When it comes to feedback, almost of us hit a blank wall. Ask a client to "help you fix" your product or service and you get two or three small suggestions. So how about a 1500 word answer instead? What if you could get the client to go into every nook and cranny and give you feedback that would drive you crazy? Yes, of course it drives you crazy, because you have to go about fixing everything? Or do you?

This episode on feedback goes deep into what you should ask, why and when you should ask for the feedback. And then how to cope with feedback when you can't fix things. It also talks about how feedback causes the clients to come back repeatedly to buy your products and services.

Sounds exciting? Well go on, listen to the episode.

And if you missed part one here is the link.

Read and Listen:
http://www.psychotactics.com/secret-feedback/

Listen: http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/86_Feedback-The_Secret_of_Returning_Clients-Part_2.mp3

Most of us are like crazy chickens, focused solely on attraction and conversion. They fail to see the biggest resource in our business—returning clients. If you're able to keep your existing clients and they buy everything in sight, you may never need new clients again. But what magic spell would cause them to buy everything in sight? Incredibly, the answer is "feedback". Wait, not testimonials—feedback. Feedback is that ugly sound of "complaint". It's screechy and seemingly yucky. But we're not just aiming for a bit of feedback, but feedback that's 1500 words or more. Yup, how do you get a mountain of the "yucky stuff?"

Let's find out why you need to get deep into the world of feedback. And put your Teflon suit on. You're going to need it.

Join us as we explore
Part 1: How do you get feedback? And when do you get feedback?
Part 2: Why safety plays a big role in feedback
Part 3: How to copy with feedback

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I’d been driving for about 5 years before I got to Auckland, New Zealand

When we moved here, however, my Indian driving license wasn’t valid and I had to sit for both the written and driving test. And I failed the first driving test within minutes. We barely got on the road, and down a slope when the assessor failed me. Ten minutes later, we were back where we started. As you’d expect, I was perplexed and wanted to know what I’d done wrong.

He wouldn’t tell me. “I’m not supposed to tell you what you’ve done wrong,” he said brusquely. “You’re supposed to drive correctly and when you make an error, I note the error and fail you, if necessary. And you’ve failed this test.”

This is often how we feel when clients won’t give us feedback on our products, services or courses.

But whose fault is it? Is it the client’s fault or ours? In most cases, we’re at fault, and this is because of a primary reason. We fail to figure out the difference between testimonials and feedback. We use the words interchangeably, and it gives the client the feeling they’re supposed to praise you all the time.

Praise is hard, because you want to reserve it for special occasions and anyway a constant stream of praise feels worthless. So the first task is to separate the concept of testimonials from feedback. The client should know clearly—and unequivocally—that they’re not praising you, but giving you feedback. Then, they should know that you’re going to do something with the feedback.

So how do you get feedback? And when do you get feedback?

Let’s take a look at three main areas of feedback and see how we can ensure we get the feedback that we need.

The three areas are:
1) The safety issue—and reward issue
2) The implementation issue
3) The specificity of your questions

1) Let’s start off with the safety—and reward

There’s a video online called “Austin’s Butterfly”. It shows a group of very young children appraising the work of one of their classmates. Austin, who’s probably in first grade, and has just drawn a butterfly. There’s only one problem. The Tiger Swallowtail butterfly looks amateurish and the kids know it. At that tender age, they’re not about to let Austin get away with such a terrible piece of art.

Then something quite amazing happens.

The teacher takes over and asks the kids to give feedback. One by one they pipe up, with their critiques, so Austin can take a crack at the second draft. They point to the angles, the wings, making the wings of the butterfly more pointy. They go on, and on, and the illustration improves with every draft. Six drafts later, the butterfly looks like something you’d find in a science book. The finished butterfly is so stunning that anyone—you, me, anyone—would be proud to call the illustration our own.

And yet this article isn’t about whether we can draw butterflies or not, is it?

Instead it’s about safety. The reason why those kids walked Austin through every one of those five subsequent drafts, is because they felt safe. So what made them feel safe? And how do you get your clients to feel safe? Incredibly that safety didn’t start on the day of the Austin butterfly demonstration. It started long before the teacher walked into the room. Safety needs to be created miles before you get to your destination.

So what do we do on Psychotactics?

Notice the “What Bugs Me” on every page of the website? That “bug” is designed to create safety. Yet, you’ve seen organizations ask for feedback before. Why does that bug bring in over 200 clients writing to us every single year (that’s about 2500 bugs since we started). The answer lies in the statement that accompanies the bug.

The statement says: We’ll give a reward of $50 for the best bug of the month. Have we been diligent about this reward? No, I can’t say that we’ve been super-diligent in doling out the reward. But at a primary level, 99% of the clients aren’t interested in the reward at all. They’re just interested in us fixing the problem.

We have something similar in our membership site at 5000bc.

The moment you get into the Cave (which is our forum) you are faced with a question thats says: What makes you unsafe in 5000bc? And even a casual glance at that post-—and it is a post in the forum—shows you that members have vented their feelings and there’s been an immediate response. When you get on an online course, like the information products course, you have an Ask Sean—again in the forum, as well as the ability to contact us at any point in time.

But contacting us can be a little intimidating.

It’s easier to ask the question in the Ask Sean post. When you examine the posts, you’ll find that clients aren’t always asking questions. They’re often giving a bit of feedback and mostly testing the waters. Is it safe to give feedback? When I answer the question, I’m always aware of everyone watching. When you treat one person with disdain (no matter what the issue) you create a factor of lack of safety.

Without safety you’re not going to get feedback—not the feedback you’re looking for, at least.

The clients aren’t exactly looking for rewards either. Those kids in the classroom weren’t getting any candy for their feedback. Their candy came in the form of change. Their opinions were valued and they were instantly rewarded with another draft. When they made suggestions, another draft showed up. They wanted to be heard, to see change.

And this takes us to our second part: The implementation

The Article Writing Course has been held since around the year 2006—and in the early years, we’d have three or four batches a year—now we have just one. This means we’ve had several hundred clients on this immersion course—and several hundred chunks of feedback.

Why chunks?

Because at the end of every course, we reserve a whole day—as part of the assignment—to get feedback. But why do clients give feedback? They do, because of the first reason: safety. They also want to make the course better—just like the kids in the classroom. The reward is the ability to be part of the change. It’s been almost 10 years. We should have stopped getting feedback by now, don’t you think? I mean how much feedback can you get on a course?

And yet here is the highlight of last year’s feedback—in brief

Action: Go over all the material and remove elements or testimonials that are confusing.
Action: Go over the autoresponders and fix them.
Action: Reconstruct the syllabus to move from learning components to actually writing complete articles.
Action: The weeks that aren’t part of the main course need to be treated as “starters” or “dessert”.
Action: Create Level 2 Course

Action: Fix the notes.
Action: I could, however, mention how the 55 minute club works—in the sales letter.
Action: Be clear that the connectors are sub-heads and sign posting.
Action: Review all instructions to make sure there’s no inconsistency. And consistent language.
Action: Get writers to post their goals on the forum.
Action: Syllabus goes first.

Action: Feedback: What do they specifically look at?
Action: Remove any connection to the 9-month course (Wiz Withers)
Action: Tell participants in advance that there will be changes mid-stream.
Action: Live call not needed.
Action: Sean handles several projects at once. This is a perception and needs to be tackled.

Action: No templates, checklists or worksheets (it would have been so helpful to have an article template in order to see the overall structure)
Action: The materials we received weren’t linked to the weekly assignments
Action: You’re not writing EVERY day.
Action: There will be a 55-minute club at the end. And it will cost $87.
Action: Have a day just for feedback.

Action: Have reference material that sums up all of the different components of a great article
Action: Show how to write shorter articles
Action: Drop headlines from the course.
Action: Put in all the elements that we don’t cover.

Action: Make sure to ensure that there are only two methods I use to write articles.
Action: Make sure there’s an introduction to the transcript and clients know it’s a transcript and not the notes.
Action:The book by George Leonard titled Mastery: the Keys to Success and Long-Term
Fulfillment (instead of Karate Kid)
Action: For final feedback include a question about what was working, as well as improvements and what needed to be fixed

Notice what you just read? It was an action list, based on a feedback list.

The clients came up with this immense list of things to be fixed—and spelt it out in great detail. We then compiled the list, and put in the action plan to fix the elements that needed fixing. Almost as soon as the clients came up with the feedback, we demonstrated we were not just asking for feedback, but we were going to take action—and we wrote what action needs to be taken.

The same applies to any feedback we get off the “what bugs me”

You probably heard about Rosa, didn’t you? If you didn’t here’s the story. Rosa goes and buys a product off our website. It’s the “Dartboard Pricing” series and she loves it, but has something to say. She says I need to have the books in ePub. Now this is a tiny nightmare, isn’t it? Because while it’s relatively easy to transform books into ePub, our books are filled with cartoons and captions. Those cartoons and captions need specific coding and yes, the nightmare is revealing itself, isn’t it?

But we got in touch with Rosa, said we’d work on it and then we posted Rosa’s feedback in the podcast. And shortly after, another podcast listener said he’d do the job (I’ll give you the link to this ePub genius at the end of this piece).

So he set about the task of fixing the books—one by one—but first worked on Rosa’s request. This week, I wrote to Rosa and told her we had not only taken her seriously, but we were going to send out the PDFs and the ePub documents, so she could happily read on her tablet or phone.

Do you think Rosa feels safe?
Do you think she’s bound to give feedback again?
Do you think she was rewarded, both by the initial response as well as the implementation?

But what if you can’t implement something?

Take for example, the courses we hold offline—at workshops such as the one in Amsterdam, or Vancouver or Nashville. The workshops are designed not t give you information, but to give you skill. Clients come up with all sorts of feedback, even during the workshop.

At the storytelling workshop in Amsterdam, Ellen—one of the participants, suggested a walking group. “We walk in the Netherlands”, she said. Now, if you get to our workshop, you’ll notice you’re not in the room a lot. That’s because you learn the least in the room.

We get groups to leave the room and sit by the pool, by the stair, in the lobby—just about anywhere they wish to sit and discuss the assignment they’ve been given. And yet, here was Ellen talking about “walking groups”. So we sent them off for a walk. And half of them took our advice, while half chose to sit instead.

So yay, the feedback went like clockwork, but it’s not always so hunky-dory—this implementation bit—is it?

And when you can’t change things, you head off the objections off at the pass. For instance, if you look at the feedback we got from the last course was “Sean is handling too many projects at once”.

Now that’s like saying “fire is hot”. The reason you’re even reading this article is because I like to write articles, but I also like to paint, cook, take photos, dance, learn languages, mentor my niece—and take a nap in the afternoon (that’s a project too, you know). So what would you do with such feedback, especially when you know nothing is going to change?

I mean I handle projects but then I know what to keep and what to drop. Yet, the perception may exist and a client that’s going through a rough patch may find an easy target—me—the guy with ten million projects. That client may not have any idea that I’m not dancing right now, or I’ve put my Japanese and photography on hold. They’re working off a supposition—their perception. And to make sure this problem doesn’t arise, we head it off at the pass. I bring it up early in the course, or the book, or the workshop.

It’s on a slide, or in an introductory page, or somewhere it cannot be missed. And it needs to be repeated several times, so it sinks in, because not everyone sees or understands everything the first time around.

If you cannot or will not implement something and you have your reasons for it, you need to be very clear why you’re avoiding that course of action. Rosa’s suggestions were doable, and we went ahead with the plan, but it’s also quite a task to convert every book on the site to ePub. If this were the case, and we couldn’t fix every PDF, we’d just have to head off the objection before the client bought the product.

However, to get back on track—the implementation is what matters

Implementation creates safety. Implementation tells your client that they matter. That their opinion is important. And if you can’t fix it, at least put out an action plan, so they can see that you’re hard at work. Then cross out the elements as we’re doing with this new Article Writing Course. Will we be 100% successful? No we won’t but we’ll keep at things until they get fixed. And then we’ll have another big list to go through.

So we looked at safety and reward.

Then we had a long dive into implementation and at least the need to communicate with the client; the importance of having an action plan. Which takes us to the third part: The specificity of your questions.

Check back next week for Part 2 of The Secret of How To Get Clients To Keep Coming Back Repeatedly

http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

 

What’s one of the biggest “rookie mistakes” when putting a landing page together?

It’s the rookie, sitting down and writing the entire page at their desk. If you want a reasonably boring landing page, write it yourself.

But what if you didn’t write it yourself? Who would write it for you?  Find out more in Part 2 of this series.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How do you find the ideal client?
Part 2: What happens when you dig into a single problem?
Part 3:  What do you do with all the other problems?

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There’s a reason why I moved from PC to the Mac.

In 2008 I had to do a series of presentations for a radio station.  Since the clients of radio stations are always looking for ways to get the attention of their clients, the presentation of The Brain Audit seemed like the perfect match. If there’s one thing I’m very possessive about, it’s the slides for my presentation.

I tend to make changes, simplifying the content and moving the slides around until the very last minute. Even if I have done the presentation dozens of times before, you can be sure I will be making changes at the very last minute.

In this case, the terms of my contract prohibited me from making those changes at the last minute.

The radio station was putting all their slides together in advance, so all slide decks had to be submitted the week before the presentation. This rattled me enough to show up three hours before I had to make my presentation. The technical crew was more than happy to let me go through a run through of my presentation on the big screen.

As I clicked through the slides, I realised that something was wrong. The presentation I was seeing on the screen looked a bit like my presentation, but somehow it was different.

The weird part was that it looked better than what I had done.

After I had got over the shock of someone tampering with my presentation, I asked the crew how they had gone about changing the presentation. “We didn’t do anything with the presentation itself,” they said. “We just ran it through keynote — which is a presentation software for the Mac.”

That one idea was enough to get me hooked onto the Mac, even though I had used the PC for close to 15 years. The Mac had solved a problem that I didn’t know existed. It had taken the best possible presentation I could muster, and made it far more beautiful than I could imagine.

Since then, I have dumped all my PCs and stuck to the Mac. So does this make me the ideal client?

It does not, because I wasn’t aware of the problem in advance

To find the ideal client, you have to find someone is already deeply aware of the frustration they are facing. If you find someone like me—someone who’s surprised and delighted, you’re going to get a very shallow rendition of the set of problems the client faces—and most certainly never get to the depth of the biggest problem.

You have to find someone who already has a problem

And the best place to start could be a random place like Facebook. Since everyone already has an opinion on Facebook, you may shortlist your ideal client based on a friend that responds to your question.

You may have a tiny list of subscribers on your e-mail list, and if you send out a request, there’s a good chance that at least a couple of responses will show up in your inbox. If you already have clients like we do, you’re often still like a newbie, especially when you want to launch a new product or service.

Let’s say we want to launch a product on how to take outstanding photos with your iPhone

In many cases it’s easy enough to locate a great client, and it’s more than likely that they would like to take great photos, but don’t know how. Once you interview them over the phone, or in person, you’ll quickly find a series of issues.

– Taking great food pictures with an iPhone
– How to improve your vacation photos
– How to use manual controls with your software
– How to shoot close up or macro photography
– Great portrait photography with Your iPhone
– How to dump the SLR at home and take outstanding photos with your iPhone.

The problem is obvious, isn’t it? How do you choose? All of these problems seem headed in divergent directions.
The answer is: You don’t choose. You get the client to choose.You focus on the problem at hand and dig deeper.

The questions would hinge on the single problem:
– Why do you want to take your iPhone instead of a Nikon?
– What frustrates you when you take the Nikon?
– Can you describe a day on your vacation?
– What are the consequences of taking a heavy camera along?

If you own a Nikon 7000 like I do, you’ll find yourself leaving the camera back in the hotel room a lot.

The Nikon 7000 is a great camera, but it feels like you’re lugging a brick along—and when you take three months off every year, that’s like lugging a brick for 90 whole days. So unless I’m going on a trip—like the time we went to see orcas in Vancouver, or camels on the road in Australia, I keep the DSLR—that’s the Nikon—in the hotel room.

And once you get me started, I can keep going on and on about the problems of a heavy camera. However, as the interviewer digs deeper, she may find that I like the iPhone for other reasons as well. I can use a slew of software, improve my photos, use filters, create depth of field (that’s a feeling of fuzziness for objects in the distance)—and do that all before I get back to the hotel. With the Nikon, I have to get back, download the photos into a program like Lightroom, and then I’m chained to my computer, instead of enjoying my vacation.

When you dig deep into a single problem, you get the client to give you a ton of details.

You get them to describe their frustration on that one problem.
You also get a sense of what they experience with that one problem when you ask them to describe their day.
And finally, you get the consequences—a truckload of consequences.

You then take the biggest problem and put it in your headline and sub-head on your page

The frustration and the sense of what the client experiences: that needs to go in the first couple of paragraphs, followed closely by the consequences. Which leaves us with a sort of dilemma, doesn’t it? What do we do with all the rest of the problems the client brought up? Do we just get rid of them?

This takes us to the third part—what to do with the rest of the problems.

---

Element 3: What do you do with the rest of the problems?

The answer is simpler that you think.

Remember the Portabooth—that portable recording booth that you could take on the road with you? Well, it didn’t have one benefit or feature, did it? It has a series of them. And yet, the client is most interested in the biggest problem. Once you’ve solved the biggest problem, the rest of the features are really a bonus for the client. They are a nice-to-have, but not a deal breaker.

The way to use the rest of the problems brought up by the client is to see whether you want to tackle them in the first place

With the Portabooth, we could bring up the rest of the features and benefits and explain why there was a problem and how the Portabooth solves that problem. Unlike the biggest problem, where you have to go into a lot of detail, you can just use a paragraph or so to explain the rest of the main features.

You bring up the problem—for example: Assembles in seconds Just close two zippers—and describe the problem briefly, before bringing up the solution. Now you’ve taken every one of the remaining features, turned it into a problem, and brought up the solution.

But what if the problems were incredibly divergent, like in the case of the iPhone photo book?

Think about it for a second: Is the book going to show you how to shoot portraits, use manual controls, take pictures of butterflies—as well as show you how to take great food photos? If so, then hey, the product already solves the problem, so simply use the remaining features on the sales page itself.

If the problems the client brought up, don’t fit in with your product or service, then you have to ask yourself: Am I going to include them in this product or service or do I simply focus on one thing?

In Psychotactics land, we’ve focused on one thing

Instead of writing a book of 200 pages, we may restrict ourselves to 59 pages. We’ve come to the conclusion that clients want to get a skill, not more information. But if you’re selling a product like a mixer, for instance, you have a ton of features and benefits. Even so, it’s better to restrict yourself to just four-five problems being solved.

In today’s world it’s easy to get overwhelmed very quickly, and keeping the features and benefits to just a few is the best way to go. If, however, you still have a ton of features and benefits and would like to talk about them, then restrict them to bullet points. Bullet points are amazingly effective, because they form a quick summary of the product or service.

And there you have it—the series of steps you need to give your product or service the limelight it needs.

You focus on one.
One plane landing on the tarmac at a time.

It makes for a tidy airport and a very successful landing page!

So what did we cover?

1 How to choose one problem.
2 Defining why the problem is important.
3 What to do with the rest of the problems.

We looked at the racehorses—and how they bolt out all at once. It seems like a good idea to introduce all our benefits and features, but instead of benefits and features, we need to use a problem. We get to the problems, by inverting the features and benefits. And then once we have the list of problems, we get the client to choose one. Which is the client’s most pressing problem?

– Trying to write this landing page all by yourself is usually a big waste of time.

You struggle to write it and then the problems are not that which the client experiences. Plus, it’s hard to figure out the emotions the client feels. I’ll ignore my own advice only to come back later and realise what a fool I’ve been. It’s so much easier to call a client and record their experience. Or better still, take them out to lunch—because you’ll get to drink some wine too. And that’s always more fun. Take your recorder with you and make notes as well. Both are very important.

– Finding a client is always daunting.

The best kind of client is a client that’s already deeply frustrated. Someone who’s been going through a heck of a lot and can describe in great detail what they’re experiencing. I’ve lugged my camera around a lot to tell you what that feels like and why I leave the camera behind. You may think Facebook isn’t the best place, but you’ll be amazed at how much feedback you can get on Facebook. Are they the best clients ever? Of course not, but once you launch your product or service, you can always tweak your landing page.

– Go deep into the problem. Ask the questions.

– What frustrates you the most? Why does it frustrate you?
– Can you describe a day on your life?
– What are the consequences of postponing this decision? How does it make you feel?

Finally, what do you do with the rest of the problems?

If they fit in with your product or service, then simply put them in as features and benefits. Or as bullets. Talking about features and benefits, there’s a way to write them a lot better than just listing them, and here is where you can find out more about how to maximize the power of features and benefits. (https://www.psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors/)

 

Did you know that landing pages fail almost at the headline stage?

We’re all told to create landing pages.  So why do they fail?

The answer, it seems, can be found at any international airport. When planes land, they don’t land all at once. They land one at a time. Yet on a landing page, we scrunch the issues together. We throw everything at the page. That’s a mistake. And this episode tells you why it’s a mistake and how to fix it.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Element 1: How to choose one problem
Element 2: Defining why the problem is important
Element 3: What to do with the rest of the problems

Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

Find out: Why clients buy and why they don’t.
Listen: The biggest “rookie mistakes” when putting a landing page together?
Read or listen: How To Design A Sequential Landing Page—Part 2

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When you’re at a derby, you notice something interesting.

Every single horse bolts out of the gate all at once. But wait, that is not interesting, is it? That’s what the horses are supposed to do. They are expected to race madly towards the finish line so that they can win the championship. Which is fine for horses, but terrible for landing pages.

On a landing page, the first thing you present your client with is “the biggest problem”.

If you were to treat the landing page like the horse derby, then all the problems would try to outdo each other in the very first paragraph. Like horses thundering towards the finish line, they would all attempt to get ahead of each other.

And this causes a problem for the client looking at your landing page. Suddenly that client is faced with a ton of information hitting him all at once. It’s why clients leave your landing page; they become disoriented, but mostly overwhelmed.

On any sales or landing page – your job is to present the client with the biggest problem.

A client gets interested in your product or service because you’re taking on a specific problem. And it’s that problem that needs to rise to the surface. A landing page is more like a layered cake than horses at the horse derby. There needs to be a sequence of ideas presented one after another based on their importance.

And yet, this restriction causes a real headache, because most products and services solve multiple problems, don’t they?

How do you choose which problem to use? And what do you do with the rest of the problems? Do you just drop them or do use them elsewhere?

That’s what we are about to find out as we go on this journey on isolating the problem. However, it’s not a very long journey. We got three simple steps that will enable us to create a more precise landing page — and one that will get and keep the customers attention. We will find out where the customer gets confused and how to eliminate that confusion.

The three elements we will cover, are:

Element 1: How to choose one problem
Element 2: Defining why the problem is important
Element 3: What to do with the rest of the problems

When I was about ten years old, I wanted to be a pilot.

In fact, I can’t remember anyone at school who didn’t want to be a pilot. However, for most of us growing up in India, a trip to the airport was out of the question. This is because air travel was not as frequent or inexpensive as it is at this point in time. However, on the rare occasions that I did get to the airport, it was fascinating to watch the planes land and take off. But what was most interesting of all, was how the planes circled the airport.

Planes circle for a reason; Air-traffic controllers exists for a reason.

You too are an air-traffic controller when it comes to your landing page. In fact, it’s pretty ironic that it’s called a landing page in the first place, isn’t it?

Ironic, because so many of us are more than keen on making sure all those planes land at the very same time. Circling planes don’t run out of fuel in a hurry, so why not let them circle a bit while you get the most one plane safely on the tarmac!

So what are the “planes”, anyway?

The “planes” are simply the problems you’re presenting to the client. When we say problems, a negative connotation pops to mind, doesn’t it? But that’s what you’re doing on your landing—you’re bringing to light the biggest problem so that you get the attention of the client. For instance, Let’s take the headline from the product on pricing – called “dartboard pricing”.

The headline reads like this: How do you systematically raise prices without losing customers?

Did you notice the “problem” in the headline? You can feel the pain of not raising prices, can’t you? You know that you would like to raise your prices, but are holding back because you are not sure how your clients will react.

It’s possible that you will lose some of them, or maybe the entire clientele will walk out in droves. What we have done in the headline — and that little bit of explanation — is define the main “problem”. When you read that headline, it seems pretty straightforward, and you can feel the emotion and get the point.

However, you can only get the point when you look at it from the air traffic control system tower.

When you sit down to write your headline, you are suddenly faced with all these circling “planes”, and feel the need to land all of them together. An inexperienced writer will try and bring out all the problems within the first few lines — or within the first paragraph itself. As you can tell from “an air traffic controller point of view,” this is a recipe for disaster.

Element 1: The first thing we have to do is to decide which “problem” is the most powerful of them all.

It’s only the most evocative problem that will get the attention of the customer. But how do we know what is interesting to the customer? The way we go about this exercise, is to list all the solutions — or the bullet points together. We now have a bunch of bullet points or feature is that we can work through. Let’s take an example of a product that I use for recording the podcast.

If you decide to do any recording, you’re going to get a sort of echo

When you sit in a restaurant and find it extremely noisy, what you’re experiencing is the amazing ability of sound to bounce off surfaces. And to reduce the noise factor, you have to have some elements that absorb sound. A tall shelf of books behind you helps. The uneven nature of the books seems to absorb a fair amount of bounced sound. To avoid sounding like you’re recording in the bathtub, you have to either put foam tiles on your walls (like they do in professional studios) or have some noise reduction system.

My Google search led me to Harlan Hogan’s Porta-Booth-Pro

Yes, it costs a whopping $350 to buy the Porta-Booth, but hey, I would rather cook a six-course meal for two weeks in a row than put a nail in the wall. To get some foam tiles, put them up, worry about disfiguring the wall—and getting random results—that didn’t sound like my idea of fun. So I got the Porta Booth. But wait, this isn’t a story of why I bought the Porta-Booth. What we’re looking at is how the benefits and features can be turned around to help you create your headline—and your first few paragraphs of text.

When we look at the Porta-Booth-Pro on Amazon, it reads like a lot of Amazon pages

There are a few bullet points and you have to make a decision to buy a $350 product based on these bullet points. And like horses at the derby, all four (or five) bullet points seem to dart out simultaneously. Let’s take a look at the Amazon page and see what we find.

– Rugged 600 denier fabric / Only 7 pounds / Air travels as checked or carry-on luggage
– 120% larger than the Porta-Booth Plus / Unique sonic stage “Auditorium” design.
– All interior surfaces treated with Auralex Acoustics Studiofoam #1 choice recording pros worldwide
– 2 way zippered bottom and rear slots for shot-gun mics cables boom arms. Corner straps add rigidity
– Anti-sway strap & Booth Lifter for boom arm mounting. Assembles in seconds Just close two zippers.

Notice the derby syndrome? What are you going to choose as a prospective client?

If you’ve already decided the problem that needs solving, it’s still hard to figure out which of the bullet points remotely get your attention. If you look closely, it’s part of the third bullet point—and slinking at the back of the sentence. So let me light up the importance of the third point for you. It says #1 choice of recording pros worldwide.

That’s it? That’s all that’s required to get the attention of the customer?

When you look closely, you realise what is happening when that specific solution or benefit is turned into a problem. As a solution or bullet point, the fact that it’s a number one choice of recording professionals worldwide doesn’t stand out. But when you turn it into a problem, it immediately gets the attention of the prospective client.

The problem would read like this: when you’re on the road, do you end up in the closet trying to get a great recording? The subhead would be: when you’re a voice-over artist, only the best sound will do for a recording studio.

We’ve all tried to reduce the noise by propping up pillows, searching desperately for rooms with thick curtains and occasionally even clambering into the closet. All of these techniques work, but there are terribly inconvenient when you are a professional. Instead, the Porta-booth Is like the equivalent of a mobile recording studio, reducing all those unwanted sounds and annoyances.

However, even a very quiet room—and this applies to homes and apartments, too—can sound like a “big, boomy box” to your microphone, instead of the tight sound booth quality we are used to in purpose-built studios. That’s because in addition to picking up the sound of your voice directly, the microphone also “hears” the ambient sound of the entire space. And this becomes the room from “hell”.

Instead of battling with pillows and getting stuck in dark closets, here’s what many professionals do on the road—they take their studio as carry-on luggage—no matter where they go.

See how different you feel about that very same bullet?

The Problem—the biggest problem is the key to getting the client’s attention.

Yet, how do you choose the biggest problem?

Most of us are too close to our product or service and in many cases, can’t see why clients choose us. We think we know—and that’s what we put on our sales page, but often (more often than not) we’re hopelessly wrong. For instance, let’s look at the page on ‘Black Belt Presentations’.

That’s an extremely powerful product because it shows you why you fall asleep when most presenters get on stage. It shows you how to design your slides, how to control the audience, how to structure your presentation—and yet, look at the headline. The biggest problem says:

When you make a presentation, wouldn’t it be amazing to completely control the room—without turning anyone off?

Then the subhead says: (It’s rough enough to have to speak to an audience, but aren’t you always in awe of presenters who can bring the room to life? How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action)?

Notice how excited you were by that headline and sub-head?

It’s not exciting, is it? Because instead of doing a target profile interview; instead of going out there and understanding what clients want, we’ve continued to sell the product as if everyone is doing predestinations on stage. And yes, for years since its release, the product has been bought by people doing presentations.

But the world has changed in the sense that many of us do webinars. We do podcasts, don’t we? And ‘Black Belt Presentations‘ is perfect for both—but more so for webinars. A reliable webinar software like GotoMeeting costs over $250 a year, and yet if your presentation isn’t amazing, what have you lost? You’ve lost the money you pay for the software, the time, the effort—and all because your presentation isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.

Now webinars aren’t news

They’ve been around for ages. Many of our clients could tell me right off that they rarely, if ever, get on stage. Yet, they’re likely to give a webinar to a client or be part of a webinar series. And guess what? The lack of focus in that headline and sub-head—it’s not only causing us to sell less product but also depriving you—the client—of increasing your sales, improving your credibility. And how did I figure out that the headline needs to be changed?

I got an e-mail from a client. He told me how he used it for his webinar and how it got the audience to respond amazingly well. And there I am, trying to procrastinate. I know I should get to changing that headline; that sub-heads; the first paragraph—and I’m betting you have the same affliction. You want to put off talking to your client and then making those quick changes.

But we’re circling the airport, aren’t we? We still haven’t got to the point where you know how to pick the biggest problem. So how do you do that? How do you pick the biggest problem, the sub-head and the first few paragraphs of your text?

The answer as we know—doesn’t lie with you

It lies with the client—your best client—or possibly any random person. How on earth does this make sense? It makes sense to approach a great client, but why approach a random person? What would you expect to find with any random person?

This takes us to our second part and: What’s one of the biggest “rookie mistakes” when putting a landing page together? 

Why do we struggle to write?

The ONE word? What’s that? And why does it play such an incredibly important part in article writing? That’s what we explore in this second part of what I’ve learned in article writing.

We also look at why we struggle to write—Yes, we seem to get in our own way most of the time.
How do we get others to help us? Find out more here.

=========

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness
Part 2: Why when we sit down to write, we often get into a state of randomness
Part 3: How can you be sure you have the right ‘One Word’ ?

Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resource

5000bc: If you suspect that your business could be bringing in a lot more revenue but you don’t have a clue how to make that happen without hype or hassle, 5000bc is a must-have resource.
Listen or read: Part 1 of Three Interesting Things I Know About Writing

==============

Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness

---

ALMOST half of the goals scored in football—or soccer—are virtually random! So says Martin Lames of the Technical University of Munich.

Raphael Honigstein’s new book, “Das Reboot” talks about the non-random side of football. It talks about how a well-prepared team can rise from the depths and win the match, even the tournament. And especially if that team is Germany—which is considered to be a world-class team, but was at the bottom of the football heap in 2000.

Germany’s randomness arose from complacency

In the European Championships in 2000, they failed to win a single game—and even lost to the English team (which was considered pretty terrible in the first place). And yet, 14 years later, Germany would rout Brazil 7-1 and make its way to the ultimate prize defeating Argentina in the World Cup final.

What Germany did—and did effectively—was reduce the randomness. Right after the 2000 Euro disaster, Germany’s top professional clubs were ordered to set up academies—and this was a considerable cost to the clubs, so they actively resisted the directive. Ten years later, this move proved to be a boon saving the clubs millions of dollars in transfer fees, because more than half the players in the top division were academy graduates.

In short, the moment they got rid of their randomness, the German team started to see results. A similar concept applies to article writing.

When we sit down to write, we often get into a state of randomness

And you know it’s random because you can’t sum up the article in one word or one idea. The moment you have one idea—it becomes that wall around your article. You know exactly what you’re going to write about, what are the sub-topics under that main topic—and how to get the stories and case studies to support the piece. For instance, this section is about why the article can’t be random. Instead of starting the article with a boring line that says: “The worst thing you can do is write a random article”, the article starts with a story of disaster—well, a disaster for the German football team, anyway.

Yet, most writers never sit down and write down their one word because they’re not sure if it’s the right word

There is no right word. The word is what you want to communicate. In the introduction, the story was about the journey. Well, that’s where the story of Isambard Brunel came to light. The second part was about the coach—and we ran right into Wolfgang Amadeus’ father—Johann Leopold Mozart. The third part was about why writing for yourself is so very hard, and the two female conductors told their story. And finally, we have the story of randomness—and the German football team.

When you have a single word to focus on—or a single idea—it’s not hard to get stories

But it also forces you to stay within the parameters of that single word. I have to stay within the walls of randomness as this part of the article unfolds. It becomes my binding agent. And ironically, the one word can be picked randomly.

The one word in this piece could have been completely different. It could have been about “binding”—and the story would be different; the angle different. It could have been about “boundaries” and yet again we’d see different stories and a different angle?

But isn’t it cheating to decide one word and then write an article?

No, it’s not. Put yourself in the shoes of noted author and TV personality, David Attenborough. Do you think the TV crew goes into the jungle, finds whatever footage they can find, before returning to write the script? That would be a nightmare because you’d have to go through hundreds of mismatched shots to build a coherent documentary.

As radio personality Ira Glass describes: “You write the story, and then you go out and ask the questions. You have the idea in your mind; the questions down on paper long before you get to the person you’re interviewing. That way you get a coherent structure. And the same concept applies to article writing.

If you simply sit down to write an article, you’re doing what a lot of crummy writers do

Sure, you can pick the one word or one idea randomly, but that becomes your binding agent; your wall; your barrier. Now you have focus. The direction of your article is no longer random. You follow the lead of the one word, and your article isn’t a mish-mash of ideas thrown randomly on paper.

You become like the German football association-focused and getting results every single time!

=====
So let’s summarise what we’ve learned.

Article writing is a journey. And you can limp into the harbour or arrive in great shape.

To sail into the harbour in glory, I’ve learned three things over the years. The first is you need a coach—this can be a course, a book, a workshop—but you need that coach. And that coach needs to be a teacher, not a preacher. Then you need an editor. Everyone needs an editor. I have five or six—but even a single editor makes a world of a difference.

The second element is one of writing for yourself.

It’s a head banging, frustrating process. The best way out of this mess is to get questions. I get questions from clients in 5000bc, from e-mails, from consulting, from almost everywhere. But they’re not random questions on the Internet. They’re from a person—a person I know—and this makes all the difference. I don’t have a cocktail party in my brain because I’m focused on answering the questions of the client. My entire mood, mode and method changes when I’m focused on them, instead of myself.

And finally, we have the one word.

Without the one word, you’re in random land. Define what you want to say in a word, and then look for examples that fit that word. The only thing that’s random is the choice of the one word itself. You can choose any word or idea, but once you do, everything in the article must align to that one word or idea.

And that’s what I’ve learned—three things I know about article writing. That it’s a journey—and Isambard Brunel would have been proud to be on this crazy, exhilarating journey!

You can also listen to or read this episode: Part 1 of Three Interesting Things I Know About Writing. (http://www.psychotactics.com/three-writing-strategies/)

Writing isn't easy-but it isn't hard either

The key to writing is to know what strategy to follow, so the road isn't bumpy all year long. This episode isn't about going down memory lane. Instead, it's practical advice I wish I'd had—Like how to choose the right coach or the right editor.

Writing isn't all about you. Writing depends on the coach, the editor and the client. This podcast is about a strategy that's not commonly expressed and approaches writing in a more philosophical, yet practical way.

In this episode Sean talks about

Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial
Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided
Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness

Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

5000bc: There is a lot of information on the internet. You can read and learn from it. But in 5000bc the discussion is about you. About your specific problem. And how to go about your specific situation. And Sean is around answering all your questions. Find out more here—5000bc. www.5000bc.com

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

Hi, this is Sean D’Souza and you are listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast.

Who is considered the second greatest British person of all time?

When the BBC did a poll in 2002, they expected somehow that Winston Churchill would be in that top ten list. But there in the second position was someone whose name was reasonably unfamiliar. A name that didn’t belong in this century, nor from the previous century. A man who was born in 1806, somewhat mysteriously found his way to the second spot.

His name? Isambard Kingdom Brunel—one of the most famous engineering minds of all time. And Brunel built a magnificent ship—and it was called the Great Western

At the time of its construction, the Great Western was the longest ship in the world.

There she sat at 236 feet, with one stunning goal in mind—to cross the Atlantic. The trip was to start from Bristol, in the UK, and terminate in New York city in the United States. The goal was audacious because no one believed in the commercial viability of such a long journey. In 1838, despite many technological developments, shipbuilders presumed that a ship had limited capability. They believed that no ship could carry both—commercial cargo as well as enough fuel—and make the long journey across the Atlantic.

Brunel was a person who thought differently about long journeys

For one, his heart was set on engineering. He developed a theory—a sort of formula that involved the amount a ship could carry and how a ship could be built so that it faced a lot less resistance from the ocean. Armed with his formula he set about building the Great Western, but then added more technological improvements.Instead of a ship, made mostly of wood. Brunel added bolts; he added diagonal iron reinforcements. He increased the strength of the keel and carried four masts for sails.

And so the ship—the Great Western—embarked on her maiden voyage from Bristol with 610,000 kilos of coal, cargo and seven passengers.

The Great Western on her maiden voyage to New York—powered by steam. A feat never achieved before!

Despite all the plans and engineering, Brunel’s ship hadn’t got off to a great start

In the 1830’s there was a competition to be the first to cross the Atlantic powered by steam alone. The Great Westernshould have been well on its way, but ran into difficulties before leaving Bristol. There was a fire on the ship, a minor fire, but Brunel was hurt in the fire and wasn’t able to make the journey. As a result of the fire, 50 paying passengers cancelled their trip. Finally, the ship made it out of Bristol’s harbour with just seven people on board. What was worse is that it was four whole days behind it’s competitor—another steam ship called the Sirius.

The Sirius left as scheduled, leaving the fire-stricken Great Western still in dock. Now, the Great Western and her crew were well and truly behind—and Sirius would get all the glory.

But Sirius’ trip was anything but glorious

Along the way to New York, Sirius ran into serious trouble. They started to run out of fuel. Her crew was forced to burn cabin furniture, spare yards—even an entire mast because they ran out of fuel. And they took 19 days to get across the Atlantic. The Great Western, in comparison, arrived like the queen of the seas. She took just 15 days and five hours and with a third—that’s almost 200,000 tons of coal to spare.

This is a story about journeys—a writing journey, in particular.

I didn’t want to write. My story is one of being nudged and pushed into writing. When we started out Millionbucks.co.nz (yes, that was our pathetic first shot at a brand name), I was writing for a fledging portal called MarketingProfs.com. Back in 2000, everyone was a fledging—and there wasn’t as much content online, as there is at this moment in time. Which is why the founder of MarketingProfs, Allen Weiss, would e-mail me and ask me for an article. This meant I had to write. I didn’t want to write, but I didn’t have much of an option. We were new in the business—and had just moved to New Zealand. The only way I could get any credibility in the marketplace was to get better known.

And how you can have two sets of people—one battling almost vainly against the headwinds, while the other reaches its destination with amazing grace. When you embark on the task of writing, the headwinds start almost immediately. I know because I ran smack into trouble when I started writing articles.

Every article was a chore; something I detested and yet I persisted. Over the years, I’ve learned that sheer determination and persistence is not enough. That engineering and planning make a big difference to the journey.

And on that journey, there are three elements that stand out…

Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial
Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided
Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness

Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial

Whenever the topic of a child-genius is brought up, one name rises above them all: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This kid, we are told, was a prodigy. Before the age of six, he was already composing music.

Most kids barely are barely finding their way around school at this age.

And yet, we are told, Mozart was already competent at playing the piano and the violin. He’s also rumoured to have transcribed entire scores of music on a single hearing. How much of this is true, and how much was stage-craft, we’ll never know. But one thing we know for certain—Mozart had a coach.

You don’t think of a coach when you hear the name of Mozart, do you?

Yet, Mozart’s coach was his dad—Johann Georg Leopold Mozart. And Leopold Mozart wasn’t your average-let’s-play-music-dad. He was already a famous author on violin playing and celebrated enough to be the deputy director of music to the Archbishop of Salzburg. Plus there was Nannerl, Mozart’s sister. When Nannerl was just seven, her father decided to give her piano lessons because he believed she was gifted. So there was Mozart—baby Mozart—surrounded by all these incredible musicians—but primarily—coaches.

Without coaching, you can go far—but it takes a lot of time

When you read studies that quote the concept of 10,000 hours to mastery, what fails to emerge is the factor of mistakes. As a beginner, you’re expected to make mistakes. You aren’t aware when or where you’re making the mistakes. All you feel is this frustration—this resistance that ships often felt back in the day of Isambard Brunel. Something is wrong with the engineering, but you’re not sure what to fix. And if you can’t figure out where the mistake lies, the journey ends up with furniture and masts being burnt up—so that you can complete some sort of journey

Coaching is valuable—that we already know—what’s hard is knowing how to find a great coach

For me, this process of finding a coach has been streamlined to a single factor: skill vs. information. I call it “preacher vs. teacher”. Is the coach going to give you more information, or is he/she going to give you a skill? Alex Blumberg, ex-Planet Money, now co-founder of Gimlet Media is a coach. How do I know? Because in the world of telling radio stories, Alex doesn’t pound you with needless information. Instead, he has a method, even a formula of sorts. For example, when telling a story, he shows you how to evaluate the story.

Let’s say you’re writing a story about homeless people—how would you use the formula?

The formula runs like this: The story is about X, and it’s interesting because of Y.
So the story is about “homeless people” and it’s interesting because “20% of them are college graduates”.

Immediately that stands out from a line that goes like this: The story is about homeless people, and it’s interesting because “many have mental problems”. What Blumberg teaches us is how to eliminate the vagueness and lack of interest in the story. In his courses, he goes about things systematically, taking about editing, music, etc., in the world of podcasting. And you end up not full of information, but with specific skills.

When you look at Mozarts, the Phelps, the Brunels of the world—they all had coaches.

Coaches that enabled them to find their mistakes and move forward. And in article writing, going it your own way is the slowest boat to anywhere. I know because I took that boat. I took that boat in the field of cartooning; in the field of article writing too. And it took me ages to figure out the connectors, the “First 50 Words,” the endings, the beginnings, the structure—all of that misery could have been reduced if I had a coach. A coach that had a system; who would point out the errors—and get me quickly down the road.

To me, of all the skills you have to learn as an entrepreneur, article writing stands out because you have to have a precise structure when writing. You have to be interesting; you have to tell stories; you have to stand out in a sea of content.

Which is why, even today, I will go to workshops, buy a course, read books—because that’s how you get better at what you do.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that without a coach, you’re floundering even when you’re pretty good. To get outstanding at what you do, you have to find Johann Georg Leopold Mozart to help you along.

And you’re going to need not just a coach, but an editor as well

You can be the best writer in the world, and you’re going to need an editor. I have five or six, at the very least; sometimes more. There’s David, Pamela, Teresa, Renuka, Alia, Philip—and Zack (I can hear Zack’s voice here). And every one of these editors come from a different angle; they have a different perspective. They force me to relook at what I’ve written so that I fit their needs. I remember the time I was writing a book, and I’d written more than ¾ of the book when I showed it to Philip.

But Philip wasn’t impressed

“All your books, they show me how to do things,” he said. This one is all information. Nice information, but not a lot I can implement.” There’s no use fighting these editors. And I’ve tried. There was a time when I went “hand-to-hand” in a battle with Pamela. She wanted me to chop out two whole pages from my pre-sell book. Those two pages were about how crummy marketers use pre-sell.

Pamela wasn’t interested in reading about the other marketers—even though no names were mentioned. I fought back. I kept it down to a page. She came back and told me to get rid of it. I kept half a page. No dice. I tried a paragraph—and then finally buckled in. Pamela was right all the time, but I couldn’t see it at the start. I was too busy and too in love with what I’d written.

But we’re talking about articles, not books. So would I do this for every article?

Going back in time, yes, it’s what I did for every article. One of our earliest clients, Chris Ellington, would pore through all my work and shred it a bit more than I liked.

It made me a better writer.

But even now, I’ll post a series in 5000bc.com, and there are questions; lots of questions. The questions are a form of edit. They show what’s missing from the series and what needs a repair job. Plus, alongside every article we have a “what bugs me” on the website. So years after an article is written, you can have retrospective feedback.

This is my first learning in article writing

That at all times you need a coach, finding structural mistakes, helping you to get better at the core skill of writing. And then once you’ve written, you need someone to pick out the holes and make the work get to the level it deserves.

Yet, to get to complete the article, you have to write it. And there’s a big barrier in the way.
It’s you.
You are the barrier.

Why are you the barrier? This takes us to Element 2.

Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided

Simone Young is a world-renowned conductor from Australia. Alondra de la Parra is also a world-class conductor—from the other part of the planet—Mexico. In a BBC podcast interview featuring the two conductors, there is a moment when they describe fear—Fear and anxiety.

Young pipes in first. “I’m always anxious before I get on stage,” she says.

“And that’s because I’m thinking about myself. The moment I get on stage, I start thinking about the audience, and my fear goes away.” At which point, de la Parra chimes in. She talks about the “cocktail party” in your brain. About how everyone is seemingly talking about you, and they’re not saying good things. The “cocktail party” chatter never seems to end, or so it seems.

This is what you’d call “writing for yourself”—or at least what I call “writing for myself.”

When I write an article, my first act is to ask a client for a question. If they ask more than one question, I’m a lot happier. If they have a list, I’m the happiest. Why? Because now I can stop the silly “cocktail party” in my brain. This cocktail party pops up every single time, no matter how good you get at the craft of article writing. Most times, I’m just writing an article, but sometimes that article becomes a book.

Like the time I wrote the book on “Dartboard Pricing”, for instance

I couldn’t figure out whether it was good enough. I couldn’t understand why anyone would buy the book when I’d written so many articles and done so many podcasts on the topic. Of course, I knew—I knew it’s an entirely different experience reading a structured book vs. random articles.

But even so, you think about the “cocktail party” a lot.

I had no such trouble when coming up with answers for a future book on “The Three Prong System.”

A client and friend, Paul Wolfe, decided to do a series of three interviews with me on the topic of how I take breaks; how I manage to take a three-month vacation; how we handle vocation and vacation. And Wolfe had a series of questions—some prepared in advance, and some that organically sprouted from the discussion in progress. It’s not like I haven’t tried to write the book before. I’ve created an outline, started on the project and then abandoned it repeatedly. And it’s not because of a lack of skill, either. I can easily write the book—possibly in under a week.

The problem is that I’d have to clamber into my brain to write that book.

When Wolfe asks me the questions, I’m not trying to think about me. I’m thinking about the person asking the question—and occasionally other clients too. And the interview brings up a wealth of information—practical information too! When a client (or interviewer in this case) asks the questions, the cocktail party syndrome disappears, and it’s replaced with a focus on the audience. To write quickly and write a lot, I need questions—a lot of questions.

But where do we get the questions?

I get most of my questions in 5000bc. Clients ask a ton of questions and get articles in response (yes, I know, it’s a mad system). However, I also get a lot of questions through the podcast, e-mail, through consulting (I rarely consult, but every time I do, it’s amazing). Questions com from chats, after I make a presentation, and through just listening and reading.

What I’ve learned is that I can’t just look for a random person asking a question online. That doesn’t fire me up at all. Instead, I have to have a specific person asking me a specific question. And when I’m writing the answer, I’m thinking of that person. Which is what gets me to talk a walk in those shoes and write with far more fluidity than if I sat down with a blank screen staring back at me.

But where do we get the questions?

We all wonder: Hasn’t this question been answered before? Aren’t there fifty thousand and three variations of this question already on the Internet? And the answer is NO. No one is going to answer the question like you do. For instance, there are whole books on the topic of focus. But my angle on focus—and focus in a distracted world—is different.

I take three months off every year, still meet our “fixed revenue” goals and still manage to write books, conduct courses, do workshops, paint, cook—in short, do whatever I want, despite the distractions. So my angle is always going to be unique; my voice is going to be unique. And yours will be too. Your voice, your tone, your language—even the structure of your answer will be different. The question may have been asked a million times before, but the answer—your answer—is different.

And you get questions from many sources, but you have to listen—that’s what I’ve learned.

When others speak, they’re asking you the questions and doing so in many forms. You’ve got to listen, answer those questions and then keep a writing pad right next to you. Why a writing pad and not a recording? Well, have a recording, but the writing pad is vital because it captures the gist of the conversation. Then, while the ideas are still fresh in your head, you sit down and write.

And the orchestra in your brain begins to play.

You may not be a great writer yet. You may struggle as I did.

But even in the middle of that struggle, you’ll notice the emotion. You’ll realise that everyone has gone home from the cocktail party, but you’re not quite alone. You’ve got words on paper.

Writing for yourself is disgustingly difficult.

It’s hard to reach into your brain and work out how to write an article, a report or a book.
But write for others and you get the feeling that Young and de la Parra talk about.

Suddenly, you feel free.

======

A coach, an editor. They help you along.
The client and her questions—they bring out the orchestra in your writing.
And there’s the article itself. It is also a guide—a big guide.

So how do you use the article to stay on course? It’s a concept called the “One Idea.”

This takes us to the last element. Click here to continue reading about—Three Interesting Things I Know About Writing-Part 2 
http://www.psychotactics.com/writing-for-yourself/