Why do clients leave?

It seems odd, doesn't it? When you ask a client why they join, they seem to suggest it is all about information and content, but then they inexplicably leave. They seem to suggest they need either better content, or they need time to implement the content. But that's rarely the case, as we've found out.

The need is far greater and we've all experienced it. Clients leave for a very obvious reason that you're never going to find in analytics software or surveys. Listen to find out more.

Read the podcast online: Why Clients Leave.

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Ok, so it has always bothered me why clients leave.

And when that thought crossed my mind, I was sitting in the cafe—the very cafe I'd been avoiding for well over a year or more. So now I had two thoughts: why do clients leave? And why did I return to the cafe? In case you're wondering, the answer is not “coffee”. And if wasn't the coffee, then it had to be something else, right?

But let's leave the cafe for a second and go online—say to a membership site, instead

Let's say you belong to a membership site and the membership fee comes up for renewal. Why do you stay? Or why do you leave? The obvious answer is: it's the product or the service, right? And yet when we look at membership sites all over the place, there's really no shortage of content.

No matter how grotty the site, there's usually way more content than you can browse, let alone consume. Videos, audio, articles, reports—they all swarm around you with increasing intensity. If the content were really the problem, you have no problem, do you?

So let's take another angle

There's too much content, and you really can't absorb it all. You've had your fill, and you now need to buckle down and focus on your business. Even if you have received advice and answers to your questions; even if your business has indeed gone ahead, you still need some breathing space to implement all of that information.

We say it, but we don't mean it, do we? None of us has time. We didn't have time yesterday, or last week, last year, or even in the last decade. Time marches on to the sound of a jiggling rumba beat, and there's no way we can stop that time parade. So it can't be the focus or the time off, because the moment we've left the site, that information will cease to exist, but some other stuff will replace it.

And that's when I finished the foam of the coffee, and I got my “bfoto”

Yup, that's short for “blinding flash of the obvious”. People, clients—they don't leave because they need time to focus; or because they're not getting enough content. Most of the time they don't even leave because they need the money. Unless the relationship with the site or the coach is just crappy, it makes more sense to get good advice and pay the fee. If it's not the money, or the content, or the time, what is it?

It is the “people”. To get back to the cafe story above, we were regulars at the cafe about two years ago. However, back then, we knew a lot of the people at the cafe and by people I mean the staff. Then the manager, Justine, left and took some of the staff with her. Suddenly the place wasn't so appealing, even though nothing much had changed.

Two years slipped by, and we avoided the place. One day early this year, the current manager invited us in. She assured us we'd get great service and the coffee we were used to. And suddenly we're home again. We got to know the current staff, they know us, and it's like nothing's changed.

The bfoto—or blinding flash of the obvious is just “people”

When asked why we buy products or services, we often give a logical reason. We reel out the features or the benefits, but in reality, it's the people. It's the reason you and I have a preference for a particular petrol station, when all petrol stations have the same product, at approximately the same price.

It's the reason why we don't care for rotating hairdressers or barbers, choosing as far as possible to go to the same one every single time. I know it's evident that people matter, but how does this play out when you consider the field of marketing? And what are you supposed to do if clients are starting to leave even when you're doing your best?

The plot thickens. Stay tuned.

We noticed something very odd in the courses we conduct online

The online courses, like the Article Writing Course, is remarkably difficult, and rightly so. You're trying to compress a skill that usually takes years, into just 12 weeks. This intensity means you're going to have several sleepless nights, have to do assignments, interact with the group.

Wait, interact with the group?

Isn't learning about the teacher and the student? What's this group nonsense about? And if you look at the data, the data speaketh plainly. It says: those that interact with the group do two things consistently. The first being they finish the course and show a far higher skill level than those who don't interact with their group.

The second point is that clients, having done one course, then show up for a second course; then a third; buy many products and services; come to offline events, and so on. The ones that don't interact with the group, and merely do their assignments don't exactly fall off the face of the Earth, but they're—and I hesitate to say this—less skilled and more likely to leave, or find it harder to go on (for some reason or the other).

Africans knew this a long time ago

In Africa there's a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. However, when you look at the saying, or the course, or the cafe, what you see repeatedly is the interaction with people. We are really like a herd of elephants that want to travel together, as far as possible and not some lonely leopard sitting by itself on a tree in the middle of the Himalayan foothills.

We want to be together, or at least to know each other. The blinding flash merely is that if you don't get people to become part of the group, they will get less of a benefit, pick up fewer skills and finally find they need to leave.

We've found this phenomenon to play out repeatedly in our business

If clients come to a workshop, they meet. And at Psychotactics we don't have this thousand person, 150 session seminar. We have boutique workshops, which means you don't take notes; but instead, you work on your project and the projects of the group (yes, here comes the group again).

And in doing so, we find that clients come back repeatedly not just for the workshops, but also for other products and services. They've connected with Renuka and me, that's for sure, but they've also connected with each other.

Which is why we started having paid meet ups

You noticed the term “paid”, right? We tried having free meet ups, and they just fizzled and died because it's easy to look out the window, see the rain and climb back into paid. A paid meet up leads to commitment, and you get a 90-100% turnout. Anyway, the meet ups had the same effect. The more people met, the more they knew each other and the more they then interacted in 5000bc. The interesting bit is that they didn't just interact with others they'd met, but with the rest of the members in 5000bc.

And as you'd expect, a phenomenally large number of those we've met in person are still members of 5000bc. Some have been members for ten years, some have been around for 15, while others are newer. It isn't to suggest that longtime members are people we've met with or interacted with on a live course. If you're looking for a magic trick, it's right in front of your eyes: it's the people.

What should we do at Psychotactics to increase this interaction?

What are we currently doing? Quite a few things. The first is the chocolate bar, the second are the e-mails, the third is the Taking Action forum, the fourth is the welcomes when you join—but instead of a list, let's find out how it all works. And yes, let's find out what else we can do because there's a real downside when a client leaves or doesn't participate.

If you look way back to the tribe, you'll notice that every person in the tribe could bring knowledge to the fireplace. When that elder didn't participate, the group was poorer. Or if a participating elder died, that group's learning and interaction were greatly impoverished. Going alone sounds pretty cool, but it's terrible for the group, and it's crappy for the individual.

We're not done yet. I'll be back to explain how we use and how we can use the people interaction for mutual benefit. Oh, and you know how it's frustrating when you don't have examples, lots and lots of examples, well, “don't you worry”, there will be examples galore. Let's move to the next part, shall we? But before we do, let's take a little detour into what makes people happy.

Robert Waldinger is the director of a project that should have been abandoned a few decades ago.

He's the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is possibly the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. Over the past 75 years, the study tracked the life of over 724 men, year after year, deeply digging into their homes, their lives, their health and one more thing. They were also asked how their life stories would turn out.

A study like this is extremely rare, because funding tends to dry up, the researchers get bored or the people involved in the study die. Yet this study is still going and still has about 10% of the original participants still alive and well into their 90s.

And what did they learn?

The real happiness came from something extremely boring: good relationships. Yup, that was it. 80% of today's millennials, when surveyed, want to be rich and at least 50% want to be famous. Yet, the thing that people figure out over time, is seemingly mundane. It's that we crave relationships most of all. People who are socially connected to each other are physically healthier and live longer and happier lives. Secondly, the quality of those relationships matter. Toxic relationships don't count for much.

And the third big lesson that they learned about relationships is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people's memories stay sharper longer.

But what has all of this got to do with your business?

It's the “bfoto”: the blinding flash of the obvious. We all want stuff, don't we? We want to be rich and famous, but most of all, we want to feel wanted. All those phrases of “no one is an island” or “love me or hate me, but don't ignore me” comes into play. And this feeling of being wanted goes right to the very root of our happiness.

UC Berkeley psychologist and author Dacher Keltner. When Pixar was doing research for the movie, Inside Out, they needed guidance from an expert on emotions and they turned to Dacher Keltner.

Anyway, here's what Keltner said in an interview with Shane Parrish from Farnam Street.com. “The connection, you know, happiness, our sense that life is going pretty well, is strongly driven by three things in the vast scientific literature now. One is the positive emotions we’ve been talking about, like mirth and laughter and love and sympathy. Another is how you handle stress and negative emotion. The third is social connection“.

We are so focused on adding content, playing with technology and dancing with keywords that we forget to work on the most basic (and most wanted) human emotions of connectedness. Advertising and great salesletters are important to get the client to become part of your clientele or community, but it's what you do next that makes all the difference.

Keeping clients is—at least to my mind—the most important part of a function of how you go about connecting them, getting them to talk to each other and help each other. And voilà we are still going to have some people that leave, but by and large, people want to stay.

This concept applies to every job most of us have ever held

Most of us get into a job for economic or prestigious reasons. Even so, even when the money or prestige is great, we feel like chumps and long to find another job if the company isn't great. We long for the people and the connections and to be treated with dignity and respect. This “bfoto” is something almost all of us have experienced if we've been in a job somewhere. And it applies just as profoundly in your business.

But how do we go about creating this community and connectedness?

Let's find out what we are doing at Psychotactics and maybe you can add to the list as well. it would be great if you added what you're doing, to the list as well. And why you're doing it. But first, let's check out what we've done so far and how it has helped.

Next Step: Have you seen your customer back out of a deal at the very last minute?
The Brain Audit  is a complete system that enables you to understand what's going on inside the brain of your customer. It's a system that is based on a deep understanding of how our mind works.

The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve-wracking decision.

Is it going to drive clients away?
Or will it work?

The odds are it will fail if you don't consider “segregation” and “creating attraction”. This episode shows you exactly what those two terms mean when it comes to waiting lists. Let's roll on to the episode, shall we?

Click here to read online: Why Waiting Lists Fail

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Commitment

Would you wait 14 years to join a Disney Club?

Apparently so, because Club 33, in Disneyland has a 14-year waiting list. Originally intended as a place for Walt Disney to entertain investors, the club now has a nose-bleed $25,000 joining fee plus a recurring $10,000 a year membership fee. Oh, and you still have to pay your tab for the food and drink.

But surely all this waiting is excessively nutty behaviour, isn't it?

We wouldn't ever get obsessive about a waiting list, would we? And yet we do get on a waiting list all the time, though on a modest scale. You may not think of going to your hairdresser as being on a waiting list, but if you've made an appointment, that's just what it is.

The reservation you made at the restaurant next week, that's also a waiting list. That flight in October, the hotel bookings—they're all waiting lists. Waiting lists are everywhere, but we don't quite seem to notice because they're part of our everyday lives.

And when you book or put down your name, the commitment increases

Or does it? If we look at the hotel you booked, there's a reason for that specific choice. The flight, the tennis match, the restaurant booking—they're all a form of commitment. Some of them you might need to pay for, in advance.

Some of them, you pay for later, but the reason for being on that list is because you and I seek a level of satisfaction. However, we are more likely to show up, pay for, or join something if we're already on a list than if we're not on that list.

Nonetheless, a waiting list by itself doesn't work.

If all you do is slap on a form on your website, it's unlikely to get any attention. However, if you create the demand for it, the corresponding commitment goes up as well, because potential clients have both something to gain and to lose.

If they get into Club 33, for instance, they have additional status, plus other goodies such as immediate fast passes, upgrades on Disney cruises and behind-the-scenes tours of Disneyland attractions. If your eyes glazed over the attraction—and the loss factor, in the case of Club 33—then clearly you're not going to get on that list even if you owned half of L.A.

At this point we are probably clear, a factor of attraction is what we're going to need to get a commitment of any kind

In the case of a famed club, restaurant or event, the attraction can be a foregone conclusion. In the case of your course, workshop or book launch, you need to spell out the detail of why the client should even bother getting on that list. However, you don't have to list everything that the client is likely to get.

Clients are pretty smart and know a good deal when they see one, but can quickly get overwhelmed with dozens of reasons. Instead, picking one reason why someone should get on the list is extremely important. For instance, even with the home study versions, we expressly communicate that there are only 25 copies. When a to-be buyer realises the scarcity factor, they understand they can't get the product any other way and hence sign up.

But what if you're a complete newbie?

If you are, pay close attention to the previous paragraph. Even a completely unknown business can focus on one big idea that will convince a client to commit. Let's say you've just decided to sell a physical product like a water bottle. There's nothing fancy about water bottles, but let's say your bottle is designed to enable the person know for sure, how much water they've consumed in a day. That's a single point.

It solves a problem, and the potential client is likely to be more eager to want to know when the product is out so they can buy it. Or let's say you have a camera—a video camera—that is likely to help you edit video as if you were operating a two or three camera set up. That one point is likely to get most people who shoot video to pay very close attention to your list. As you'd expect, it works just as well for a training session or a digital product.

You'll need to pick ONE point from your product that's super-compelling. Let's say, for instance, I'm laughing a book on “talent” for example, or a book on how to “make nutritious Indian food, 10 minutes after you get home”, I'd be harping on a single point. And that point alone without a ton of details about the book is likely to be enough to get you on a list.

Once you're on a list, it doesn't mean you'll go through with the commitment

Many reservations get cancelled and changed along the way. However, the greater the loss factor, the more likely the client will go through the entire process. Therefore, even if you're only able to create attraction at this point, you'd want to think about the downside as well.

A person headed to a hard-to-reserve restaurant is more likely to clear all obstructions so that they can make it for dinner. A person that is keen to do a course will wake up at midnight just to make sure they sign up.

It might sound a bit like science fiction to you right now, but remember that all businesses that have that kind of demand today, were once struggling just like everyone else. They systematically put the attraction/loss factor, increased the scarcity and then commitment followed soon after.

In case you missed it: Listen to Part 1:

3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work

A waiting list seems to be both a barrier and an enticement

The problem with waiting lists is that they fail, and fail miserably if you don't get the elements right. So what are the elements that contribute to a really smart waiting list? Let's find out in this episode, shall we?

Click to read online: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work: Episode 183

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Why do most of us prefer Friday to Sunday?

It's odd when you think about it, right? Friday is a working day (in most countries), and Sunday is a day of rest. Yet we wait with baited anticipation for Fridays. The reason is probably apparent to you by now. Friday clearly and consistently holds the promise of the weekend that is to follow. We all know what follows Sunday, don't we?

Anticipation—that's one of the big reasons that you need to have a waiting list

Anticipation creates an enormous amount of drama in our minds. If you have to wait for something, there's a pretty good chance you're going to value the product or service a lot more than if you hit some magic button and got an instant delivery.

We create waiting lists for three core reasons:

The first reason is the anticipation
The second is to create a barrier
And finally to get a commitment.

Let's take a deeper dive, shall we?

1: Anticipation

In 2010, some British ministers came up with an incredibly interesting, if slightly preposterous idea.

If you were going to apply for British citizenship, you had to learn to queue. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister at the time was dead serious when he suggested that to-be citizens would need to learn to queue. He said: “The simple act of taking one's turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea. It is central to the British sense of fair play, and it is also better for everyone. Huge resentment is caused when people push in.”

There you go—anticipation in a nutshell

And you know something, the British are spot on when it comes to creating anticipation. We like stuff better when we have to wait. Tali Sharot, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London gives a simple example of how anticipation works.

Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy

The behavioural economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity, any celebrity. Then he said, “How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a superstar if the kiss was delivered immediately, in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years?

He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days. They were willing to pay extra to wait. Now they weren't willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an ageing celebrity. But three days seemed to be the optimum amount.

So why is that?

Well if you get the kiss now, it's over and done with. But if you get the kiss in three days, well that's three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait. The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen. Anticipation made them happy.

A waiting list is all about anticipation, isn't it?

No matter whether you're about to sell a product, service or training, it would do us all a bit of good to create a waiting list. And waiting lists work for a simple reason: it creates a feeling of scarcity—even if you're not exactly well known in your field. Take the example of Joseph Pilates, for example. When Pilates started out his studio, he wasn't just an unknown; he was also an immigrant to the US with a German accent.

That didn't exactly stop Pilates from creating a waiting list. He started his exercise regimen near a niche audience—dancers. Despite being brand new in the business, Pilates never agreed to see a client right away. The client was always put on a waiting list, a few days or a week or two after the initial contact. Waiting in that “queue” as it were, created anticipation for the client. When the day rolled along, they were eager to get started.

In the case of a kiss, that anticipation needed to be relatively quick

However, that's not always the case. A few years ago, I bought a cigar-shaped Nakaya pen from Japan. If you're into fountain pens, you can bow now, because the Nakaya is easily one of the most revered pens. Solar orange in colour, the nib is fashioned to your writing style, and yes, the nib is made from 22 karat gold. It comes with its own fancy box and a whole lot of razzmatazz justifying its price.

And as you'd expect, you can't just walk in and buy a Nakaya. That would ruin everything, wouldn't it? The joy of owning a Nakaya is in telling this story. The story of how I was told I'd have to wait for at least nine months. Nine months turned to a year, and if I'm not mistaken, it took yet another six months to get the pen. By the time it showed up, I had almost given up on ever owning it.

Which brings us to an important point of anticipation

Some anticipation can be relatively quick; some months long. The main factor is to keep the flame alive while the client is waiting. Waiting for the Nakaya was partly interesting, partly a pain. I didn't get any updates on what was happening, and as a client, I had to follow up. That's not good practice, especially since the delivery was an unspecified date. Even if the delivery time is well into the future, it's a good idea to keep the client in at least a mild state of anticipation, or the whole experience can quickly turn to irritation.

Pilates' system wasn't complex

He created a list. Anyone of us can do that. Whether you use a notebook, appointment software or some form online, the first task is to create a list. That list alone creates the first level of anticipation. And believe me, it makes a big difference to how clients perceive your offering.

Take for example the home study courses we have at Psychotactics

One of the downsides of creating content is that there's this eagerness, almost a lust for creating new products. It's so much fun to create yet another course, yet another product, yet another service. And it's inevitable that as you produce new products, the older products—powerful as they are— seem to become very Cinderella-like. They don't get much attention because all you're doing is promoting the new and fancy program or workshop or app.

Well, in 2016 I overdid things a bit. I rewrote the entire Article Writing Course so that it was now in Version 2.0. However, I like to do things “live”, which meant that I rewrote all the notes, re-recorded all the audio, and moved around whole sections of the course. Stuff that was in week 8 moved to week 2 and let's just say it was like trying to refuel a plane while flying it.

Anyway, that fried me a bit and I couldn't do any more courses that year

Which is when Renuka and I sat down and decided to bring out the stuff that we'd already done. The uniqueness course, the copywriting course, and yes, since I wasn't going to conduct the Article Writing Course in 2017, that too went on the list of courses to be sold. We then created waiting lists.

And just because we're weird, we kept the list down to a fixed number. Which meant we'd sell only 25 copies. As you can tell, the scarcity works quite well, and the sales of the product replaced me. Instead of me doing a course, just the combination of the waiting list, the anticipation and the scarcity created enough revenue so I could do something else instead of conducting a course.

If you're just starting out, Pilates is an excellent beacon in the dark

Yes, go and do some Pilates at a class, but also pay attention to how he created anticipation by making people queue in an imaginary line. And that's the first point to consider when designing a waiting list; the first element to put in place. Create the anticipation.

However, a waiting list is an instant barrier. Is that a problem? Or a blessing? And can it blow up in our faces? Let's find out.

2: Barrier

If you host a valuable seminar and charge a lot, will more people show up? Or is it better to have one free of cost?

Back in March 2007, we had the chance to test the free option. We'd decided we wanted to give back to New Zealand because we got so much from this strange and lovely country. We decided we'd have free marketing events under the brand name “The Learning Rock”. You could come to the event; there would be no up-sell; no charge and not even the Psychotactics logo anywhere in sight. In effect, we decided to spend over $1000 a year (and these were the costs of hiring the venue), without expecting anything in return.

We had a room capacity of 40 people. Would enough participants turn up or would the room be half empty?

The answer lay in the barrier that needed to be put in place. For one, the event was at 7:32 am. Not 7:33, not 7:34. The doors were fastened as though with superglue once we got to the start time. The attendees were put on a list, and if they showed up, they'd get a chance to be on the priority list. If on the other hand, they didn't show up they'd be taken off the priority list. All of these barriers should have put people from making the long drive into the city. Instead, the room was packed to the brim, every single time.

Barriers play a significant role in creating a filtered waiting list

It's not like there aren't waiting lists online, but having a barrier of sorts makes a big difference to the quality of the clients. It's easy to believe that a barrier isn't much use if you're selling something like products or digital products, but it matters. In our case, we don't sell products, but we do sell information products. When there's a barrier in place (and we insist on clients reading The Brain Audit), they tend to buy a home study product and finish it. This behaviour carries on to online courses like the Article Writing Course. The course is incredibly tough and should have a high dropout rate. Instead, the opposite scenario unfolds. Over 90% of the clients get right to the finish line and get the skill of writing.

Having a barrier in place is one of the first things to consider when starting up a waiting list

The size of the barrier doesn't matter. What matters is that there's some sort of barrier in place. You could get the client to read a few pages of a report. Or you could get them to fill in a detailed form. Or there could be a small fee—say $10—that creates a barrier. The waiting list itself is a barrier, but to make it, even more, wanted, add one more level, and you get a far better quality of clientele.

However, easily the coolest reason to have a waiting list is, so you don't have to bug clients who are not interested in your product or service. Having a waiting list creates a nice opt-in and commitment factor.

Next-Up:

 

Listen to—Why Waiting Lists Fail.

How do you instantly grow your small business?

How do you become “rich” overnight? These are the frustrations we have to deal with, almost every single day as we wade through the temptations of the internet.

It almost seems like a lottery, doesn't it? But people win the lottery, don't they? And so we fancy our odds too. Yet, there's a hare vs tortoise race in play here and usually, it's the hare that seems to burn out.

How can you enjoy the race and have a good life and yes, become an “overnight success?”. Find out in this episode.

Click here to read online here: How to Become An Overnight Success: Episode 182

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Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right?

Richard Lustig doesn't agree. Despite odds of 175 million to one, Lustig has won the lottery seven times, and claims he's won over a million dollars so far. When you hear the repeated success of Lustig, it's easy to miss the sub-text in his wins. The first point of the sub-text is that he's been playing the lottery since 1992—that's well over 25 years. Plus he has a strategy. He goes after the smaller prizes, like the $100,000 lotteries, completely avoiding the $40 million jackpots.

Are you going after the $40 million jackpots in your business?

You know what I mean, right? Let's say you've managed to make the break from a job to your own business. That move, wonderful as it is, hasn't brought a lot of relief because you still have to commute to and from meetings with clients. And now you're keen on hitting the jackpot. Well, what's the jackpot? You want to reduce or eliminate that commute completely, don't you? And while it would be ideal, that's not what a “gambling man” would do.

A “gambling man” would reduce their odds of losing. Instead of five days of commuting, maybe you can whittle it down to four. Four may not sound like much until you get into the percentages—yup a 20% increase in home-time, isn't it? In the months to follow, reduce that by yet another day, and you have a 40% improvement over the start of the year.

A similar sort of phenomenon plays out when it comes to earning revenue online

Let's say you're earning twenty three dollars online. What next? Oh, that's easy. Most people would like to go from twenty three to two hundred thousand and twenty three. It sounds bizarre right now, as you're reading it. No one in their right mind is likely to achieve so much of a monetary gain, so quickly. Even so, it's a lot like playing the lottery, isn't it? You see others playing, they seem to be winning; surely you have the same odds too.

Our world, your world is inundated with success stories

Everyone is making more money than you, everyone is spending more time on vacation (yes, I'm guilty) and everyone seems to be winning the lottery, except for you. It's not like there's any shortage of avenues, either.

Some make their fortune via podcasting; others on YouTube; the third through some SAAS (software as a solution) offering. We all have this multi-pronged attack of the different types of media that will make us our fame and fortune, and the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine.

But a gambling man like Lustig may tell you a different story

He's spent the past 25 years hacking away at the lottery. He's picked the smaller wins, because the odds are so much better. It's all about structural change, making sure that he gets ahead bit by bit. And to be fair, his gains are pretty average by a wage standard.

By his own admission, he's won a little over a million dollars over twenty five years. That's a pretty modest $40,000 per year. You can easily beat those odds in your own business, but your goal must always be structural.

I guess it's time for an example, right?

When we bought our first house in New Zealand, it was priced at $230,000. I'd read a book about how to whittle down that mortgage in a few years (In New Zealand it pays to wipe out the mortgage quickly). Our expenses, barring educational courses, was about $3000 per month (and that included the mortgage). We set about aiming to turn that mortgage into a big fat zero. In the first five years, we bought three houses in Auckland, totalling well over a million dollars.

In ten years, we paid off every last cent on those loans. Would anyone in their right sense try and pay those loans in three months? How about six months? Ten years seems pretty quick by any standards, but we learned what we had to do, and we went about it systematically.

We applied the same rigour to our business

In the year 2000, the business was just a website with a dozen articles. No one bought anything, hardly anyone read much of anything. We simply buckled down, went for dozens of meetings with clients. And out of those dozens, sometimes hundreds, we got ourselves our first client; a sofa store.

The second client was a law firm. The third was a division of Quickbooks. We paid the mortgage, we budgeted our expenses and the only big blow out was education. I bought a ton of stuff online and we both read through them. We listened endlessly to workshops and marketing material (even the stuff which was tedious).

It took a while for things to happen. The first international workshop was in 2004, but that was after we'd done a tonne of speaking sessions in little places all around New Zealand. By 2006, we had our first really big ticket item, the Protégé sessions where clients paid us a substantial sum. That's when we knew we were finally getting somewhere.

Jim Collins is the author of “Good To Great”, a book that has sold over 2 million copies

In the book, Collins talks about the “Egg and Chicken”. He says: If you look at an egg before it hatches, it looks like nothing’s happened. Then the chicken jumps out—now we’re the chickens—the chicken jumps out, and Fortune magazine comes running in or Fast Company comes running in and says, “Revolution at Egg! Transformation to chicken! Interview with CEO of Egg!”

But if you ask what it looks like from the chicken’s point of view—from the chicken’s point of view there was a lot going on inside the egg before this one step happened that you never know about that led up to that process.

We know what leads up to that chicken moment

It's structural change, bit by bit. Whether you're aiming to win the lottery, or start up a business, your job is to go about the steps systematically.

— Will you get twenty e-mails telling you that you could become a millionaire overnight? Sure you will.
—Will there be a pull to do this, that and the other all at once? Sure there will.

But eventually, it's the gentle progress that counts.

Progress like commuting just four days, instead of five; getting one strategic alliance per month; taking on one medium, e.g. podcasting, and working it day after day for the next few months, weeks, and yes, years.

All those stories about how you can double and treble your income, they're probably true. And they probably aren't at odds of 175 million to one. However, the structural way is better. With tiny changes, you can move ahead. You can slowly but surely get your commute down to zero; your bank balance to a healthy state and pay off the mortgages in style.

If you want to become an overnight success, you'll need to slow down a bit and work the structure.

The odds are a lot better, I can assure you.

Special Bonus: The Brain Alchemy Masterclass give you the structure that you need to build your business upon.

It gives you the tactics and strategy that will form the very core of your business, no matter whether you're just starting up, or have been in business ‘forever.' We've always recommended that clients start off with this workshop because it whizzes your strategy around.
Here is the link to get this $2500, product free: The Brain Alchemy MasterClass—How To Structure Your Business.