How do you know whether your business idea is good or bad?

Is there a system of validation for your info-products, courses and workshops, or do you just go with the wisdom of the crowds? This episode shows you exactly what causes one business idea to fail and the other one to succeed.

This series is about the validation of your business ideas. We will explore what  is important when you’re about to embark on a new business idea.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How to distinguish between your own voice of fear, and voice of reason
Part 2: Good ideas can't be left on the bench; they need to be consumed right away
Part 3: The big picture is usually the biggest problem

Click here to read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/validate-idea/

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Imagine if you invented a set of tyres and they were ridiculed.

That is precisely what happened to a vet from Belfast, Ireland. This vet, named John Boyd Dunlop, watched with a bit of angst as his son, Johnnie, as he bounced madly while riding on a bike on a cobblestone street. The solid rubber tyres were clearly not suitable and he set about inventing the first commercially viable pneumatic tyres.

But then they made fun of him. They called the pneumatics, “pudding tyres”.

What would you do if you were in Dunlop’s place?

We know that Dunlop didn’t give up. He didn’t give into the ridicule, but partnered instead with Irish industrialist W. H. Du Cros to create the Dunlop tyre factory both in Ireland and across the world. But what if Dunlop backed away? What if he wasn’t so sure if his invention would be a success?

This series is about the validation of ideas. And in three parts we explore three chunky bits that are important when you’re about to embark on a “pudding sort of idea”.

And here’s what we’ll cover:
-How to distinguish between your own voice of fear, and voice of reason
-How to go about validating your idea to give yourself the best chance of success
-Tips for getting over analysis paralysis

Part 1: How do you distinguish between your own voice of fear, and voice of reason?

If you buy really well-made bread, it goes through a cycle.

At first, it's delicious. It's likely to be crusty on the outside, soft on the inside. But keep it on your kitchen bench for a few days, and it starts to get hard. In a week, it's likely to get rock-hard and possibly get mouldy. The question to ask yourself at this point is: Did you buy bad bread?

And the answer is self-evident

The bread wasn't bad, was it? But if you take the best loaf of bread, made by the most dedicated baker, and you keep it outside for days, you're going to get an almost identical result. This is true for good ideas as well. No matter how great your idea happens to be at the start, the hardness will set in and so will the fungi.

Good ideas can't be left on the bench; they need to be consumed right away

However, this is where things start to go horribly wrong; only we feel like it's going just right. The way things unfold is through testing, research and working out if the market needs our product. Once we've gone around the research block many times, we then wonder if we have anything new to bring to the table. And as we're doing all of this evaluation, the market marches on. The more we research, the more we get stuck in your own trap to the point where the only thing we can do, is to scout for yet another idea. Fear takes over, and we don't know what to do next.

But why are we fearful in the first place?

We're fearful because we can't see the big picture. When you look at most business owners, they don't look confused and composed. They seem to have all these projects going; they appear to be attending events, speaking, turning out courses and books. In short, they seem to have everything well under control. You, on the other hand, aren't able to see so far into the distance, let alone figure out a way to get there. And this lack of the ability to see way into that future, plus the ongoing intimidation from seemingly successful people, puts you in a position of great angst.

The big picture is usually the biggest problem

Entrepreneurs who succeed rarely see the big picture. They're not entirely clueless, either. They know where they want to go, but it's still, at best, a hazy view of the future. What they tend to look at closely is what's in front of them. To understand the analogy, think of yourself in a car. Let's say you have to drive from Auckland to Wellington, a route of almost 8 hours of hard driving. Do you know what Wellington looks like at this moment? It would hardly hassle you because you're focused on the road right in front of you. Your only piece of research is a sort of GPS system that will more or less ensure you don't get lost along the way.

But wait, you already have your GPS system

You did the research; you read the books, you know how to move forward, so why are you still stuck? If we were to go back to the road analogy, you wouldn't be stuck. And that's because you're not figuring out whether you'll have a puncture 24 km from now. You're not worried that there's other competition; other cars on the road. What you're entirely focused on is the road right in front of you. If you get tired or confused, you stop for a break. If you get hungry, a meal does the trick. All along the way, you're just looking at what's in front of you.

Which is completely the opposite of what you expect when you're getting started with a project

A project somehow needs to have all your ducks lined up in a row, or you simply drive around in circles. But what if there were a way to break up a project into smaller bits? When we think of a business or project let's drop the big, seven-silly-figure plan, shall we? Let's just focus on two core elements. The first point is where we're going to get our clients. The second is where we're going to get them to spend their time.

So where do we get our clients?

If you just build a website, no one will come. Despite being online and having a rock-solid reputation, almost no one comes to our website out of the blue. Instead, they come from somewhere else. When we first started our business, that somewhere else was a portal called “Marketingprofs.com”. We'd publish an article at the portal and clients would head to our website after reading the article. When we'd go to a local, tiny event, and speak for about 30 minutes, prospects would turn into clients and buy an e-book, and then a small percentage would sign up for consulting.

In every instance, what you're doing isn't this big, long range planning. All you're doing is this tiny task.

Successful entrepreneurs are like successful comedians

You only get to see the final one or two-hour show, but you never get to see all the small parts along the way. Comedians painstakingly put forward their jokes, only to see many fall flat. Some make the cut, and they go into the final show. Entrepreneurs do something similar. They make a move here, a move there and they keep going forward. By the time you see that fancy course appearing on Facebook or on their websites, they've made dozens, possibly hundreds of little moves to get to that point. And then, if they're good, as in really good, they keep working on their plans and refining it to the sharpest possible degree.

The road right in front of you isn't that scary

When you consider the entire journey, the possibility of a breakdown, deteriorating weather, and crazy drivers, suddenly it seems like a pretty good idea to put some tea on the boil and stay home. But with every experience you have of staying home, you create a whole new layer of fear. After a while, it seems totally impossible to go ahead with any plan and research and further learning seems to be the only consolation prize.

Let me tell you a personal story I've told many times before

I know how to create an ePub file. How do I know this? Because I've been through many hours of practice. When ePub first came out many years ago, I was keen to learn it, and so I followed the tutorial and made an ePub file. But it was a dummy file because I didn't want it to be anything a client would hold. When InDesign started to dig deeper into ePub, I went through tutorial after tutorial, in version after version of ePub and InDesign. To this day, I haven't created a single Psychotactics document in ePub.

You can see the problem, can't you?

I'm trying to create this perfect book, this perfect product. Instead of simply planning out a simple ePub, I'm looking at the big picture, and it's stifling me. All the information and all the research isn't helping at all. The ePub project is many years old, and it's like a loaf of bread that's been sitting there the whole time. You can barely believe your eyes when you read this information, can you? You'd think, what's the problem with a measly epub file? Why can't you just give it a shot? Who cares if it turns out right or wrong?

Same question is headed your way

Who cares if the idea is right or wrong?
How about taking on this tiny project and conquering the fear?

And if it fails, you'll figure out a way to fix it. But if you don't start, you know that idea will get harder by the minute.

Next Up: How do you go about validating your idea to give yourself the best chance of success?

 

 

How does tolerance play a role in small business?

It might not seem like tolerance is the root for success, but if you dig deeper, you'll find that small businesses struggle without the core concepts of tolerance.

So how does tolerance play a part in something like a successful artwork, or music, or the next product or course you produce? Let's find out in this podcast.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Tolerance for Success and Failure
Part 2: The Tolerance to Learn
Part 3: The Tolerance for the Long Haul

Read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/lack-tolerance-effect/

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In September 2013, Renuka and I were headed to Cape Town, South Africa.

Whenever we leave, we always ask our nieces, Marsha and Keira what they'd like as gifts. Keira was pretty clear about her gift. “Bring me an elephant”, she said emphatically. Now Keira was just four at the time, and an elephant seemed like a pretty plausible gift.

She wasn't taking no for an answer, even when we told her that the elephant might not fit in her house. But then I brought up a point that stopped her cold in her tracks. After she had heard what I had to say, she wasn't keen on the elephant anymore.

So what did I tell her?

I said, the elephant is a big animal and all animals poo. The larger the animal, the greater the volume of poo.

Keira didn't need much convincing

She wanted nothing to do with the elephant or the poo for that matter. And this is the battle we have to deal with every single day. We all want our businesses to grow bigger than ever before. What we don't always think of, is poo.

The bigger the business, the bigger the poo

And in business terms, you could call the poo, tolerance. You need an enormous amount of tolerance to keep the business going. Which is why people struggle so much when they get into a business. They don't see the factor of tolerance needed to keep the business going.

Let's look at the factor of tolerance in three shades, shall we?

—The Tolerance for Success and Failure
—The Tolerance to Learn
—The Tolerance for the Long Haul

Part 1: The Tolerance for Success and Failure

In August 2015, a musical made its debut on Broadway

It wasn't just any old musical. A few months earlier in February of that year, the off-Broadway engagement was totally sold out. And in 2016 itself, it received 16 Tony nominations and won 11.

That musical goes by the name of Hamilton; a hip-hop musical is about the life of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution. And the musical's producer, Jeffrey Seller is passionate about the need for tolerance.

“People don't have the tolerance”, says Seller who's seen more than his share of failures. “The tolerance for anxiety, fear, bewilderment and pain.

In the book “Originals” by Adam Grant, there's a list of high profile failure

You're likely to have heard about William Shakespeare's work in plays such as Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. But it's normal when you fail to recognise names of plays such as Timon of Athens or All's Well That Ends Well. Those two in particular rank among the worst of his plays and have been considered to be completely underbaked. But that's not unusual, is it? A writer does bad work and then produces better work as time goes on.

What's interesting about these plays is that he produced them in the same five-year window as some of his best plays. Shakespeare is known for his amazing plays, but most people fail to realise that he turned out a grinding 37 plays and 154 sonnets. His tolerance for getting into the heart of failure and getting out of it, was, as it turns out, consistent with any other successful person.

Hamilton basks in incredible success today, but its producer Jeffrey Seller clearly defines success through the eyes of failure.

Success feels good. Success is in its own way easy. It’s easy on my stomach and in my heart. It is also true that failure; the feelings that failure evokes are so much worse than the positive feelings that success evokes. I’ve heard of tennis players who say, “I never feel as good winning as badly I feel when I’m losing.”

“You can't cherry pick”

We must not cherry-pick because it will never get it right. If I lose money in one show and then say, “Oh, I better not do it in the next,” I’m going to be in big trouble if the next one’s the hit. I’ll give you an example. I did an Opera on Broadway in 2002.

We did La Bohème on Broadway in Italian. It was a beautiful production conceived and directed by the filmmaker Baz Luhrmann. I had persuaded this group of Korean investors who I’ve done some other business with, to invest a whopping million dollars. They lose 900 of the million. I asked them to invest in this little show with puppets called Avenue Q. They passed.

Avenue Q goes on to make over $30 million of profit for all of its investors. They cherry-picked. They used the fear that losing money in La bohème generated to guide their next decision.

Picasso didn't cherry pick

We look at Picasso's greatest paintings but what we don't see is the sheer volume that's almost too well hidden. By the time he died in 1973, Pablo Picasso has done over 1800 paintings, 1200 sculptures, 2800 ceramics and a staggering 12,000 drawings. Only fifteen or sixteen of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings are said to exist, yet in his surviving notebooks alone, we have a staggering 7000 detailed drawings.

It's called elephant poo.

If you want to get the elephant you get the poo as well. And success, the success so many of us crave, is just a tonne of fighting through a mountain range of poo. In reality, success is far less frequent that failure. “The tolerance for anxiety, fear, bewilderment and pain.

But what's really happening when we get into this failure zone?

What's happening is we're rooting out the mistakes. Talent, or success, is just a reduction of errors. Mozart is known for a few great works, but he barrelled through 600 of them before his death. Beethoven was no slouch either, producing over 650 in his lifetime. Mahatma Gandhi tried an endless number of ways to get the British out of India when he finally hit upon the “Salt March” in 1930 that would set the momentum for Indian Independence.

The tolerance for fear is the greatest one them all. But it doesn't stop there. We need the tolerance to learn and learn progressively.

Part 2: The Tolerance to Learn

I know, you're probably laughing at me because this system sounds so ridiculous

And it may or may not be ridiculous. It's hard to measure what you can remember, but after years of trying to speed things up, I realised one important fact. I need to slow down. I need to have a higher tolerance for learning.

So what is a higher tolerance for learning?

In my opinion, it's a method of slowing down, rather than speeding up. When I get a book to read, I rarely ever read the book. I'll read a bit, and then dig in my Moleskine bag for my pen and Moleskine diary (yes, I am a Moleskine nut). And then I'll make notes or mind maps.

Not every book makes the cut, but when I get a good book, like “Originals” by Adam Grant, I'll read the book, listen to the audio version, make notes and then write articles and possibly do a podcast too. So why go through all of this trouble? It's the opposite of the TV dinner.

It's like a chef that lavishes time and effort to get a meal ready for dinner. It allows me to get to the very core of what's being stated in the book. Or at least that's what I think.

My memory is like a sieve, sometimes

I remember going back to listen to an audio book after many years. I knew I'd listened to it because it was on my Audible app. I did remember some of the material, but even so, it was like a brand new book. I understood the book at such a great depth, and it astounded me that I hadn't figured out what the author was saying in my earlier reading.

This level of tolerance for reading is not common because it seems so very trendy to say you read many books. To this day if you go to the About Us page on the Psychotactics website, you'll see how I proudly mention that I read 100 books a year. Well, that's hardly possible now, at this slow pace, is it?

Don't get me wrong; I crave books

Just like someone longing for a great meal, I look at all the books I've missed, and there's a definite sense of regret. Even so, it's important to have a tolerance for slow learning. And with slow learning, it's also important to cross-pollinate your learning (which in turn makes it seem even slower). This cross-pollination means you're reading a series of books that often have little resemblance to each other.

At this moment, I'm reading “The Man Who Knew Infinity” a book about Srinivas Ramanujan (we'll get to know him better in the next section). There's a book by Adam Grant about “Originals”. And a book specifically about the David statue sculpted by Michelangelo. While poring through these books at a snail's pace, I'll watch videos about thermohaline currents and ponder over the information I get about high and low entropy in the universe.

All of this learning takes a mind-boggling amount of time

It's easy to feel you always need to be in a hurry. You still could be voracious in your learning. I listen to podcasts and audio almost all the time, while on the move. I'll read when I can, but reading requires you to be focused on what you're doing. And then there's the writing, endless amounts of writing about what I'm learning.

This is what I'd say is the tolerance for learning

To slow down, not speed up. However it's not necessarily about doing less, but instead, abut going deeper into the information and cross pollinating it in a way that makes you far more creative; far more open to seeing things in a way that others simply can't see.

But why go so far?

So many people take the easiest way possible. They say they have no time to read. If you ask them to listen to audio, they say they can't remember anything. And that's not the point of learning. Education comes in layers. I can't remember a lot of what I learn in audio, but if I don't listen to audio, I will miss out on about 300-450 hours of education in a single year (that's because I go for a walk every day and listen to audio).

The tolerance for learning has to be high. Speed is not the answer.
Speed reading is more like a TV dinner—a quick, yet deeply unsatisfying experience. Slow down and absorb the information and that's what leads you to a greater level of understanding and success.

Tolerance to failure is critical.
Tolerance to learning is also extremely vital.
But we still have one factor of tolerance that's needed: the tolerance for the long haul.

Part 3: The tolerance for the long haul

If you could buy Google for US$1.6 million, would you buy it?

Google in April 2017, was worth $560 billion. But back in 1997, Google was still a dream in CEO, Larry Page's brain. While at Stanford University, he created a search engine called BackRub. He tried to sell that search engine to another search engine company called Excite. But Excite's primary investor made a counter offer of $750,000. And Larry Page thought BackRub was worth a lot more. The short story is that today, 20 years later, Google is the most valuable company in the world.

A story that contrasts completely with what you're likely to run into on the Internet.

About a month ago, an ad on Facebook caught my interest. This person was promising you could get hundreds of clients signing up to an e-mail list, per day. And usually that kind of bombastic language just bores me to pieces, but on this morning, I was playing around with my watercolours, and it seemed like a fun idea to sit through this webinar.

The pitch was predictable

The story was about how he struggled to make any income at all. And the rags to riches story went nothing to several hundred million dollars. And before we know it, this person is hobnobbing with big shots including Sir Richard Branson. So why am I giving you the run down of this webinar? I'll tell you why. It's because the webinar talks about hard work as the enemy. How we all work hard and how it never changes our life. And how this person's seemingly magic system will change everything. What he continues to suggest is that you can get the elephant—without the poo.

And that's the reality we know is untrue

But we're often so sick and tired of being tethered to a job, or even feeling like we should be doing so much better in business, that we take the bait. We reject the tolerance for the long haul. We hope somehow there is a magic pill that will solve our troubles. Larry Page almost took that pill back in 1997. He had his reasons, of course, but it's the long haul that has gotten Google to where it is today.

So why is the tolerance for the long haul so critical for success?

The answer is encapsulated in a single word: drudgery. Let's say you are nuts about coffee. You know the beans, you're over obsessed over the roasting process, and you dream of opening a cafe for coffee-snobs. For the first fifty or hundred days, you're probably running on the aroma of the coffee alone, but then one day you feel like sleeping in. Now imagine your client showing up to the cafe only to find closed doors.

Every business has days of drudgery

You may adore your work, and should, but there are days when you simply don't feel like going to work. And ideally someone should and will step in to help, but the core of the issue is that no matter whether you're Google or that guy selling pipe dream webinars, it's all hard work and there are days of pure drudgery.

Days that you'll get over if you take a break. But if you don't have tolerance for the long run, you'll give up. You'll give up that podcast series you started; you'll give up on the blog posts, you'll give up when hardly anyone turns up to your workshop because you think you've failed.

Our membership site at 5000bc started in 2003

I've personally written 49,945 posts so far. Divide that by the number of years we've been running the site, and that's around 3,500 posts per year. It includes answers to clients, articles in response to questions, etc. With the courses, I've also finished over 50,000 posts. Add the podcasts, the books, all the workshops, etc. and you have a long list of stuff that needs to be done, and which I'm happy doing.

But if you think the work stops, it doesn't

William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Hamilton's producer, Jeffrey Seller, Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo da Vinci—they all realised that they're in the long game. That if you think you're just going to get into a business and the business will run itself, well, that's like buying into a webinar and paying a small fortune to get a magic pill. A magic pill that for the most part, is unlikely to work because it too will involve work.

Which is why you need to get involved in something you love

I love what I do. I love writing; I love making podcasts. I adore answering thousands of posts in the courses and in 5000bc. I didn't get into this business to simply walk away. I will take my weekends off, and I will take three months off every year. That's my way to get rid of the drudgery factor and come back fresh and rested. But I know that I—and you—we both need a tolerance factor for the long haul.

As Keira learned at the tender age of four, you can have your elephant, but it comes with poo. The bigger the elephant the greater the poo. If you want to build a business get the poo tray out because you're going to need the tolerance for failure, learning and most importantly the long haul.

How do you Get Smart (And Stay Smart)?

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

"I wasted too much time getting angry".

So said world-famous tennis champion, John McEnroe. McEnroe and arch-rival, Jimmy Connors had similar temperaments on the court. Both were easily provoked. Yet both of them managed to get to the No.1 ranking in the world for many years consecutively.

Yet McEnroe was gone from the tennis scene by the age of 34. Connors, on the other hand, was still around at the highest level, even at the age of 40.

So what happened?

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Work-Rest Ratios
Part 2: What Depletes Energy
Part 3: The Power of a Backup Battery

Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/

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Performance psychologist Jim Loehr was on a particularly difficult mission.

He wanted to understand what kept the world's top competitors head and shoulders above their competition. He watched hundreds of hours watching live games and followed up by poring through taped matches. Despite the rigour he put into this research, he ran right into a brick wall.

He noticed that during points, high calibre players appeared to be remarkably similar to each other. There seemed to be little or no difference in the way they went about their game.

Then Loehr looked closer and began to look at what players did in between points. That's when he had his Eureka moment.

The best players, it seems, had consciously or subconsciously built up a routine.

As they headed back, they had a type of walk; they held their heads and shoulders in a certain way. And most importantly, their breathing seemed to slow down. These players were playing their shot and then, amazingly, going through a recovery method while getting ready for the next shot.

To dig deeper, Loehr hooked up the top players to EKG telemetry and was able to monitor their heart rates. To his astonishment, he found their heart rates dropping by as much as twenty beats per minute, in between points. Lesser ranked players seemed to have no recovery routine at all.

As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz write in their book: The Power of Full Engagement, the key to being super-productive is to have enormous amounts of energy.

To drive home this point, they give the example of two players of relatively equal talent and fitness.

The players have given it their all as the match has progressed, but as the game reaches the third hour, who's going to be less fatigued? Who's going to get more angry and frustrated? Who's going to push his heart rate even higher resulting in muscular tension and drop in concentration? The one who has been recovering in between points is clearly far ahead because he's got far more energy.

When you think of energy, nothing quite fits the analogy like an electric car.

A petrol-driven car is a car with no fear. You can put $5 worth of fuel in it, and sure enough, you will find a petrol station along the way when you need one. At least at this point in time, in most countries, you can't do expect the same level of topping up for an electric car.

To get to your destination, and back, an electric car requires the driver to move forward without sudden acceleration. Brakes are applied only in an absolute emergency and most slowing down involves a generous amount of anticipation. In short, the electric car has a fixed battery and few, if any, charges along the way. If you manage your drive well, the car even recharges even while moving ahead.

An electric car and Loehr's research align almost perfectly.

Energy needs to be used to propel us forward, but we have to make sure we not only recharge, but also avoid energy depletion. Which is why it's a good idea to look at three core elements of energy so that we too can ditch time management and work on energy management, instead.

Here's what we'll cover:

1- Work-Rest Ratios
2- What Depletes Energy
3- A Backup Battery

1) Work-Rest Ratios

1972 was a scary year for Southwest Airlines.

They had been battling it out on the ground for years, just to get the right to fly. But right alongside their legal battles, there loomed a threat that was promising to put them out of business. They were haemorrhaging on cash and in order to pay the bills, they had to sell one of their four planes.

However, Bill Franklin, former Vice President of Ground Operations and others in Southwest made a bold calculation

They came to the conclusion that three planes could to the work of four. There was just one tiny problem to overcome. The planes had to be in and out of the gates in 10 minutes. Getting a plane cleaned, restocked and refuelled is a precision-driven task that often requires a solid hour.

Southwest had little or no option. They were either going to keep the planes in the air, or they'd go out of business. Years later, author, Kevin Frieberg, author of the book, “Nuts!”, was quoted as saying, “Aeroplanes only make money in the air”.

This kind of go, go, go machine-driven attitude is what we seem to apply to humans as well.

Many of us see ourselves as the product of hard work; of having little or no turnaround time; of always being in the air. Internet marketers boast how they're spending time working at the beach, usually in their underwear. And all of this talk about being able to be always connected, always at work, always putting down rest as if it were a disease—this is what causes us to feel constantly tired. What we need are work-rest ratios.

This factor of work-rest ratios isn't news to you, is it?

It shouldn't be, and yet we ignore it as though we have fuel-driven engines. We fail to see every day has to have a prescribed amount of work, then real rest. Every week has five days of work, and then two days off. Every quarter needs a break; every year needs many breaks. And though not all of us can, at this point, do a three-month long vacation, almost all of us can work with just the day.

It's so blindingly obvious that even reading this information seems bizarre

Yet, look around you, and you find that almost no one but the kids are bouncing around like crazy. Well, those kids aren't watching TV until late at night, are they? They aren't scrolling through their devices endlessly either.

They're doing what performance coaches advise their clients. A good night's sleep—yes, the most obvious thing of all—is what we seem to ignore on a consistent basis just because we don't wind down before bed time. Is it any wonder that we seem to be tired all the time?

So what's the quickest thing you can do, and do today?

Be like a kid. Figure out a bedtime for yourself, then wind down. That alone, this obvious task, is what causes you to have a lot more energy the next day. If for instance, we sleep just half an hour later every night, we've deprived ourselves of a good 3 ½ hours every week, and this accumulates over time.

Weekends or even half the weekend is what we should mark out to rest and recover, but we're always busy doing stuff. If you speak to someone they say that “the stuff needs to be done”.

But there's a downside to being constantly like a plane in the air

You're compromising your performance. As you clock in more hours, you take more time to do the very same task, and there's a greater chance of errors. What's weird about sleep is that the more rested you are, the better you sleep. Think about the times when you're agitated, and it's clear that the sleep was just as disturbed. So without going round and round, we need to understand a simple philosophy.

Get the work-rest ratio consistent, most of the time

In the book, The Power of Full Engagement, the authors talk about how there are times when you have to break away from the work-rest ratios. Sometimes we have to build capacity, and we have to increase our stress level. But even when you increase that stress, it needs to be followed by adequate recovery. You need to do both: push beyond limits sometimes and then to have enough recovery.

But work-rest ratios are not enough. There's something more, something even deeper. And that is to explore what depletes energy in the first place. Let's take a hard look at energy depletion.

2) The Energy Depletion View

It's Wednesday morning here in New Zealand as I write this piece. But this Wednesday isn't like last Wednesday, or the Wednesday before last.

That's because on all those previous Wednesdays

I didn't have the pressure of having to write the script, and then record the podcast. However, this week I've fallen behind and the pressure is building up. The more I delay, the more my mind is focused on the task of writing and then recording the podcast.

Energy depletion isn't something that's immediately apparent

It's all around us. Let's say you have to cook a dish. What does the professional chef do? She makes sure there's a sequence in place. No professional chef does what we often tend to do.

In one morning, we are likely to get the recipe, buy the ingredients, chop and prepare the ingredients and then begin to cook the meal. What we've done is gone through Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and so on. By the time we're ready to cook, we're already tired. That's not how a professional chef works. Every stage is separate so that the chef is at their highest possible energy for each stage.

Here's how I used to write an article back in the year 2001 or so I'd start with the idea, do little or no outlining. Then I'd write, but what I was doing was editing. I'd go a line forward and two lines back.

Eventually, after a brutal two days or so, I'd be done with the article. However, even after all that struggle, I didn't know if I had a good article or not. What's more important is that I'd be exhausted and dread having to write another article in the following week.

When I look at the way I'd create sales pages, write articles, cook, paint—all my activities were amazingly well-designed to create energy-depletion. Today, my methods are radically different. Take for instance the dish I prepared this morning. I soaked it last night, chopped the ingredients early this morning and about 10:45 am, I darted back home and cooked the dish.

Writing an article—this article for instance—involves a similar method of using stages.

I've got a bunch of Post-It stickers on the wall that all have topics that I want to write about. When I'm ready to take on the topic, I go to the cafe or park bench and outline the article.

I'll then split the article into three parts and write the article over three days, taking a day to cover each section. If the task isn't broken up, the energy required to go from one end to the other is often too great. You can expend the energy, but then it takes enormous time to recover.

Completing tasks is only one form of energy depletion

People and situations also play an incredibly important role in depleting energy. Take for instance a workshop we had in California back in 2006. One of the clients was terribly demanding, and we were still new in the business. We bent over backwards to make this customer happy, and I guess she was, but we were so drained at the end of the day. It's a good thing they have giant Margaritas in California because I needed more than one to feel like a human again.

The same applies to situations

We go for a walk and sometimes a car will pull out of the driveway, leaving just a little gap behind for us to traverse back onto the footpath. I'll go behind the car, and then glare back at the driver. See what's happening? It's all a depletion of energy. That small incident can rattle me for the next 10-20 minutes. Put in a few of these seemingly small events in a day, and it's not hard to see why we can be super-drained by the end of the day.

Being constantly distracted is also an energy depletion factor

No one is allowed to be bored any more. If you're bored for about 3 seconds, you reach for your phone to surf the Internet or look at what's on Facebook. Yet this behaviour is remarkably different from the way my parents (and possibly your parents) use the Internet.

My father goes online to look for something, to check the weather, but it's always a specific task. His phone isn't a distraction device. Instead it's a tool, like a hammer. You reach for it when you need it. Always going online and endlessly searching for something to allieviate our boredom is another factor of constant energy depletion.

The key to understanding energy is to see what depletes our energy

It's easy to see where these negative energy fields exist in our daily lives. A job we hate; a person that drives us crazy; a course that's going nowhere; a friend or relative that puts us down; a lousy call to the bank, endless surfing—it's all draining. And there are some energy fields that are hard to avoid.

So how do you cope when you know you're bound to run into energy-depletion zones every single day? What you need is a reserve battery pack and here's how you get one.

3) The Backup Battery

Imagine writing a complete article and finding it's vanished into thin air.

Granted it takes me just about 45-60 minutes to write an article, but this one was longer. It would take me at least an hour and half, maybe two to get the job done. The first instinct is not to re-create, but to go on a hunt. And that's exactly what I did. I searched high and low using all the tools at my disposal, but 25 minutes later I had nothing.

Right before that moment of seeming despair I loaded my backup battery

For 30 minutes every morning I meditate, simply because of the returns I get from meditation. At first, meditation was just something to try out. However, when you go through a day from 4 am and you're still energised at 9 pm, eyebrows need to be raised. Meditation is my backup battery. I don't know how it works, all I know is it just does. If you could stop your day for 30 minutes and get several hours of renewed energy later in the day, would you do it?

Think about time management vs. energy management for a few seconds

We are all focused on time, but at 5 pm you're pooped. You have time, but you have no energy. Now imagine having energy as you go through the day, then through the evening, and even late at night. It sounds so bizarre that I didn't believe it. I once heard the comedian, Jerry Seinfeld saying approximately the same in an interview, but I thought it was not possible. Maybe he doesn't spend long hours like me, I thought. Well, I was wrong, not once but twice over.

The second and possibly better reason for meditation is the capacity to deal with energy-draining situations.

Feel like screaming at the traffic? Angry at some new law the council has passed? Clients driving you crazy? Suddenly you're able to see all these people, events and situations as a bystander. It almost feels like it's not something that affects you, but is happening to someone else, instead. Instead of grumbling, getting mad and clearly draining your energy, you have a feeling of going with the flow.

Remember that article I lost?

I did my best to search for it, but instead of getting upset, I went about it in a calm and composed manner. Even though my problem wasn't solved, I simply went about some other activity. Then, today, while searching for something else, I found my article (about the same time as I was about to re-write it from the ground up). If all of this sounds like gobbledegook, then believe me, I thought it was too.

However, I believe in results too

And if the supposed-gobbledegook is going to help recharge my batteries and more importantly, keep me from draining them, then that's exactly what I need. Hence the meditation every day for 30 minutes. And if you're wondering where you're going to get 30 minutes from, remember the concept of the electric car (because it's remarkably similar to your phone). When you charge a device for 30 minutes, it lasts longer, but even a short 10-15 minute charge is still a charge.

But charge it for zero minutes and you get zero.

The backup battery should be some sort of cola

It really should be some sort of tequila shot or mixed in a cup of coffee. And yet it's just boring ol' meditation. The kind of stuff they've done for thousands of years. So, are you going to charge your battery with a longer, or even shorter charge?

This takes us to the summary where we'll look at the three aspects of energy.
Summary

“I wasted too much time getting angry”.

So said world-famous tennis champion, John McEnroe. McEnroe and arch-rival, Jimmy Connors had similar temperaments on the court. Both were easily provoked. Yet both of them managed to get to the No.1 ranking in the world for many years consecutively. Both of them also won Grand Slams.

What's interesting about this story is that Connors was considered to be the lesser player. It was more than apparent that McEnroe had a flair that helped him win even when he was fuming and screaming.

Yet McEnroe was gone from the tennis scene by the age of 34. Connors, on the other hand, was still around at the highest level, even at the age of 40. It's not hard to see what's happening, is it? Energy starts to escape at the very moment you rant and rave. It might seem like you're disrupting your opponent, but by McEnroe's admission, he did better when his temper was in control.

From an energy perspective, we need to look at three core elements.

1) Work-Rest Ratios 

Without the rest, we simply drain our batteries until our system can't handle it any more The more we work, the more we have to rest. When you rest, you come back fresher and more eager to do far better work. At Psychotactics, we take breaks whenever we possibly can. Through the day, on weekends, and then after 12 weeks of work, a month off. You may not be able to take a chunky three months off at this stage but rest and work beckon you. If you want to do better work, you have to have more rest. It's that simple.

2) The second—and more important point—is monitoring what depletes our energy

Losing our cool takes up a huge tonne of energy right through the day. Things invariably go wrong; chaos is almost hovering around us all the time. In the face of constant and overbearing trouble, how do we avoid depletion of energy? There's also a depletion that comes from the lack of stages. Without stages, we take on too much, and we're invariably tired as we move through the sequence. A little spacing out of stages, whether you're writing a book, an article or just cooking dinner, is what's needed to keep your energy at high levels.

3) Finally, we need a backup battery, and that battery is meditation

If you have 12 minutes, that's 12 minutes of backup in place. If you have 30 minutes, so much the better. But maybe 12 minutes will counter 12 minutes of chaos—and the net effect is that you're not losing energy. You're stable, calm and happy. Life takes you on a diversion, and instead of getting mad and upset, you go along like a child, glad to be part of the adventure.

We live in a world hostile to rest. We trust coffee more than meditation as a pick me up. We lose energy all the time and aren't sure how to get it back.

Well, now you know.

NEXT STEP: How To Get Smart (And Stay Smart)
Many of us believe that smartness comes from learning the skills in our own field. And yet, that's only partially true. We can never be as smart as we want to be, if we only have tunnel vision. So how do we move beyond? And how do we find the time to do all of this learning?Amazingly it all comes from limits.Find out more here—How to learn.

In a small business, strategy and tactics often go wrong.

Yet all you hear about is success, success and how someone made it big.

This episode is about some bad judgment calls and also about plain pomposity.
It's taught us to be better marketers and better people.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Story No.1—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003
Story No.2—A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea 
Summary: How our minus two learning has helped us

To read this podcast online: 
https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/

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

I remember one of the early events in my speaking career

Renuka was sitting in the audience. When I finished my speech, I came back to my seat and asked her how she found the speech. I gave you a minus two, she said.

Speaking hasn't been easy for me, and I struggled a lot not knowing what to say when in front of an audience

Luckily, almost at the start of my career, I ran into Eugene Moreau and his 13-Box Speaking system. The 13-Box system was so honed, it was like having a Samurai sword at your disposal. Except, it's not much use having a Samurai sword and not going through “sword practice”.

To get my practice in speaking to a high degree of professionalism, I'd speak everywhere I could. And when I mean, speak everywhere, these weren't at fancy events. I'd speak at the Rotary club, some places where people would meet to network and even at association meetings. In my mind, it was pretty clear that if I didn't get the practice, I wouldn't become a confident speaker.

And I knew I'd reached a good level when I was paid to speak at an event

It wasn't much. I think it was about $300 or $400, but hey, this was a paid gig. The only problem was that my so-called ability had gone to my head. In the first few years, I'd rehearse fifteen, sixteen times before getting in front of an audience.

This event, however, was different. The audience happened to be farmers—not professionals. They still had to sell their products, so they still needed a message like the one that's contained in The Brain Audit. But because they were farmers, I got a little pompous.

I practiced a couple of times, then my wife Renuka and I drove to the event

The signs were not good. Both Renuka and I had spent a restless night, and we had a long drive ahead of us. She kept asking me if I'd done my usual practice runs. I nodded, but I knew I'd taken some shortcuts. And on that day, when I went on stage, I was sleep-deprived and already a bit tired from the drive. Plus, as you can tell, I hadn't done my usual 15-16 practice runs.

Yes, I got a minus two.

This series is a little detour into the world of Psychotactics—and. About times when we got below par results

Some of the results were our fault, and some of them were just experiences we had along the way. In every instance, we learned a lesson, and it helped us move ahead in our business. Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Let's look at some minus two experiences. Like the time back in 2004, I think, where I was a speaker at an Internet conference, and everyone was selling their products, but me.

Why did things go so wrong?

Story No:1—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003

I should have known better than heading to a particular Internet Marketing Conference in Australia.

It was what you'd call a pitch-fest.

Pitch-fests are given that name because the speaker tends to speak for a fixed amount of time, but then reserves at least a third of the given time to pitch their products or services. Think of speaker after speaker getting up on stage and selling like those folks you see on infomercials, and you get the idea.

I was not even part of the original speaker set up, but I was keen to be part of an international speaker group

Even though it was barely 2003, the speakers at the event had substantial lists, exceeding 50,000 subscribers. We, on the other hand, might have had fewer than 1500 people on our list. I watched as speaker after speaker got on stage and made a presentation. Then they'd make an offer, and there would often be a scramble to the rear of the room, where they were selling their products.

It was pretty early in my career, but I was pretty confident of my speaking skill by then

I'd done a bit of selling from the podium as well, and I thought I'd be going home with several thousands of dollars in sales. This dream of mine seemed more feasible when I compared myself to the person who did his presentation just before mine.

His presentation was more about how to run some software, than a real transfer of knowledge. And yet when he made his pitch, there was an almighty scramble to the end of the room. I was sure I could top that act, because my presentation was clearly better than his, and plus in my mind, I was a far superior speaker.

But even before I could get on stage, things went wrong

I was allocated just 45 minutes, and that included my presentation and my pitch. I figured the person introducing me would be done in about 3-4 minutes, but like an Emcee that won't shut up, he went on for a whole ten minutes, maybe longer.

Sure, he was saying good things about me, but I was losing a tonne of time in what I considered to be a pointless introduction. Anyway, I got on stage, did my presentation confidently and made my offer. It was the moment I'd been waiting for. I had dreams of the audience stomping over each other to get to the back of the room to buy my products.

You have a good idea of what happened next, right?

And you're right. Nothing much happened at all. About 15 people gingerly got up from their seats, and casually sauntered to the back of the room. Would they buy the product, I wondered? In my head, I was still doing the calculations.

Since we were selling the product for $100, I'd still make $1500 at the very least. However, maybe 9 of them decided to go ahead with their purchase. And you might think that's still a pretty good deal for a 30-minute presentation, right?

And yes it was a good deal, but not when you consider the expenses

To be part of this event, I had to fund my own travel costs. There was the flight to Australia which exceeded $500, the hotel room which also exceeded $500 for the duration of the event. And then there was food, transport to and from the airport and other incidental costs. Plus, the organisers wanted 50% of all sales to be passed on to them as a commission.

This was a -2 experience

I was out in the cold, and not feeling very good about myself. Any pity I have for myself is quickly tempered by the fact that there's a learning experience in every failure. I resolutely sat at the back of the room and watched what caused clients to scramble like crazy.

That event wasn't my first lesson in scarcity, but it certainly was the first one that was doused with so much defeat. It's the defeat that made me pay close attention to every single presenter. I stopped paying attention to the content of the presentation and instead paid attention to what they did instead. And I learned some very valuable lessons on that day.

But one mystery remained.

Remember the speaker who went before me?

He wasn't terribly good; his content was mostly technical. He made a pitch that involved scarcity just like everyone else. So why did he succeed when I did so miserably by comparison? I knew him well, so I went up and asked him what he thought was the big reason because I frankly couldn't see what caused the audience to rush to the back of the room.

And that's when I learned about the concept of the bonus. Now you're well aware of bonuses when you buy a product or service online, right? But I had bonuses too with my pitch. Why didn't the bonus work as well?

The key was the nature of the bonus

He was offering some software that would enhance their positions on Google rankings (yes, these were the good old days where a lot of crazy stuff worked). But that wasn't what people were so excited about. He had promised that the first 50 people would not only get the software, but he would install it on their servers, so they had to do nothing but run it.

Aha!

It wasn't the bonus. It was so much bigger and better than a mere bonus. And that's when I learned that you need to make the bonus more important than the product or the service itself. Why? Because when people decide to buy something, they've already made up their mind.

If you've decided to buy a fancy new computer, you already are in the frame of mind to buy it. But what if someone offered you a bonus? Like a nice box of chocolates if you bought the computer from them? The box of chocolates costs just $15; the computer $3000. What are you focused on? What if I told you that you could get the computer without the chocolate box? That's the power of the bonus. That's the lesson I learned from this -2 experience.

I lost on the monetary front.

But when I got back to Auckland, I had a plan in place. We re-looked at The Brain Audit page and made sure we had an irresistible bonus in place.

And the power of the bonus worked!

As a result of the “failure” in Australia, we sold more product than ever before. That embarrassment led to a profound learning experience, and to this day when creating a product or service, I think about the bonus long before I write the sales page for the product.

The bonus—that's what matters more than anything else. And it doesn't even have to be many bonuses. Just one compelling bonus is what makes the client decide they want your product or service right away.

But hey, this isn't about the good, success stuff. These are stories about where we messed up.

Time for Story No.2, don't you think?

Story No.2—A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea

Only thrice have I gone blank on stage. Once was back in school when I was about 12 years old. The next time was the first time I made The Brain Audit presentation, but the third time was really odd. It was at a time when I was confident with my speaking and was being paid to speak as part of a series.

When I first started out in marketing, I read and heard stories of personalisation

One of these stories came from a veteran marketer, Dan Kennedy, who once spoke about how he showed up for a Mary Kay event. Mary Kay Inc. is a cosmetics giant and is famous for its bias to the colour, pink. Superstars—the salespeople who earn 0ver $18,000 in a four month period and build a team—are rewarded with a pink Cadillac.

Dan Kennedy, ever the showman, turned up for the Mary Kay event in pink

Pink suit, pink tie, pink patent leather shoes. Kennedy said he wore pink in order to sell more effectively at Mary Kay events and it clearly worked for him as he'd sell 40% more when dressed in pink. Unlike at the Internet conference, I was not selling anything at this event, but I saw no harm in trying to personalise my presentation.

Since I was working with brokers at an insurance company, I spent hours talking to my liaison at the head office. I then sought out and found examples of insurance-based problems and solutions. All of this research was my aim towards personalisation, and I didn't realise I was making a big mistake.

The first mistake was that it ramped up my nervousness a lot…

When you're making a presentation you're already on someone else's turf. I'd just made it a lot harder by over-tweaking my speech to include many insurance-based case-studies. Trying to force fit their case-studies in my presentation wasn't a mistake, but I didn't have any background of the case-studies. No sooner did I bring up the case-studies than I had people in the room say, “that didn't work” or raise objections to the case-study.

This threw me off guard

Instead of doing The Brain Audit presentation, which was all my own, my entire talk was intertwined with their case-studies. I was not prepared for any pushback from the audience, and yet the cat calls came at intervals.

However, once you're nervous, things start to spiral. I was plainly confused and slightly terrified on that stage. Finally, I just gave up and wrapped up as quickly as I could. What should have been an hour-long presentation was curtailed to a mere 30-minutes. Suddenly the emcee had a nasty problem of filling in half an hour of dead air, as there was no presenter in sight.

This was definitely a -2 moment

Renuka wasn't around to give me those low scores, and I had to self-evaluate my own performance. Why did things go so wrong? Was it Dan Kennedy's bad advice? Or was I at fault? What I failed to notice, and learned a lot later, was that presenters do tailor their presentations.

Kennedy would have worn that crazy, even slightly-ridiculous outfit, but his speech would have barely wavered at all. He might have had a few words here and there that talked about Mary Kay or the kind of business, but he would have scripted his script and nailed it down. The Mary Kay women knew their business; Dan didn't.

In my case, the insurance agents knew their business, and I clearly didn't. To give the audience examples that they could pull apart was a silly move. They knew I was an outsider and my attempt to endear myself to them was easily the worst move I could make.

So what's the learning we got from this experience?

Let's say we're selling a product like the info-products course. That course is designed to show you not just how to create an information product, but to create one that's so useful that clients come back to buy many info-products from you in the future.

Now let's say your current sales page is pretty generic. But then you're going to be introduced to 10,000 coaches. And now you don't want the page to be generic. You want it to speak to the coaches, don't you?

Think of the Dan Kennedy factor: He only wore pink, he didn't colour his text in pink.

If we were selling to an audience that was precisely coaching related, we could change the first paragraph to talk about coaching and the biggest problem facing a coach today. And how the information products would be likely to help that coach. But that's where it would stop. Once we went past the problem, the solution would be as it is on the Psychotactics page right now.

Which brings up an ethical problem doesn't it?

If the product is not specifically created for coaches, would it be right to give the idea that the product was designed for coaches? And that's not what the main problem on the sales page is doing. The solution is to get the info-products course because it helps you create info-products—plain and simple. But we relate better to signage or information that seems to call us, rather than the general public.

The product or course would still have to deliver the goods. It would still need to help coaches (or anyone else) create outstanding info-products. However, there would be a greater attraction factor if the audience felt it was aimed at them.

At Psychotactics, we don't ever appeal to a specific audience e.g. coaches. Instead, we use the concept of target profile, so the question of using this method would not arise on our sales pages. However, there may be several situations where you have to appeal to a specific audience. In such a scenario, make tiny changes at the top, and don't go changing everything else.

My stop at Wellington was pretty scary

I've mentioned in an article and podcast before how I was so petrified of the place that I was not keen to go back to that venue. But several years later it's exactly where I had to speak once again, and once again. And it was a paid speaking engagement, so I couldn't back out of it.

This time, however, I stuck to my original speech, got a rousing applause and didn't have to flee the auditorium in a hurry. I was able to turn my -2 experience into a plus 6 or 7, at the very least.

The third -2 experience was the mistake of tweaking the rules we have at Psychotactics

We have rules because we've run into a problem before and we're not keen to rep area the mistake. Even so, it seems ridiculous to hold on to rules forever. Sometimes we break our own rules.

Retribution follows shortly. This is the story of a workshop where we broke our rules, and things went south very quickly. In fact, there aren't one, but two stories that follow.

The Importance of Keeping to Your Rules

“I don't like the smell of the carpet”. That's the ultimatum we got from a client's wife.

You'd have quickly figured out we're not dealing with a customer, but his wife instead. But what does the wife have to do with the event? And what was the “carpet story” all about?

Rules are meant to be broken, but sometimes we bend over backwards too much, and we pay the price. We've had many such instances where we've sought to bend the rules; trouble has hit us thick and fast. Here are just two instances, where we allowed family members.

Back in the early days, we had a system called the Protégé system

From that Protégé group, we created an Inner Circle which consisted of just a few clients. So few of us, that I thought to myself no harm could come by including their wives or partners.(Just as a matter of clarification: Back then all the clients in our Inner Circle were male, which is why I mentioned wives or partners). Anyway, on with the story.

And that's when our trouble began

We'd booked an intimate boardroom, seeing we were so few. But as the wife of this participant walked in, she stormed right out. “I don't like the smell of new carpet”, she said. I'm not sure what the problem was, or if she was allergic to the smell of new carpet, but we were to start our session, and we were in a fix. She demanded another room, and there was none to be had at the hotel. So she took her grievance to the reception and started berating the staff.

If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's this: When you want to get on a flight, you don't scream at ground staff. And this was no exception. She was yelling at the people who were most likely to help her and help us.

As her screaming got louder, we were forced to step in and take over. As we found out later she'd inadvertently been screaming at the General Manager of the hotel as well. The GM was quite unassuming. You'd never expect that she was the GM because she was low-key and looked more like an employee. And this screaming was aimed at her as well until we decided to take matters into our hands.

With a lot of pleading and apologising, we managed to get another room

The room was super-large, more like a disused meeting room. We were so few of us in the room, and it made the entire proceedings so very un-cozy. However, our little nemesis didn't stop there. When I'd bring up a point in the presentation, she'd object.

She hadn't read The Brain Audit; she hadn't gone through the notes. We thought it was a good idea to have the partners and wives come along, but it was evident she had no context, so she interrupted and argued her way through the day.

At most events and workshops, most clients hang around the meeting room

Unlike other events where people leave shortly after, you'll find that we stick around, and so do most of the clients. We may be around for a good hour or more after we're done, but in this case, we were out of the room like a bolt of lightning. We made our way to our room just to recover our energy and then an hour later to the bar where we inhaled some gigantic margaritas.

But did we learn our lesson?

Apparently not. The lesson was not to allow anyone who wasn't part of the group. Anyone who hadn't read the notes in advance (and we send notes a month in advance) or hasn't read The Brain Audit is not welcome at our events. But there was a pleading tone in the e-mail we got just the day before the event.

Apparently, our client was visiting California with his daughter, a teenager. He asked if we could accommodate her at the back of the room. She'd be very quiet, he said. She would just sit there and not participate, he said.

I don't know why I didn't see the signs

Think of yourself as a teenager. Would you sit through a workshop on Website Strategy for three whole days for no reason? It became evident that there was an ulterior motive, but we only realised it later when going through previous correspondence with this client.

He'd earlier asked us if he could book two seats at the event but finally booked just one. WE didn't think about it at the time. Clients ask all sorts of questions, and we answer, and no one really dwells on such issues. But as the workshop unfolded, so did the chaos.

She didn't participate in the workshop discussions, but in a Psychotactics workshop we have group activities

That's when she'd tow along with her father, which seemed fine at first. Soon enough other clients started complaining. She was butting in, in the discussions, the clients told us. She'd start going off on a tangent, and then her father would defend her, causing a very unprofessional situation in the discussion.

I had to tell the client that his daughter couldn't be in the room or attend any of the sessions

This made him mad. He couldn't see why she wasn't able to attend. It didn't seem to occur to him that she wasn't part of the group, or hadn't even paid for the seat. It was a messy moment and one that we could have avoided. It created a whole bunch of frustration that none of us needed. And while it wasn't exactly a minus two moment, it sure created a bleak, nasty situation.

So what's the learning?

The main learning is never to allow anyone who doesn't have the credentials. In the case of all workshops and courses, those credentials are the purchase of The Brain Audit. If the client hasn't read or listened to The Brain Audit, they're not welcome.

However, at a different level, we needed to stop being overly kind and letting in anyone—wives, husbands, kids or anyone who wasn't required to be at the event. No matter how much pleading is done, this rule is now unshakeable.

And that's how our minus two learning has helped us

In every instance, we've learned more from the bad times than the good. That speaking engagement at the farmer's conference taught me not to wing it and be prepared, even over-prepared. The event in Australia seemed to be a fiasco, but it was a valuable training ground for me, once I started paying attention to what was happening around me.

The event in Wellington, with the insurance agents, taught me never to over-personalise anything. Over-personalisation puts you squarely in the region where you're not the expert. You already have your speech ready, and it's best to do a sprinkling of personalisation and then keep to the original script.

Finally, it was and is important to have our benchmarks when it comes to attendees, whether at events or courses. Making an exception doesn't always lead to chaos, but why bother inviting confusion in the room? Our job is to ensure our clients get the best experience ever and go home with skill. By restricting who's in the room, we end up with a better result every single time.

And then we can enjoy our margaritas. We don't have to guzzle them after an energy-draining day! But these minus two events are only part of the picture.

 

How do you dramatically increase your rate of learning?

And why do we get stuck when we're trying to learn a new skill? Strangely the concept of boxes comes into play. We move from beginner to average—and then we spin in that middle box, never moving to expert level.
So how do we move to expert level? And how can we do that without instruction?

Listen or read about:  Not just how to learn, but how to teach as well.

 

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When you sit down to write a book you and I can waste a lot of time, if we don't take time to outline

But what are the elements involved in outlining? And how can we make sure we don't make any silly mistakes?

If you're about to write a book or plan to be an author sometime later, this information is for you. But even if you've already published books, you'll be amazed at how this information speeds up your process and gets better results.

In this episode Sean talks about

Element 1: How many points do you cover in your book outline?
Element 2: Why deconstruction is important.
Element 3: Understanding the purpose of the book.

Read online: Outlining Your Book: The Three Crucial Steps

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Around the start of 2010, I was very upset with myself.

I'd pre-sold a workshop and as I always do, the notes for the workshop are sent to the attendees a whole month in advance. Since the workshop was being held earlier in the year, I had been thinking about the notes right through my summer break in late December and early January.

Uniqueness is a pretty difficult topic and I needed to find a way to ensure that everyone—without exception—got the concept of uniqueness and was able to implement it. The only problem with writing the notes, was that it seemed like the notes were going to be at least 200 pages long.

200 pages is like a security blanket for a writer

In the mind of a writer, the chunky volume of notes seem to suggest you have something important to say. And yet my wife Renuka isn't a big fan of a ton of notes. “Why can't you write fewer pages?” she asked me as we were sitting at the cafe. “Why can't you get the same point across, so I don't have to read so much?”

A pointed question like this is truly frustrating for me because I know it's easier to fill a book with a ton of information. But a book, or notes in this case, need to be Spartan. They only need to have enough pages; just enough knowledge for the client to get a result. They don't need to be padded or filled with words no one needs. And this meant I had to go back to my outline several times.

When writing a book, the most difficult task isn't the writing

Distilling the ideas down to simplicity is what gets in the way. I have to force myself to leave the office, sit at the cafe for hours at a time, with no Internet connection. Monday's draft gives way to Wednesday's, and will be supplanted by Friday's draft. Sometimes it can take a month of drafts to get my thoughts together.

Except it was already January. The clock was ticking closer to my deadline. I had to make sure I had the book going. Which is why you, and I, we both need an outline.

So how do you outline a book?
What method should you use?
What if you can't write a lot and can only manage a few pages? Should you give up?

Let's explore three elements of book outlining to get us on our way:

Element 1: Why you should ideally cover just three points.
Element 2: Why deconstruction is important to get you going
Element 3: Understanding the purpose of the book.

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Element 1: How many points do you cover in your book outline?

When you think of a topic like “presentations”, what comes to mind?

Let's make a list, shall we?
– Creativity
– Crafting stories
– Simplicity
– Delivery
– Audience connection
– Engagement
– Displaying Data
– Creating Movement
– Time Keeping

Those points above represent a tiny list. If you were to look through the books on Amazon.com alone, you'd find at least fifty, possibly a hundred, even two hundred and ten topics on the singular topic of presentations. It's at this time that a novice or unthinking writer decides to do it all. He or she decides to cram as many items as possible into a single book, just to make sure nothing is missed.

Take watercolours, for instance

Back in 2010, I was pretty hopeless at watercolours when the painting bug struck me. How hopeless is hopeless? I painted for three months faithfully following the instructions of my teacher, Ted. After three months, the area had an auction of the artwork. My painting came up on the auction block.

The auctioneer started at $30. No takers

$20? Wait, auctions are supposed to go up, not down.

But there was the painting at $10, and still no buyers in sight. Now that you'll have to agree is a hopeless situation. Anyway, to avoid such a high level of embarrassment in the future, I decided to take watercolours a lot more seriously.

I tramped down to the library and came back armed with at least a dozen books on the subject matter. As I opened book after book, a similar scenario unfolded. Every book seemed to feel the need to cover all the possible topics under the broad umbrella of watercolour.

This is the kind of mistake you want to avoid as a writer

The journey to outlining a book or just about anything—a book, an article, even the weather report—is better served by working three elements; three main topics and then digging deep into the sub-strata of every one of those topics. Ironically, though, you have to start with the entire mess. 

You have to begin your journey by being reasonably crazy and listing everything. Which means you've got to roll out two steps.

Step 1: List all the points you can think of
Step 2: Choose three points

Take for example the topic of “pricing”

If you were to gaze deep into the crystal ball of pricing, you'd be sure to run into dozens of topics and angles. Covering every possible scenario, even at the brainstorming stage should drive you crazy. Well, let it drive you crazy. Writing a book needs to start with a brainstorm, long before you get to the outlining stage.

So let your imagination go on that rodeo as you list everything you could cover. 

An exhaustive list is not a bad thing. It demonstrates how much you know and how much you can cover in the future. However, once you're done with that list, it's time to pick the three elements that will go into your book. You have to wiggle your way into Step 2 and choose three points.

The problem with Step 2 is deciding which points to choose

You'd probably think it's crazy to choose any random points, but that's usually what I do. Take the “Black Belt Presentations” book for example. I didn't set out to write a series of books on the structure of a presentation or webinar. 

I set out to write a single book. And when we look at the huge list we can muster from a single visit to Amazon; I decided to simply choose the three elements that I considered to be important.

And so we had:
1: Controlling the visual aspect (how to create stunning slides)
2: Controlling the structure of the presentation (how to build the presentation with amazing flow)
3: Controlling the audience (why a great presentation can be ruined if you're not prepared for the reality of an audience).

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When outlining, take on the role of a GPS. Sure there are a thousand points to cover, but it's easy to get lost. Instead, cover just a few points, ideally no more than three main points.
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Were there more topics to cover?

Sure there were. Would I cover it? Maybe in another book, a series of podcasts, articles, etc. But as a writer, creator, weather reporter, you can't really go digging into every single cloud or that spotty bit of sunshine. You have to make a decision to drop stuff. 
To take a simple analogy, think of a sculptor. Or rather a dozen sculptors all with similar blocks of marble.

The job of the sculptor is to remove the bits that don't matter so that you can reveal the sculpture that does matter. Yet, when you look at the finished work of a dozen artists, you'll notice they all end up with different types of sculpture. 

Given the same topic, e.g. presentations, you have to get rid of all the sub-topics you can't possibly cover and stick with just three.

Three? Not four? Or five?

I've got “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz sitting on my desk. First written in 2004, it's gathered a bit of dust, but when I open the Table of Contents, what holds 250-odd-pages of the book together? It's the topics—four, not three.

1: When we choose
2: Why we choose
3: How we suffer
4: What we can do.

And nestled under those four categories are what Schwartz needs to say. Even though you can clearly spot ten, wait, eleven chapters and one prologue, they're still magnificently constrained by the limitations of four topics.

When you look at The Brain Audit, you don't quite see that in the Table of Contents, do you?

The Brain Audit is split up quite clearly into seven chapters. And yet there's an overlying structure to the book. The first three chapters are about attraction. They're solely dedicated to getting the client's attention. 

The next four chapters are all about risk. It's what causes the client to back away, to get all hesitant, even though they seem to be so interested in your product or service.

But what if you don't have such clarity of vision?

How are you supposed to know that one topic will seamlessly fit into another? The reality is that you don't need any such seamless fit at all. Three random topics can fit together. To demonstrate this, um, magic trick, let's take that list we created above. Let's first randomly take the first three topics.

– Creativity
– Crafting stories
– Simplicity

The three topics work together, don't they? So let's take the next lot.

– Delivery
– Audience connection
– Engagement

That works too, doesn't it? Let's move to the third lot.

– Displaying Data
– Creating Movement
– Time Keeping

You may feel that timekeeping may not require an entire chapter. And if that's the way you feel, then simply get rid of the topic, and slide in one that makes you feel more comfortable.

For example:
– Displaying Data
– Creating Movement
– Audience connection

Writing a book may seem like a daunting and reasonably frustrating experience

An enormous amount of frustration bellows forth from the need to cover everything in sight. Instead, if you were to cover three topics, almost any three topics, you could seamlessly stitch them together to create a fantastic outline.

You still have to do a fair bit of work to get the book written, but the battle is won or lost at outline stage. Train your outline to sit, beg and play dead, and you've already vaporised away the first—and biggest headache of all.

This takes us to the second bit where you outline the personality of your book

To get on this fascinating trip of structuring the personality of your book, you have to dig into a whole bunch of books you love. It's time to use the power of deconstruction to get going.

Let's deconstruct.

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Element 2: Deconstruction—How To Systematically Outline A Book (So You Can Get It Off The Ground)

Imagine you're the emperor in a far eastern land.

And your son, Kintsukuroi (pron: khintz-ku-roi) is about to go through the ceremony of investiture. The bowl is the most important symbol of this rank being given to the young prince.

And yet, the king opens his cabinet to find the magnificent bowl broken into a hundred pieces. Broken hearted at the wanton destruction of this incredible piece of art, the emperor retires to his private chambers to share his sorrow with his son.

The night passes quietly, but in the morning there's a huge commotion.

The cabinet of treasures has been broken into and not only have the pieces of the bowl disappeared but also the bejewelled crown for the prince, which was to be used for the investiture ceremony. What's worse is the thief was seen running towards the prince's quarters. Could the guards break down the door? Why was there smoke coming out of the prince's quarters?

The mystery was solved the next day when the bowl reappeared, whole again, but glistening with veins of gold where the cracks had been. And the prince appeared at his investiture ceremony later in the day. Except he had a thinner crown, depleted of much of its gold.

Kintsukuroi means ‘to repair with gold’ in Japanese, and is the art of repairing pottery with gold and understanding that the piece is the more beautiful for having been broken.

When creating the outline of a book you have to deliberately break, or deconstruct the work of others, so that you can engage in Kintsukuroi, and reconstruct your own book in a way that's far superior.

And that's exactly what I did back in 2002 when I first started writing the earliest version of The Brain Audit

I was brand new in marketing and writing just 16 pages of The Brain Audit took me well over a week. Even the introduction derailed me quite a bit. So I turned to a book I loved a great deal called “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. 

His introduction seemed to be so un-stuffy, so well put together. And he had a ton of graphics in his book. Right then and there I decided my book would have a similar tone of voice and style.

When outlining your book, it's easy to get caught up in the construction of your own words and pages. And yet, it's pretty important to go through at least six-eight books that you love, if only to understand the underlying structure.

Take for instance most of the Psychotactics books or courses

There's a structure to the book that you may have noticed, but not necessarily paid great attention to.

– It starts off with an introduction.
– The introduction is followed by three main topics.
– Every topic goes deep into the sub-topics.

And as you wander though the pages of the book, you'll run into cartoons, captions, stories, examples, fly out boxes, summaries, a food recipe—and so on. 

This is the underlying structure that makes the book so easy to read.

It's the powerhouse that pushes you forward, making sure you get to the last page. Compare this with a book that has no summaries, no visuals, no captions and examples that are always harping about ginormous companies like Amazon and Apple.

You get the idea, don't you? When you deconstruct a few of your favourite books, you get a wish list of what you'd like the reader to experience in your own books, don't you?

You've gone through the act of Kintsukuroi

The books you looked at were already quite impressive by your own reckoning. That's the reason why you chose them in the first place. But then after you've broken them apart, you get to reconstruct them in a way that's more beautiful and more suited to you than ever before.

And this structural break and remaking process is what helps you put your information under a structural format that you can keep and evolve over the years. When you're outlining a book, it's easier to put pieces of content where there's already a category or space. It's a lot less intimidating when you know what needs to go where in the book structure.

Structural inspiration comes from many places

I love the music of Sting, and in one particular concert he talked briefly about the inspiration behind several of his songs. For instance, did you know that “Englishman in New York” is not Sting singing about himself? In the video it appears as though the song is about Sting, an Englishman, but in reality the song is about famed gay author Quentin Crisp and his experiences as an outcast.

When I first heard that little bit of information, I was quite tickled. And so I decided to add a little story about how we “wrote our books”. Since then the structure of a Psychotactics course or product has included “the making of this book” that includes photos and a little story.

But if I copy the structure, won't it look similar?

Did you know that my introduction and illustrations were influenced by “Don't Make Me Think?” Of course not, and even now if you were to hold The Brain Audit and Steve Krug's book side by side, you're unlikely to find too much of a resemblance. 

The key isn't to make an identical copy.

Remember the procedure? You're breaking first, then reattaching it together. There's a bit of additional input going into the structure. Whether the structure comes from you or from another source, it all helps to create that Kintsukuroi moment. Construction after deconstruction.

This is the kind of deconstruction you want for your book as well

You could see it as a sort of template for all books you create in future. What makes it truly beautiful is that the act of breaking up the structure of other books ends up with a stunning new creation. It's truly Kintsukuroi and helps create a powerful outline structure.

We worked our way through creating just three topics, deconstructed and reconstructed the structure of our book, but finally it's down to purpose. Why are you writing the book? Is it just to put words on paper, or is there some other reason?

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Element 3: Purpose

Usually from December 20th to Jan 20th every year, I take a summer break.

The days consist of no e-mail, endless episodes of detective series on Netflix, biographies and beer. Eventually, December gives way to January and New Zealand (and I) wake up from our month long vacation.

To ease myself back into work mode, I start reading business books. And this year started out with an outstanding book called “The Content Trap” by Bharat Anand. Just leafing through the introduction takes you well past 30 pages and yet every moment of the introduction is gripping.

But what is Bharat Anand's purpose?

This is the question most writers need to ask themselves before sitting down to outline their books. Is the book meant to create consulting? Are you expecting to improve your profile? Would you hope to do a speaking tour as a result of your book becoming a bestseller? Would companies hire you to solve their problems? And would it involve big business or small firms?

In the case of the “Content Trap”, my perception was that the book was aimed at bigger companies

The examples within the book were amazing, but there they were: Amazon, the Scandinavian newspaper publisher Schibsted, The New York Times, the sports marketing giant IMG and Harvard Business School's own content management system.

These examples leave me and most other readers in a sort of trap of our own. We have all these utterly outstanding examples, but all of them are companies that are high and mighty. Even if we were to admire the sheer depth of the learning, how would someone like you or me put this information to use?

And this is where the purpose comes right in

You need to be clear about why you're writing the book. In Anand's case, he's got a great idea and scintillating data to back up his concept, but it falls apart at the seams because there's no way to use it.

Could it be that the book is designed to give potential clients an idea of what's possible? Could it be that they then call the author in for extensive consulting? Many books are written with the goal of getting consulting in mind. Could this be one of them?

When I sat down to write an outline, I wasn't always clear about the goal

The early years saw me create sparse outlines and fill content into the early books. This was my way of battling my seeming insecurity. I didn't see myself as a marketing person and saw myself as a cartoonist.

The more pages I had in a book, I convinced myself, the less I had to worry about refunds.

It doesn't help when some early buyers, and we're going back to 2003 or so, said they were returning the books because there were too few pages. 

Back then, most of the world was still walking into bookstores and stepping out with $20 hardback books. And there we were, selling a PDF for $67 that consisted of fewer than 20 pages. Hence the need to “fix the book” by adding a tonne of material that may or may not have been needed.

Today, when I outline the book, the main goal is to get a precise result

If you buy the book on presentations, you could be woken up at 3 am and still be able to put together a very compelling presentation from the ground up. If you spent your hard earned money on the information products course, you'd find an incredibly well thought out template on how to create info-products.

Whether it's photography, article writing or landing pages, the goal is well-defined before I start to write. And this is something you should do. It seems like such a tiny, inconsequential part of the outlining process and yet it's crucial.

What's the end point when the book comes out?

Is it to get you more consulting?
Is it to get you more fame?
Is it to create a permanent source of income and nothing else?

Knowing the end point makes a difference to the examples you give and how you structure your book. The end in mind, it's sometimes called. Knowing where you're going. It applies to everything in life, but especially when you're outlining a book.

Once you know exactly where you're going, you can focus your energy better than ever before.

The Three Elements Needed When Outlining Your Book are:

Element 1: Why you should ideally cover just three points.
Element 2: Why deconstruction is important to get you going
Element 3: Understanding the purpose of the book.

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