You're always busy doing things". Even so, at some point all of us hit a wall It's not the kind of wall you're thinking of. This isn't a spiral into sadness, frustration and depression. It's just a feeling I tend to get into, when I sense I need a break. And instead of paying attention to what my brain and body is telling me, I dig my heels in and go to work. I turn on my phone and listen to another podcast or audio book. I turn that moment into a learning episode. Except today, my phone decided to have a mind of its own. I turned on the phone on my walk back, expecting to continue listening to an audio book. Instead, the phone started playing my favourite music. Admittedly my music tastes are pretty eclectic. They go from quawwali, to African drums, some Turkish music. Buried in the middle of it all is tango, Taylor Swift and Zhu. However, today my phone decided to play Randy Travis. Yup, country music. That's the twangy stuff that comes out of Nashville, Tennessee. The stuff that most people like to turn their noses up at. But for me, country music isn't weird at all. I pretty much grew up with a generous dose of country music. Think about that; a kid growing up in Mumbai, India, listening to country music. But I didn't just listen to the Randy Travises, George Straits and Ricky Skaggs. I record whole country radio shows and listen to it repeatedly on the sound system As you can tell, the music floods my brain with subtle waves of joy and growing up. Anyway, my earphones were plugged in, and there I was on my "horse", listening to country music on my way back home. But something had changed. I was no longer disgusted. I had a big smile on my face, and Renuka was struggling to keep up with my pace and stride. By the time I was back home, a mere half an hour later, I was a changed person. The body and brain has a wall We all run into that wall from time to time. Instead of paying attention to that obstruction, we try to bludgeon our way through it. What the brain is telling us, is that it seeks a bit of distraction; a good dose of downtime. For most of us, music is an instant mood lifter. Yes, it's an obvious choice to turn our mood around, but strangely we seem to ignore it when we're in a foul mood. But why stop at music? What else makes you happy? I know a visit to the library makes me happy. So does a visit to the cafe, but not with any books or learning to do. Just to sit there and watch the world go by—that's a big fun-trip. Most days my to-do list is fine, even important, but on some days I need to block my ears. Instead of listening to my to-do list, I need to pay attention to your brain and body. Bowing to the demands of a to-do list is bound to make me even more miserable. Instead today, instead of wallowing in frustration, I decided to have some fun on a Thursday. I blasted the music, cooked some food, went for a haircut and wandered through the public library. I even thought of driving down to the ferry and jumping on it and going around to the city, for no particular reason. A miserable day is a miserable day only because we choose to make it miserable It's not something that can be solved with a tub of ice-cream or half a dozen cookies. Work is a lot of fun for a lot of us, but we often fail to realise that work is a series of projects. Take for instance, the work I've been doing this week. I had to write a

How do you get clients to return? One of the most underrated tactics is often right under your nose. Yet most people having events don't realise the mistake they're making and have to work a lot harder to get clients to come back. In this episode we look at what every business should do: not just get a client but get the client to come back repeatedly. Read online: How to Get Clients To Return To An Offline Event ============ If you head down to the South Island of New Zealand, you'll run into a little French town called Akaroa. The story goes all the way back to 1838 when the commander of the French whaling ship Cachalot what can only be called a slightly questionable purchase of the land around the area. Then, the French colonists left France to sail to New Zealand to establish a French colony. The French did get to Akaroa but found a treaty had been signed between the Māori and the British. The whole of New Zealand was officially a British colony. As the story goes, the French were just a wee bit late. The French seemingly missed out on yet another colony, and we can feel the impact of being late when it comes to testimonial-gathering as well. But why testimonials? Because testimonials are the lifeblood of any organisation, product or service. The more testimonials you have in place, the more the prospective client can experience your product or service, long before they pay for it. Which is why books have testimonials on their dust jackets, and websites have testimonials on every single product or service. But back to the concept of lateness If you wait long enough, the client is unlikely to give you a testimonial, simply because they've gotten too busy. It's also harder for the client to gush as much once they've moved on. 2) How and when to get testimonials Getting a testimonial for an event is almost as important as the event itself. For one, when a client gives a testimonial, they're ratifying they made the right decision to attend the event. However, it gives you, the person holding the event, a chance to make sure you never have to struggle to fill in seats in future. Which is why you should get testimonials during the breaks If you don't have breaks in your event, there's no way to stop the juggernaut from rolling on. At Psychotactics we have workshops, and for information-based events, it's critical to have many breaks or clients simply get more tired. If you're having an event like a cooking class or a watercolour class, something that's not usually break-oriented, it's easy to forget that every event could do with a break of some sort. People need to get to the toilet; they need just to step outside or reduce the intensity of what's happening. Most trainers or people hosting events fail to pay attention to the concept of breaks, merely because they think it will stop the flow of the event. What you'll quickly realise is that people regroup speedily and focus better after a short break. It gives you some downtime as the organiser, and it leaves some room should something go wrong during the event. If you simply go from one end to the other, you're not really planning for any chaos, and as we know, that's a hazardous strategy. Chaos can erupt from nowhere, and it's best to prepare for it in advance, by having at least one, if not several breaks. It's in this break that you're going to be able to get your testimonial Usually a client will be having a great time and will come and tell you so. It will quickly be evident as to who's having the most fun, and you can usually go up to them and ask if you can shoot a quick video. Be prepared to know in advance where you can shoot the video, ideally some places that are slightly quieter and away from the scene of action. I tend to use another room or another area close enough, but far away from the group. Ideally get 2-3 people to give testimonials, and in about 10 minutes, you can get about three quick testimonials that can be used in a video, audio, or when transcribed, in text format. Be sure to use the six-questions found in The Brain Audit The Brain Audit gives you typical questions to ask a client, and when you use the format of the six-questions, you get a client experience instead of yet another sugar-coated testimonial. It also gives you a clear pathway to follow when asking the testimonial. You rarely have time as you have to get back to the event itself. Even so, you may well run out of time, and it's good to schedule testimonials for the breaks, but also for a short time after the event. Despite all your best intentions, sometimes it's not possible to get the testimonials, or all the testimonials during the event. Even if that's the case, ask people if you can call them on Skype video and get a testimonial. Most people will agree, and that serves as a form of an appointment, and you've more or less got your testimonial in the bag. Waiting for a testimonial after the event can often be too late Once people leave, or if they don't make a commit

Most of us dream of having an online business We are led to believe it's fine to just start up a blog and the audience will show up. Reality is a lot different. It takes time for an audience to appear. And when they do appear, it takes time to trust you. So how do you speed up that process of client acquisition and trust? Welcome to the land of offline events. In this episode we'll see why you should have the event and how to get your clients. Read the transcript online: Why You Need An Offline Event to Boost Your Chances of Success =========== I don't like Microsoft Excel. However, my wife, Renuka does. She can spend hours, even days tinkering with that "weird" program and come up with some statistics that are plainly astounding. One day as we sat down to lunch, as we do every afternoon, she announced the results of her morning escapade with Excel. "Guess what percentage of our income is derived from workshops and offline events?" Before I could answer, she revealed her statistics. The income we earned from offline events was barely 2% of our income. This tiny percentage wasn't terribly surprising to both of us, because we knew that conducting international events was an expensive exercise. Even so, I was a bit ambivalent at the thought of putting in so much work and getting a return of just 2%. That's when Renuka revealed her ace, "Guess how much of our income comes as a direct result of those events?" she continued. And mercifully I didn't need Excel to answer that question, because I've done the hand-raising ceremony at our live events. What's the hand-raising ceremony, you ask? At workshops, I will ask how many clients have done one online course with us, and at least 50% of the hands go up. Then I ask them to keep their hands raised if they've done two courses and few hands, if any, go down. Three courses? The hands still stay up. The courses at Psychotactics are not necessarily cheap. While some start at around $900, the hands-on courses can cost as much as $3300. If at this point you think that it's the online courses that lead clients to come to the in-person workshop, then it's the other way round. Clients that meet us in person, tend to sign up for the online courses, and then just for good measure come back and attend an in-person event as well. It makes perfect sense to you, when you think of it in terms of dating, doesn't it? A relationship can be formed online, but to make sure you're not picking the wrong person, you and I, we both have to do the offline thing: we have to meet. The exciting bit about the meeting is that it doesn't always have to be a big event At Psychotactics, we've had three-day, four-day, even seven-day in-person workshops. At other times, we've had a presentation for between 20-45 minutes. But there have also been situations where we've just spent a few hours in a meetup, given answers to client's questions and then gone for an extended lunch or dinner. In every case, the results are similar. Clients that get to know us don't bother to go to the sales page with a fine tooth comb. When we offer a product, workshop or course, they sign up instantly. They have met us offline, they get to know us well, and they trust us. When you see and meet someone one the flesh, you can often make a pretty accurate assessment of whether to go ahead or not. Which is why despite the meagre 2% income from workshops and events, we continue to run offline events. But what if you're just starting out? You may not have any books or products to sell the clients who attend your event. You aren't likely to have an online course or training system. Is it still worth it? Without a doubt, it's one of the best ways to get started, no matter what you're planning to do for a living. In most cases, a workshop will get you to interact with clients, you'll find out what interests them, and you'll get instant feedback. Plus, if you do your budgeting well, you're likely to make more than just 2%. When we did our very first workshop back in the early days of Psychotactics, we were rewarded for our audacity. I was part of a networking group, and I cajoled several of the members to show up and bring their friends along. The fee was $75 for the evening. The cafe owner offered to rent us the place for no cost and even provided the coffees free of charge. That event netted us $1500 because 20 people showed up. But it didn't stop at that point. It's a well-known fact that the hardest sell is the first one, so I'd prepared myself to sell recurring events just like this one. How did we go about this task? And how do you do something similar? This series will cover three core factors. 1) Why consider planning an event—offline 2) Where to get clients 3) How to get people to sign up and the next step. 1) Where to get your clients When I was just about eight or nine years old, I had a job on Sundays. Not every Sunday, of course, but around the months of late May and most of June was when my father needed my brother and me

How do you redefine the term "passion"? A definition shouldn't be a barrier to your progress, should it? Yet, the moment you hear people talking about passion, you're stuck. And that's because their definition is all wrong. How do you redefine the term "passion"? And what does one-buttock have to do with passion? Let's find out. You can read this episode online: One Buttock Passion ------------------ In a TED Talk that's been watched over 9 million times, the conductor of the Boston Philamornic, talks about a seven year-old child. And this is what conductor, Benjamin Zander, says in his speech. He talks about a seven-year old child and what he sounds like when he's pounding on the piano. Clearly, the sounds that emanate from the piano border on pain. Even so, if that seven-year old practices for a year and yes, takes lessons, he's now eight. And the piano isn't screaming out in terror any more. Benjamin Zander goes on to talk about how the child sounds when he's nine, then when he's ten. At which, point, Zander suggests that most kids give up. However, if he'd waited for one more year, he would have sounded pretty wonderful. Zander takes pain to suggest that it's not that the kid became suddenly passionate, engaged or hit puberty. He explains that when the child was younger, he was playing with an impulse on every note. Then as he got better, he was playing with an impulse on every other note. At 10, it was every eight notes. And the 11-year-old had one impulse on the entire phrase. Zander calls this the "one buttock" moment When instead of hogging the piano stool with both buttocks, the music takes over and you're taken over by the music itself, so that you're playing on a single buttock. People who try to find their passion are two-buttock players. At the start of their journey they're struggling to hit the right impulses and this is because of the information they get about passion. -Stop looking for your passion. -Knowing something well and solving someone's problem is more commonplace than you believe. -Why the terminology is all wrong—and hence drives us crazy. -What if you know too much or too little? Think about passion for a second and what does it sound like to you? It sounds remarkably like love at first sight, doesn't it? You don't equate passion with spending five years chasing after a girl or a guy to get their attention. Instead, it's quick, it's instant. You have a new type of drink, possibly a wonderful Pisco sour, and you fall head over heels with it. Now you want to talk about it to everyone. You want Pisco sour for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if possible. It's all about instant, now, magical moments. And that's what passion sounds like to everyone, whenever it's brought up in a conversation. But passion for your work is almost never like that It's almost always a kind of slight attraction, a lot of frustration, some joy, some more frustration, some more joy. And then bingo, you look backwards and it's no longer two-buttocks on the seat. Take me for example. Most people consider me to be a really proficient writer. Without fail and for 40 weeks a year, I diligently turn out at least 5000 words a week. That's the bare minimum, by the way. However, I had no passion for 500 word-articles, let alone 5000. In time, I could turn out 500 word articles while conducting two courses, it was that easy. And may I add, fun too. I was one-buttocking my way to writing. In 2014, I started writing longer pieces that progressively moved into the 5000 word zone. As we were having coffee this morning, Renuka reminded me how I was getting upset with her all the time. Well, really I was getting upset with myself. I couldn't come up with topics. Writing 5000 word articles would drain me completely. I'd reach out to her to get ideas, and of course it wasn't something that she was interested in, so it wasn't possible to suggest something as quickly as I needed it. This would cause me to complain, and quite bitterly at times, that she wasn't helping me at all. In reality, I was a one-buttock 500-word writer, but a two-buttock 5000-word writer. Then, later, much later in 2017, something happened. Yes, you know what happened. I was writing and able to look at the back as well and notice that one buttock was off the chair. Now I have the opposite problem I have so many 5000 word articles, that I barely have time to write them. I have about 5 or 6 of them outlined and ready to go, and by the time I write them, it will be a week or two from today. By which time, another 5 or 6 will be in the queue, if not more. The passion I'm feeling for writing, just wasn't there when I started Psychotactics, then it came along. Then it wasn't there at the 5000 article mark, and now it's suddenly all fun and games again. Even so, there's nothing instant about passion. The idea of passion is all wrong. This one-buttock stuff just takes time. This is not a Pisco sour where you swig it down and you hit an instant high. This is slow, of

Most of us are told to start up a business doing what we're passionate about. There's just one problem. We don't know what we are passionate about in the first place. How are we supposed to find something we know nothing about? Let's explore the concept of passion and how to stop looking for it, and get it to find you, instead. Read the podcast on the website: Passion:Let it find you ---------- Imagine a person who can sniff a perfume and instantly identify the brand That person is my wife, Renuka. She can quickly work her way through as many as 150 fine fragrances. Fine fragrances are perfumes made in the classical style, by companies such as Chanel, Givenchy, Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, etc. If you asked her if she's passionate about perfumes, her answer is clearly, yes. She worked in the perfumery industry for well over ten years, spending as much as half an hour to an hour each day, just tuning her nose to the subtleties of every perfume. Would that count as passion? It should, shouldn't it? All your life, you're told to follow your passion. To dig deep and find that one thing that makes you ecstatic. Somehow, you're supposed to know almost at the point of leaving school, what you're going to be good at, and to go after that passion. And Renuka didn't fit that bill at all. The only reason she took on the job at the fragrance company was because she was sick and tired of travelling and wanted a marketing job that involved little or no travel. So how much of a newbie was she at the job? In Mumbai, India, wearing flowers in your hair is a common trait among women. Whole market spaces are designed just to sell flowers. And two of the most popular flowers worn in women's hair are "mogra" and "jasmine". When put to the test, Renuka couldn't identify their fragrance. It came as a complete surprise to her when she discovered that soap contained perfume. In short, this was a really miserable start to any kind of passion-hunt. Success feeds passion, more than passion feeds success Those are the words of Scott Adams, author and creator of the highly successful cartoon strip, "Dilbert". And he's right, you know. Passion is a slightly ridiculous word because very few of us know what we're going to be passionate about, and especially so early in life. If you speak to my nieces, who are 8 and 13, they seem to have a range of things they love. One loves dancing and music to the point where she'll stop chattering and start singing along to the music. Another loves animals and is really fond of the idea of the romantic version of being a vet until she has to do all the un-romantic bits as well. And that's because success feeds passion I remember going to Fotosoft, a computer training school to learn Photoshop. Photoshop itself was barely five or six years old having first been released in February 1990. However, I was keen to learn Photoshop. I went to the class, learned what I could and then promptly forgot most of it. To say I was passionate about it, was an incredibly silly statement to make. Not many years later I needed Photoshop almost all the time. Instead of using the archaic system of creating a sketch, taking photocopies by the dozen and colouring each photocopy, I was able to do a single illustration, scan it in, and colour madly on the screen itself. Then along came the Wacom tablet, and I bought the ArtZ II. I was soon head over heels with Photoshop—a passion that has remained strong for almost 21 years. Most people don't get hit by a passion bolt of lightning Instead they fumble, stumble and grumble their way into a whole new world. Along the way, they suddenly run into a whole new world, and they start an exploration process. They look to solve either a problem that has loomed large in their own life or they set out to help someone else. Or like Renuka, they get a highly unusual assignment and then go through the process of falling in love with the skill. Take someone like Michael Phelps, for instance. Surely he was born to be a swimming champion, right? Nonsense. Phelps hated water as a kid. But he had a problem at school. He had trouble concentrating and was constantly fidgety. When his paediatrician diagnosed him with ADHD, he was expected to take the drug, Ritalin. When Michael Phelps was in the sixth grade, he was fidgety and had trouble paying attention in the classroom. His paediatrician diagnosed him with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. To burn off all of that excess energy that Phelps seemed to have, he was told to "swim it off." Except for the fact that he hated water "It's wild to kind of think about how far we've come," he said in an interview with ESPN. "From my mom putting me in the water safety — I hated the water. I didn't want anything to do with it. I learned on my back." Now with 23 Olympic medals to his name, we'd all be forgiven for believing that he was born with a passion for water. Even once he more than made his mark in swimming, his so-called passion flickered wildly. In the run-up t

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. Read it online: Mental Barriers Myths --------- Mental Myth: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster) If you looked at the About Us page on the Psychotactics site, it used to say that I read 100 books a year. Well, that was true when I started out in business. I didn't have many clients, hence loads of time. It was also the very early days of the Internet. There were still millions of pages online, but blogs barely existed. Youtube was non-existent. Facebook was years away. If you wanted to get those 100 books, you had to physically make your way to the book store or the library. Nothing online was particularly instant or as distracting as it is today. Even so, I bought a book on speed reading. In fact, it was an entire course. The course was instantly impressive. It showed me how my brain could recall just about anything it viewed even for a brief second. It got me to open a random page of the dictionary, then flick through the page and later recall a fair bit of what was on the page. It was a long time ago, and I forget the details of the exercise, but I was hooked into believing I could store endless amounts of information in my head. As I found out, it wasn't impossible to store information, but it was quite like a photocopy machine. Think of a photocopy machine for a few seconds What is the primary function? It takes photocopies of information. You can run tens of thousands of pages through a photocopy machine, and it just takes images. Your brain, from what I understand, can do something similar. However, it does not mean that your brain can make sense of the information. It's just information, loads of information piling up on top of more information. The speed reading course was instantly enjoyable and useless to me, even back in those early days. I abandoned it despite paying a small fortune for it and went back to reading two books a week at top speed. For someone like me, who was just learning marketing and business reading a lot was a great idea It was a bit like getting to know the streets in a city. It gave me the confidence and feel for the city. And I didn't have a fear of getting lost. And this constant, pounding flow of information is great as long as you don't have to do too much with the information. You watch the news; you read magazines, you listen to podcast interviews. They constitute a mountain range of information, but not information you necessarily need to use, now or in the future. I found that I was losing out on depth In my need to keep up with 100 books a year, or even 25 books a year, I was playing a game of chicken. I was headed right towards my goal, refusing to swerve, and in doing so, missing out on the nuances. To bounce back to the analogy of the city streets, I was getting a lot of information, but not enough depth. I didn't need to speed up my learning. I could take things at a reasonable pace and even slow down. When I slowed down, I noticed something quite interesting I missed out at least 30-50% of the nuances in the first reading or listening. I remember listening to how trees absorb nutrition, for example, and I loved that podcast episode, so I heard it again. And again. And yet again. The fourth time around I was still picking up nuances I'd missed on the earlier drive-throughs. It wasn't enough to read and listen at normal speed but to go back and read again, listen again. Which is why the book, The Brain Audit has a note right in the introduction to go back and read the book thrice. And most clients come back to say that they were surprised at how much they learned on the second and third pass. This isn't to say that speed itself is a problem Right now I'm learning some nuances of InDesign and ePub. And much of it is "old knowledge". I've been over the material and could do some other activity while "listening to the video", let alone looking at it. In cases where I am very familiar with the material, I will wind up the video to at least 1.25x or even 1.5x. Even in these conditions, it's important not to get cocky. The material may be the same, or remarkably similar, but often the presenter talks about a new way to implement the information. And if I'm just speeding things up, I will almost certainly miss it. And the idea is to make the learning stick. But doesn't your brain adapt to faster speeds? I believe it does. If you listen to everything at twice the speed, over time that double speed is more than likely to become the new standard for you. This isn't to say you're going to know twice as much, only that you can absorb twice the amount at once. There's also a defini

Do you have a bad memory? Well, so does the memory champion of the US Memory Championships. How's that possible you may ask? But that's exactly the point. We have misconceptions about learning and memory that need to be wiped out and replaced with accurate representations of how our brain works. In this first episode we look at two of the mental blocks that cause us to stutter, if not fail. And we transform them from failure to success. Let's find out how. Read online: Business Mental Myths --------- As late as the 1970s, women's brains were considered to be inferior to that of men, and especially so in the game of chess. Chess is a game that demands a high level of spatial awareness, among other skills, and it was erroneously believed that women could never equal men at the grandmaster level. In fact, not one woman had made it to grandmaster level until Susan Polgár came along. Susan's father, László Polgár, didn't believe in inborn talent. He wrote a book about genius, and in it emphasised the fact that "Geniuses are made, not born". To prove the point, he and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, and while geography and history lessons were important, chess was considered to be the most valuable of all. At 4, Susan Polgár won her first chess tournament in the Budapest Girls' Under-11 Championship, with a 10–0 score. In 1982, at the age of 12, she won the World Under 16 (Girls) Championship. In a series shot by National Geographic, called "My Brilliant Brain", Susan Polgár talks about her first visit to the premier chess club in Budapest. She was still just a little girl. "The room was filled with smoke and there were elderly men who thought my father was there for a game and brought his daughter along. But the reality is that my father wanted to see how I would against the members of the club". The club members thought László Polgár was mad. But they went along with the crazy plan and soon found the "pretty little girl" was beating them hands down. Susan Polgár continued her meteoric rise She was the first woman in history to break the gender barrier by qualifying for the 1986 "Men's" World Championship. In January 1991, Polgar became the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title in the conventional way of achieving three GM norms and a rating over 2500. No longer could men claim that a woman couldn't attain the role of a grandmaster in chess. In time, Susan's sister, Judit also became a grandmaster. The third sister, Sofia earned a norm in a grandmaster-level tournament in 1989 when she was only 14. The mental myth was shattered once and for all. In business too, the we have to deal with mental myths that hold us back. As we weave our way through videos online or articles that rarely have any solid research, these myths take a hold of us and create a factor of intimidation. It feels sometimes, like everyone else is moving ahead while we lag behind. In business, as in life, it's not enough to just get and keep the business going. We have to make sure we don't get bogged down in myths have have no basis in reality. Three persistent mental myths that prevail are: Mental Myth 1: Copying is not a good idea. We need to be original. Mental Myth 2: You Need To Remember What You Learn Mental Myth 3: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster) Let's find out why these myths need to be banished, once and for all. We will look at the first two myths in this episode. Mental Myth 1: Copying is not a good idea. We need to be original. When you look at the Taj Mahal, you don't think of Humayun, do you? Humayun, who? For over 200 years, the Mughals ruled over parts of what is modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In what is surely one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, they were rulers of between 110-150 million people—a fourth of the world's population at that time. The family tree of the Mughal emperors started with Babur, went down to Humayun, Akbar the Great, Jahangir, but it's Shah Jahan who gets most of the spotlight. And let's geek out a bit on history a bit here because we're talking about the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan. Emperor Shah Jahan was utterly besotted with his wife, Mumtaz Begum. In an age where marriages were simply ties between one ruling family and the next, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz fell in love with each other. However, Shah Jahan was so in love with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than having a child with each. Mumtaz, on the other hand, bore him thirteen children, which, if you're rolling your eyes, was a family size quite common back in those times. Anyway, on 17 June 1631, at the age of 38, Mumtaz Begum died while giving birth to what would have been the fourteenth child. The Taj Mahal is a memorial to the intense grief that followed It took 21 years, from 1632-1653 to build the Taj Mahal. And today, if you're around Delhi, you're likely to make a trip to Ag

Whenever you have a deadline, somehow you're able to stagger towards it and get the job done. But other tasks never seem to move forward. You fall behind on your reading, your fun projects, even that movie you'd promised yourself. In life we need to complete projects that are urgent, but also projects that are good for the soul. How do we get these projects going and how can we sustain them over the long term? Let's find out in this episode. Click here to read it on the website: How To Avoid Overwhelm (And Systematically Complete Projects) -------------------- I remember lying in bed on a Sunday morning and realising I was a hypocrite. My niece Marsha says she loves reading, which is why we bought her the entire Harry Potter, the Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles. She stuttered through the Harry Potter series but made her way to the last book. And as of this moment, she's been stalled on the first book in the Percy Jackson series. When I ask her if she's been reading, she always nods happily, but she's barely progressed further than 10-15 pages in the last month or two. It bugs me, because I know that reading isn't just about reading. It's about spelling, structure, storytelling and imagination. As you'd expect, I'd nudge Marsha at every chance I got, encouraging her to read, but she still gives me a happy smile and makes little or no progress. Until that Sunday morning, I didn't think the lesson of the nudge applied to me I'm one of those crazy people. I go for a walk, and sometimes I'll listen to music, or Renuka and I will talk all the way. Even so, I'll get at least between an hour to two hours of audio every week. I'll read before I go to bed, and sometimes on weekends. I'll even spend Friday morning planning and then get an hour's worth of reading. I'll even watch a TED Talk on while making breakfast every day. Marsha's situation doesn't apply to me, so why did I feel like a hypocrite? It just so happened that I was browsing through my Kindle collection that Sunday morning As I scrolled through the books, I realised I hadn't read at least 30% of what I'd bought. That among those I'd read, there were several that were half-abandoned. A good chunk was complete, but how's that different from Marsha? How's that different from all of us? We start out with good intentions. We buy stuff; we save stuff onto our computers or devices for future reading and then suddenly it seems to be too overwhelming. We're reading through one book when you get a recommendation to read five others. You're leafing through one article, and a stack of one thousand seem to be trying to be trying to get through the front door. I don't like the feeling of being a hypocrite, so I devised a system. And since I like naming systems, I called it "TBM": the bare minimum. It even sounded nice when written on a piece of paper. Or better still on a car plate. In my crazy mind, I read it as "T BM". As in the "the bum". The kind of guy who is lazy and won't do much more than needed to get by. This mindset of doing the bare minimum was my own invention, it seems. And yet it's not. Many years ago I'd read about the financial advisor, Dave Ramsey who talked about his own bare minimum method when paying back loans. When you have several loans to pay back what advice do financial planners give you? They tell you to pay the biggest loan first. Which means if you have loans of $500, $2000, $200,000, it makes a lot of sense to whittle down the biggest loan, as it also has the largest portion of interest. Ramsey works on a seemingly counter-intuitive method. He gets you to pay the smallest loan first. Here 's How the Debt Snowball Method Works As he explains on his website, it's a bit like a snowball, a debt snowball. The debt snowball method is a debt reduction strategy where you pay off debts in order of smallest to largest, gaining momentum as each balance is paid off. If the task is too big, it's easy to give up. After all, a $100 payment is barely going to tickle a $200,000 loan. But put that $100 towards the $500 loan and you've wiped away a chunky 20%. TBM—The bare minimum. The idea gelled in my brain on a Sunday morning. And this series is a bit counterintuitive as well. It's not about achieving any big goals. Instead, it's about chipping away small wins. It's important because we all seem to fall by the wayside when it comes to long term goals. The more personal the goal, the more likely it is to fall into the cracks. Reading a book that you dearly want to read, goes into the must-do-in-future list. And the future comes and goes, and the book is unread. So what are we and Marsha to do? The world isn't getting less complicated. How do we roll this bare minimum plan out and keep at it? Let's find out. The three things we'll cover are: – What is the bare minimum, and why it's not a mind trick to do even more. – How to use triggers to get the bare minimum going – Why you need to use it exclusively for long-term projects 1) What is the bare min

Writing a report for your website can be quite a nightmare How are you supposed to put 20-30 pages together? And what system should you follow to get great results? That answer is remarkably simple, and plainly effective. And instead of just one way, why don't we look at three ways you can put together a great report! Let's go into report-land, shall we? Read this episode on the website: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight ---------------- Rice. Curry. Meat, Fish. Papad. Pickle. Vegetables. Many, if not most of the meals we'd have when I was growing up, consisted of a what you'd easily call a well-rounded meal. But as a teenager, I couldn't wait for dinner. I was ravenous by the time I got back from school at 4 pm. I'd head to the pantry, and pick out my favourite noodles: Maggi Masala. Boil the water, toss in the noodles and the tastemaker and "two minutes" later, I'd be well on my ate to satisfaction-land. When creating information, it's easy to get lost in a "rice, curry, pickle, papad land". However, complexity is the last thing you need, because it slows you down. What you need is something that's quick, yet effective. Something you can put together for your website, or as goodies to attract clients. In this series, we're going to look at three ways to create a report, seemingly overnight—if you have a small or even disconnected content. And we'll also look at what to do when you don't have any content at all. It might not take "two minutes" but you can put together a report that will create a solid impact. Let's take a look at the three types of reports you could put together. Type 1: Report that goes from C to A Type 2: Diverse, Disconnected Topic Report Type 3:One Topic, Many Angles Report Type 1: Report that goes from C to A How do you make a delicious rice dish in under five minutes? Step 1: Take a cup of cooked rice. Step 2: In a frying pan, pop a teaspoon of mustard seeds and some dry red chillies in oil. Step 3: Pour the oil, mustard seeds and red chillies over the rice and add 1 ½ cup of natural yoghurt. Notice where we started? We didn't start with the cooked rice. Our goal was to make a delicious rice dish in under five minutes. And then we worked our way backwards, didn't we? We didn't go from A to B to C. Instead we started with the goal in mind, then rewound the steps and it wasn't very difficult to get a very tasty result. When writing a report, it's easy to feel like you have to cover a lot of information When I started writing marketing articles back in the year 2000, I had no idea what to write about. I'd read a book about positioning, and then borrow some of the ideas and write my own version of positioning. I'd talk to someone about how they needed to brand their product or service and then rush home to work my way through an article. These were early days. I was struggling just to get 500 words on a page. I wasn't exactly worried about which articles got more attention than others. Even so, it was hard to ignore how some articles got far greater views than others. One such article was about how to write headlines in three steps. Another winner seemed to be how to tell if your business card was too busy. Again, three steps. At which point we had this bizarre idea to turn one of the articles into a report. We did nothing more than put the very same information into a PDF. We added some graphics, made the report look all pretty and then put it on the website as an incentive to sign up to the newsletters. If you've ever subscribed to the Psychotactics newsletter, you're likely to have seen and read this report. The reason why it works is because it's short, but more importantly it starts with Point C. It shows you how to build a headline in a few minutes, that's what it does. With the goal firmly in mind, it walks you through Step A, Step B and then in a matter of 8-10 pages you're at Step C. It's not unlike the method used to make the yoghurt rice, is it? You're not creating a complex document. All you're really doing is getting a client to get to a specific point, no matter how small the point. We might believe a report needs to be more detailed, certainly more complex to be taken seriously Instead what you'll quickly realise is that clients want the quick wins. And if the quick win is small, so much the better. If I were to give you a recipe of a biryani (another rice dish), with 30 ingredients, you're not likely to make that dish, are you? Yet, a 5-minute shot at yoghurt rice couldn't go so terribly wrong, could it? In the worst possible scenario you'd waste five minutes, wouldn't you? Having a simple report that starts at C and works its way backwards in about three steps is what makes it easy to create a ton of reports—if you want to do so—that is. But why create a ton of reports? Let's say your site covers different topics, or has different products or services. Let's say you get to the Psychotactics site and land on a page about resistance. Would you be more likely

Competition? That's the enemy isn't it? Why would you sell or worse, give the competition your ideas? It doesn't seem to make sense at all and yet it's a very solid business strategy—and especially for small business. In this episode, you'll find three solid reasons why competition can change your life for the better. Right click here and 'save as' to listen to this episode. You are read the transcript on the website too:#155: Why Selling Strategies to Competition Is a Smart Idea ================ Approximately every month we take our nieces, Marsha and Keira for dinner, but Keira always does something very curious. Since the girls were little, my wife Renuka and I have taken them to dinner After dinner we head to the mall, where they buy themselves an ice-cream. The first thing Keira does when she gets her ice-cream is offer me the first bite. "Not too big a bite", she'll always say. But yes, I do get the first bite, before she continues to devour the rest of the ice-cream. In doing so, Keira is sharing what's rightfully hers to keep. She doesn't need to have a chunk of her ice-cream bitten off, no matter how small. Like Keira, our business is our ice-cream We don't need to share our secrets with someone else, do we? Yet, the smaller your company, the bigger the upside in sharing the secrets and knowledge you've gained over the years. Big companies can thrive on muscle power alone and sell solely to their customers. A smaller business, on the other hand, needs to learn to share; to teach the competition what they already know. I know, I know, this strategy sounds really odd. However, there are very solid reasons why you should wade right into the unlikely world of "teaching your competitors". Let's find out why and cover three main points. 1: Clients Come And Go, Competition Remains Longer 2: You're always ahead of the competition (even when you tell them what you know) 3: Why selling your information to competition makes the market more viable Part 1: Clients Come And Go, Competition Remains Longer Imagine you dominated 90% of your market. Would you be happy? About 20 years ago, I heard of a lumber company that was hugely successful. So successful, in fact, that the competition was reduced to just 10% of the share of market, while this lumber-company gobbled up the rest. Ideally they should have rested on their laurels. A 90% stake signifies a healthy bottom line and lots of champagne, but they were restless. Their restlessness arose from their unusual plight. Being a lumber-based company, they could only operate profitably in a certain geographical area. If they tried to sell outside that area, they would run into increased transportation costs and other additional taxes, which made it unprofitable to go outside their boundaries. In short, they were "trapped" and could never expand or grow their business. What would you do in such a situation? Marketer, Jay Abraham, came up with a solution. He suggested the lumber company sell their secrets. As you can imagine, such a suggestion meets with instant pushback. The lumber company was the market leader because they had a system to treat the trees. I don't remember the story very well, but it went a bit like this: If they overdid the treatment, the lumber would be "overcooked". If they were too cautious, the wood would be "raw" and unfit for any use. Every year, companies lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of precious lumber, because they hadn't perfected this system of treating the lumber just right. And now the company was being asked to sell its secrets You'd recoil if you were asked to do the same, wouldn't you? Like some crazy grandmother defending her precious recipes, you'd refuse to give away your secrets. What if the competition learned all of the methods and put you out of business? Why should you sell something that has taken you so much pain to acquire? Giving away, or selling your secrets to the competition seems like the most dimwitted thing to do. Selling to competition may seem foolish, but competition is an exceedingly powerful source of revenue and longevity. My friend Julia used to own several bed stores. Over the years she learned how to run the stores very effectively. So effective was she that she'd make 200-300% higher profits over other stores. What's interesting about a bed store is that the goods aren't terribly unique. If you look at a brand like Sealy or Sleepyhead, you're likely to find the same beds in practically every bed store. Yes, her profits were higher than other stores, but there's a limit to how much stock can be held in a store Unless Julia were to lease a new space, get the franchise rights, hire new staff etc., there seemed to be no way to increase her profits with clients. However, there was a spectacular, if slightly hidden opportunity to sell the secrets to the competition. Clients come and go. You buy a bed, and you're not exactly rushing out to buy another one tomorrow, are you? So clients buy the product

Take time off? Doesn't everyone want that? So how are you supposed to achieve that force of business? How do you get to downtime? And what about the passion projects you've been putting off for so long? In this episode we wrestle with the remaining two forces of business and start on a journey that's been put aside for much too long. ====== Read the article online: Passion Projects: How They Can Completely Change Your Business ====== In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Fourth Force of Business—Passion Projects Part 2: Fifth Force of Business—The Power of Down Time ====== The fourth force: Passion Projects In 2010, I got this dazzling idea to do a series of stock cartoons. As you probably know, I'm a professional cartoonist, and my fascination for Photoshop has lasted for well over 20 years. It seemed like a very good idea to create a unique set of cartoons that clients could use for their blogs, e-books, webinars or presentations. Then, seven years sneaked up, and now it's 2017. The cartoons aren't done. Passion projects are what feed your soul A passion project is something that you really want to complete, not necessarily because of revenue or fame. It's just something that you have to do because no one else will do it. The longer you put it off, the more you feel something chipping away at your soul. I've wanted to write a book on talent; I've wanted to write about real education online with "Teacher vs. Preacher", there's a website that I started out in 2015, and it's been on ice ever since. So much of what's important to me, to you just seems to circle the airport and never really lands. However, at least at first, passion projects don't necessarily feed your tummy If you were to decide to spend time embarking on a photography project on the side, or writing the novel you've always planned to write, there's almost no guarantee that any of it will bring in revenue or clients. It's possible that you may hit paydirt or hit a wall—at least when it comes to any sort of riches or fame. Even so, now and then it's important to feed your soul. Take for instance, Marcus Stout from Golden Moon Tea Back in 2011, Stout decided to trash 4 out of 5 of his best-selling teas. As if that were not enough, his company had to re-create 75 of his tea blends? What was the reason for all of this upheaval? It was a passion project that Stout wanted had wanted to put into place for a long time. Around 2011, he changed the way he was personally eating and found he wasn't keen on drinking a lot of his own tea. "Most people don't realise it," he says, "but a lot of tea has chemicals, even if they say it's natural." Since he was keen on getting rid of all chemicals and every last toxin, he decided to scrap his best-selling tea. It wasn't easy to take on a passion project of this nature Stout did his homework. He didn't merely jump into changing the teas without seeing if a market existed. Even so, it was an incredibly difficult decision to make as some of the teas had been superstars all the way back from 1995. Some of his clients ask for those teas even today, and he won't stock them or sell them because they don't meet his standards. A passion project can be a small undertaking or a complete change in the way you conduct your business No matter how we look at it, it's a plane that's been circling the airport, and you need to get that plane to land. At Psychotactics, this meant walking away from doing courses in the second half of 2017 and early 2018. The Article Writing Course and other live courses (that means courses that are conducted by me online) won't show up until mid-2018. In doing so, we walk away from well over $100k-$150k of profit. Will the passion projects replace that income? It's impossible to tell. When we walked away from the Protégé Program back in 2009, we also walked away from $150k a year, with no idea how to replace that income. Whether you're dealing with smaller revenues or substantial revenues, the fear and the excitement are remarkably similar However, a passion project needs to be done. It can't be postponed forever. All those dreams of what you and I will do when we retire, can't wait for retirement. They might be pushed onto the back burner for a while, but at some point, we all have to do what is important to us, even if we aren't sure it will have a payback. Getting to New Zealand was a bit of a passion project for us When we left India, we didn't know what to expect in New Zealand. We'd never been to Auckland and knew next to no one. We were also leaving a very settled and decently luxurious life back in Mumbai. The people we'd met along the way told us that it rains a lot in Auckland and it's really quiet. That to us was our beacon of light. We love the rain and the quiet, and it became our not-so-little passion project. Making space for "landing those planes" is necessary. It may not happen right away, but it needs to happen because it's good for the soul. What we've found as well, is that i

No one thinks running a small business is easy But even so, there are forces that pull you in all directions. These five forces almost seem to tear at us as we go through our daily work. It's not just a question of coping with the forces. We have to somehow make them part of our lives. Let's find out how. ============= Read Online: How To Cope With The Five Forces of Business: Part 1 ============= In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What are the five forces of business? Part 2: Why it is a question of management? Part 3: What sucks up the most time in business? ============= In December 2015, I attended a workshop in Nashville, Tennessee. The workshop itself was very tedious. There were endless slides, countless examples of TV commercials and no breaks. However, there were these long lunch breaks that spanned almost an hour and a half. With little else to do after lunch, I'd wander around the lobby looking at the signs posted on the walls. The signs were quotes from prominent American politicians. One of them was attributed to US President, John F. Kennedy. It simply said:"If not us, who. If not now, when?" No one seems to know if John F. Kennedy said it or not. And yet, for me at that moment, the quote was relevant. I'd wanted to get certain things done. I'd wanted to write some specific books on talent; books on teaching etc. And this sign seemed to slap me in the face. If it wasn't for me, who would do it? If not now, when would it get done? And yet here we are all these months later, and the battle rages on Many other projects got done, but some remain almost permanently on the to-do list. How could I, I wondered, make things happen? It was time to take stock. I soon realised that business—at least my business—had five permanently competing forces. To achieve what I wanted, I couldn't only focus on one and leave the others sulking in the corner. This wasn't a question of focus, it was a question of management For me to feel a profound sense of achievement with every passing year, I knew I had to deal not with just one or two, but with all five forces of business. So what are these five forces of business? The first two involve learning. The third includes revenue and client retention. The fourth was critical, but often neglected "passion projects" and finally there was downtime. All five of these forces jostled for space, and every one of them was incredibly important. Let's take a look at all five of them by listing them out, to begin with. 1) Learning by doing 2) Learning by learning 3) Revenue generation/client retention 4) Passion projects 5) Downtime The first force of business: Learning by doing Stop for a moment and think of something that kills 842,000 people a year. That's a whopping 2,300 people per day. You didn't think of water, did you? Water isn't supposed to kill. It's meant to give life. And yet it runs around day after day, year after year like a mutant Jack the Ripper. No one, it seems, is interested enough to stop this killer. No one, except Dean Kamen. "We could empty half of all the beds in all the hospitals in the world by just giving people clean water", says Kamen. And Kamen is the one person who's uniquely placed to take up this challenge. In Manchester, New Hampshire, where he lives and works, he's known for the invention of the Segway, Ibot Transporter – a six-wheeled robotic "mobility system" that can climb stairs, traverse sandy and rocky terrain, and raise its user to eye-level with a standing person. Kamen has over 440 patents to his name, but it's clean water that got his attention. Which is why he set about creating the "Stirling engine". The "Stirling Engine" is so amazing, it can generate clean, drinkable water even from water contaminated with mud, even bacteria-filled human faeces. For most people, creating products of such grand simplicity would be an insurmountable barrier, but Kamen's team at his firm, DEKA, soon came up with a working machine. A machine that only needed the power of a hair dryer. And if necessary, it could even work on fuel sources such as cow dung. The product was ready; the challenge was met. It was then that Kamen ran into his first major hurdle For fifteen years Kamen struggled to get his "Stirling Machines" mass-produced and distributed around the world. And yet all he met with was polite smiles and closed doors. The World Bank, the UN, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many other governmental agencies, and NGO's—they all realised the problem but couldn't help. Too many of these organisations were not set up to help mass manufacture or distribute Kamen's machine to the poorest parts of the world, where they are most needed. This is our first challenge in business: We need to learn by doing At Psychotactics I've conducted the Article Writing Course since 2006. It's called the toughest writing course in the world, and for a good reason. For three months clients have to slog to get to the finish line

Articles can be mundane or enthralling. But what makes an article stand out? The short answer is enthusiasm. Yet, it's not easy to know how to create enthusiasm in an article, is it? In this podcast, we learn how to step through the three phases that makes your article pack a rollicking amount of enthusiasm. ========== Read the article online: #152: How To Write Enthusiastically and Avoid The Dull Article ========== In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why you need to outline and how to keep it fresh Part 2: Why you need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. Part 3: Why you need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy. ========== What is the definition of sales? There's are probably a lot of definitions, but back in the year 2003 or so, Canadian-born American motivational public speaker and author, Brian Tracy came to New Zealand. I loved Brian's work and got to know him personally. One of the things I really liked was his definition of sales. "Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another". A transfer of enthusiasm. Wow! I always thought of sales as something grimy Something you were forced to do to get your product or service in front of a client. With this definition, Brian changed the way I looked at sales. What he couldn't have known is that he didn't just change my perception of sales, but of communication itself. If selling could be enhanced through enthusiasm, then so could writing. Instead of just putting words on paper, an article could come alive with enthusiasm. There's just one problem, isn't there? How do you write enthusiastically? Are there stages or steps to follow? Not surprisingly, the stages aren't something you're unfamiliar with. The steps to enthusiastic writing are seemingly so obvious that it's easy to miss them. Writing can get really grimy without the power of enthusiasm. It's time to find out what makes your words sing, isn't it? Let's take a look at the three steps you're going to need to put that zing in your words. 1: You need an outline. And the outline needs to be fresh. 2: You need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. 3: You need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy. 1: How to write enthusiastically: The "fresh" outline The week my mother in law came to stay with us, I had to throw out all my spices. Most people think that cooking is the act of getting ingredients together in a pot or vessel. But we also know that ingredients matter. The fresher the ingredients, the tastier the food. What we seem to forget are the spices. Like many others, I bought bottles of spices and they sat in the pantry for weeks, even months on end. My mother in law was appalled at the lack of freshness. She got me to bin the entire lot and start with a fresh lot. An outline is a lot like stale spices Whether you're outlining a big project, like a book, or a relatively smaller project, like an article, you're still dealing with the factor of freshness. If the outline is a week old, it's already getting relatively stale. If it's older, you're likely to be struggling to find out what you outlined in the first instance. The reason I outline is because it saves me time I'm not exactly the kind of person that loves to outline. The reason why I do so is because I know it gives me structure and it saves me an enormous amount of time. Even so, there's the curse called "excessive outlining". In my desire to create a truckload of content, I'll head to the cafe and outline five or ten articles. If I get down to writing those articles within a week or two, maybe even three, I'd be fine. But as you can tell, it's practically impossible to write so many articles in such a short time span. Which means that the outline starts to get stale I get newer ideas along the way, and add to the mountain of outlines and the longer I wait, the more the earlier outlines seem to fade into oblivion. I will look at the outlines; I know they're important, but they're not fresh anymore. Like those spices in my kitchen cabinet, I can throw them in the dish, but they won't enhance the dish at all. Which is why you need to get an idea, outline it, and then get started with your writing. If you need to re-outline the material along the way, that's perfectly fine, but the outline must be relatively fresh at all times. The longer you wait, the more you have to battle with what you were really thinking about. And battle takes up a lot of energy, which means that you're less likely to write with any sort of enthusiasm. Consider that outlines don't vary too much An outline for an article will tend to have a pretty straightforward construction. First Fifty Words (Opening of article) What? Why? How? Other questions Objections Examples End of article So if you had an article on "How to buy earphones" First Fifty Words What to look for? Why is it important? How to avoid the noise in earphone marketing What else to consider when buying earphones Objections

How do you find a good coach? We've all done courses that have been a waste of time, money and energy. Yet, finding a great coach isn't easy, is it? There doesn't seem to be any way to know in advance how good (or bad) a coach will be. Or is there? There are a few benchmarks that make the difference between average and special coaches. And strangely, your first point of due diligence is located right on the sales page in the testimonial section. In this episode Sean talks about Factor 1: Look for the "End Point" in the testimonials Factor 2: Why you need to focus on the next play Factor 3: The Rollercoaster Design Training System Read it online: Unusual Methods to Find Outstanding Coaches ------- I wanted 200 gm of coffee. The Russian behind the counter was only willing to sell me 50 gm. My idea of a great coffee, was instant coffee, Nescafé to be precise. At which point I was introduced to New Zealand's amazing coffee culture. To improve my coffee taste buds, I first moved to a slightly fancier brand; a Dutch barista-style coffee called Moccona. It consisted of coffee granules in a reasonably sized jar. However, that wasn't enough. My journey to becoming a coffee-snob involved buying a pack of pre-roasted coffee called Gravity. Shortly after, I ran into the Russian. The Russian ran a boutique roasting company not far from my house When I needed coffee, I'd go over and order about 200 gm (about 7 ounces). Until the day he decided not to sell me that quantity. He was only willing to sell me 50 grams (about 2 ounces). "You live close by," he said. "What's the point of buying coffee and letting it oxidise for the whole week? When you're out of coffee, you come back and take the next 50 gm." A good coach is like my Russian coffee "dealer". Good coaches know that you can't consume massive amounts at one go, and so they slow you down so that you get a far deeper, richer experience. Over the years, I've had the luxury of having good coaches. Coaches that take speed up your progress. And there are also the bad coaches, who in their own way, teach you what good coaching is all about. In this series, we'll take a look at how you pick a good coach that moves you forward on the journey from a "Nescafé" to a delicious "brew of excellent coffee". In this series, we'll cover three factors that will help you spot good coaches. Factor 1: Look for the "End Point" in the testimonials Factor 2: Focus on the next play Factor 3: Rollercoaster design Factor 1: Look for the "End Point" in the testimonials If the sky is filled with cirrus clouds, what will the next 24 hours bring? Cirrus clouds are those feather-like clouds you see high up in the sky. In fact they're so high up at 20,000 feet that they're composed exclusively of ice-crystals. But here's an interesting fact: if you see a sky filled with cirrus clouds, you'll get rain and cooler, if not cold weather within the following 24 hours. What's fascinating about this fact is that almost all of us have seen those fairy-like cirrus clouds, because they can cover up to 30% of the Earth's atmosphere at a time. Even so, we've missed the obvious—that rain and cold soon follows. Missing the obvious is something we tend to do a lot when trying to find the right coach—or even the right course to attend—online or offline. And that obvious fact is in the most obvious place of all, in the testimonials. Almost every coach or coaching system will have testimonials, and it's through scanning the testimonials that you're likely to find a lot of incredibly valuable information. But what does a mere testimonial reveal? Here are just some of the things you should look out for in the testimonials. Let's say you joined a class to learn to make sushi. When you finish the class, what would you expect to be able to do? Silly question, isn't it? Almost all of us would "want to make sushi". That's why we joined the class, and that would be the end point, wouldn't it? Which means that as you scanned through the testimonials, you should see row upon row of words talking about how the attendees were able to make flawless sushi. In fact, we'd be a little concerned if we didn't see testimonials with a clear end result. Yet when we sign up for courses, we don't bother to check the fine print of the testimonials Let's say the course makes some bombastic claim like how you can treble your client list in 60 days. Now we know what to look for in the testimonials, don't we? The testimonials should talk about how everyone (yes, everyone) saw a 300% jump in client growth. Instead, you rarely see any talk about 300% growth. Most of the testimonials seem to talk about the amazing quality of the videos, about the stunning modules in the course or how the person conducting the course is a great teacher. Almost none of the clients talk about the fact that their list numbers have gone up 300% or more. And if such a testimonial does sneak in, it's probably just one of the many testimonials that seem to say little or not

The biggest problem with article writing is the exhaustion factor. It's write, delete, write, delete and the endless cycle goes on. So how do you go about article writing? Can you really write articles and not get exhausted? In this series you get to see how I went from getting really frustrated, to writing 800 word articles and then 4000 word articles. What's the secret to such an enormous output? And how do you do it without getting exhausted? Let's find out how spacing the writing and the timer play an incredibly important role in writing.

Why do others seem more talented than we are? Is talent innate? Is it just practice? Or is there something else. Incredibly the key to talent is in the way you define talent. Change the definition and you see it in a whole new light. In Part 1 of this episode on talent, you'll see how mere definitions change the way you see the world of talent (and how it can get you talented faster than before).