The Three Month Vacation Podcast

You've told yourself you shouldn't be a perfectionist. Yet time and time again we head back to getting things done—perfectly. And in the process we get nothing done. I get into that trap a lot, and the only way out of the trap is to use a combination of three methods: external deadlines, internal deadlines and the "version system". Interestingly, one of the most effective tools you have at your disposal is a timer. Find out how to use these methods—and yes—the timer.

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Useful Resources

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

 

For the Headline Report (Free): http://www.psychotactics.com/

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Time Stamps

00:00:20 Introduction: The Great White: The Ultimate Predator? /

00:05:19 Table of Contents /

00:06:00 Part 1: External Deadlines /

00:11:34 Part 2: Internal Deadlines /

00:14:11 Part 3: Versions /

00:16:49 Summary /

00:18:06 Actiion Plan: The ONE Thing /

00:18:28 Final Wrap Up / 

 

This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. When you think of the greatest killer in the ocean, one thought comes to mind, and that is the great white shark. Until quite recently, the great white shark was considered to be the ultimate predator. They grow up to a length of 15 feet and they weigh about 5,000 pounds, which is about 2,500 kilos. We consider the great white shark to be the ocean's ultimate predator.

                                    But in fact, the ocean's ultimate predator is not a fish at all, it's a dolphin. Well, it belongs to the dolphin family and it's called the orca. Orca are known as killer whales, but that's wrong because they're not whales at all. They belong to the dolphin family. The reason why they're probably called killer whales is because at some point in time they were called whale killers, and somewhere along the line it got inverted and now they're called killer whales. The greatest predator in the ocean, that's it: the orca, the whale killer.

                                    It's called a whale killer because they routinely gang up on whales, especially baby whales. Yes, that's breakfast, lunch and dinner sometimes. But no one had ever seen an orca attack a great white until it happened. Then in October of 1997 there was this whale watching tour. They were out on a routine whale watching mission and they got this call that there was some activity. They rushed to the scene and what they saw had never been seen before. They saw an orca attacking a great white.

                                    There they are, this whale watching tour, off the Farrallon Islands, which is just off San Francisco. There's complete quiet, complete silence in the water for about 15 minutes. No one knows what is happening. They know that the orca and the great white are out there but no one knows what is happening.

                                    Then out bursts the orca with the great white between its teeth. Now a great white, as fearsome as it is, is about half the size of an orca. It's about 15 feet, whereas an orca grows up to be about 32 feet. The weight is different as well: about 5,000 pounds for the great white and 22,000 pound for the orca. Still, they'd never seen an orca attack a great white before.

                                    Why was it so quiet for 15 minutes? What kind of attack would involve quiet? What they found out later was how the orca attacks. Sharks, as it appears, are only fearsome right side up. If you flip them over they go into a state of almost being unconscious. It's called a state of tonic immobility. What this orca did was it attacked the shark and flipped it over. For all those 15 minutes it held it in a state of tonic immobility.

                                    Now a shark that is held in that position, it cannot breathe. After a while it just drowns. That's what the orca knew. Somehow they had figured out that if you held the shark in a state of tonic immobility, they would not move again. They would be stuck forever. This is how it feels like when we're trying to deal with perfection. So many of us call ourselves perfectionists, but we're in this state of tonic immobility. We're struggling to get things done. How do we get out of this state of always wanting to do things perfectly? How do we get out of this state of tonic immobility?

                                    As usual, we're going to cover three things and then you're going to get an action plan. You know something? I think I forgot to give an action plan in the last podcast. That was podcast number 35, I think. Anyway, we'll have that action plan this time around. The three things that we're going to cover are first, the external deadline. The second is the concept of a timer, which is an internal deadline, and finally, the understanding of how versions work.

                                    Let's start off with the first one, which is the external deadline. In October of 2014 I decided that I wanted to write a book on pricing. I put it down and got everyone to look at it and did a plan. Then November came along and then December came long, and then Jan and then Feb. Then around the middle of February we sold it, as in pre-sold it. We did an offer. I didn't do a sales page, just did a trust the chef offer, which by the way, I picked up from restaurants, because I'm always eating.

                                    We did a trust the chef without the sales page. That's when I started writing. Before that I was just playing perfectionist. I was sitting there trying to get the whole system together, doing mind map after mind map, writing notes, talking about all kinds of things but getting the job done.

                                    The moment we had our sale and the moment the first person bought the product, the game was on. I couldn't afford to be a perfectionist anymore. We said we were going to release it on April the 13th. It needed to be ready on April the 13th. Now you might think that a lot of planning went into that date. No, it got plucked out of thin air. We just said it's going to take three or four weeks. Let's go for it. That's how you pick an external deadline. There is no precise something that you need to figure out. There is no alignment of planets before you can work out the exact external deadline.

                                    I've wanted to do a bunch of stock cartoons, not the usual stock cartoons that you get but just lavish cartoons. More so in the pricing book because I've got better over the years, but in every single book that you get from Psychotactics there are 40, 50, maybe even 100 cartons. They're very lavish, and I wanted to do a series of stock cartoons, maybe 100 or 200, that people could use in their marketing, in their books, on their covers.

                                    I first had this idea back in 2010. We were in California and I wanted to do it. I'm being the perfectionist. I've done all the planning. I've done the sales page. I've interviewed the customers. Like a plane that's circling the airport, I go round and round and round and nothing gets done. How do I resolve this perfectionist issue?

                                    When we get back from Sardinia in June, I'll just sell it. We'll have an external deadline. Then the job gets done. It's that simple. I'm saying it's simple but there is never anything in life that's simple. You will run into a bunch of obstacles, late nights, early mornings, all kinds of problems. Eventually you get there. It's almost like the Olympics. When the Olympics is supposed to start on a specific date, it's not like they can push back the date. They just have to start on that day. That's the day of the opening ceremony and everyone has to be there. Everything has to work the best it can possibly work. That is the power of an external deadline.

                                    What we have, however, is a backup system. For instance, when I wrote the pricing book they were three separate books. I get into my perfectionist tendency and I wanted to do even finer cartoons so it took a little more time than I expected. I wanted to do some graphics. I went hunting for some fonts and other stuff. That all took a little time, so on the date what did we do?

                                    We gave two of the books and then four days later the third book. We have this backup system. If you're running the Olympics there's no backup system. You have to be ready on the date. You as a business owner, you always have a backup system. If you can deliver most of the goods on the day, then the external deadline works. This is very important for us because we feel this pressure. All of us feel this pressure. If all your information is not ready, if you're writing a book that is, you can send in an update later. If you missed out some of the slides in your presentation, you can send the information later. If you're in a consulting program, same thing. Everything can be done three-fourths or four-fifths and the remaining can be sent later.

                                    The external deadline really helps us get rid of that perfection, because otherwise we're just going round and round and round and we're constantly stuck. The external deadline is one thing. There are situations where we don't have such a big project and we just have to write an article or maybe we just have to do a cartoon, or maybe we just have to do one little thing. For this we need the power of the internal deadline, or rather, a timer.

                                    In the second part we'll look at the timer, just a plain, ordinary timer. Whenever we've trained people to write articles or draw cartoons or do just about anything, what we see time and time again is they spend an inordinate amount of time just trying to perfect their work. Let's say you're writing a book and you have to write a chapter. Now, even if you're writing the introduction that might take you an hour or two hours. What people do is they start editing and cleaning it up and then it takes three, three and a half hours.

                                    The question is: By adding 30% or 40% more, did it become 40% better? The answer is it never does. It has never been 40% better. Whenever I look at the work of other people, whether they're writing or drawing or dancing or cooking, the extra time doesn't add up. The only way you can solve this problem is to use a timer. You have to figure out how long you're going to take to finish a project. How much time do you have to finish your project? Let's say you've got two hours. Well, set a timer for two hours. Because if you sit down to write something or draw something or cook something, invariably you will take more than two hours. When you take more than two hours you're getting tired all the time and your work is actually getting a lot worse. Spend the two hours, and when the timer goes, it's done.

                                    Now we may think that we're improving it. This happens when you're editing an article or you're improving your cartoon or doing a watercolor. In most instances it actually gets worse. If you've ever tried to overcook something or paint a watercolor, it gets worse every single time. It seems to get better. You try to make it better, but the overwork doesn't really help. You're getting more and more exhausted. At the point that you're trying to fix it, you're at your weakest. You're exhausted. You're just unable to do whatever you think you're doing. Having the timer just allows you to rest, to go away from it. Then if you want to come back to it later, that's fine, but don't overwork it. Get the timer in place before you start a project. That's it.

                                    With that ding, we go to the next part, which is treating everything as a version. Now there is an external deadline, there is an internal deadline, but what about a version? Most people when they're doing big projects, they have to follow this method where they do version one, which is a draft. Then we do a second draft. Then we do a third draft. All the time you're getting rid of the perfectionist system. You're still working towards that external deadline but you're treating it as a draft.

                                    We're now on episode number 37 of this podcast, and if you go back to, say, number 3 or number 6, or number 10 for that matter, you will find that there is a huge difference. There is a huge difference in delivery and confidence and style and everything. How can that happen in just 36 episodes? If you go back all the way back into, say, 2010, which is when I first attempted podcasts and gave up, it's terrible. Even though there is so much content out there, I don't need to put that out anymore.

                                    The point is that we're always improving. If you just treat your stuff as if it were a version, then it really helps with big projects because then it becomes a draft, and the second draft, and the third draft. Then finally, on your external deadline, it's ready. For smaller projects your work is going to be better tomorrow. No matter what you do today, no matter how much you work at it today, it's going to be better tomorrow and the day after and the day after. It's much better than just sitting there and hoping that it will get better, that it will get perfect. Do the job. Call it version 1. Then move along and then fix it later.

                                    Now a lot of people say, "Well, but I am a perfectionist." The truth is that all of us are perfectionists. Every single one of us are perfectionists, but we could not live in a perfectionist world. Think of going through school. Did you always score 100%? Think of your driving lesson. Would you be able to drive a car if they expected 100% from you? Think of all the things that happen in today's world and you'll notice one thing consistently: there is no such thing as perfectionism. It's a complete myth. It is in your head, and the only way to get it out of your head is to have these three things. Let's just summarize what these three things are.

                                    The first things is an external deadline. You cannot get out of an external deadline. You can push it like we have, just a little bit, but you cannot get out of it. That's really good. It's pressure-building but it's really good. The second thing is the factor of an internal deadline. No one can control you except that timer and that little ding sound that shows up. Finally, it's the version. No matter what you do today, it's going to be crappy tomorrow, so you might as well get used to it, and you will get better tomorrow if you continue going.

                                    This podcast sounds good. I think it sounds really good, but it's going to be better next time, and it's going to be better in episode number 40, and 45, and 50. Your project, your artwork, all of your stuff, it can be the best in the world but it doesn't matter. From the depths of the water comes an orca and poof, it gets you. The moment it gets you, you go into tonic immobility. That's what perfection is. It's tonic immobility. You're stuck. You can't move ahead. So use one thing. What's the one thing that you can do today? Drafts are a good thing and external deadlines, well, you might get down to that, but a timer: all of us have a timer. All of us have a clock, a phone, something on the computer that will go ding. Use the ding to your advantage.

                                    That brings us to the end of this episode. Now if you want to go through these steps, one of the books that really helps people is outlining. This is especially when you're writing books or writing articles. We have a book on outlining. Another book that really helps is the factor of storytelling. How do you build that story? Look up outlining and storytelling on the Psychotactics site. About this podcast, if you want all the links and all the information, the transcripts, it's all at psychotactics.com/37. You can find this for any episode except for 18. 18 is the great mystery. We cannot put in psychotactics.com/18. Anyone wants to help us on that, you're welcome to try. Finally, if you want to contact me I'm at psychotactics.com, sean@psychotactics.com, or twitter Sean D'Souza, and then also on Facebook at Sean D'Souza. If you haven't told your friends about the Three Month Vacation podcast, do so today. That's me, Sean D'Souza, saying bye for now. Bye bye.

 

Direct download: 037_Beating_Perfection.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00pm NZDT

Most of us wait until a job is completed to ask for testimonials. Admittedly that's a good time, but it's also much harder to get a testimonial from a client at that stage. Then we have to get all needy when asking for the testimonial. There are three points when you can get testimonials, and get them long before the client has finished with your product or service? Where are these points located? And can all of us get testimonials at these points? Find out in this episode?and get to the points sooner than later.

What I'm listening to on audio books
Anti-Fragile by Nassim Taleb
The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge

Useful Resources
Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com
Twitter: seandsouza / Facebook: seandsouza
Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic /

Time Stamps
00:00:20 Start /
00:02:41 Table of Contents /
00:03:18 Bear Point No.1: Getting Agreement In Advance /
00:05:45 Bear Point No.2: In Progress Testimonial /
00:09:58 Bear Point No.3: Tail End of Project /
00:12:09 Summary /
00:15:36 Links, Resources and Goodies

 

Sean D'Souza:            This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. As spring arrives in British Columbia and Alaska, something amazing happens. The grizzly bear comes out of its hibernation. All through the winter it has been high up in the mountains where there's lots of snow, and it's relatively easy to hibernate in the snow. Now it's time to feed, but there's no food up here so it has to make its way down to the coast. It's all about timing. It's all about planning. It has to get there just in time for the salmon run.

                                    It might seem to us that the bear just shows up, but usually a mother bear will have some cubs with her as she makes her way down the mountain, so it's not just a matter of showing up but also making sure that the cubs make it, because the cub mortality rate is very high. Over half of the cubs die every year. The bear has to wake up from its hibernation, makes its way down the mountain, make sure the cubs are all fine, or at least as fine as they could be, and then get in position for the salmon run which will happen at a speak time, provided the rains come.

                                    All of this requires an enormous amount of time and anticipation, and we have to do exactly the same thing. We have to act like bears when we want to get our testimonials, because if we don't anticipate and we don't plan, then nothing happens. It's all about timing. It's all about being there at the right time, at the right moment. Or is it?

                                    Most of us think that testimonials are only available for us once the project is complete. It doesn't have to be like that. The project can be very incomplete before you starting to get testimonials. Let's just explore these elements of where you can get testimonials. The first point of getting a testimonials, or getting an agreement for a testimonial, is before the project even begins. The second point is the in-progress testimonial. Finally, you can get a testimonial right on the tail end of the project. In all three instances, the project hasn't been completed and you're getting a testimonial, or at least an agreement to a testimonial. Let's explore all three of them one by one.

                                    In one of my first jobs as a consultant I didn't have any testimonials, so I had to get the testimonial in advance, or at least get the agreement for the testimonial. Here's what I did. When we sat down to work out the project, we worked out the scope of the project, and then at the tail end of the discussion I turned to the person and said, "If this project works out exactly as you planned, as we planned, can I get a really good testimonial?" Of course the client is anticipating the fact that the job will be done really well, and so they will give you a really good testimonial.

                                    Just by asking this little question at the starting point, it makes a huge difference to how you get the testimonial at the end. When someone has already agreed to something, there is more of a likelihood of them giving a testimonial. When they have not agreed to something, and at the end you in and say, "Can I have a testimonial?" the chances are diminished. The first instance is always to look at where can I get an agreement. At first it seems like this is only consulting-based, but it works just as well if you're doing a workshop, just as well if you're writing a book.

                                    Say for instance you're writing a book and you have these graphs. The client or the prospect client can look at those graphs and agree to a testimonial in advance. Same things applies to the workshop. What you're really doing is setting the whole benchmark. You're getting the client ready and prepared. Not every client is ready when you just finished the project, but if you've put it in right at the start as part of the agreement, the chances are much higher. You're like that bear sitting there not on some river any place on the planet, but specifically in British Columbia. You're waiting for the salmon, so you're setting it up in advance. You're setting up your position in advance. This is a very critical step, especially when you're starting out and you don't have much of a reputation.

                                    This takes us to the second point, which is the in-progress testimonial. Often when I'm writing a book or creating a course, I don't have testimonials for the product in advance. Now, I still have to write the sales letter. I still have to send out some kind of testimonials. What do you do? You have the in-progress testimonial. In this case, the customer doesn't look at the complete picture but looks at the part of the picture.

                                    Let's take an example of the book that I just wrote, which is on Dartboard Pricing. It consists of three different sections. Say I finished the section on sequential pricing, which shows you how prices go up and they go down. The customer doesn't really need to read the entire book. They could just read about sequential pricing, and then they could give you a testimonial that went into a lot of detail about sequential pricing.

                                    Now surprisingly, this kind of testimonial is often better than a testimonial that just talks about the entire project. This is the kind of testimonial that focuses on one aspect, and it gets the prospective reader or the prospective client to then get excited or interested in that one aspect. Instead of the entire project, now you're starting to get interested in just how does this sequential pricing work. How does it relate to [kuh-rah-day 06:39]? Why do prices go up and come down, and do we do that for all our products, all our services, all of our training? How do you use all the three different aspects of sequential pricing simultaneously? What is a doorway? Even right now as I'm speaking to you, you're getting interested because what we're covering are elements of that section of sequential pricing.

                                    It's often easier for a customer to tackle a small section and talk about why that section works than the complete experience. By the time you're finished with the complete experience it almost becomes abstract in a way. There's so much stuff to consider, so much stuff to implement. When you deal with a smaller sequence, you're able to explain that in greater detail.

                                    This is the in-progress kind of testimonial that you can get. A customer doesn't need to go through a whole year of your consulting practice. They don't have to go through your entire book and they don't have to go through the entire course. In fact, when you come to a Psychotactics workshop you will see that on day one there are some people who are giving a testimonial, on day two another batch, and on day three a third batch.

                                    Now, not only is this smart in terms of planning, because you can't do all of them back to back. It's too tiring for you in the first instance. More importantly, you can get the customers to talk about that specific moment, that specific section, that specific segment. You can do this for a book or a workshop or consulting. This is the second type of testimonial, which is the in-progress testimonial. Notice we haven't reached the end of the course. We haven't reached the end of the book. We haven't reached the end of the consulting program, and yet, you're getting testimonials that are better in some respects than the testimonials you get right at the end. As we're progressing through this testimonial bit, right at the start we could get the testimonial or at least an agreement to a testimonial. Then the in-progress testimonial. This is very powerful, so pay attention to it and use it.

                                    This takes us to the third part of today's episode, which is how to get a testimonial right at the end of a project, not after the project, but right at the end. How do you get a testimonial right at the end of the project? In every Psychotactics course I have an entire week where the customers will give feedback, and this is brutal feedback, believe me. They also give a testimonial. They're finished with their feedback. They've got it out of their system and now they move to giving the testimonial. This is part of the assignment. We're not done.

                                    Now the mistake that you can make, and I've made this mistake, is to treat it as part of the whole system. Supposing this is a 12-week course and you say in week number 12 you're going to give your feedback and testimonial. Obviously that won't go down too well. If it's a 12-week course, people expect 12 weeks of instructions and then the 13th week to be one of testimonial or whatever you want them to do.

                                    We did this in our eBooks as well. We put in a little email link in the last chapter and people write to us from the chapter. The pricing book has been out barely a few days and customers have already started writing in. Even as I'm doing this podcast, it's like how do I put this testimonial thing as part of the agreement. How do I put it in-progress and then how do I put it at the end of the book instead of sending an email after?

                                    Now be aware that we send the email anyway. If your customers are part of a list and you have them on the list, then you should send them an auto-responder that asks them specifically for their testimonial. In effect, we have four spots where we can ask them for the testimonial, but what are the three main spots that we covered today? Let's just summarize.

                                    The first instance where you can bring up the testimonial is at the starting point when you're sitting down with the client, when they're buying into your consulting or your training, and you can ask them whether they would give a testimonial at the end. This agreement makes a big difference. The second point is the in-progress testimonial, which I think is the most powerful of all, because it focuses on a specific bit. Finally, we have the testimonial you get at the end, not after, but at the end, where you tag on a little assignment that the customer can do or should do as part of their whole exercise. Most customers agree to this. There's no problem getting this. It's the waiting after the project that's a problem.

                                    Yes, you can send an email or you can request for a testimonial after the project is over, but that's the harder testimonial to get. That's the kind of testimonial that most of us try for. You're like this bear sitting there waiting for the salmon after the season is over. Well, good luck to you but it's much harder to do that. You want to be there getting those salmon, those testimonials, as they leap up through that salmon run, not after.

                                    Now let's say you have a product and you already have a few testimonials. Should you go through this exercise every time with all your customers? The answer is yes. There are two reasons why. The first is, a customer is explaining their mindset in the testimonial, so if the testimonial is done right, you will get an insight into your product, a completely different insight from all of those other customers. This is very powerful for you. It's very enabling but it also shows you what customers are looking for and what they're not looking for, because then you can go and fix it. All of our products, all of our services, they're all versions, at least at Psychotactics. When you go to the next workshop, when you go to do the next course, when you read the next version of the book, it's always better, and it's because of these testimonials. It's because of the feedback that we get.

                                    That's the first thing, that it enables you to look into the customer's mind from a completely different perspective. The second thing is that when a customer goes through a good experience they actually want to say thank you, and they want to say thank you in a meaningful way. The testimonial is a meaningful way. It is their way of saying thank you for all the trouble you've taken. The testimonial is a way of saying thank you. It also ratifies that they have made a good decision by investing in you. You definitely want to have that testimonial in even if you've got a million other testimonials.

                                    This brings us to the end of this episode. What's coming up next? We're looking at the mistakes that you make in not planning to get these testimonials. Yes, we are the bear that's waiting there at the river, but things can go wrong. What are those things that can go wrong? We'll explore that in the next podcast. Now you can get all the links and resources at Psychotactics as well. This is podcast number 36 so you go to psychotactics.com/36. The second thing is, if you want to learn more about testimonials, there is a cool book. It's called The Secret Life of Testimonials. When I started writing this book I thought I'd write about 25 pages, because I'd already covered it in The Brain Audit. There's already a chapter in The Brain Audit about testimonials. That's about 25 pages, so I thought maybe I'll add another 20 pages or so.

                                    As I started writing, the book ballooned to over a hundred pages. You'd never think that testimonials had so much depth, but there are questions and the problems you run into. It's really cool to get into this secret life of testimonials. As you're listening to this podcast, if you scroll down a bit you'll find the information section, and there is the link for the testimonial book. Have a look at that. There's also the Dartboard Pricing. If you haven't already got it, it's really good. Two of these books: testimonials and pricing. You know you need them. Go for it.

                                    It's almost time to go for my walk. I go up the hill, down the hill, all the way to the beach, past the beach, then to the café, and then all the way back. What am I going to listen to today? I've got some podcasts lined up and some audiobooks, and of course my languages. What I do is I listen to podcasts because they provide me with stories, they provide me with tactics. The audiobooks, they are more about strategy. The languages? I just speak better Italian. If you want to find out more about what I'm listening to or reading, it's all down in this information section, so as I said, scroll down a bit and it's all there, all the links. Enjoy yourself. If you want to get straight to the site, it's www.psychotactics.com/36. If you'd like to get in touch with me, I'm at Twitter, so that's Sean D'Souza, and on Facebook, Sean D'Souza, and at sean@psychotactics.com. This is the Three Month Vacation, and I'm saying by for now. Arrivederci.

 

Direct download: 036_Specific_Points_Testimonials.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:00am NZDT

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It's easy to just want praise, but that's not how nature works. Nature roots out the fragile and keep only that which is anti-fragile. So is anti-fragility just a factor of "resilience"? No it isn't. There's a big difference between being resilient and anti-fragile. And the key to anti-fragility is to be like a "hydra". Find out more about how you can root out the namby-pamby factor and become anti-fragile.

 

Useful Resources

 

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

 

Finish The Book Workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc

Meet Me In Denver: http://www.psychotactics.com/denver

 

For the Headline Report (Free): http://www.psychotactics.com/

 

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Time Stamps

00:00:20 Introduction: Anti-Fragile /

00:00:33 The Trip To New Zealand /

00:02:26 The Stockdale Paradox: Good To Great /

00:05:43 Table of Contents /

00:06:15 Part 1: Chaos / 00:09:33 Part 2: Twice as Strong /

00:13:37 Part 3: Brutal Feedback / 00:20:06 Summary /

00:21:03 The One Thing You Can Do /

00:21:41 What's Happening Next? / 00:23:10

 

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Sean:            This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. In the year 2000 we had moved to New Zealand from India. When we moved to New Zealand we didn't really know anyone here. We'd never been to New Zealand. We just chose to come here, and then in 2001 we decided we were going to stay here, so we had to get on a flight and go back and sell our apartment and sell all the stuff that we had there and just close up everything in India.

                        While I was on the flight I had a book with me. It was called Good to Great. It's a book by Jim Collins. I'm not sure why I picked it up. Maybe it was the title. As I was reading that book on the flight, something happened to me that changed my mindset. What was my mindset at that point in time? It was a complete jumble of facts. We'd got to New Zealand. We'd bought a house within three months of getting here. I'd got a job; I last at the job for six months and then I was made redundant.

                        The question is were we feeling fragile. That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about this concept of anti-fragility. Anti-fragility is just not being fragile, it is the opposite of fragile. I used to drink rum and Coke back then, and while I'm at 35,000 feet I'm drinking my rum and Coke and chomping my peanuts, and reading about the Stockdale paradox.

                        This is about a guy called James Stockdale. He was in prison in the Vietnam War and he was the highest ranking officer at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, which was a prisoner of war camp. From 1965 to 1973 he was tortured over 20 times. On page 85 of the book there is this conversation between the author, Jim Collins, and Stockdale. Jim Collins is asking Stockdale who didn't make it out of the prison camp. Stockdale says, "Oh, that's easy. The optimists didn't make it."

                        That causes Jim Collins to be completely confused. He says, "I don't understand. Why the optimists?" Stockdale says, "The optimists always thought that things would get better, so they would say we'd be out by Christmas, and then Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they'd say we'd be out by Easter, and then Easter would come and Easter would go. Then they would say we'll be out by Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving would come and suddenly it would be Christmas again. Eventually they died of a broken heart."

                        Optimism, it seems, can be very fragile. In his book, Nassim Taleb talks about this concept of anti-fragility. The book, by the way, is called Antifragile. Fragile is something like glass. It drops to the floor and it breaks into a thousand pieces. Then you have something which is resilient and that is a piece of metal. That doesn't break, but nothing changes it. As soon as something hits it, it falls to the floor, nothing changes it. It remains exactly the same.

                        Then there is something in between. That in between thing, that is anti-fragile. That's someone like James Stockdale where you get battered and hit and punished and pushed around. Everything comes at you, good times, bad times, and you change but you become stronger. I always thought that being resilient was powerful, but resilient, as Nassim Taleb describes it, is being like that block of steel. Nothing happens to it. It doesn't change, and you want to change. You want to improve. You want to get better.

                        What makes anti-fragility so important? We'll cover three topics as we always do, and then we'll have a clear action plan, just one thing that you can do. In today's episode we're going to talk about chaos and how it becomes part of our life. The second thing that we're going to talk about, how anti-fragility makes us twice as strong, and third, how all of this prepares us for the unknown.

                        Let's start out with the first one, which is battling chaos. Whenever you run into people you're always finding that they're struggling. They're always talking about how difficult things are. What they're really doing is they're battling chaos. When you're fragile, every single thing that comes your way causes you to fall and break into a thousand pieces. Then you have to stick yourself together again, and that's very difficult.

                        On the other hand, you have people who are like steel objects and nothing changes them. You want to be somewhere in the middle. You want to understand that chaos is your best friend, that every single day of your life, it doesn't matter where you live or what you do, there is going to be an element of chaos. The people who are antifragile make a friend out of chaos. They go, "Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to run into chaos and it's going to take up an hour, two hours, three hours of my day, so I'm going to make an appointment with chaos. I'm going to keep three hours separate."

                        The people who are fragile, they don't understand this. They think somehow that they will get through the day without that factor of chaos hitting them. Then when chaos hits them they don't know how to react so they fall to pieces.

                        One of the main factors that you have to understand when you battle chaos is that it exists. It exists every single day, every single week, every single month of your life. Chaos is going to exist. If you don't plan for it, if you don't make an appointment with chaos, then nothing happens, or rather, the worst happens. You get hit by chaos. You're not prepared for it, and you fall to pieces.

                        The people who are antifragile, they accept chaos for what it is. Let me give you an example. Let's say we're getting on a flight, say a week from now. When do we pack our bags? The fragile people, they're packing their bags until the very last minute. Then chaos hits you. If you're antifragile you're prepared for that chaos. You're prepared for something to go wrong so you've decided that the flight is going to leave four or five days earlier. You've got all your stuff, all your bags packed five days earlier as if you're going to go to the airport right now. Then if chaos hits you you don't care because you're prepared for it. The core of fragility comes from this factor of chaos, this factor of pretending that Christmas will come and Easter will come and Thanksgiving will come and things will be better. But things are what they are. Chaos is what it is and you just have to make friends with chaos, make an appointment. That's your first step towards anti-fragility.

                        This takes us to the second step, which is how it makes you twice as strong. When we go back to the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb, he talks about this ancient Greek mythological creature. It's called a hydra. The hydra is a serpent-like creature, and you have to battle this creature. Of course you go there with your sword and then you try to chop off its head but it's got many heads. You think I'll just cut off the heads. You chop off one head and two heads grow in its place. Then you cut off the other head and two more heads grow in its place.

                        Suddenly you see this is a crazy battle. You cannot win this battle. When we put ourselves back in that Vietnam War and we see Stockdale's captors and they're trying to get him to do stuff or not do stuff ... At one point in time they wanted to present him as a well treated prisoner so he took a razor and he disfigured himself so that he could not be represented as a well treated prisoner.

                        Exchanged secret intelligence information in letters to his wife. He knew that if they found out, and when they found out, there would be more torture. This is the point of people who are antifragile. They understand this concept of becoming twice as strong. It's not just about falling to pieces. It's you get at me and I will become twice as strong. I will be the hydra.

                        Getting to New Zealand was an adventure. It was an amazing adventure. It was something that couldn't be foreseen, because as I said, we'd never been here before. Yet all of these things hit us together: the loss of a job, the mortgage, everything altogether. Those who are fragile, they want this certainty. They want this map in advance. We're going to do this on this day and this person's going to show up on that day and this is how your life is going to unfold. They may not admit it but that's exactly what they want. They want things mapped out for them. That's why when things hit them they get rattled and fall apart.

                        Nassim Taleb talks about the whole economic crisis and why everything falls apart. It is because everything is being shielded. The banks are too big to fail. The economy will fall apart if we get rid of these people. That's the problem. When we make things fragile, when we make our kids fragile, when we make ourselves fragile, when we expect that everything will go according to today's schedule, then we can't be the hydra. We can't grow two heads every time someone cuts off one head. That's the critical part. Anti-fragility enables you to become twice as strong.

                        There is a third part to anti-fragility, and that is to prepare yourself for the unknown. I know that I'm saying that this is the third part, but when you think of the first part and you think of the second part, which is the chaos and twice as strong, you're going to be prepared for the unknown. The reason why you're prepared for the unknown is because you're not expecting life to unfold just as you wrote it down. You have this saying: planning is priceless but plans are useless. You go through with the plan and you plan for chaos, and chaos will show up.

                        Let me give you an example. One of the courses that we conduct at Psychotactics is called the article-writing course. We're in the last stages of the article-writing course. There are a few things that I get the participants to do before they finish the course. The first thing that I get them to do is to give me feedback. Feedback may sound like testimonials but feedback is not a testimonial. Feedback is that screeching sound you hear when two mics come into the range of each other. That's feedback. They have to tell me everything that is wrong with the course, everything that is wrong with my teaching, everything that is wrong with anything to do with what they've just gone through.

                        I want you to be the trainer in this case and I want you to step back and think of the chaos that's going to hit you. You are actually asking people to tell you what is wrong. What are they going to do? They do, they tell you what is wrong. So far we have got 25 recommendations in the last 24 hours, 25 new things, new structures that we have to put in place. This is for a course that has been running since 2006. You know what happened the last time we had this course? They probably made 25 recommendations as well, and the time before that they made 25 recommendations as well.

                        Chaos has to be my friend, right? I have to make an appointment with chaos. There is this course that people absolutely love, this course that people are willing to sign up six months, eight months in advice, that when we release it it fills up in less than an hour yet, 25 recommendations, 25 fixes, 25 structural jigsaws to put together? That's what you have to do. You have to be antifragile. You have to put yourself out on there. Of course you will get recommendations.

                        Now when you are the student making the recommendation, you are simply giving your feedback. You're being as constructive as possible, but for you, the teacher, the trainer, the book author, it's like someone attacking your baby and saying there are 25 things wrong with your baby, and wait a second, we're not done yet. There are still more to come. If you don't make chaos your best friend, you don't make an appointment with this chaos and these 25 changes that you have to make, then chaos will come along. Clients will leave. They'll be upset. They won't tell you anything. If you confront chaos, then you become antifragile. You don't become that piece of steel and you don't become that piece of glass. You become the in between, the hydra. You step into the battle and the sword is coming straight for your head, and you better be prepared for it.

                        When that sword comes and chops off your head, it makes you twice as strong. All of those 25 amendments and the structural changes and all that stuff, it's going to take a month, maybe two months of extremely hard work on top of everything else that has to be done on a daily basis. That's going to make us twice as strong. Then next year when we do the course, again it's the same thing all over again. There are going to be 25 amendments or changes or recommendations.

                        How do we know this to be true? Because look at your phone, look at your software. The moment a new phone comes along, everyone is all excited and then you find all the glitches with that phone, all the things that could be better. All these glitches go back into that system, and the company that decides we're going to fix it, we're going to make a bigger screen, we're going to make a sharper screen, we're going to do this and do that, they're the ones that are expecting the chaos. They're the one that know that the feedback, brutal as it is, is going to make them twice as strong, that the next version is going to be a better version.

                        It's this concept of antifragile that makes them ready for the unknown, because we don't what's around the corner. Whether you are manufacturing phones, doing a course, writing a book, you don't know what's around the corner. Being prepared for it in this way by being antifragile is what makes a difference.

                        The biggest problem with people who are fragile is they don't see themselves as fragile. They see other people as fragile but they don't see themselves as fragile. How do you become antifragile? The only way to become antifragile is to ask for brutal feedback. I know that some of you listening to this podcast say it's feet forward or something else, but eventually it's feedback. It's terrible. It feels miserable. It's not like I went through the last 48 hours feeling like I was the king of the world. You feel like you put in so much work and it almost seems like why do I do this to myself.

                        Stockdale would have that answer for you, because for Stockdale it was the end game that mattered, how you became twice as strong with all the beatings and all the imprisonment and all of the stuff that affected you, you became stronger. That change, that brutal change, it makes you stronger, not weaker. The weak, they seek plans and lack of chaos, and certainty. That's not how life pans out, and that's when you get brittle and you fall apart.

                        Let's just summarize what we've covered today. We talked about the three factors. The first one was battling chaos, the whole concept of making an appointment with chaos and then expecting that it's going to show up. That's what makes you antifragile in the first instance. When you go out there and you expose yourself and ask for feedback, brutal feedback ... I don't like any other word but brutal feedback because it feels brutal. That makes you twice as strong. What it does on a third level is it prepares you for the unknown. That unknown is coming whether you like it or not. Clients are going to leave whether you like it or not. When you know about it, when they give you their feedback, you can take corrective action and you can make it better. That's really what anti-fragility, in my world at least, is all about.

                        What's the one thing that you can do? Ask for brutal feedback. Don't sugarcoat it. You are going to get brutal feedback. When you get brutal feedback, you expect that you're going to feel miserable for the next two, three days, a week, however long it takes you to recover. When you recover, you come back like that hydra: stronger than ever before.

                        That brings us to the end of this episode, a longer episode, almost 20 minutes and still edging forward. What's happening next? In about ten days we're headed to the US. We're doing the workshop on information products, on how to structure your information products. If you haven't already got the workshop, you might want to get the home study version. It's not as great as the workshop. The workshop if a lot of fun. There's Elmo; there are soft toys; there's food; there's stuff that you don't find at other workshops. If you haven't got to this workshop you will get to another Psychotactics workshop in the future.

                        We then head over to Denver. I'm speaking at the Denver Opera House on pricing, talking about pricing. The book on pricing, the prices have gone up, as you'll expect but it's still at a reasonable price. Go to psychotactics.com. You will find the search bar on the right hand side and you won't find a sales page on the pricing book, but if you type in "trust the chef" you will be taken to the page, and yes, there is not a lot there but the book is really good. That's trust the chef. Find it in the search bar at psychotactics.com. If you want to get in touch, sean@psychotactics.com or I'm at Twitter @Sean D'Souza and on Facebook at Sean D'Souza as well. This has been brought to you by the Three Month Vacation, and we're headed for one of those months shortly, and psychotactics.com. If you're not already a subscriber, here's your cue. Bye for now.

 

Direct download: 035_Antifragilty.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:18am NZDT

When we're writing a book, creating a workshop or giving a presentation, we go hurtling down the path of HOW-TO. Except it seems that HOW-To is only part of the picture. We're missing out on a crucial element, which is why our clients get confused. Learn how to use the HOW-NOT-To in your online and offline marketing and training.

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Useful Resources

Dartboard Pricing Excerpt: http://www.psychotactics.com/prx

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

 

Finish The Book Workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc

Meet Me In Denver: http://www.psychotactics.com/denver

 

For the Headline Report (Free): http://www.psychotactics.com/

 

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Time Stamps

/ / 00:00:20 Introduction

/ 00:03:34 Table of Contents

/ 00:04:01 Part 1: How To

/ 00:06:41 Part 2: Why HOW NOT to Works

/ 00:08:03 Part 3: Bringing in HOW NOT to.

/ 00:14:09 Summary / 00:18:27

 

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Sean D'Souza:            This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. Today I was at the café as usual. As I'm paying the bill, the guy, he knows I'm writing the book on pricing and he says, "Well, why is it taking you so long." I said, "Well, it's because I'm not just writing how to, but I'm writing how not to." He lifts his eyebrows like people often do when they don't really want to ask you a question but the question is on their mind, so I feel compelled to answer the question.

                                    That's what we're going to cover in today's episode. We're going to see how how to is more an intellectual thing and how not to is more instructional, and why both of them combined make such a potent weapon when you're teaching something, and also when you're learning it.

                                    I don't know if you've ever heard of the water test. Now the water test is a test that you do to figure out if the frying pan is at the right temperature. Often when we're cooking, what we'll do is we'll take a frying pan and we'll put some oil on it. Then the oil will start to heat up and then we'll put some chicken in it. The chicken or the fish, it sticks to the pan. Now that only happens because the pan is not at the right temperature or the oil is not at the right temperature.

                                    I was watching this video online and they were showing me how to figure out the right temperature. What you have to do is you take a little water and you drop it on the pan. If it goes vsshhhhhh, then the pan is not hot enough. Of course you go through many of these, until at one point it's magic. The water droplet just rolls in the pan as if it were a blob of mercury. At that precise moment you put the oil in the pan and then immediately after that the chicken or the fish, and it doesn't stick.

                                    Here's what I did. I took the pan, I followed the instructions, and no matter how many times I tried to get that water test to work, and it just wouldn't work for me. I'm pretty persistent. I went at it quite a while and the pan was in danger of getting burnt, but I still wasn't having any success with it. This doesn't make any sense, because when you think about it, I had the instructions. I should have been able to get it right but I wasn't getting it right.

                                    In this episode we'll cover three things as always. The first thing is the importance of how not to vs. just how to. The second is why how not to works. The third is when to bring it in. What's the right time to bring it in? Let's start off with the first topic, which is how not to. What is it and why is it so important?

                                    Let's go back to my frying pan. There I was with the frying pan trying to get the water test to work, but it wouldn't work. The reason why it wasn't working was because in the video they had a stainless steel frying pan and I had a non-stick. Now you might think that makes perfect sense. You're such an idiot. You should have seen it was a stainless steel one. They would have even mentioned take a stainless steel frying pan.

                                    But when you're encountering something it's like learning a new language. You're just struggling at so many levels that it's easy to have this blind spot, to have many blind spots in fact. You're so focused on trying to get it right, not to goof up, that eventually you do goof up. That's because how to is an intellectual process. It might seem like how to are the steps. You're doing one step, the second step, the third step.

                                    But if you've ever sat in an audience when a presenter is talking about, say, search engine optimization, or they're talking about pricing, or they're talking about something that you're not that familiar with, you get it. I remember the time I was at this water color class in Spain. The artist was showing us how to get these reflections of light on a rainy day. When he showed us he went through the steps. This is step one. This is step two. This is step three. I got it.

                                    Then I went to my easel and I got the paint out, and then it all falls apart. Of course the reason why it falls apart is not because of the how to, the how to is already in place, but the how not to. That is the beauty of learning. Most of us are so focused on giving our clients how to. Whether we're consultants or we're teachers or we're training or writing books, we're so focused on giving them the how to that we don't realize that they go off-track on the how not to.

                                    This takes us to the second part, which is why does the how not to work so well. Don't get me wrong, the how to works exceedingly well, but it works at an intellectual level. If you really want the client to practically use whatever you've showed them, then you've got to get to a how not to level.

                                    Essentially what you're doing is you're highlighting the mistakes that people will make. Let's say you're drawing a cartoon and you place a character on one side of the page and another character on the other side of the page. What happens at that point in time? There is nothing wrong with the cartoon. You've drawn a great cartoon, because if you go and speak to 20 people they will say, "Wow, that looks really good," but from a composition point of view, that is terrible.

                                    As a consultant you need to be able to tell your clients what to do and where they can go wrong. As a writer, you've got to do the same thing. You've got to tell them what to do, how to do something, and where it can go wrong. We have this responsibility with our clients to show them how things go wrong, and of course, the how to, which is how to get it right.

                                    Which of course takes us to our third part, which is where do we bring in this factor of how not to. When a client starts reading an article or reading a book, or doing anything with you, they essentially want to hear how to do something. They don't want to know how not to do something. It just drives them crazy to have to listen to all the mistakes.

                                    Once they figure out what steps they have to take, then at that point in time it's a very good idea to bring in the how not to. One of the really good ways of bringing in a how not to is to have an example. The example could be a story; it could be a case study; it could be something from history. Now the moment you bring in an example, two things happen.

                                    The first is the attention spikes. The how to has been driving them crazy. Well, it's been driving their brain crazy, because the more you get in terms of information, the more your brain gets tired. The how not to takes the opposite stance, and the fact that you're using an example or a case study makes it even better. It makes it better because now you're taking the opposite stance. When you take an opposite stance you create contrast. When you create contrast you create attention.

                                    The how to has its role. It creates attention, but as you go through the how to, the brain gets more and more tired because it has to juggle with all these facts. Then you get to the how not to, and again, you've got the audience's attention, but now you're doing it with a story. Shall we go to some stories and examples? We should, shouldn't we? Here is example number one.

                                    I recently wrote a book on pricing. It's called Dartboard Pricing, and it shows you how to set your prices, how to do sequential pricing, how to increase your prices without losing customers. There right in the middle of the book is a table, and the table only has four elements. Now how much can you get wrong with four elements? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. Over the years this table, called the yes and yes table, has helped people increase their prices by 10%, 15%. But they still get it wrong.

                                    How do they get it wrong? I go through several pages of showing them the how not to, showing them all the tables that went wrong, and people just love this. They love to see how someone else got it wrong. They look at those case studies, the attention goes up, but the lesson goes home. Now they know how to because of the how not to.

                                    You might think that this applies just to business but it applies to everything in life. For instance, I mentor my niece Marsha. We have to do spellings. Now sometimes Marsha will go off-tangent and no matter how much I try to get the spelling across she will still spell it incorrectly. What do you do? You go to the how not to stage. You show her how not to spell the word.

                                    What I do is I make her spell the word as she's spelling it and say that's the wrong way to spell it. Then I give her the right way to spell it, at which point in time I tell her now spell it wrong. You know what happens to the brain? It's not able to cope with spelling something wrong. She has two options. She can spell it right or spell it wrong, but now that she knows how it's spelled wrong, her brain switches back to spelling it right. I tell her spell it wrong; she spells it right. I say spell it wrong; she spells it right. Wrong, still right.

                                    This is the power of how not to. When you expose the concept of how not to, you get to people at a very practical level. When you give them how to, you go to them at an intellectual level. Both of them are needed. The intellectual stimulates, gets tiring. Go to how not to and then you can implement it.

                                    At this point in time we run into an even bigger problem. When you have a how to, the steps are usually limited. If you have to put something together, you have maybe step number one to step number 17, but when we consider the realm of how not to, we're looking at an enormous number of things that people could do wrong. What are you supposed to do? The how not to exposes how much you're confusing your audience. The best advice I can give you on this is to get them step by step, to bring out the step, to take them through the how to, to take them through the how not to, and then move to the next step. You're tackling one thing at a time, and that's the way the audience really gets it.

                                    The second thing that you have to consider is the medium. Now in a presentation, probably an hour-long presentation, you have more time to go into the how to and how not to. In a book you definitely have more time. You have more space. In an audio or a video you don't have that much space. You probably didn't realize it, but I just ran two how not to's by you. In audio or video you need to keep the how not to's short, a couple of them and then move along. In a book, in a presentation, you have a little more space, a little more leeway.

                                    With that, we finish how to and how not to. Let's summarize. What are the three things that we covered? The first thing that we covered was the how to. We started off with the concept of how to and how not to, and that how to is an intellectual process and how not to is very powerful because it allows you to implement things. The second thing that we covered was how not to. How does it work? We saw how it gets the attention of the customer. It gets the attention of the reader simply because it shows you what you shouldn't be doing but it also is very useful for you as a creator of audio or video or a book or a consulting, because it spikes that attention just after all of those how to's have tired the person out. Now you've got this situation where you are creating attention yet again.

                                    You do this with a case study. You do this with a story. You do this with an example. I gave you the example of the yes and yes in the pricing book and how people get it wrong, and also how I work with my niece Marsha, with her spellings. If you've got kids around, you should try this. Finally, we talked about where to use it. Usually the how not to comes right at the end. Just when all that attention is going down the gurgler, that's when you want to pick it up with the how not to.

                                    What's the one thing that you could do today? You want to start documenting the mistakes. You want to start documenting where people go off-tangent. Let's say I'm doing a course right now on article writing. What I do is I document where they go off-course. Then that becomes part of the documentation. The next time I give some kind of instruction on what to do this week, I also put in the how not to. That makes a huge difference. If you're writing an article, write the how to. Write a bit of how not to. You're writing a book? How to, how not to. Presentation? How to, how not to. Work out the how not to's. That's all you really have to do.

                                    It's almost time for me to go for my coffee and to the beach, so that brings us to the end of this episode. Now I've been going on and on about the pricing book and Dartboard Pricing. Pricing affects us all. There's not a single one of us that really knows what is happening with pricing, so how do you get better prices? This book has some fascinating examples and pretty much a lot of how to, but one of the things that is very powerful in the book is book number three, which tackles sequential pricing, where instead of your prices going up all the time, they actually go up and then they go down.

                                    Why would you want your prices to go down, and how do you create this strategy? That's what sequential pricing is all about. If you want excerpt of the book you can get it at psychotactics.com/prx. If you still want the book, it might still be on Trust The Chef. If you are lucky and you get to it before we raise the prices, get it. Go to psychotactics.com. Search for Trust The Chef and get your copy of Dartboard Pricing.

                                    About iTunes, if you haven't already left a review on iTunes, please do so. We're off to the United States in a couple weeks. We're headed to the Copyblogger Conference. I'm also doing my own workshop on information products, and then we're going to Sardinia, Italy for the rest of the time. We won't be back until mid-June. No work, just play, which is why this podcast is called the Three Month Vacation. Our three months of work are up and now it's time to take a break. This podcast has been brought to you by the Three Month Vacation and psychotactics.com. If you haven't already subscribed, go and press that subscribe button. All the links and the resources are below this podcast, so if you scroll down you'll see all the information right down, and there are links out there. That's it for me from Auckland, New Zealand. Bye for now.

 

Direct download: 034_TheImportance_Of_How_Not_To2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:02am NZDT

When you have a product or course online it seems it's easy for competitors to copy it. Yet, being in online marketing isn't the only place things can be copied. The fashion industry, for one has people that can copy. Competitors can copy whatever they feel like, because there's no law that prevents them from doing so. So whether you have an offline business or online, you'll want to stay ahead of the competition. But how do you do so?

 

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Useful Resources

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

 

Finish The Book Workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc

Meet Me In Denver: http://www.psychotactics.com/denver

 

For the Headline Report (Free): http://www.psychotactics.com/

--------------------

 

Time Stamps

00:00:20 Introduction

00:02:35 Table of Contents

00:02:50 Method 1: Updates

00:07:04 Method 2: Branding

00:11:20 Method 3: Personality

00:16:11 Summary

00:19:43 Final Announcements

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Ever since I was a kid, I always liked to draw. I'd sit in the corner and I'd draw. I wouldn't speak much to people, but I'd draw. As you can imagine, I got very, very good at drawing, but I wouldn't sign my work. I wouldn't put my name on the work, and my mother would always tell me, "Sean, you have to sign your work. People will copy it. They'll copy it and they'll claim it as their work." Now when I was 10, I didn't see the irony of it, that the reason that I could draw in the first place was because I was copying stuff. As human beings, that's what we do. We learn to copy; we learn to trace. The more we can copy and the more we can trace, the better we become at any skill.

The problem arises when we grow up and we start to write books and we start to do other things like paintings and then other people start to copy us. Suddenly, when you look out there in the marketplace, there seem to be people there ripping you off and you don't know how to stop it, but there is a way to stop it. The wrong way to stop it is to go after them. The wrong way to stop it is to get so upset, so angry that you want to destroy that competitor. This takes up all your energy. All that frustration comes to the fore and it's completely useless because the other person will continue to copy. How do we stop them? We stop them with our own ingenuity.

There are 3 ways that you can actually slow down your competition. How do you slow them down? You can never stop them. You slow them down with updates, with branding, and finally with personality. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do this, so how do we go about it? Let's start off with the first one, which is updates. Yesterday, while I was on my walk I was listening to a TED talk, and this TED talk was by Johanna Blakley. She was talking about the fashion industry and how in the fashion industry it is routine to just copy other people's stuff. You don't even have to think about it; you just copy it.

She talked about a shoe designer, and this shoe designer's name is Stu Weitzman. He was very frustrated because he would design these amazing shoes and people would go out there and copy it, and there were no laws to stop them from copying it. Johanna goes on; she went on to describe how Stu upped his game. What he started to do was create these Bowden-Wedged shoes. It was very difficult to copy them because they were made of titanium, and if you didn't' make them of titanium, they would crack. What he did was create an update that was almost too difficult to copy.

You're probably not making shoes. You probably have a consulting service. Maybe you have a book or a product, you sell information and there your competitors are copying you. How do we deal with this? Let me tell you the issues that we have at Psychotactics. You can have copying where someone just copies your stuff, kind of similar, and then there are other issues like where they rip off your stuff. If you look at several courses that we have, we have the article writing course, the copywriting course, the uniqueness course.

We've been going since 2002. I guess we're reasonably popular on the Internet because if you look at some of the sites where they pirate stuff, where they resell other people's stuff, well, that's exactly what's happening to us. There are these pirates that take our stuff just like they do with Microsoft Word and Photoshop and then they resell it and they make money off it. We can get angry; we can start chasing them down. There are websites that do just this, and it's a complete waste of time.

The way to beat this system is to create updates. When we do an article writing course, we change about 20% of the course. If you did an article writing course live with us, not through some pirate, you would find that it has changed 20% since last time. It has got more efficient, it has got better. If you bought the course off some pirate, you're probably struggling 20% or 40% or 60% more. Yes, you're getting the information probably cheaper, but the problem is that the updates are so powerful that it is very, very difficult for them to keep up. Now they may buy the original product, but as long as we keep updating it, as long as we keep refining it, it becomes extremely difficult to copy.

If you look at our book The Brain Audit, it started out at Brain Audit Version 1 and then went to Version 2 and Version 3 and Version 3.2, and it has stayed there. Now what if your book just stays there? What you've got are updates. What we've done is we've had updates on target profile and we've had updates on uniqueness. The book is changing about 10 to 20%, but internally. If you're on our list and if you bought it from us, that's where you get all the information from, but if you don't, you don't. This is how you stay ahead of both your competitors and your pirates. You keep updating. Change 15%, change 20%, and they'll never, ever catch up.

Now this takes us to the second part, which is the concept of branding. Now branding might just seem like this big multilevel exercise that you have to do that costs a lot of money, and you don't have to do anything like that. At the very core, branding is naming something in a way that makes it difficult to copy. For instance, in The Brain Audit we have something called reverse testimonials. Now you've heard of testimonials, but you've probably not heard of reverse testimonials. That is branding. When a person reads that and they go out there and they learn about reverse testimonials, immediately they think of you. Branding makes it extremely difficult to copy.

I'm writing a book right now. I could have called it Pricing; I did start to call it Pricing. It's very difficult to hang onto a brand name like Pricing, so I changed it. The concept was about pricing being this crazy thing, so we called it Dartboard Pricing. Now immediately, it gets your curiosity as a customer, but it also brands it. It brands it in a way that makes it extremely difficult to copy. When you think of branding, you probably just think of the name of the product or the service and you know it's top level. What you can do is you can also create branding at many sublevels. Dartboard Pricing, that's the top level; that's the name of the book. Within Dartboard Pricing there are already other terms; there are other forms of branding.

For instance, we have a method called a Yes-and-Yes system. Now the Yes-and-Yes system is a way to increase your prices and not lose customers. It shows you a systematic way of going about this whole pricing exercise. What's interesting is the brand name. Once I have the Yes-and-Yes system, whenever someone else sees it, it becomes difficult for them to copy it. What they can do is refer back to you. When you look at, say, someone like Jim Collins and he wrote his book Good to Great, and in that he talked about the Hedgehog Principle, but he doesn't just talk about the Hedgehog Principle. He also talks about Level 5 leadership.

As you keep reading that book, you run into other concepts like the Flywheel and the Doom Loop. This is what you've got to do. You've got to have this top level, which is probably the name of your product or your service. Then within that, you've got to have multilevel branding, names that you come up with that only make sense to you and to your customers, but they follow a pattern, they follow a system, and then it becomes very, very difficult. If you have generic names like, okay, we're going to deal with target audience, well, that's great, but it doesn't become yours, it doesn't become your own. Then it becomes very, very easy to copy.

How do you come up with these names? As you are creating your product or your service, you are describing it. You're probably describing it in words or you're describing it as someone else or they're describing it back to you. You want to pay attention, because sometimes they will use a word, they will use a term, or you will use a word or a term, and that's when it comes about. When I write a book or I create a system or a seminar or a workshop, that's what I'm looking for. I'm always looking for that moment when I can create a term that no one else can copy. I'm not doing that consciously, but just by having that term, it sticks in someone's head and it also makes it very difficult to copy.

This takes us to the third element, which is personality. Now all of us have a personality. Some of us are very quiet and some of us are louder and some of us are bubblier. Developing this personality makes it very, very difficult to copy. If you listen to the podcast that I did back in 2009, I was a different person. I was more loud, I would say. I was more energetic. I was trying to get my point across like this, but now I don't. This is the kind of personality that people tune into. When you're writing your book, you have a certain style that develops over time, and when you're speaking on a podcast, there is a certain style that develops over time. Your job is, ironically, to copy.

How do you develop this style, this personality? Most people think that the personality is inbuilt. Your personality is inbuilt. When you grow up as a kid, you have a certain personality and that is inbuilt. Your style, your drawing style, your writing style, your creation style, that comes from copying. To develop that style, you have to copy many people. Let's say you want to become a great watercolorist. You could copy 1 watercolorist, and after awhile what happens is you become a replica of that person. You start doing the houses the same way, the people the same way, the colors the same way, and when people look at your stuff, that's what they say. That's what they said about me.

When I started out, I started copying a cartoonist called Mario Miranda. Mario was a very, very, very good cartoonist back in India, and his work is still outstanding. I was copying his stuff so much as I was growing up that when I drew a bunch of cartoons and we put them on coffee mugs … These coffee mugs were sold; there were hundreds of thousands being sold. People used to call them the Mario mugs. Now, obviously, Mario was infuriated and so was I because that's not the way I wanted to represent my stuff.

You have to understand that today my work is completely different from Mario's work. The reason for that is I went on to look at other styles and copied those styles. Then over time, you just get your own style, and that style doesn't stay still; it changes. Just like in this podcast, the style that I had I 2009 is totally different from this year. It's the same thing with drawing and writing and everything else. When someone tries to copy you, you don't need to be infuriated because that's exactly what you've been doing.

If you are any good at what you do today, it's because you have been copying, but not copying from one person but from many people. This goes on and on and on until you stop doing whatever it is you're doing. To become great, you have to get influenced by other people, and invariably, that leads to copying. Whether you like it or not, your brain is taking snapshots. Ironically, that is personality. Ironically, that is what people call your drawing personality, your writing personality, your speaking personality. It comes from copying all of these people.

The funny thing is it also becomes a uniqueness; it becomes you completely different from everybody else. If you constantly dive into this pool of influence, of influences of different people and different style and different cultures and different everything, then you become extremely unique, extremely different from everybody else. I know I use the word irony, but the irony just sits there, that you have to become great by copying, and it's copying that infuriates us the most.

Let's summarize what we've just covered, 3 things that we covered. The first thing was the update. When you have updates in your system, it becomes very, very difficult for someone else to copy you. As I said, with the article writing course, with the uniqueness course, with all our courses, with all our workshops, things change. You want to do this because it excites you. Imagine giving the same course over and over again. Imagine having the same book that you wrote 10 years ago and you haven't made any updates. This is a challenge for you; this is interesting for you. Making those updates keeps you ahead of the competition, but it also keeps you ahead of those pirates. If someone were to go out there and buy your stuff from a pirate, they would be worse off. That's what you need to know. That would make you very happy, wouldn't it?

The second element is one of branding. When you start to give terms to anything … You'll find this right through the Psychotactics system where we have the Bikini Principle, the Yes-and-Yes system, the target profile, all of these things that are not common out there. Now that you're aware of that, you can create your own. When you have a book on pricing, well, you can't call it Dartboard Pricing anymore, can you? Which takes us to the third factor, which is the personality, and this is the personality of writing, of drawing, of creating stuff. While we are born with our own personality and that personality develops, all of it is about copying, but not copying 1 person because otherwise we become a replica. It's about copying several people. When you copy several people, you develop a style, and the irony sits on you and you think, "Goodness, what a trip."

How is all of this relevant to the Three Month Vacation? It's relevant because you want to get better prices. You want customers to come to you, and the way to do that is to stand out from the competition. If you were just me-too in your branding, in your personality, and you have no updates, you become exactly like the competition. You become someone who doesn't really change anything. When you do that, it becomes more difficult to get better customers and better-paying customers. As a result, you have to work longer and harder and there's no vacation in sight. This is very critical to creating that uniqueness factor so that people can't copy.

What is the one thing that you can do today? The one thing can be to look at your branding. For instance, we have a course like the article writing course, it's very generic, it's boring. I should go back and I should look at it and say, "How can I make this like the pricing book? Instead of just calling it Pricing, how do I call it Dartboard Pricing?" You and I, we both have to go back and we have to look at our existing product or existing services and say, "How can we brand this in a way that is interesting?" Not just at the top level, but at all other levels as well. When you do that, automatically it's going to stand out. That's what we both have to do.

This brings us to the end of this episode. It's 4:35 a.m. here in Auckland City, quiet. Right after recording this episode, I'm going to be sitting down to complete my book on pricing. That's due out on the 13th of April, so if you get it by then, you get it at a better price and then the prices go up. They always go up at Psychotactics, so get your copy. Go to psychotactics.com and search for Trust the Chef. When you get that Trust the Chef, that's the Trust the Chef offer. Go and get it today.

In a few weeks from now, we're headed to Washington, D.C., to the Information Product Workshop. If you're joining us there, you're going to have a blast. Then we're going to Denver to speak at the Copyblogger Conference, and then it's one of those months of vacation. We'll be back and then we're going to be doing the headline course and the brain audit trainer, where you actually learn to become very, very good at reading your customers' minds. More about that later.

To get all the details on this podcast, just go to psychotactics.com/33. That's the episode; this is episode number 33. You can get all the episodes except episode 18. For some reason, we can't do 18, so you can never find psychotactics.com/18, but you can find all the rest of them from 1 to right now, which is 33.

That's me, Sean D'Souza, saying bye for now. Bye-bye.

Direct download: 033_Too_Difficult_To_Copy.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:25am NZDT

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