The Three Month Vacation Podcast

How do you get clients to return?

One of the most underrated tactics is often right under your nose. Yet most people having events don't realise the mistake they're making and have to work a lot harder to get clients to come back.

In this episode we look at what every business should do: not just get a client but get the client to come back repeatedly.

Read online: How to Get Clients To Return To An Offline Event

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If you head down to the South Island of New Zealand, you'll run into a little French town called Akaroa.

The story goes all the way back to 1838 when the commander of the French whaling ship Cachalot what can only be called a slightly questionable purchase of the land around the area. Then, the French colonists left France to sail to New Zealand to establish a French colony.

The French did get to Akaroa but found a treaty had been signed between the Māori and the British. The whole of New Zealand was officially a British colony. As the story goes, the French were just a wee bit late.

The French seemingly missed out on yet another colony, and we can feel the impact of being late when it comes to testimonial-gathering as well.

But why testimonials?

Because testimonials are the lifeblood of any organisation, product or service.

The more testimonials you have in place, the more the prospective client can experience your product or service, long before they pay for it. Which is why books have testimonials on their dust jackets, and websites have testimonials on every single product or service.

But back to the concept of lateness

If you wait long enough, the client is unlikely to give you a testimonial, simply because they've gotten too busy. It's also harder for the client to gush as much once they've moved on.

2) How and when to get testimonials

Getting a testimonial for an event is almost as important as the event itself. For one, when a client gives a testimonial, they're ratifying they made the right decision to attend the event. However, it gives you, the person holding the event, a chance to make sure you never have to struggle to fill in seats in future.

Which is why you should get testimonials during the breaks

If you don't have breaks in your event, there's no way to stop the juggernaut from rolling on. At Psychotactics we have workshops, and for information-based events, it's critical to have many breaks or clients simply get more tired.

If you're having an event like a cooking class or a watercolour class, something that's not usually break-oriented, it's easy to forget that every event could do with a break of some sort. People need to get to the toilet; they need just to step outside or reduce the intensity of what's happening.

Most trainers or people hosting events fail to pay attention to the concept of breaks, merely because they think it will stop the flow of the event. What you'll quickly realise is that people regroup speedily and focus better after a short break. It gives you some downtime as the organiser, and it leaves some room should something go wrong during the event.

If you simply go from one end to the other, you're not really planning for any chaos, and as we know, that's a hazardous strategy. Chaos can erupt from nowhere, and it's best to prepare for it in advance, by having at least one, if not several breaks.

It's in this break that you're going to be able to get your testimonial

Usually a client will be having a great time and will come and tell you so. It will quickly be evident as to who's having the most fun, and you can usually go up to them and ask if you can shoot a quick video.

Be prepared to know in advance where you can shoot the video, ideally some places that are slightly quieter and away from the scene of action. I tend to use another room or another area close enough, but far away from the group.

Ideally get 2-3 people to give testimonials, and in about 10 minutes, you can get about three quick testimonials that can be used in a video, audio, or when transcribed, in text format.

Be sure to use the six-questions found in The Brain Audit

The Brain Audit gives you typical questions to ask a client, and when you use the format of the six-questions, you get a client experience instead of yet another sugar-coated testimonial. It also gives you a clear pathway to follow when asking the testimonial. You rarely have time as you have to get back to the event itself.

Even so, you may well run out of time, and it's good to schedule testimonials for the breaks, but also for a short time after the event. Despite all your best intentions, sometimes it's not possible to get the testimonials, or all the testimonials during the event.

Even if that's the case, ask people if you can call them on Skype video and get a testimonial. Most people will agree, and that serves as a form of an appointment, and you've more or less got your testimonial in the bag.

Waiting for a testimonial after the event can often be too late

Once people leave, or if they don't make a commitment to speak later, the task of getting a testimonial gets increasingly harder as the days go by. You're eager to recover after your event, and they're keen to go back to their lives.

This means you've lost the one thing that's incredibly important to business: third party proof. Getting a testimonial needs to be almost as important as conducting the event itself.

At Psychotactics we've goofed not once or twice, but often

It's quite tiring getting an event off the ground. You're never quite sure whether clients are quite ready for the testimonial. And notice that break?

That break should give you a breather as well, but you're often using it to get testimonials. However, we've had to learn to structure our testimonial system in a way that we get a bit of a break and get our testimonials too.

There are times when it's all too much to do on the day itself. For instance, we hosted some really popular meetups that were three hours long but went on for six and seven hours.

It was difficult to break away from the fun and chatter to record a testimonial. It does feel a lot like work, and it takes an iron resolve to keep working when everyone is having a great time.

If it's really so hard to break away, simply ask the group to write each of their names on a piece of paper and give it to you. Later, you know who's keen to provide you with the testimonial, and you can call in or video chat and get your testimonial.

Testimonials are how clients decide, so getting them early is critical to your business. But there's one more thing to cover, isn't there? It's about getting the clients back. How do you do that?

Let's find out.

3) How to get clients to come back.

If you were to get a dolphin to do a trick in the pool, would the size of the reward matter?

In the wonderful book, “Don't Shoot the Dog”, author, Karen Pryor talks about how a dolphin would learn and execute a trick. However, the trainer decided to give the dolphin a smaller fish as a reward.

You'd think the dolphin wouldn't bother too much, considering a fish is a fish, is a fish. However, dolphins do care about the specifics too, just like humans. Which is why if you get a client to come to your event once, you're going to have to figure out how to get them to keep coming back.

You've probably heard that getting a new client is the most expensive part of a business, right?

Even if you don't spend any money on advertising or publicity, getting a client to trust you and attend your first event is a huge task. And your mission should be to get the client to come back repeatedly, if possible.

When a client trusts you, they're likely to sign up at higher prices, and without needing you to create a long sales page and endless promotional messages. Which brings us back to the fish, doesn't it? Why do clients tend to come to one event and never return?

There are many reasons why clients may not return, but one of the most significant responsibility lies with you

One of the biggest reasons why clients come to information based events is, ironically, not to get information. We may believe they come to get more knowledge, but YouTube is full of information.

So is Google, Bing and their inbox. The reason they're coming to you is to get less confusion and more skill. Strangely, the information you're imparting can only be less confusing if you just what's required.

When we started out with Psychotactics, we had no idea how to get the client back to an event

We got lucky because we sat down and did some planning in advance. At the very first event, where I presented early concepts found in The Brain Audit, I had an ending section where I talked about follow up sessions.

For $75 a month, clients could be part of a group that learned different concepts just like The Brain Audit. We'd didn't have the money to book a venue, so we asked for help, and people offered their offices since no one was around after 6 pm anyway. But why did clients sign up for the follow-up sessions?

It's because they got their reward, their right-sized fish, the first time they showed up. That presentation, as amateur as it may have been, got them to a result and they were keen to come back.

If you're hosting an event, clients are eager to get a similar sort of reward } If you're teaching them how to do a pose in yoga, please don't spend the evening showing them ten thousand poses. Show them one or two and get them to a result.

If you have a cooking class, don't run around like a headless chicken trying to get five-six dishes going. A single dish, maybe two will do the job. Clients are increasingly going nuts with the level of information that's streaming through their doors.

What they're looking for isn't a bucketload of fish. They just want one—provided it's the right size.

When we did our first event, we didn't expect anyone to sign up for future events

All the same, we put our strategy together and were pleasantly surprised when about ten people signed up and consistently showed up over the year to follow. Some of those clients then attended higher priced workshops and even ended up consulting with us.

All of this information is very important for those of us who've grown up believing that everything can be done online. The internet is a great tool to market our business, but just starting up a blog and hoping people will visit is a strategy that may get you quickly disappointed.

The core of today's world is a factor of overwhelm, but also a sense of loneliness. Which is why an offline workshop or event should deliver not just a factor of skill, but also the chance to meet others on a similar journey.

So what do you do from this point on?

The first thing you need to do is to work out how you can get the client the reward he/she is seeking. If they come to an event that promises they'll learn to make mozzarella, then all of them should be walking out with that mozzarella-making skill.

Once you have them at the event, and possibly get a few testimonials, you need to do them the courtesy of asking them to come back repeatedly. Even if you're hosting an event in a different country, there's a high likelihood that clients will come back to future events.

Over 50% of the attendees at any event, have met with us before or been through our courses or events. We invite them back to another event, and they come along happily because they enjoy the experience.

If you're going to do an event, plan for six, or ten

This is true especially if your audience is local. The key is to prepare, go into the event, give the participants a skill and call them back. That's the way to go about making sure your events are full in future.

Three things to consider:
1) Where you'll get your clients
2) How and when to get testimonials
3) How to get them to come back.

Now go out there and host your event and give your computer a break .

Next Up: Imagine being a hostage at your own workshop!

Imagine not having access to your own venue; having to take permission from someone else just to conduct your event. This is the crazy story of the very first Psychotactics U.S. Workshop. And while it's an entertaining story all by itself, there's a lot to learn as well for any small business owner.
Click here to read more: The Psychotactics Story_The Craziness of The Very First US Workshop

Direct download: 163_-_How_to_Get_Clients_To_Return_To_An_Offline_Event.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00pm NZDT

Most of us dream of having an online business

We are led to believe it's fine to just start up a blog and the audience will show up. Reality is a lot different. It takes time for an audience to appear. And when they do appear, it takes time to trust you.

So how do you speed up that process of client acquisition and trust? Welcome to the land of offline events. In this episode we'll see why you should have the event and how to get your clients.

Read the transcript online: Why You Need An Offline Event to Boost Your Chances of Success

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I don't like Microsoft Excel. However, my wife, Renuka does.

She can spend hours, even days tinkering with that “weird” program and come up with some statistics that are plainly astounding. One day as we sat down to lunch, as we do every afternoon, she announced the results of her morning escapade with Excel.

“Guess what percentage of our income is derived from workshops and offline events?”

Before I could answer, she revealed her statistics. The income we earned from offline events was barely 2% of our income. This tiny percentage wasn't terribly surprising to both of us, because we knew that conducting international events was an expensive exercise. Even so, I was a bit ambivalent at the thought of putting in so much work and getting a return of just 2%.

That's when Renuka revealed her ace, “Guess how much of our income comes as a direct result of those events?” she continued. And mercifully I didn't need Excel to answer that question, because I've done the hand-raising ceremony at our live events. What's the hand-raising ceremony, you ask?

At workshops, I will ask how many clients have done one online course with us, and at least 50% of the hands go up. Then I ask them to keep their hands raised if they've done two courses and few hands, if any, go down.

Three courses? The hands still stay up. The courses at Psychotactics are not necessarily cheap. While some start at around $900, the hands-on courses can cost as much as $3300.

If at this point you think that it's the online courses that lead clients to come to the in-person workshop, then it's the other way round.

Clients that meet us in person, tend to sign up for the online courses, and then just for good measure come back and attend an in-person event as well. It makes perfect sense to you, when you think of it in terms of dating, doesn't it? A relationship can be formed online, but to make sure you're not picking the wrong person, you and I, we both have to do the offline thing: we have to meet.

The exciting bit about the meeting is that it doesn't always have to be a big event

At Psychotactics, we've had three-day, four-day, even seven-day in-person workshops. At other times, we've had a presentation for between 20-45 minutes. But there have also been situations where we've just spent a few hours in a meetup, given answers to client's questions and then gone for an extended lunch or dinner.

In every case, the results are similar. Clients that get to know us don't bother to go to the sales page with a fine tooth comb. When we offer a product, workshop or course, they sign up instantly. They have met us offline, they get to know us well, and they trust us. When you see and meet someone one the flesh, you can often make a pretty accurate assessment of whether to go ahead or not.

Which is why despite the meagre 2% income from workshops and events, we continue to run offline events.

But what if you're just starting out?

You may not have any books or products to sell the clients who attend your event. You aren't likely to have an online course or training system.

Is it still worth it? Without a doubt, it's one of the best ways to get started, no matter what you're planning to do for a living. In most cases, a workshop will get you to interact with clients, you'll find out what interests them, and you'll get instant feedback. Plus, if you do your budgeting well, you're likely to make more than just 2%.

When we did our very first workshop back in the early days of Psychotactics, we were rewarded for our audacity.

I was part of a networking group, and I cajoled several of the members to show up and bring their friends along. The fee was $75 for the evening. The cafe owner offered to rent us the place for no cost and even provided the coffees free of charge. That event netted us $1500 because 20 people showed up.

But it didn't stop at that point. It's a well-known fact that the hardest sell is the first one, so I'd prepared myself to sell recurring events just like this one. How did we go about this task? And how do you do something similar?

This series will cover three core factors.

1) Why consider planning an event—offline
2) Where to get clients
3) How to get people to sign up and the next step.

1) Where to get your clients

When I was just about eight or nine years old, I had a job on Sundays.

Not every Sunday, of course, but around the months of late May and most of June was when my father needed my brother and me to pitch in, in the family business. Since my father ran a secretarial college, admissions would start in July, which meant that we had to stand outside churches and hand out a leaflet. After reading those flyers, many young women would then sign up for the year-long batch that started in July.

But why churches? As it turned out, most secretaries at the time were almost exclusively Catholic.

In Mumbai, India, masses are held on Sundays, on the hour from 6 am, and then all the way until 10 am. Which meant that we'd often be giving out hundreds of leaflets to everyone coming out of the church.

Some of whom would either become secretaries or would pass on the leaflet to a friend or relative. In effect, to start up any business, you need to show up and make yourself known in places where your future clients congregate.

If you've been brought up on the goodness of the internet, you might think the best idea in the world is to sit behind a computer, write a blog and the clients will come rushing in. In several cases that method of creating content is valid, but it could take a lot of time, money and energy to get that kind of business model off the ground. Which is why you may as well take a deep breath and go offline. Scary as it may seem, it's time to do an in-person event instead.

Which raises a very pertinent question: Where do you get clients?

The answer is not apparent and for good reason Let's say you wanted to start a cooking class. Let's say you're no champ at making Michelin starred meals, but you're no slouch at cooking either.

Where would you go? Do you randomly post leaflets into your neighbourhood boxes? That's one option, but there would be a lot of waste as it's unlikely that everyone in your neighbourhood is suddenly going to be interested in investing a frying pan and heading to your class.

Instead, go looking for a problem that needs solving.

When you look at the leaflets being distributed outside the church, it seems like a scattergun approach, doesn't it? However, as we already noted, there was a method to the madness. The girls were out of school or college and back in the early seventies, those were among the only jobs available to them.

It enabled them to get more independent and earn a reasonable income. When looking for your audience, you too need to look at the problem you're solving and not focus on just the solution. The problem you're likely to address is: unsure of how to make meals that kids love? The answer is “how to make meals that kids will eat in minutes”.

And where would you find kids? Right, you figured it out, didn't you? At the playground, in schools—even in doctor's waiting rooms fighting those millions of germs they seem to attract.

But what if you're selling a product instead, like a microphone?

Again, we don't necessarily start out with an audience, but tackle the problem, instead. What problem does the microphone solve? The Rode Podcaster, for instance, combines broadcast quality audio with the simplicity of USB connectivity, allowing recording direct to a computer without the need for an additional digital interface.

Suddenly finding kids and their parents for a cooking class seems a lot simpler, doesn't it? However, you're more likely to find a group of podcasters that meet locally. If you look up a site like MeetUp.com, you're more than likely to find all sorts of different groups.

But what if you looked long and hard and not a single podcast group shows up? Well, let's go past the technology problem and see what problem a microphone can solve. It helps a business owner record podcasts, or just have better-sounding screen recordings or screen videos for their business. The business owner can simply plug in the microphone, and they're well on their way to recording without needing to get muddled up with digital interfaces.

Every product or service is going to solve a problem

Sometimes you can find clients in an obvious place.

For example, we were able to find clients at our networking group. However, we also went on to meet with a group of coaches who held their weekly meetings not far from where we lived. We found dentists who needed marketing advice. I know this sounds bizarre, but we also wrote and got paid for articles in an alpaca magazine. We didn't get to do a workshop or in-person event with the alpaca folks, but the example is designed to show you how to look beyond the obvious.

In some cases, your audience is likely to be pretty narrow

Kelly Q lives in Australia, and her audience is a relatively tiny niche of “supply teachers”. Know what happens when your kid's teacher can't make it for the day? They get a temporary teacher, don't they? They're called “supply teachers” or “teachers for the day”.

Kelly writes a book that helps them work out the issues that plague supply teachers, and her business has started to take off. Where did she find her audience? Not offline, but online in teaching groups and Facebook groups. In her case, the Internet has come to the rescue and enabled her to sell her book. Yes, it's not an offline audience, to begin with, but over time every audience whether you find them online or offline can be engaged within a real setting, in a real place, and drinking real coffee.

2) What's the first step to finding an offline audience?

Sit down with a couple of friends or someone who knows your business well and write a list of the problems your company solves. Once you have the problem, or problems worked out, you can find out the audience that needs your solution. If you're still struggling a bit, try going to a site like MeetUp.com.

For Psychotactics, I had no luck with volleyball teams, or with potters, but that got me to think of volleyball coaches who might need marketing advice or pottery companies. With a little bit of brainstorming, you should be able to find several groups or at least ideas for where to get started.

But what's next? How do you go about getting people to sign up for your event?

3) How to get people to sign up to your event

You know the phrase that says, “Think Big”? Well, the way to get people to sign up, is to get rid of the idea of thinking big. And I stumbled upon this “think small” idea quite by mistake. When we started out, I'd always compare myself with more prominent marketers, and somehow extrapolate their numbers to my own. If they had 5000 people at their event, I automatically assumed that 150 people at my to-be-event were entirely feasible. Then I ran into a friend of mine, Kushla Martin, excitedly told me about an event she was attending and that she'd paid $75 for the event.

Two things struck me at once

The first thing I realised was that it wasn't some elaborate event that I was always dreaming about. It was a simple speech that would take an hour, possibly a couple of hours. Kushla was more than happy to go out, get inspired and pay $75 for the advice.

The $75 was the second point that stuck in my head. When you have to make a decision that involves hundreds or thousands of dollars, there's a lot of decision-making, fund-checking to be done. With an $75 event price, it was relatively easy to decide to go. Even though my business was relatively new, I too had been to at least two or three events that ranged in the $50 to $75 range.

But how do you get people to sign up for your event?

You merely announce the event, the venue and put a price on it. Remember that clients aren't coming to your event just to support you, though a few friends might just do that. They're there to learn something so that they can use it in their own lives and business. So ask yourself: what will the clients get as a result of attending your event?

Sachie's Kitchen in Auckland, New Zealand started with a simple goal in mind. Run by Sachie Nomura who's Japanese and her husband, Nick (who is Kiwi-Chinese) their goal was to take the most helpless cook and turn him or her into what they call a “black belt of Japanese cooking” in a single 2 ½ hour session.

A cookbook store called CookTheBooks, also in Auckland, turned their backyard shed into a kitchen of sorts teaching (and serving) Sri Lankan, Moroccan, North African, Spanish and other cuisines. The clients that come to their events know exactly what result they'll get. In Sachie's kitchen it's a masterclass on Japanese cooking.

In CooktheBooks, it's a bit of knowledge of the cuisine, but it's a great fun evening out and hence it attracts office groups and friends along.

Should you consider having free events?

You could, but it's hard to get people to show up to free events. Remember those series of sessions we did back when we first started? Those were paid sessions, and you could safely say that between 80-90% showed up month after month. Several years later, we decided to give back to the community and host free monthly sessions of one hour each.

For over a year, participants turned up, and the room was always packed with 40 people, but it was never the same people. When an event is free, it's easier to stay at home if it's a windy, rainy day. We found the same with our meetups worldwide. When we'd announce a free meet up in a city, people would turn up, but not in force.

The moment we started charging a modest fee of $30 or so, everyone turned up. Free events are harder to market and even harder to sell. It's better to restrict your free goodies to something online or also something you can give away at the event itself. By and large, you'd do well to avoid free events.

What do you do next?

Depending on how you publicise your event, you can put details on sites like Eventbrite or EventFinda. Those are event sites in this part of the Pacific. You'll have some event sites on your side of the world.

f you're meeting with a group of people, for example, a group of volleyball coaches, you can get them to sign up and often pay through a mobile device. Finally, don't forget to print a few leaflets that talk about the results you're going to get the clients. If you just want them to meet and have a great time, make that the focus of your leaflet and marketing. If you want it to be deadly serious, that's fine too. I've been to watercolour classes, photography sessions, dancing lessons and even bought a couple of houses as a result of offline events.

However, once you've got the event going, it's time to think of the next step

You'd think the contents of the event are pretty important, right? And they are, but that's what you have to put together. No one can tell you what agenda you need.

You can pretty much work it out yourself, and even if you're feeling reasonably nervous, no one is going to notice. The first 5-10 minutes of any event are reasonably nerve wracking but once you settle in, the crowd relaxes, and everyone has a decent time. However, while settling in, you may easily forget a crucial next step.

Next Up: How do we get clients to come back?

How do you get clients to return? One of the most underrated tactics is often right under your nose. Let's look at what every business should do—not just get a client but get the client to come back repeatedly.

Direct download: 162-Why_You_Need_An_Offline_Event.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00pm NZDT

How do you redefine the term “passion”?

A definition shouldn't be a barrier to your progress, should it? Yet, the moment you hear people talking about passion, you're stuck. And that's because their definition is all wrong. How do you redefine the term “passion”? And what does one-buttock have to do with passion? Let's find out.

You can read this episode online: One Buttock Passion

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In a TED Talk that's been watched over 9 million times, the conductor of the Boston Philamornic, talks about a seven year-old child.

And this is what conductor, Benjamin Zander, says in his speech.

He talks about a seven-year old child and what he sounds like when he's pounding on the piano. Clearly, the sounds that emanate from the piano border on pain. Even so, if that seven-year old practices for a year and yes, takes lessons, he's now eight. And the piano isn't screaming out in terror any more.

Benjamin Zander goes on to talk about how the child sounds when he's nine, then when he's ten. At which, point, Zander suggests that most kids give up. However, if he'd waited for one more year, he would have sounded pretty wonderful.

Zander takes pain to suggest that it's not that the kid became suddenly passionate, engaged or hit puberty. He explains that when the child was younger, he was playing with an impulse on every note. Then as he got better, he was playing with an impulse on every other note. At 10, it was every eight notes. And the 11-year-old had one impulse on the entire phrase.

Zander calls this the “one buttock” moment

When instead of hogging the piano stool with both buttocks, the music takes over and you're taken over by the music itself, so that you're playing on a single buttock. People who try to find their passion are two-buttock players. At the start of their journey they're struggling to hit the right impulses and this is because of the information they get about passion.

-Stop looking for your passion.
-Knowing something well and solving someone's problem is more commonplace than you believe.

-Why the terminology is all wrong—and hence drives us crazy.
-What if you know too much or too little?

Think about passion for a second and what does it sound like to you?

It sounds remarkably like love at first sight, doesn't it? You don't equate passion with spending five years chasing after a girl or a guy to get their attention. Instead, it's quick, it's instant. You have a new type of drink, possibly a wonderful Pisco sour, and you fall head over heels with it.

Now you want to talk about it to everyone. You want Pisco sour for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if possible. It's all about instant, now, magical moments. And that's what passion sounds like to everyone, whenever it's brought up in a conversation.

But passion for your work is almost never like that It's almost always a kind of slight attraction, a lot of frustration, some joy, some more frustration, some more joy. And then bingo, you look backwards and it's no longer two-buttocks on the seat.

Take me for example. Most people consider me to be a really proficient writer. Without fail and for 40 weeks a year, I diligently turn out at least 5000 words a week. That's the bare minimum, by the way. However, I had no passion for 500 word-articles, let alone 5000. In time, I could turn out 500 word articles while conducting two courses, it was that easy. And may I add, fun too. I was one-buttocking my way to writing.

In 2014, I started writing longer pieces that progressively moved into the 5000 word zone.

As we were having coffee this morning, Renuka reminded me how I was getting upset with her all the time. Well, really I was getting upset with myself. I couldn't come up with topics. Writing 5000 word articles would drain me completely. I'd reach out to her to get ideas, and of course it wasn't something that she was interested in, so it wasn't possible to suggest something as quickly as I needed it.

This would cause me to complain, and quite bitterly at times, that she wasn't helping me at all. In reality, I was a one-buttock 500-word writer, but a two-buttock 5000-word writer. Then, later, much later in 2017, something happened. Yes, you know what happened. I was writing and able to look at the back as well and notice that one buttock was off the chair.

Now I have the opposite problem I have so many 5000 word articles, that I barely have time to write them. I have about 5 or 6 of them outlined and ready to go, and by the time I write them, it will be a week or two from today. By which time, another 5 or 6 will be in the queue, if not more. The passion I'm feeling for writing, just wasn't there when I started Psychotactics, then it came along. Then it wasn't there at the 5000 article mark, and now it's suddenly all fun and games again.

Even so, there's nothing instant about passion. The idea of passion is all wrong.

This one-buttock stuff just takes time. This is not a Pisco sour where you swig it down and you hit an instant high. This is slow, often boring, consistently frustrating progress. One more example and I'm out of here.

I recently bought an app because I love cooking. The name of this app is Paprika (yes, like the spice). And I was instantly in love with it. I could use it on day one and I continued to sing its praises. I even did a double spread cartoon about the app in my Moleskine diary. This experience with the Paprika app is diametrically different to the the experience with Evernote. I didn't like Evernote. I found it hard to work with. I made excuses, I deleted it from my computer, from my iPhone and then installed it again.

Then over time, as I learned how amazingly eccentric it was, I started to love it. And today I'm passionate about Evernote. How do I know that to be true? Because if you gave me the option of deleting one app and keeping the other, the Paprika's head would be on a plate in a second. I would never, ever, ever, ever, give up Evernote, if I could help it.

So all this talk about follow your passion is going to take you nowhere because the starting point is more frustration than one-buttock playing. Which leaves us with a nagging question.

Where do you go from here?

The key is to start learning something you think would work for you. Maybe learn how to do some pottery; or make face cream; or how to build running shoes. Perhaps you're already skilled at something and need to get the message out and need to learn about how to give a better presentation or write better. Wherever you are now, it's where all entrepreneurs are at any point in their lives.

They are almost always in transition. There's almost always that point where you get a bit fidgety and want to do something else, or at least the same thing differently. Whatever it is you have an inkling for, the only way to get the passion to keep going until you look back and see your one buttock.

It's an inexact science, but it boils down to a few simple steps

You start, not necessarily knowing where you're going You run into a lot of frustration until things start to ease up a bit. You aren't doing very well, but you still love what you do, and you persist. Eventually, the tide turns in your favour. You get terrific. And clients think you're close to perfect. It's an inexact science that requires a good deal of focus and persistence.

That's when your passion will find you. And that's all I can really say. The journey is long, but it sure is interesting. You may as well start today.

A few questions on passion:

1) I do have a question: How do you find that intersection passion or even exploring a passion and solving someone's problem? Especially when you have too many interests and passions & can solve several problems just like you can. Or you just pick one and stick with it until you find a reason to change the course.

2. How about people who draw a complete blank on their hobbies, interests or often times they are things like playing tennis but at 50, bodies don't cooperate very well, or a mum who wants to learn calligraphy but fears what's the point of that and where will that lead her, or someone who simply draws a blank? I have met several people like this and it fascinates me that I have a complete different problem to what they are struggling with.

Everyone has either a problem where they feel they know nothing.

Or they know too much. The point is the people who feel they know nothing, haven't really thought things through. I know a woman who for years was just a stay-at-home mother. Technically, that doesn't get you very far if you're looking for a job or want to start a business. She had no intention of starting a business, so she got a job. And how do you get a job if you don't have the skill? That's an easy answer, isn't it?

You look at what you want to learn, and you learn it. Then you apply for the job, and if you meet the requisite needs of the employer, voilà, you have the job. We all know how this system works, don't we? Most of us have had to do some kind of job at some point, whether at home or at work, and we get the skills and off we go.

If you know nothing or believe you know nothing, you have to learn something

This very same person never cooked much. For her a sandwich is as interesting as a fancy meal. Even so, she got herself some cookbooks and took to baking. She now bakes all the time and turns out some great pies, muffins and all sorts of goodies that you and I are not supposed to eat. Once again, no experience, no knowledge magically turns to a high level of skill.

Almost everyone can create something, if they're not physically or mentally handicapped. It sounds trite when someone says the word “simple”, but it's really that simple. To get a skill, you have to learn a skill. To get better at the skill, you have to practice the skill. To get good at muffin-making, you have to burn some muffins before you get your Michelin stars. The same analogy applies to business.

You can sit around thinking that you know nothing, can do nothing and end up doing nothing

The result of all this inactivity isn't nothing. It's a few levels below nothing. Feelings of uselessness wash over you with increasing rapidity. Others see you as directionless and lazy, or just confused. Yet, think of yourself as being 15 years old again and wanted to move into a career. You wouldn't be aimless. You'd pick a college. You'd pick a university. You'd do a professional course. You'd learn, and acquire the skill knowing fully well that it was just a matter of time before you had enough ability to do the task.

There is the flip side to ability, of course.

When I was 25, I felt like I was a bit cursed. I adored Photoshop. I wanted to spend all day with it. But I also drew cartoons. Hey, I could use Photoshop to draw cartoons. No clash of interests, there, are there? But what if you can write, draw, dance, cook, and find there are subsets of everything. Because cooking can involve Italian cooking, but also French. It can involve Sri Lankan cooking, Thai, Malaysian, or Indian.

Suddenly the options are too many. And the excuses increase with every subsequent option. Well, you have to “kill some of your babies”. If you're so very talented, so very skilled, you have to sit down and get yourself a nice big red pencil. Then you make a list of what you can do, by crossing out everything that isn't important right this minute.

You pick one and you stay the course, just like you'd do with a marriage. If things go sour, and you've given it your all, it's time for a change.

The problem with passion is that it changes all the time

When I was growing up, I was a shy kid. All those cartoons you see; all that skill you think is inborn isn't a result of some magical gene in my family. If you go back many generations, you'll find zero cartoonists in our family. All of that drawing came from a lot of encouragement and being much too shy to talk to too many people.

I went through a lot of years, all the way into the first couple of years of university, being relatively shy. If there was one thing I was passionate about, it was drawing. It got better over the years, people complimented me about my talent all the time, and more importantly, it was a perfect “chick magnet”.

While other guys were busy trying to get the attention of the girls in university, I'd sit quietly in the corner of the canteen. I'd drink my chai, open my book and start drawing. Before long, a few girls would be oohing and aahing over the drawings. I didn't have to go and find the girls; the cartoons drew them to me. That's how I got over my shyness, and that's how my passion for drawing cartoons burned even brighter.

But by the time I was in university I wanted to be a copywriter

By the time I'd spent a year and a half in copywriting, I wanted to script 30-second commercials. Then, on a whim, I decided to go back to cartoons. The journey to New Zealand back in the year 2000, caused me to want to get into marketing. Could I end up becoming a chef in the next few years, or find myself obsessed with origami?

It's hard to tell, but look at the story of most entrepreneurs or freelancers, and a common thread starts to reveal itself. Passions change over time, and the starting point of passion is almost always marked by lots of enthusiasm—and a lot of frustration.

It's hard to imagine it now, but back in the years 2000 and 2001 it was really a slog trying to get clients I was passionate about jumping into marketing, but no one else was willing to pay me for it—not for a while at least. And sure we had our website up and running. Sure, we wrote articles. You have to do that for yourself, if not for anyone else.

But the slog continued for quite a while. That frustration is the starting point, and it seems to swirl about like a fog for the longest time. Which is when most people give up and try to find something else.

Something easier, or shinier. And this is where I think the concept of the 10,000 hours really shines.

I don't believe you need to do 10,000 hours to gain a talent

You can get good enough to be hired in a fraction of that time. Even so, the 10,000 hoursmeans you're deep into what you think is important to you. It shows persistence, and if you're spending that much time learning, you will also figure out ways to make things work for you. When I started cartooning, I had no clue how to earn an income. I persisted and found areas where I could make my mark and get paid for it.

The same applies to any skill. At first, if you're floundering, you'll be in that position for a while. If you study your profession well; if you keep improving your skills and more importantly, get away from that computer and into the real world, you'll find that your passion will eventually find its way to you.

In the end it's not about whether you have a passion or not. No one starts off wanting to be an engineer at a waste-recycling plant. No kid runs into the room saying, “when I grow up, I want to sell USB cables to the world”. It's something that you find along the way. That passion comes when you play enough on two buttocks and find you're having fun.

And you know it's one buttock time. For now. Tomorrow, or next year, who knows?

Next up: We are told to start up a business doing what we're passionate about.

How do we know what we are passionate about in the first place?
Let's explore the concept of passion and why you should let your passion find you instead.


Most of us are told to start up a business doing what we're passionate about.

There's just one problem. We don't know what we are passionate about in the first place. How are we supposed to find something we know nothing about? Let's explore the concept of passion and how to stop looking for it, and get it to find you, instead.

Read the podcast on the website: Passion:Let it find you

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Imagine a person who can sniff a perfume and instantly identify the brand

That person is my wife, Renuka. She can quickly work her way through as many as 150 fine fragrances. Fine fragrances are perfumes made in the classical style, by companies such as Chanel, Givenchy, Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, etc. If you asked her if she's passionate about perfumes, her answer is clearly, yes. She worked in the perfumery industry for well over ten years, spending as much as half an hour to an hour each day, just tuning her nose to the subtleties of every perfume.

Would that count as passion? It should, shouldn't it?

All your life, you're told to follow your passion. To dig deep and find that one thing that makes you ecstatic. Somehow, you're supposed to know almost at the point of leaving school, what you're going to be good at, and to go after that passion. And Renuka didn't fit that bill at all. The only reason she took on the job at the fragrance company was because she was sick and tired of travelling and wanted a marketing job that involved little or no travel.

So how much of a newbie was she at the job?

In Mumbai, India, wearing flowers in your hair is a common trait among women. Whole market spaces are designed just to sell flowers. And two of the most popular flowers worn in women's hair are “mogra” and “jasmine”. When put to the test, Renuka couldn't identify their fragrance. It came as a complete surprise to her when she discovered that soap contained perfume. In short, this was a really miserable start to any kind of passion-hunt.

Success feeds passion, more than passion feeds success

Those are the words of Scott Adams, author and creator of the highly successful cartoon strip, “Dilbert”. And he's right, you know. Passion is a slightly ridiculous word because very few of us know what we're going to be passionate about, and especially so early in life.

If you speak to my nieces, who are 8 and 13, they seem to have a range of things they love. One loves dancing and music to the point where she'll stop chattering and start singing along to the music. Another loves animals and is really fond of the idea of the romantic version of being a vet until she has to do all the un-romantic bits as well.

And that's because success feeds passion I remember going to Fotosoft, a computer training school to learn Photoshop.

Photoshop itself was barely five or six years old having first been released in February 1990. However, I was keen to learn Photoshop. I went to the class, learned what I could and then promptly forgot most of it. To say I was passionate about it, was an incredibly silly statement to make.

Not many years later I needed Photoshop almost all the time. Instead of using the archaic system of creating a sketch, taking photocopies by the dozen and colouring each photocopy, I was able to do a single illustration, scan it in, and colour madly on the screen itself. Then along came the Wacom tablet, and I bought the ArtZ II. I was soon head over heels with Photoshop—a passion that has remained strong for almost 21 years.

Most people don't get hit by a passion bolt of lightning

Instead they fumble, stumble and grumble their way into a whole new world. Along the way, they suddenly run into a whole new world, and they start an exploration process. They look to solve either a problem that has loomed large in their own life or they set out to help someone else. Or like Renuka, they get a highly unusual assignment and then go through the process of falling in love with the skill.

Take someone like Michael Phelps, for instance. Surely he was born to be a swimming champion, right? Nonsense. Phelps hated water as a kid. But he had a problem at school. He had trouble concentrating and was constantly fidgety. When his paediatrician diagnosed him with ADHD, he was expected to take the drug, Ritalin.

When Michael Phelps was in the sixth grade, he was fidgety and had trouble paying attention in the classroom. His paediatrician diagnosed him with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. To burn off all of that excess energy that Phelps seemed to have, he was told to “swim it off.”

Except for the fact that he hated water

“It's wild to kind of think about how far we've come,” he said in an interview with ESPN. “From my mom putting me in the water safety — I hated the water. I didn't want anything to do with it. I learned on my back.” Now with 23 Olympic medals to his name, we'd all be forgiven for believing that he was born with a passion for water.

Even once he more than made his mark in swimming, his so-called passion flickered wildly. In the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, he routinely skipped practice for days on end. He got into intense arguments with his coach, Bob Bowman. Bowman told Dateline that he wished Phelps would have quit right at that point: “I didn't want him to go through this and I thought it was going to end badly,”.

If you pick successful people at random, you're sure to hit those who knew they were going to make it big

Some people, it seems, were either groomed, or got really good at a skill, and they went on to huge success over time. That's more the exception than the rule. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony first started out making rice cookers that were flops.

The inventor of the pacemaker, Wilson Greatbatch, had no interest in getting the heart to function well. Instead, he spent his days as a young man, absorbed in radio technology. Thomas Knoll, one of the Knoll brothers that invented Photoshop, was a doctoral candidate in computer vision, with no desire to create one of the world's most loved photo retouching tool.

So where do you go to find your passion?

When you hear how Renuka got into the perfumery business, it might seem like a lucky break. The reality is that she sold discount debit cards, to begin with, then timeshares with a company called Dalmia Resorts. Her lucky break was like any other lucky breaks. It wasn't lucky at all.

It was just a matter of getting involved with a project for long enough and finding you're hopeless at it at first, but are willing to stick it out for the duration. Most people start out in one field, get into another, and another and the passion grows, and even wanes over time. One thing is clear: you're not going to find your passion anytime soon.

You'll just have to do what almost everyone before you has done

You'll have to start solving a problem for yourself or someone else. Just writing on a blog or creating a website might be baby steps, but it's probably not going to solve the primary goal of business. A business tends to figure out what a client needs and then create the solution for that problem. To address the problems of the clients, you'll often to get moving past the computer screen.

To get a business going, start those cooking classes, make those guitar videos, teach someone how to do the stuff you know. For starters, all you're doing is going down the road to find success. And success is simply being able to do something decently well. So well, that you're almost starting to enjoy it.

I had no idea I'd like marketing I was positive I hated writing.

I didn't speak very well, cook or dance very well. I started out with a passion for drawing, and that I still do to this day, but not as a profession. Instead my passion hovers around marketing, writing, and yes, I love to dance, cook and I'm a really good speaker.

Forget looking your passion

Learn something well. Solve a problem. Your passion will find you, instead.
But don't you need to know something well before you solve someone else's problem?

Does your neighbour know how to mow a lawn better than you? I'd say if you walk across, you will find the answer. Whether they do a better job or not, it barely matters.

At some point, that neighbour is likely to pay you for the job if you offer to mow their lawn. Most businesses don't start solving some amazing problem. Most businesses are remarkably mundane in their approach. You need to get a package across, let's invent a business like FedEx. You want to learn how to get rid of the cracks on your feet, let's make a crate called Heel Balm. You want to go to Mars? Well, that's an amazing problem, but most of the time, you're not trying to rewrite history.

Take for instance the book “5-Minute iPhone Magic”

That's a book, and yes we sell it on our website. How many pages do you think that book contains? It promises a 5-minute makeover, so it can't have many pages, can it? But wait, surely I must be a great photographer to write a book on photography, right? Even as you hear those words, you know it ‘s not true.

I'm an excellent cartoonist. My writing skills are way above average, and photography is something I do on the side. Unlike any of the books you see on Amazon, this book isn't promising you'll learn about any technical stuff. In fact, what makes it so very palatable is that it takes the 50 odd features that exist in the software and gets rid of 47. When you have only three things to learn, you are on your way to taking some wonderful, if not excellent pictures with your iPhone.

The most mundane job will get you started as an entrepreneur

Which is why so many successful people talk about those mundane jobs. They delivered papers, they worked as waiters, they brushed down a dozen horses—jobs like that. And while they were lucky enough to get their mundane job earlier in life, every job, every business has an overwhelming amount of mundane moments.

The reason why most of us don't start is because we think have to be outstanding, or at least superior in some way.

No one is saying you have to be mediocre, but when you start out, by golly, you're going to be average at best. And there's this funny story to tell at this point because it involves photography. A few months ago, my cousin came over to visit from Dubai. For some reason, the discussion about my sister's wedding came up. And since I've been such a keen photographer/videographer, I'd taken pictures and video of their wedding.

It wasn't easy to find the DVD of the recording, but I was persistent. It only took 30 seconds of video for me to realise I was terrible back then. My video flipped aimlessly from side to side. The photos were devoid of composition, story and didn't resemble anything close to what I can achieve now. Would someone hire me back then as well? The answer is yes. Even when I was turning out what I now consider terrible cartoons, abominable logos and probably ugh articles, someone was willing to pay for it, because it solved their problem.

The reality is you'll never know something well enough for yourself

Or to put it another way, what you think is horrifying, is pretty good for someone else. The reason why successful people get that way is because they are either ignorant how bad they were (I was that way for sure) or they expect to get better as time marches on. If you wait to get better, the wait extends interminably. You'll never really get off the ground. And that passion, your passion, will go find someone else more deserving.

Harsh words? Sure, but that's how passion comes into being

Instead passion starts at the bottom of the heap being really crappy. Renuka didn't know about perfumes. Even you probably know that soaps have perfume. Even I, who have zero interest in fragrances, could identify a “mogra” and “jasmine” flower fragrance. Renuka's start wasn't at the intersection of knowing something well and solving someone's problem. There was nothing. Then there was a little bit. Then there was more. Then she was offered a job as a perfumer.

You don't get asked to be a perfumer unless you have knowledge of chemicals

She knew nothing about it. She didn't take the job because life veered off in another direction. But one thing we know for sure. She'd start at crappy, no-knowledge and work her way up. It took her six months to get to a point where she was ready to rock and roll from not knowing anything to being pretty confident. It might take you three months, or nine.

However, if you wait for that intersection; that intersection of knowing something well and solving someone's problem. Well, that's a long wait. A wait that will last forever.

So, stop looking for your passion. Knowing something well and solving someone's problem is more commonplace than you believe.

Next up: Whenever you have a deadline, somehow you're able to stagger towards it and get the job done. But other tasks never seem to move forward. In life we need to complete projects that are urgent, but also projects that are good for the soul. Find out how do we get these projects going and how can we sustain them over the long term? How To Avoid Overwhelm (And Systematically Complete Projects)

Direct download: 160-Why_You_Cant_Find_Your_Passion_And_How_It_Finds_You_Instead.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00pm NZDT

How many books do you read in a year?

Most people boast about how they read hundreds of books a year. That's what I used to do as well. Until I found that I wasn't really absorbing any information. So is speed reading a bad idea? Well, not entirely, but you need to know when to use it and why. Find out how speed works for you and more importantly, when it fails.

Read it online: Mental Barriers Myths

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Mental Myth: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster)

If you looked at the About Us page on the Psychotactics site, it used to say that I read 100 books a year.

Well, that was true when I started out in business. I didn't have many clients, hence loads of time. It was also the very early days of the Internet. There were still millions of pages online, but blogs barely existed. Youtube was non-existent. Facebook was years away. If you wanted to get those 100 books, you had to physically make your way to the book store or the library. Nothing online was particularly instant or as distracting as it is today.

Even so, I bought a book on speed reading. In fact, it was an entire course. The course was instantly impressive. It showed me how my brain could recall just about anything it viewed even for a brief second.

It got me to open a random page of the dictionary, then flick through the page and later recall a fair bit of what was on the page. It was a long time ago, and I forget the details of the exercise, but I was hooked into believing I could store endless amounts of information in my head. As I found out, it wasn't impossible to store information, but it was quite like a photocopy machine.

Think of a photocopy machine for a few seconds

What is the primary function? It takes photocopies of information. You can run tens of thousands of pages through a photocopy machine, and it just takes images. Your brain, from what I understand, can do something similar. However, it does not mean that your brain can make sense of the information.

It's just information, loads of information piling up on top of more information. The speed reading course was instantly enjoyable and useless to me, even back in those early days. I abandoned it despite paying a small fortune for it and went back to reading two books a week at top speed.

For someone like me, who was just learning marketing and business reading a lot was a great idea

It was a bit like getting to know the streets in a city. It gave me the confidence and feel for the city. And I didn't have a fear of getting lost. And this constant, pounding flow of information is great as long as you don't have to do too much with the information. You watch the news; you read magazines, you listen to podcast interviews. They constitute a mountain range of information, but not information you necessarily need to use, now or in the future.

I found that I was losing out on depth

In my need to keep up with 100 books a year, or even 25 books a year, I was playing a game of chicken. I was headed right towards my goal, refusing to swerve, and in doing so, missing out on the nuances. To bounce back to the analogy of the city streets, I was getting a lot of information, but not enough depth. I didn't need to speed up my learning. I could take things at a reasonable pace and even slow down.

When I slowed down, I noticed something quite interesting

I missed out at least 30-50% of the nuances in the first reading or listening. I remember listening to how trees absorb nutrition, for example, and I loved that podcast episode, so I heard it again. And again. And yet again.

The fourth time around I was still picking up nuances I'd missed on the earlier drive-throughs. It wasn't enough to read and listen at normal speed but to go back and read again, listen again. Which is why the book, The Brain Audit has a note right in the introduction to go back and read the book thrice. And most clients come back to say that they were surprised at how much they learned on the second and third pass.

This isn't to say that speed itself is a problem

Right now I'm learning some nuances of InDesign and ePub. And much of it is “old knowledge”. I've been over the material and could do some other activity while “listening to the video”, let alone looking at it. In cases where I am very familiar with the material, I will wind up the video to at least 1.25x or even 1.5x.

Even in these conditions, it's important not to get cocky. The material may be the same, or remarkably similar, but often the presenter talks about a new way to implement the information. And if I'm just speeding things up, I will almost certainly miss it. And the idea is to make the learning stick.

But doesn't your brain adapt to faster speeds?

I believe it does. If you listen to everything at twice the speed, over time that double speed is more than likely to become the new standard for you. This isn't to say you're going to know twice as much, only that you can absorb twice the amount at once. There's also a definite downside when you enter the real world, and people don't speak at 2x. If you listen to everything at high speed, normal speech will cause you to get distracted because everyone seemingly speaks so slowly. The main point, however, is that speeding up your reading or listening doesn't necessarily make you smarter.

Eventually, what's the point of all the information you've just read?

When you go online, you'll often run into a site like ours. And some person just like me will tell you that they read 100 books a year. That information may have been correct when they had less work. Or when they were needier for that information. It could be true in an age when everyone wasn't being blasted with ten million pieces of information every single minute of the day. We believe in speed. And for the most part, speed kills. Speed doesn't make things better or more profound.

As singer/songwriter, John Mayer writes in one of his songs: 
Twice as much ain't twice as good
And can't sustain, as one-half could. It's wanting more, that's gonna send me to my knees.

It's a myth that you need to go faster

You can slow down, make notes, make mind maps. Even doodle. You can go over a book once, twice and thrice if you choose to do so. Savour what you're learning and learn it in a deeper, more profound way. It sure beats rushing through life at 2x.

Next up: 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.
Find out more: Accelerated Learning: How To Incredibly Speed Up Your Skill Acquisition

Direct download: 159-Mental_Barriers_That_Hold_you_Back-Part-2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:30pm NZDT

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