Imagine you had a program that generated over $150,000 a year. Let's also imagine that this program always had a waiting list and that clients loved it. Would you stop the program, or let it run? In 2006, we started the Protege Program and by 2009, it came to an abrupt halt. But was it abrupt? And why did it stop in the first place?

These stories and more show up in the Psychotactics story. There's not a moment of boredom as we head into the roller coaster of 2009 and beyond. Where we explore the crazy world of workshops, this time outside the safety of California. It's one nutty, exciting ride. Buckle up, because it's action-packed and full of lessons for your own small business.

http://www.psychotactics.com/stopped-protege/

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Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 2

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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It was February 2006

I’d just started a crazy venture called the Protege. Well it was crazy for me at least. I’d written a sales letter promising that I would teach six courses in one year. The courses were Article Writing, Copy Writing, Information Product Strategy, Website Strategy, Core Marketing Strategy and  PR (Public Relations). And no sooner than the Protege sessions started up when I had this idea of holding a workshop for the Proteges in California.

There was only one problem

This workshop was not part of what I’d promised. It was an extra workshop of five days. For the first three days we’d be working on Website Strategy and the next two days would be closed-door Protege sessions. So the problem that arose instantly was one of scheduling, money, effort and a few dozen assorted issues. For me it meant that I had to book a room somewhere in the U.S., book flights and do an entire workshop in slides in less than eight weeks. What’s more interesting is that the workshop didn’t exist. Notes didn’t exist and neither did the slides.

This was compounded by a few interesting facts

The Protege year was something that was just dreamed up in a salesletter. No material existed for any of the six courses (today they all exist in audio/text, but back then I was creating it as the courses rolled along). So I had this cute little challenge of hosting live teleclasses (training calls), creating content on the fly, managing a forum with 15 proteges and preparing for a workshop all at once.

Admittedly those were problems that were pretty rough but that was the least of my problems

I also had a bit of a mutiny on my hands. I hadn’t made the workshop a compulsory attendance issue (you could attend if you like to) but I sure stressed it was important. I also required each of the proteges to cough up an additional $500 for the workshop (it was just to cover the costs of the venue etc.) This additional payment didn’t go down well. What made it worse was they had to travel to Campbell, California, stay in a hotel and had all of this additional expenditure—not to mention they all had to take at least a week off from work. They were not happy in the least. It was almost like a bit of bait and switch.

But in my mind it wasn’t bait and switch at all
I really felt that those five days would be of immense help to the Proteges. For one there was the factor of learning in a compressed state (over five days). There was also the factor of connecting with each other because when people connect, they work better after the connection. To me it seemed quite sensible to have a meeting like this totally out of the blue (just kidding). But this sudden move kicked up a ton of dust and I then spent a fair bit of time on the phone, and via the forums and email sorting things out.

Once things were sorted out the real work began

We had to find a venue and get on with the job of getting the show on the road. Because Renuka’s sister, Audrey lived in Campbell, she did some scouting around for us and we soon located a meeting room at the adorable Pruneyard Plaza just 5 minutes away from Audrey’s house. And unlike the earlier workshops there was absolutely no drama at all this time around.

All we had to do was land in San Francisco, and we were picked up from the airport. We were chauffeured around from Kinko’s (where we got our binders and notes photocopied) to Costco and just about everywhere. In fact the hotel even picked us up at 7am from the house every morning and dropped us back every evening (I bet no one has ever done that before or since). And the workshop went like a dream. Oh I forgot to tell you how we made a profit on the workshop. 

So here’s how we made a profit

$500 per Protege wasn’t even barely going to cover the airfares and costs of the workshops, and if you’re going to do a workshop might as well make a profit. That’s only part of the issue. When you’re doing a workshop, you want to make sure you have a full house. Having just ten or fifteen people in a room is nice, but having about 25-30 people in the room really creates enormous energy in the room. So we decided to sell 15 -18 seats (we only ever take 33-35 attendees—never more). And the good thing was that we had already “sold” 15 seats because  all the Proteges decided to show up. This created an instant urgency because 50% of the seats were taken. Bear in mind this workshop was selling at $2200 per head or thereabouts, so it wasn’t an easy sell. Even so, the workshop was soon filled. The Campbell workshop was well on its way.

The Campbell workshops and the Protege Program went on till the year 2008

The Protege Program was a reasonably profitable program generating anything between $100,000-$150,000 a year. And year after year we’d have the workshop in Campbell, CA and there were never any hitches. And it became part of the Prot’g’ Program. What was even cooler was we started speaking at the System Seminar in Chicago, which was often held around the same time as ourProtege sessions, and so we’d finish the Protege and head to Chicago, do a speaking engagement and head for a well deserved break either within the US or to Europe.

But then in 2008 we decided to pull the Protege Program

As I said, the Protege Program was a reasonable sum of guaranteed income year after year. But to my mind it wasn’t good for consumption. Expecting a client to learn five or six new skills in a year was like learning five or six new languages a year. It wasn’t just bad for consumption, but it wasn’t (in my mind at least) doing the customer any good. So we pulled the Program. And people often asked me what I would replace the program with. And I didn’t plan to replace it with anything. As far as I was concerned, I was more interested in teaching and getting the clients to learn and implement. To me the Protege Program, wonderful as it was, wasn’t achieving exactly what I set out to do. And so when we pulled the Prot’g’ Program, we pulled the workshops as well.

Not all workshops of course

We’d still do some workshops in Auckland, where we live in New Zealand. One or two a year if at all. But the workshops held locally didn’t require the same level of planning and precision as the international workshops. Plus there were no travel costs, hotel costs or any fancy costs. Even our core costs of the room hire and expenses were lower here (There’s no gratuity or tipping required in New Zealand and all costs are inclusive of taxes, so there are no surprises whatsoever).

And then the year 2009 rolled along. It was the first year we’d didn’t do any workshops. Not in the US. Not in New Zealand. And I hadn’t really planned to do any in 2010. In fact I was pretty much happy to be back in New Zealand after a three week vacation in Argentina and Uruguay. And we were sitting at our favourite cafe when Renuka suggested we do the US/Canada trip.

In every situation, I have an idea and Renuka says no

In this situation, I was saying no and Renuka wanted me to go ahead.
And we had a lead time of just four weeks. In four weeks we had to get at least 35 people to sign up at two venues: Vancouver and Washington D.C. And I wasn’t even keen on doing the trip. But Renuka said we had to do it.

Um did I say 35 people? I meant 70 people (35 at both venues).

It was a start of a mini nightmare.

The nightmare wasn’t so much getting the sign ups for the workshop

The nightmare was getting the venue for the event. You see, all those years of California sun had made us pretty complacent. Getting a venue for the workshop simply meant that we fixed a date, called the hotel and got our room. And bear in mind the booking is always temporary. Even though our workshops have always been solidly booked, we still will always make a temporary booking—just in case.

This time around there was no temporary booking to be had

Unlike the usual California venue, we were looking for places in Washington D.C. and Vancouver, Canada. And two instant problems cropped up. One was the obvious one: we’d never had a workshop in any of these places, so we were totally unfamiliar with the territory. The second one was that we had no relationship with the hotel—and hence not a clue of what to expect.

But at first it all seemed simple enough

I went online, and looked up hotel meeting rooms and there they were—dozens of options just waiting to be picked. What surprised me was that most of them were costing as little as $200 + taxes per day. I was astounded—truly astounded, because these were hotels in prime areas. Some of them were within walking distance of downtown areas, even the White House. But hey, I wasn’t going to complain. I now had a pick of hotels and I was going to do my cherry picking all right.

So I did what any sensible person would do

I emailed half a dozen hotels and asked them if they would be willing to book a meeting room for the dates we’d decided upon. And with that job done and dusted, I moved along to making sure I had the sales pages ready, because we needed to get participants to sign up as well. And the first email that went out was pretty darned heartening. Over 50% of the seats got taken in just a few days. This was looking better than I thought, until I checked my email.

The inbox was swamped with responses to my queries

But the common question I kept getting was: How many rooms can we block for your guests? Hmm, I figured 35 people were going to show up, so I told them we’d have at least 15-20 rooms taken up by the guests. But I couldn’t be sure, I admitted. After all, the guest may choose to stay at the hotel or elsewhere. So I asked them to block a temporary 15-20 rooms and as we signed up participants, we’d direct them to the hotel and they could sign up. Of course there would be a cut off date, so the hotel wouldn’t have to keep the rooms booked forever.

But the hotels didn’t want to play ball

They wanted us to guarantee the rooms. And guarantee at least 80% of the rooms. So if you consider 35 participants, then 80% is about 28 rooms. Consider that every guest stays 3 nights, and that’s about 84 bookings. Each room may be in the range of $100-$200. You get the idea, don’t you? The hotels were asking us to guarantee between $8500-$17,000 worth of bookings. And if the guests didn’t show up, we’d have to foot the bill.

So I changed the question.

I asked: If I don’t guarantee the rooms, what will you charge for the meeting rooms? $6016 came the answer from one of the hotels. That’s $6,016 per day. A lot better than paying $17,000, you’ll agree, but still not a risk worth taking. And now we were in a real soup. Most of the participants who’d signed up were told that we’d have the workshop in Washington D.C. and Vancouver, Canada, but the exact details were going to be revealed later. Now we had sign ups but not a meeting room in sight.

It was time to fill in every hotel form we could find

I don’t know how many forms I filled up, but I hated every one of them. It was the same boring set of questions over and over again, and because they’re all forms, both Renuka and I were cutting and pasting endlessly. And then the responses started coming in by the truckload. Every time we’d check our email there was a whole bunch of emails with counter questions: How many rooms will you book? Will catering be involved? What is the minimum catering you’d require. The answer was none, no and nothing. But it still took up hours and more hours every day. I was feeling like a zombie dealing with what seemed like an endless barrage of queries.

That wasn’t the only problem

The other problem was they were so many hotels (some with similar brand names) that they all started merging into one in my head. It was at this point that three saviours stepped right up. In Vancouver, Leanne asked if she could help. In Washington D.C., Marina and Natalya volunteered as well. By this point we were exhausted, but we’d managed to get a few hotels to agree to our terms. So yes, we’d do a temporary booking. And no, there’s no need of any fancy catering. And no we can’t guarantee the rooms. And some agreed. So now it was a matter of creating a shortlist.

Excel and me aren’t the best of friends

In fact we hardly know of each other. In all my year on a computer—and I’ve been on computers since around the early 1990s, I’ve never so much as opened up Excel, let alone do a spreadsheet. But as I said, I was desperate. Someone (I forget who) created a Google docs spreadsheet and we started to fill in whatever details were available. And things were starting to look good. The sign-ups had slowed down considerably since the early burst, but to be fair we’d only sent out one or two emails. Now that the hotels were kinda falling in place, we could have the luxury of filling in the rest of the seats.

Actually things were looking better than good

We’d settled on hotels that were in great areas: In Georgetown, Washington D.C and downtown Vancouver. At which point Marina and Natalya volunteered to look up the hotels. Natalya was in Washington with her husband and kids, so she jumped on the metro and very magnanimously checked out the hotels we’d shortlisted. And she came back with a “F” on the hotels. She wasn’t impressed. The one we’d set our hearts on, was in the basement, very squeezed and with a distinct odour of mildew.

But Natalya wasn’t giving up

Right at the start she’d hinted about a hotel called Hampton Inn, located near the Reagan National Airport. Now she set about checking it out as an alternative. And yes, the “shoe” fit. She approved of the meeting rooms and the hotel accommodation. But this close miss had set our hearts racing. What if we’d made the same mistake in Vancouver? This time it was Leann’s turn. She made the long drive from Whistler to downtown Vancouver just to recce the various options. And yes, lightning does strike twice. The one we’d originally chosen was a bit of a dump. Slightly tacky. Not so hot.

But just like Natalya’s story there was a happy ending

The Listel on Robson Street, Vancouver was actually happy with our crazy terms. And they were ready to make a booking for those meeting rooms. That Excel spreadsheet was finally down to two choices, one in D.C and one in Vancouver. But it’s not like the emails stopped. You see we’d contacted (I don’t know) maybe 40-50 hotels (maybe some twice, even). And they were all writing in asking to confirm. We even had some long distance calls to top up the emails. For a change it was nice to say NO. And yes, our trip was finally getting underway.

And not a moment too soon

Participants had to fly in—and some from tiny airports, so they needed to know quickly which airport to fly into. By this point we knew the answers. Luckily from that moment on, nothing much went wrong, but that week or two was pure misery. I’d go to bed completely drained—even frustrated. To have those rooms booked and the event underway was such a relief. All I had to do was make sure that the rest of the seats were filled and I got down to the business of making sure we got the blog rolling (to create a factor of excitement and anticipation) and the slides and the music for the event.

The Brain Audit workshops were kinda unusual

For one it wasn’t just a workshop. Every four years, we have a Cave Party + workshop. At this Caver Party, we not only learn, but we go out on a day trip, do a treasure hunt, sample the wines in wineries and spend lots of time over lunch and dinner. But I was still a bit apprehensive. Some of the participants had been with Psychotactics and 5000bc for a long time. And some of them had read The Brain Audit in Version 1, Version 2 and also Version 3. They were members. They’d been on our courses. And there I was, talking about The Brain Audit. I was afraid it would be super boring for them. I mean we’d gone over this stuff before in the books, audio and video. How could I straddle the expectations of those who’d just read the last version of The Brain Audit vs. those who’d read every version.

Sleep wasn’t easy to come by

And it wasn’t because of jet-lag either. Sure we’d flown in from New Zealand to California, woken up at 4am and got onto a flight bound for Washington DC. Sure we were tired and crossing squillions of time zones. But exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up at 2am to practice my presentation and go over it again and again, making dozens of changes. Even the second day (which was the day off) had me a little perturbed. I wasn’t sure how we’d go about the treasure hunt. Were we going to play dodge ball? How would people react to having to spend an extra day for no apparent learning? These things bothered me a lot. And it wasn’t till Day 3 that I truly started to relax just that tiny bit.

I wasn’t well either

I was definitely very exhausted. Not sleeping well. Apprehensive. And yes, I had a reasonably irritating acidity problem as well. This meant instead of gorging everything in sight, I had to restrict myself to “baby food”. Anything that was bland, non-oily—as I said, baby food. Alcohol, chocolates, coffee, icecream: they were all off the menu. Of course I wasn’t paying much attention at first. So I went out. I ate Ethiopian food, then Mexican, then Italian—yes, back to back meals.

And I was in more than slight discomfort. That didn’t help me overall. And now I’m sounding like a real wus, but I managed to stiffen my shoulder and neck as well. So why am I telling you all this? Well there’s sympathy (ha, ha) but more because you need to know that these things happen. That you’re not going to get this free ride into everything turning out just hunky dory. And yet if you listened to the recording of the workshops or were there at the workshop itself, you’d notice little or nothing unless I told you about it.

The last night in D.C.

We’re all packed and ready to catch an 8am flight the next day to Vancouver, Canada. It’s an international flight, so we have to be at the airport by 5 am or so. And so we make sure we get to bed before 10pm. Then at 10:30pm, the fire alarm goes off. There’s this insistent beeping, and we’re roused from a deep, tired sleep racing around the room madly. I tried to call the reception, but the phone seemed dead.

Renuka ran barefoot into the corridor only to find it completely peaceful (Folks were coming back from dinner, and seeing Renuka barefoot, another woman took off her shoes). No one seemed slightly disturbed. It was like we were the only ones panicking. Then I looked at our bags. They were sitting right under the sprinkler. And I thought it was a good idea to move the bags before the sprinklers went off and soaked all the equipment.

As I moved the bag, the sound of the fire alarm shifted

Aaaagh! It was our travel clock. There was no fire. Somehow the travel clock had shifted and an alarm had been set for 10:30pm. And that’s what was going off. I know it seems funny to you. And it was funny too us. We enjoyed the madness for five minutes and then hopped back to bed and dozed off immediately.

By the time we got to Vancouver, my diet was doing really well.

The workshops were far more relaxing for me. I smiled a lot more. And then, after a few days in Vancouver, we were ready to go back to San Jose, California for a week, before heading back to New Zealand. The original plan was to have three workshops. One in Vancouver, Canada. One in Washington D.C. and one in London, UK. Thank goodness we stopped at two. I was exhausted. I was ready to see sheep and head back on my Air New Zealand flight back home. And we did. We had a little hiccup or two (the flight was delayed by 12 hours; I acted like an idiot and ate spicy Indian food and re-started up the acidity) but all in all it was just part of the game.

Workshops are stressful

There’s so much to do. So little time. It involves pre-selling, getting venues, making sure everyone’s comfortable, getting great content and running a tight ship in terms of budgets—amongst other things. Things go crazy in workshops. And not so crazy. And these experiences may intimidate you a bit. Believe me, you should have workshops. They’re what helps you connect with your audience in a way that no Internet browser can do.

They’re what help you become a better teacher, presenter and consultant.

And it forges a bond that causes clients to become friends. We went with Marcus Stout for sushi. Stew Walton spent close to 6 hours to come and say hello, join us for dinner, and then went back the next day (another six hour journey). Greg Lee brought his daughter, Rabia and his wife Penelope along to meet us for dinner. Marina Brito took us to lunch, showed us around, and hosted another lunch for several of us. Steve Washer helped us with the video shooting, production and editing. Tom Clifford helped us by being the perfect interrogator.

Karen Tiede and Warren Hayford made sure I ate sensibly at the workshops. The list goes on and on and these are just folks I’m mentioning from the D.C. Workshop. Everyone plays a massive role—way more than you can imagine. This isn’t just some passive “show up and learn” workshop. Everyone gets “goodies” from their hometown. Everyone takes pictures. They have long chats. Dinners. This is like Thanksgiving or Christmas lunch (without all the tension ;)). It’s magical. Often even very emotional. And yes it’s a moment in time that you can’t recreate by just being a speaker at some event. You have to wade in and it’s not always pretty, but it’s always exciting and memorable. And so far, it’s always had a happy ending.

These are events you can’t recreate sitting at your desk in the comfort of your office. You have to be a little brave. A little scared. A lot hassled. And you’ll find rich rewards in hosting workshops.

So there you have it. A glimpse into just some of the episode into our workshops. Let’s head off to the next chapter: the story of 5000bc.

Footnote: You always want enough people in the room, and it’s not because of cost and profit factors alone. There’s also the factor of having enough people in a room. If there are too few participants, it’s much harder for both the presenter and the audience. For the presenter, having a group size of between 20-30 ensures a high level of energy in the room. You get all sorts of folks when you have about 30 of them in the room, and invariably you get introverts, extroverts, funny folks, more serious folks. In short you get a good mix. This is critical for a presenter, because not only does it assist in the actual presentation, but also in group sessions where a good mix is pretty darned essential.

Still reading? Don’t miss the Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 1

 

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.

What went wrong with the strategic alliance?
What did we do when the credit card company went bust?
And how did a hurricane come to our rescue?

Let's go on this on part one of this crazy roller coaster ride into Psychotactics land.

http://www.psychotactics.com/crazy-workshop/

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What went wrong with the strategic alliance?
Part 2: What did we do when the credit card company went bust?
Part 3: And how did a hurricane come to our rescue?
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t)
Another Psychotactics Story: The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand
The Power of Enough: And Why It’s Critical To Your 

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Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 1

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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“You want a room for 150 people? Is that correct?”
“Yes that’s correct,” I said. “150 people.”
And then I put down the phone.

That was the booking I was making for our first ever Psychotactics workshop in the US.

And I did some quick calculations. I had watched other marketers fill up rooms with 1500-2000 people. And I figured, naively of course, that I could easily manage to sign up at least a hundred and fifty folks. And if you know anything about workshops, you’ll get to know one thing quickly: You don’t have a workshop unless you have a room. Because that’s the first thing a client will ask. They always ask you where you’re going to host your workshop, and ask for the dates.

And those dates need to be set in stone long weeks, sometimes month in advance. But hey, it wasn’t like we weren’t prepared.

We were so nervous about this event, that it was critical we planned about six months in advance.

It didn’t help that I had never been to the U.S. before. It sure as heck was scary that I had an Indian passport. Now it’s not like I wasn’t already a permanent resident in New Zealand. I was, but you don’t get New Zealand citizenship for five years, and so I was stuck with the Indian passport. And the passport matters. With an NZ passport I can just jump on a plane at five minutes notice. With the Indian passport, I needed a visa.

I was petrified because I was selling seats at a workshop, and wasn’t even sure I’d get a visa

It’s not for want of trying. I got in touch with the American embassy a few months in advance. They didn’t process visas that much in advance, they told me. All I could do was buy my ticket, get the requisite paperwork and book an appointment to get the visa. There was only one glitch. They would let me know about the visa a week before I was due to travel.

And that was only part of the “problem”…

On the other front we had the issue of signing up clients for the workshop. This as you can tell, was no easy task. The price of the workshop was $1500 per person. That didn’t include any meals, stay or travel costs. If a client was to agree to come to the workshop, they’d have to fly or drive to get to Los Angeles. And it’s safe to say that you’d end up spending another $500-$750 on top of the price tag of the workshop itself. I somehow had to make this workshop too hard to miss. I had to make it enticing enough so that people would somehow decide they just had to be there.

And so we did the Free 16-Week training course in advance.

In case you didn’t work it out, that’s four months of training week after week (kinda of tells you how much in advance we were getting prepared). And every week we’d have an hour’s worth of teleconferences. Each of the teleconferences had their own agenda. And their own set of complications.

The complications arose from not knowing how many people would show up on the call

It was the year 2004. And back then, if you had a teleconference, you had a lot of no-shows, but still a heck of a lot of people would show up. And when we announced the 16-Week Course we got over 2000 people signing up to the free course. Should we book 500 teleconference lines? Or 300? Or 150? It was not only difficult to take a decision on the numbers but it also cost a fair packet to reserve those many lines at a time. And don’t forget, we were just getting started at Psychotactics. Every dollar was extremely precious to us. Throwing dollars on excess conference lines wasn’t my idea of fun at all.

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I booked 500 lines

And roughly 150 people showed up for the first call. I instantly slashed the number of teleconference lines down to 150. Sometimes the call was packed to the brim. Sometimes not. But I figured I wanted 150 people and the most interested of the lot would show up anyway. And yes we were recording all the calls as well, so the number of downloads were still reasonably impressive. If you looked at the operation from the outside, it looked like a well-oiled machine.

Yet it was rough for us at Psychotactics

We were putting out fires on many fronts. One big front was the content that had to be drummed up week after week. On most weeks, I had no clue what we were going to cover the following week. And despite the fact that it was free, customer expectations were sky high. We’d get dozens of emails asking for the topics for all the calls. We’d get emails asking for the agenda of each call. People even asked for transcripts. And creating content week after week was only part of the problem.

The other problem was our “alliances”

As I said: I was scared. This was our first trip to the US. I had no idea where to go, what to do, and whom to trust. So I created some sort of alliance with some US based marketers. And in doing so, created a bit of quicksand for myself. I asked them to book the conference room, and the hotels on my behalf. Bing! Another mistake. When you book the room, the hotel only deals with the person who’s booked the place. Any changes you need to make have to be routed through the person who’s made the booking. As you would expect the hotel was dealing with the alliance. I was paying the bill but they were taking the decisions and calling the shots.

The workshop hadn’t even started, and the alliance was starting to go pretty sour

And it was all my mistake in a way. I didn’t do my homework. I got into a discussion with another marketer in the US and told him of our ‘newbie in the US’ predicament. And he assured us that he’d help. In fact, he wanted to be part of our workshop. He would actually market it to his list as well, and he wasn’t really interested in making any money.

I didn’t think it was fair

If he was going to put in time, fly to the venue, market it and even do some public relations then in my opinion he deserved to be paid. I told him we’d pay him a percentage of profits. I forget how much it was: something like 20% or 30%. And so we got off to what seemed a decent start.

But looks can be deceiving

We were in trouble almost right away when deciding the number of teleconference lines. I wanted to have fewer and then ramp up the number if a lot of people showed up. He was adamant we needed to have more lines, seeing how many people had signed up. And while I could see both sides of the picture, there was a hitch. He wasn’t paying for anything. So if we had twice as many lines, I would end up paying twice as much.

The trouble should have stopped there, but it didn’t

The room was booked in his name, even though I was paying the bill. At first I thought I’d be able to attract huge numbers, but it soon became apparent that we’d only ever get to about 20-30 people. So I called up the hotel and asked them to change the room to a smaller size. Makes sense, doesn’t it? You don’t pay for a massive room if you’ve got a smaller group. That didn’t sit well with our alliance. He was furious that I’d changed the room without consulting him first.

The tough part was that I had to tread carefully

For all practical purposes, the room was booked in his name. If he decided to prevent me from having the room (for whatever reason), I’d be in big trouble. I’d be at the venue (if I ever got my visa) with all those attendees, and he could effectively lock me out. The pressure was building on all sides and it wasn’t hard to see a worst-case scenario for everything.

Just when you think the worst is going to happen, it doesn’t

Well it didn’t for us at least. We managed to sign up about 25 people. And the alliance brought along about six-seven of his clients (they didn’t pay, and I was OK with that. I’ll explain why later). And so we had a potential 30 or so people coming to the workshop. And a week before our visit, we went (nervously) to the American Embassy, and walked out with 10-Year business and tourist visas.

And then something completely unexpected happened

PaySystems went bust. You see PaySystems was the merchant account we were dealing with. And normally we didn’t have a large amount due to us. Our clients would pay through the website, and the payment would go to PaySystems, who would in turn settle most of the bill by depositing it in our bank account. There was always a fifteen day lag between the collection of the money by PaySystems and the deposit. So for fifteen days we were in limbo. As it happened, in the last two weeks before the workshop, many clients paid their amounts and their “food coupons” through PaySystems.

The fortnight we were collecting a huge chunk of money, they decided to go bust.

I don’t know how much we lost. It may have been about $6000 or more. It wasn’t just the money accumulated in those two weeks. Merchant account routinely keep a small percentage of every transaction as a “security” in case there’s a chargeback of sorts. Well, guess what? They keep that percentage amount for several months. So not only did we lose the money collected in that fortnight, but also a decent chunk of “change” collected over the months.

This was proving to be a regular rollercoaster ride…

And while it was at points very frustrating, it was also hugely exciting. There was nothing to do but stay on the rollercoaster and make the best of the ride. In fact, to reduce the stress we took a few extraordinary measures. One of those measures was to take all the three-ring binders with us, along with the printed covers.

I know it sounds insane

Imagine trying to put 30+ two-ring binders in a suitcase. Because it doesn’t fit in one suitcase It takes two whole suitcases. And though a binder doesn’t weigh much by itself, it really starts to add up once you put thirty or more of them in suitcases. And so off we went, on our epic workshop trip to the US of A non-stop to San Francisco.

Why San Francisco and not Los Angeles?

Because Renuka’s sister lived near Campbell (a town near San Jose) at the time. We needed some time to get used to things. And get over whatever jet lag were were going to run into. Besides we still had to do a fair number of things before the workshop began. Some of these things included getting the notes printed, making sure the audio guy knew what to do etc. But at least by that point we were ready to tuck into a nice lamb roast on board, Kiwi wine and good ol’ Kapiti ice-cream on Flight NZ8 to San Francisco.

It’s nice to arrive in a place where you have someone waiting for you

Having Audrey (Renuka’s sister) and Mangesh (her husband) around was a real blessing for us. We walked into a ‘chauffeur-driven’ set up. If we wanted to go here, there or anywhere, we would be willingly ferried around. We didn’t have to work out how to get an internet connection. We just walked into their home and connected our computer to their wi-fi. The fridge was loaded with more food than we could possibly eat (though we did give it our best shot). And as we settled into the California lifestyle, our days were filled with endless wine, rum, margaritas and massively-sized chip packets (all food was jumbo-sized, at least by New Zealand standards).

Once the partying slowed down it was time to get back to work

We didn’t know what to expect in Los Angeles. After all we were arriving there just days before the event. So we decided to print out all the sets of notes at a local Kinko’s (Kinko is a stationery chain in the US). Remember we had two-ring binders? Well it seems that the US had mostly three-ring binders. And while we got Kinkos to photocopy the set of notes, we forgot to tell them that they would go in two-ring binders. As you can imagine, they had to work out some additional costs, but hey at least they got the notes to fit in our “Kiwi” two-ring binders.

We also had to make sure we recorded the event

So we managed to hire a professional sound guy (he was from Oakland). And after some cordial chats we were able to get him to understand what we needed. It was still going to cost us about $3500 or so to record and edit the audio, but hey let’s face it: In the workshop we were talking about recording what you do (the three prong system). There was no way we were going to goof up on the recording. We just had to get it right.

Our alliances wanted to get it more right than us, as you would expect

They demanded three microphones. One for me, and two for them. They wanted massive speakers in a room, when in fact a room for thirty people isn’t that large at all and even computer speakers do the trick. We were beyond arguing at this stage, so we gave in to the demands no matter how crazy. We had bigger fish to fry.

Remember the stuff we printed at Kinko’s?

We printed about 35 sets of notes. Each set consisted of about 100+ pages or so. And the math is easy. That’s 3500-4000 pages. Ever tried stuffing about four thousand pages into suitcases? It makes me laugh now thinking about moving that much paper around (and let’s not forget the three-ring binders). What we did next was even more nutty.

We decided to get on a Greyhound bus Why Greyhound?

Why not hire a nice car and drive to Los Angeles? Or at least take a flight? I don’t know what possessed me, but as a child I had brochures and booklets about Greyhound. And for some weird reason I wanted to get on a Greyhound. This presented a whole bunch of new, unwanted problems. The trip itself was fine. It was getting to a Greyhound station and then from the Greyhound station that was a bit of drama in itself.

The Greyhound bus station was far away from everything

Of course at the San Jose side of things, it was easy enough. Audrey dropped us off. And the trip was very pleasant (despite everyone asking us why on earth we were going by Greyhound). By the time we got to Los Angeles, we were quite edgy. I went off to get a cab or shuttle and some guy kept pestering Renuka. Nothing too dramatic, but she was glad when I got back. I can’t exactly remember how we got to the hotel, but it was some crazy circuitous route that involved Los Angeles airport. I know this because I reckon I saw LA airport about five or six times while we were in that city.

I can tell you I was nervous

I’d done workshops in New Zealand. Yet somehow I expected Americans to be different. I can’t explain what I expected. But I was nervous despite the fact that no one could see it. I wasn’t sure how things would turn out, and where we’d run into our next hurdle. We found our room, and it was absolutely wonderful. Clean, neat. Very nice bed. And as we opened the drapes, there it was: The most welcoming sign of all.

It said: Air New Zealand

Our room was facing what seemed to be some sort of Air New Zealand building. And instantly a smile crept onto my face. I could see that things were really going to swing our way from here on. It’s funny eh? Little things calm you down. Under different circumstances, I could have seen that sign, and not be in the slightest bit interested. And here it was, a mere sign, acting like a lighthouse on what I perceived to be a stormy night.

Stormy? It was balmy…

From then on almost nothing went wrong. The biggest drama of the next few days was the Atkins diet. Apparently this new diet was out, and people were gobbling “protein” instead of “carbohydrates.” Apparently the hotel’s breakfast was too “carb-based”. But it really wasn’t my problem. It was the hotel’s problem. You see we used to serve some sort of meals at our workshop. At least a muffin at breakfast and some lunch and then coffees through the day. And you may never realise it till you do a workshop, but these meals eat into your bottom line like you can’t imagine.

What’s worse is that the feedback forms then switch to food

When you cater, and ask someone about the workshop, they invariably have something to say about the food. If the food isn’t up to their mark, or they’re on some crazy yo yo diet, they’ll find all sorts of holes to pick. What you’ve gone and done is reduced the impact of their workshop experience, because you catered. So long story short: No catering. This was the last workshop we ever catered for. Truly speaking it wasn’t catering. The participants had bought “meal coupons” and they were using them accordingly, but we were still being told about catering issues.

Other than food we had some minor hiccups

Footnote:

It’s easy to run up a coffee bill of $1000 or more for a three day workshop

And small additions of meals or cookies can all add up considerably. It may sound petty to worry about expenses and you have to remember why you’re in business. You’re in business to make a profit. You don’t spend months ramping up to a workshop, then do the workshop and then hoof it back home—only to find you’ve lost money on “catering”. Catering can absolutely eat into your profit and leave you in the “red”. And that’s not a pretty sight. Or a nice feeling.

So the simple solution is no food. Find a venue which has plenty of food around it and then let the participants find their own food. They don’t overeat (and hence stay awake) and there’s no grumbling. And you don’t go home broke. Now that’s a happy story, isn’t it?

The aftermath of the Workshop

So we were done with our workshop in Los Angeles. And we’d planned to go east heading to Chicago where we were scheduled to do some speaking engagements. And then off to New York, Florida, New Orleans before heading back to California. Chicago was a good stop because we got to see the city for the first time—and liked it too. Except that the speaking engagements were all over the place. One engagement was to a group of business owners. The other was to some folks in real estate investing. Both went incredibly well, but only one paid any dividends. And there’s a lesson here, of course.

If you want to do free speaking engagements, pick them carefully

It may seem all very obvious to you that you need to speak to the right audience, but when you’re starting out you’ll clutch at any straws. And in the process you’ll speak to audiences that simply have no need for your product or service. Now this isn’t a waste by any stretch of the imagination. Every speaking engagement is worth its weight in gold. You know how some idiot coined up that term “people fear speaking more than death”. Well the big reason for the fear is just a lack of practice speaking to all kinds of audiences. If you keep speaking on a consistent basis, the fear does go away (And if it doesn’t go away, there are EFT techniques that will help you relax yourself and make the fear go away). But I digress…

So there we were headed east and then onto this grand tour of the US till a hurricane stopped us in our tracks

We did our sightseeing in New York, taking a nice break in New Jersey and then planned to head to Florida. And when we looked around, we were the only ones heading in that direction. Everyone else was headed away from Florida. So prudently we changed our plans, did a little detour to meet an old acquaintance in Washington DC and then headed back to California.

And good thing too, because we’d have been in a lot of trouble if we hadn’t turned around

You see we’d recorded the workshop in California. And we’d promised there’d be a recording for those who’d paid for the recording. Well all hell broke loose when we got back. We found the sound guy (we had this professional sound guy, remember?) was editing the workshop audio to exclude all ums and ahs from the recording.

Today I have barely a few ums and ahs but back then there were hundreds of them.

And as he edited he kept track of the time, inflating the editing bill considerably. At one point he also decided to put in some opening music to each audio. No problem there till we realised he wanted to charge a royalty on every copy we ever sold (yes, in perpetuity). It was time to pick up the credit card, buy some royalty-free audio and put it into the audio. And at least that fire was put out.

But there was still the issue of listening to every audio file

This activity had to be done because we had to put the content details and the time stamp on the CD. So we needed to know which files were going on which CD, do the design of the CD and blah, blah, blah. There was also the “tiny” issue of paying our strategic allianceswhat we’d promised. Which was all very fine, except they insisted on an item by item costing.

So there we were having to dig up every single cost to present to the “alliances”, when in fact we were paying them from our profits (They hadn’t brought in a single paying customer, so we were paying them from the profits made as a result of selling to our own list). Anyway, Renuka is a bit of a maniac when it comes to storing even the cost of a single staple. So we had the information needed, but it was still galling (and very frustrating) to have to give this silly account when we shouldn’t have had to do anything like that at all.

And the months ticked by. We ate, we worked. We did a few trips. And then we ate and drank some more. Till it was time to leave. And get back to New Zealand. No Greyhound this time Just good ol’ Air New Zealand—and almost in time for summer too!

So what’s the moral of this story?

Every workshop has three core components. The pre-sell. The workshop itself and at least a week of post-workshop stuff (if you sell products/services or recordings of the workshop). Taking into consideration all of these factors is pretty important because it takes the stress off you. We got lucky with that hurricane. If we’d not turned round and gone back, we’d have dragged all the work back to New Zealand and been a lot more stressed. Because we worked in “vacation time”, we were able to simply tidy up the good, bad and nasty bits with minimal effort.

And that was International workshop No.1. There wasn’t going to be Workshop No.2 till the year 2006. Amazing as it may sound, that workshop wasn’t even planned. It was just something I thought up on fine day in February. And yeah, there’s a story in that too. And you’ll find out soon enough…

Coming Up Next: The Psychotactics Story—Part 2
Another Interesting Psychotactics Story: The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand

 

 

When you're speaking to a client or presenting your product or service, do you have a ton of "ums" and "ahs"? Do you find it frustrating, but don't know how to get rid of that irritation? And if you're recording an event, a whole bunch of ums and ahs can cause a major headache in editing?plus push up editing time and frustration levels. So how can you get rid of all your ums and ahs in under 15 minutes?

http://www.psychotactics.com/speaking-professionally/

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1:  How to get rid of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ when podcasting or speaking in  under 15 minutes
Part 2:  The sound of spit and how to get rid of it
Part 3:  Why you need variation in your voice

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

Useful Resources

Read about: Why A Relaxed Brain Works Faster Than A Tired Brain
Preacher or Teacher? Why Our Clients Struggle To Learn Skills Quickly
Other techniques:  Why Variation Is The Hallmark of Outstanding Presenters

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The  Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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This is The Three Month Vacation, I’m Sean D’Souza.

We’ve been podcasting since around November of 2014. One of the things that I never seem to cover is anything to do with podcasts. That’s not on purpose, it’s just something that I’ve never covered. Today I’m going to have this very short podcast, no stories, just a little technique that will help you as you’re going about creating audio or even speaking in public.

Little Technique To Help Creating Audio

There are a few things that we do when we’re recording podcasts that are very frustrating. The first thing that we do is we cannot help it and we go um, uh, um. These ums and uhs seem to infiltrate our speech whether it’s in a podcast or in an interview or just presenting to your client. On podcasts, you also get the sound of spit, yes? Moisture in your mouth. It sounds like [chump chump 00:01:06], like that. It’s very frustrating for you, not so much for the listener. After awhile even listeners start to tune in to that spit kind of sound. How do we get rid of that?

Finally the third thing about the podcast is just this variation in your voice. It’s very easy to start recording and forget that there’s an audience out there. You’re never speaking to an audience, you’re always speaking to one person and this is the mistake that we make. These are the three glitches that we make when we’re podcasting. Today I’m going to get rid of all three of them.

How to get rid of ‘ums’ when podcasting or speaking

Let’s start off with getting rid of all the um and the uhs that we have when we are podcasting or speaking to anyone at all. It doesn’t matter whether you use a PC or a Mac, you’ve seen that spinning ball on your computer haven’t you? When the computer’s trying to access something, it’s going through that, hey let’s get to this something. You can’t do anything and you’re just sitting there waiting for it to do it’s thing before you can continue working.

That’s approximately what your brain is doing, but at a much higher speed. It’s a better processor, your brain. What it’s doing is it’s trying to access the information. Every time a speaker says um or ah or like, that’s approximately what they’re doing. They’re accessing their database. How do you stop it? At all points in time, especially if you’re not reading off the screen, like right now I’m not reading off the screen. My brain has to work out what I’m going to say next and yet there are no ums or likes or ahs coming out.

The reason is, I’m pausing. I could say “Um what we need to do next is um” or I could say, “So … what we need to do next is …” It’s a little break. You’re noticing it now because I’m bringing it to your attention. That’s all I do. Whenever I’m making a presentation, whether it’s on stage or it’s a webinar or any kind of recording, I’m conscious about the ums and the pauses. All I do is stop speaking. Just let your brain access the information it needs and let a natural pause come in.

Now if your podcast is anything like this podcast, then there will be music in the background, and sometimes not even music in the background, but a lot of music, and the pause won’t be noticeable. If you’re speaking in public, it’s critical to get rid of the ums. If you’re doing a recording like this, it’s a nuisance to remove all the ums.

When I started out many years ago, when we did our first workshop in Los Angeles in 2004, there were ums and ahs all over the place. The more tired I got, the more ums and ahs just popped up out of the woodwork. I just had to learn to pause. I’m not saying that in a live workshop, which lasts two or three days, you’re not going to get ums and ahs. It’s just that you can reduce it dramatically. In a podcast or a speech like this where you’re nice and fresh, you can eliminate it completely. Just practice that for 15 minutes. Just pause whenever you think you should be saying an um and sooner or later you get rid of all the ums and the ahs. If one or two creep in, that’s easy to edit.

The second factor that we are dealing with when recording podcast is this sound of moisture in your mouth.

Whenever you sit down to do an interview, often you’ll find that the person on the other end of the line will say hey wait I’m going to get a glass of water. That’s because they want to keep their mouths nice and moist. Your voice doesn’t crack and it’s a really good idea, especially if you’re on a call for maybe an hour, like later today I’m on a call for an hour and a glass of water really helps.

When you’re doing something like a recording, you’re very close to the mike. Every little [click click 00:05:29] sound just clicks in as one more click. It’s very frustrating for you. What I tend to do is I record in short bursts. I’ll keep my mouth very dry, which is totally counter intuitive. I’ll keep it extremely dry, actually try to suck out all the moisture, and then I’ll record in short bursts. One sentence, two three sentences at a time and then I’ll stop and then continue.

It’s funny but if you concentrate on it, you will find that the moisture doesn’t enter your mouth at all. You can go for several sentences, as I’m doing right now. I haven’t really stopped, even though you don’t know, the tape is just rolling. The funny thing is that if you train yourself to speak for long periods without having to access any moisture in your mouth, you will find that you can speak for quite a long time without any of those clicks that you get from the moisture in your mouth. The trick is to just keep it dry. That’s the trick I use rather than moisten it. The moment I get access to water, I’m in trouble again.

This is not foolproof. Obviously some of the clicks are going to escape and they’re going to get on tape, but it doesn’t matter. You can go and edit it. You just have to do a lot less editing and you’re more aware of the clicking sound.

The third and final issue is one of speaking to an audience.

Often when we get in front of the mike, we think that we have the whole audience listening in. Good presenters and people who have been on radio know that you’re always speaking to a single person. When you’re speaking on stage, you have lights in front of you and often you can’t see much. You can’t see more than a few people in the front row. What you’ve got to do is start to pick on one or two people in the audience and speak to them as if you were having a conversation with them.

The same thing applies to the podcast. When you start to speak as if you’re speaking to an audience, it becomes less of a discussion, a conversation. Think of it more as someone sitting in the same room with you or at a café. Always use the word you.

The second thing that we forget is that we have to change our tone, our pitch, our speed. If you listen to this podcast you will notice that I will suddenly speak quickly and then really slow down. In real life we have variations. We speak quickly or slowly, we get all excited and go louder and then go really quiet. You can do this on stage, you can do this in your podcast, you can do this in your presentation. You have to be aware of it. You have to have this space or this sudden movement through it, and then it becomes like a conversation and it’s no longer this single paced monotone podcast where you’re speaking to an audience.

One last tip. When you’re recording audio, you want to smile. When you smile, I don’t know, something in your voice changes. When I announce this is The Three Month Vacation, I’m smiling. You can feel that smile. You can’t see me, but you can feel that smile. Smiling when you’re speaking- not all the time, just some of the time- the audience figures it out. I don’t know how.

That’s pretty much it for this podcast. Three things that we covered. Let’s do a quick summary. The first thing that we did was the ums and ahs. It’s very simple to get rid of the ums and ahs. All you have to do is pause. It sounds like a crazy long pause, but it doesn’t matter. Just pause. It’s fine.

The second thing is this moisture in your mouth which causes all these clicks.

The way to do that is not to have water around, or at least to keep speaking, don’t worry about your mouth getting dry, and if you get some clicks in, you can go and edit them later. Anyway, the clicks seem to come just before you start speaking or just after, so start speaking, leave a little gap, and then continue speaking. You’ll be able to edit out those clicks quite easily.

Finally remember you’re not speaking to an audience. You’re always speaking to one person, maybe two people. You’re always using the word you. It’s a good idea to vary your tone. When you press the pause button more often, the tone changes automatically. When you come back again, your tone has changed just a little bit. Because all of my recordings are done without a script, I have to hit the pause a lot of times. That’s why you’ll find the tone shifting a lot. I’m also conscious of the fact that sometimes I’m slowing down and sometimes I’m going really fast. Sometimes you go softer and sometimes you get more excited and you go a little louder. All of that creates for this variation that you find in normal every day speech. That makes it so much better to listen to a podcast.

There you go.

Finally some tips on podcasting. What’s the one thing that you can do today?

The one thing that you can do today is to put these gaps. It doesn’t matter where you speak, you’re going to have the ums and ahs come in because that’s how we access the database in our brains. If you just put in these pauses just like I’m doing right now and train yourself to do it, you’ll find fewer ums and ahs on a regular basis.

Another trick is to make sure that you have examples. For instance I will get a lot of ums and ahs when I’m doing an interview and I’m trying to work out some examples to give in that interview. If I’m talking about The Brain Audit, I need to have examples of the problem and of the solution. I need to have examples of the objections. When the person asks me about the problem or the solution, my brain is trying to access the examples and then I go um and ah. That’s another way to avoid it when you’re in a live call, when you’re in a live interview. To have the examples prepared in advance.

This is podcast number 72. That’s at psychotactics.com/72 where you can get the transcript and the audio. You’re listening to this podcast while we’re in Amsterdam. It’s going to be cold and freezing in Amsterdam. This podcast is being recorded while we’re still in Oakland and it’s warm and sunny out there.

We’re going through the United States, Amsterdam, Morocco, Singapore, before we get back to New Zealand. It’s going to be a long trip, a month away, and we’ve got to have everything cued up in advance. All the podcasts have been cued up and all the newsletters and all the 500bc newsletters, which is our membership site. That’s a lot of work, but once we’re done with that work we can go on vacation. We don’t have to check email, we don’t have to do any of that stuff.

If you have any more questions on podcasting, or you have tips on podcasting, send them to me at sean@psychotactics.com. I’m also on Twitter @seandsouza and on Facebook at Sean D’Souza. Bye for now.

Still reading? Don’t miss—Why A Relaxed Brain Works Faster Than A Tired Brain

http://www.psychotactics.com/relaxed-brain-faster/

Who's Doug Hitchcock? And in a world full of goal-setting exercises, why does Doug's system stand out? Find out why most goal-setting goes hopelessly off the mark and Doug's plan works almost like magic year after year. Find out not just how to set goals, but how to create a stop-doing list (yes, that's a goal too). And finally, learn why most goals are designed for failure because they lack a simple benchmarking system. Find out how we've made almost impossible dreams come true with this goal-setting system.

http://www.psychotactics.com/goal-setting-successfully/

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1:  Why most goal-setting goes hopelessly off the mark
Part 2: How to set goals, but how to create a successful stop-doing list
Part 3: Learn why most goals are designed for failure because they lack a simple benchmarking system
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.

Useful Resources

Chaos Planning: How ‘Irregular’ Folks Get Things Done
Learning: How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn
5000bc: How to get started on your goal setting

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

The  Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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This is the Three-Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

Doug Hitchcock was my first real mentor and he had been bankrupt thrive. When I first moved to Auckland in the year 2000, I didn’t really know anyone. I was starting up a new business, I was starting up a new life. I joined a networking group and within that networking group I asked for a mentor. Well, no one in the networking group was willing to be a mentor, but someone did put me in touch with Doug.

The only problem with Doug was he had been bankrupt thrive. Now, when I say he was bankrupt thrice, it doesn’t mean he was still bankrupt. He just pulled himself out of the hole three times in his life and there he was, at about 70 plus, and he was my first mentor.

Before he starts to talk to me about anything, he asks me, “Do you do goal setting?”

I’m like, “Yeah, I have goals,” and he goes, “No. Do you have goals on paper?” I said, “No.” He says, “We have to start there. We have to start with goals on paper.”

That’s how I started doing goal setting, all the way back in the year 2000. Almost immediately, I got all the goal setting wrong. You ask, how can you get goal setting wrong? After all, you’re just putting goals down on a sheet of paper. How can you get something like that wrong? You can’t write the wrong goals, but you can write too many goals. That’s exactly what I did. I sat down with that sheet of paper and I wrote down all my work goals, my personal goals, and I had an enormous list.

That’s when Doug came back into the scene, and he said, “Pick three.” I said, “I could pick five.” He goes, “No, no, no. Pick three.” I picked three goals in my work and three goals from my personal life. You know what? By the end of the year, I’d achieved those goals. Ever since, I have been sitting down and working out these goals based on Doug’s method.

Doug may have lost his business thrice in a row, but he knew what he was talking about. Most of us just wander through life expecting things to happen. When they happen, we say they happen for a reason, but they don’t happen for a reason. They happen, and we assign a reason to it.

In this episode, I’m going to cover three topics. The first is the three part planning. Then we’ll go the other way. We’re create a stop doing list. Finally, we’ll look at benchmarks and see how we’ve done in the year.

Let’s start off with the first one, which is the three part planning.

Does the San Fernando earthquake ring any bells in your memory? Most people haven’t ever heard of this earthquake, and yet it was one of the deadliest earthquakes in US history. It collapsed entire hospitals, it killed 64 people, it injured over two and a half thousand. When the damage was assessed, it had cost millions of dollars, and yet it could have been the disaster that eclipsed all other US disasters.

That’s because the earthquake almost caused the entire Van Norman Reservoir to collapse. The dam held, and yet, if it had collapsed, the resulting rush of water would have taken the lives of more people than the Pearl Harbor Attack, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, 9/11 and 1900 Galveston Hurricane combined. In barely 12 seconds, the top section of the dam had disintegrated and yet, the surrounding areas were extremely lucky. The reservoir was only half full that day.

The aftershocks of the earthquake continued to cause parts of the dam to break apart. A few feet of free board was the only thing that stopped a total collapse. This total collapse is what many of us come close to experiencing as we try to clamber up the ladder of success. We try to do too many things and we don’t seem to go anywhere. In effect, this is like water cascading down a dam. There’s too many things and we have no control over it. What’s going to stop it?

The only thing that seems to stop anything is some kind of focus and goal setting is focus. The way we go about our goal setting is the way Doug showed me. The first category of goal setting is what we want to achieve at work. The second set comprises of our personal goals. The third, this is the most critical of all, what we’re going to learn.

Should we start off with the first one, which is our work goals? Well, that’s not the way we do it as Psychotactics. The way we work at Psychotactics is we look at our personal goals. Our own lives are far more important than work. What we do is we sit down, and first, we plan vacations. As you know, we take three months off. We’ve been doing this since 2004. We started our business at the end of 2002. Yet by 2004, we had decided we were going to take three months off.

The thing is that your vacations also need planning. Our vacations are broken up into big breaks, small breaks, and weekends. Now the big breaks are the month long vacations, and then the small breaks are in between that. We’re go away for a couple of days somewhere, and that’s our small break. I’m saying weekends, because before I wouldn’t take weekends off. I’d be working on the weekend at least for a few hours on Saturday morning and a few hours on Sunday morning, and I don’t do that any more. Now that’s almost written in stone. It’s very hard for me to get to work on weekends. I’ll slide sometimes, but it’s very hard.

The most critical thing to do is to work out the long breaks. When are we going to have those, and then the shorter breaks. That comprises that whole vacation concept, but you also have to have other personal goals. Maybe I want to learn how to cook Mexican dishes, or maybe I want to learn how to take better photographs. Now, these are personal projects. They’re not not pseudo work projects. They’re things that, at the end of the year, I go, “Wow, that’s what I’ve achieved. That’s how much I progressed.”

That’s how you start off with personal goals. You plan your breaks. You plan what you want to do personally. Once you’re done with that, then you go to your work goals. We have a lot of work goals, we have the article writing workshop coming up, we’ve got the 50 words workshop, which is, how do you start up an article. We’ve got a whole bunch of things, because we’ve got products, we’ve got courses, we’ve got workshops. All of this has to sit nicely between, so that we work for 12 weeks and then we go on a break.

We’ve decided that we’re not having any workshops next year. We’ve had a lot of workshops this year, no workshops next year. Now, this leaves us the chance to focus on the courses and the products. Now my brain is like that dam, there’s always water rushing over. I want to do a million projects, but then I have to choose. The article writing course is one of the things that I want to do for sure. I want to do a version 2.0 of it. The cartoon bank, I’ve been putting that off for a long time. That’s definitely something I want to do. Then I’ll pick a third one. Do I stop at three? No, but I make sure that I get these three down. The three that I’m going to do, they go down on paper. Some other projects will come up, a lot of stuff that I might not expect, and yet I’ll get all of this done, but these three, they’ll get done. Those three vacations, they will get done.

Then we get to the third part, which is learning.

What am I going to learn this next year? Maybe I’ll learn a software, or maybe I’ll learn how to use audio better. The point is, I have to write it down, because once I write it down, then I’m going to figure out where I have to go and what I have to do to make sure that learning happens. This is not just learning like reading some books or doing something minor like that. This is big chunks of learning, so that by the the end of the year, I know I’ve reached that point.

When it comes to planning, the first thing that we’re always doing is we’re looking at these three elements, which is work, vacation, and learning. If we have to do other sub projects, we’ll do it, but these nine things get done. Year after year after year. This is what Doug taught me, he gave me this ability to focus. I consider myself to be unfocused, I consider myself to want to do everything and anything. That was the gift of Doug.

In the year 2008, we had a program, it was a year long program. You probably heard of it. It was called a Psychotactics Protégé program. We would teach clients how to write articles, how to create info products, public relations. Lots of things along the way in that year. As you’d expect, it was reasonably profitable. 15 students paid $10,000, and so that was $150,000 that we would have in the bank before the year started.

In 2009, we pulled the plug on the Protégé system. Why would we do that? We started it in 2006, it was full, in 2007 it was full, in 2008 it was full, in 2009 there was a waiting list. We decided not to go ahead with it. We decided it was going to go on our stop doing list. We were going to walk away from $150,000, just like that. Yes, some clients were unhappy, because they wanted to be on the next Protégé program. They had seen the testimonials, they had seen the results. They knew that it was good enough to sign up for. They knew that $10,000 was a very small investment, for a year long advancement. On our part, we realized that we had to walk away from $150,000 that we were getting on cue, every December.

This is what’s called a stop doing list. We’ve used this stop doing list in our own lives. When we left India, and got to Auckland, it wasn’t like we were leaving something desperate. We were leaving something that was really good. I was drawing tattoos all day, going bowling in the afternoon, having long lunches, Renuka’s company was doing really well. They were picking up all expenses, and the only thing we really had to pay for was food but, at that point in time, we decided we had to make a break. We had to stop doing something so that we could do something different. We don’t know whether that different is better, but at that point we have to stop it, so that we can explore what is coming up ahead.

There are two things that you put on your stop doing list.

One, something that is working exceedingly well. The second thing, something that’s doing really badly. Or something that’s getting in your way. Now, the first one doesn’t make any sense. If something is doing exceedingly well, why would you stop it? Well, the point is that if you continue to do something, then you can’t do something else. You don’t know how good that something is until you stop doing it and then you go on to do something else.

Last night, I was reading The New Yorker, and The New Yorker is one of my favorite magazines. There’s James Surowiecki saying exactly the same thing. He’s saying that Time Warner should sell HBO. HBO has now 120 million subscribers globally. It has earned over 2 billion dollars in profits last year. It’s stand alone streaming service has got over a million new subscribers since last spring. What does the article recommend? It recommends that they get rid of it, they sell it, they get the best price for it at this point of time, when they’re doing so well.

What if it doubles in its value? That’s the answer we’ll never know, but the article went on. It talked about ESPN and how in 2014 it was worth 50 billion dollars. Disney owned it, they should have sold it, they could have banked the money. They could have focused on something else, but no, they kept it. ESPN is still doing well, it’s still the dominant player, but you can see that it’s not exactly where it was in 2014.

The Protégé program was doing really well for us, clients were with us for the whole year. They would then join 5000 BC, we’d get to meet them. It was a lot of fun, and it generated a sizable revenue and we walked away from it. It enabled us to do other stuff that we would not have been able to do. When you say stop doing list, it’s not just the bad stuff that you have to stop doing. Sometimes you have to stop doing the things that are very critical, like next year we’re not doing workshops. Workshops are very critical to our business, but we’re not going to do the workshops. Instead, we’ll do online courses. Instead, we’ll do something else.

We’ll create that space for ourselves, even though the workshops are doing really well. The other side of the stop doing list is stuff that’s driving you crazy. You know it’s driving you crazy, but you’re not stopping it. For instance, in September of this year, we started rebuilding the Psychotactic site. Now, there are dozens of pages on the Psychotactic site and I want to fiddle around with every single one of them, and do things that are interesting, different. The problem is that there are other projects, like for instance the storytelling workshop. Of course, vacations that get in the way.

The point is that, at some point, you have to say, okay, I really want to do this, but I’m not going to do this. I’m going to put it off until later. This is procrastination, but it is part of a stop doing list. You can’t do everything in the same time. Last year, this time, we had the same dilemma when we were going to do the podcasts. I wanted to write some books for Amazon, and I wanted to do the podcast. Every day, we would go for a walk, and it would run me crazy. I didn’t know where to start, when to start, what to do first. I had to sit down and go, okay, what am I going to stop? I just dumped the Amazon books and started on the podcast. Now we’re on podcast number 70, and it’s not even been 52 weeks.

It shows you how that stop doing list can help you focus and get stuff out of the way. Sometimes you have to procrastinate to get that point. Now the stop doing list is not restricted to work alone. You can take it into your personal life as well.

For instance, I used to get my hair cut by a hairdresser, and I was dissatisfied for a very long time. You come back in, you grumble, and my wife, Renuka, she said, “Okay, stop grumbling. Go and find another hairdresser.” I ran into Shay, now Shay was cutting my hair so well, it was amazing. I wasn’t the only one who thought that was amazing. Usually, I was on a waiting list at a barber shop. I would get there, and there were two people in front of me, waiting for Shay. While a few of the barbers just stood around, doing absolutely nothing because no one was interested. Then, one day, involuntarily, Shay went onto my stop doing list. Kimmy was around and Shay wasn’t and so Kimmy cut my hair. She was better than Shay. I thought, “Oh my goodness. I should have done this a long time ago.” Then Kimmy got transferred to another branch, and now there’s Francis. You’ve heard about Francis in other podcasts. Now Francis is my top guy.

There you go, even in something as mundane as cutting hair, there is a stop doing list. You have to push yourself a bit, and at other times you have to pull back and go, “No, we’re not going to do that.” The stop doing list is for good times, as well as for pressurized times. You have to decide, I’m going to stop doing it, I’m going to move onto the next thing.

This takes us to the third part of planning, which is benchmarks.

Now what are benchmarks? Often when we set out to do a project, say we’re going to do that website. What we don’t do is we don’t write down all the elements that are involved in doing that website because a website can go on forever, can’t it? It expands exponentially. When you are saying, I am going to write books for Amazon. Well, how many books are you going to write? How many pages are the books going to be? What’s the time frame? Where are you going to get the cartoons from? Who’s going to do all the layout?

Having this kind of benchmark in mind makes a big difference. When we plan for something, for instance if I’m planning for the article writing course, which is version 2.0. I’m going to have to sit down and work out what I’m going to have to do. When I’m doing the stock cartoons, I’m going to have to sit down and work out what kind of stock cartoons, how many. It’s perfectly fine to write a top level goal. You should do that, you should say, “Okay, I’m going to do the website,” but then you have to get granular. The granular bit tells you, have I reached my destination. Otherwise, people don’t get to their goals, and that’s why they’re struggling, because there’s no clarity.

Usually, you’re going to get the clarity when you have only three things to do, but even so, if you don’t have benchmarks you’ll never know when you’re reaching your goal or if you’re going to reach your goal.

That brings us to the end of this episode.

Summary

What did we cover? We looked at three sets of goal setting, and that is your personal goal setting, your work goal setting, and your learning goal setting. Instead of having 700 of them, you just have three things that you want to achieve in the year. Three major things that you want to achieve in the year. Logically, you start with the work, but don’t handle the work. Just go to the breaks. Organize your breaks first, because you get reinvigorated and you come back and then you can do better work. First, fix the breaks and then go to the work, then go the learning. That takes care of the first set.

The second thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you have a stop doing list. Sometimes, things are working, they’re going your way, and they still have to be dropped. That’s what we did with the Protégé program, that’s what we did with our move to New Zealand, and a lot of good things have become better, because we’ve decided to move along. Sometimes, you’re just confused because you have too many things to do, and procrastinate. Go ahead. I mean, I know this about planning, not procrastination, but procrastination is a form of planning, when you have too much to do.

Finally, have the benchmarks. Make your goals a little more detailed so that you know when you’re hitting those benchmarks. Plan it in a little more detail. That’s how you’ll reach your goal. This is what goal setting is about. It’s very simple. People make it more complicated than it needs to be.

What’s the one thing that you can do today?

Very simple. Work, vacation, and learning. Get your paper out, get your pen, and start writing. Three goals. You can start off with seven, or ten, but whittle it down to three. Oh, and make sure you write it down. When you write it down, things happen. It’s like magic when you write it down. Keep it in your head, it’s not as powerful. Write it down, it happens.

If one of your goals is to join 5000 BC this year. That’s 5000 BC, our membership site. You’ll find that it’s quite a nice place to be. It’s a very warm and friendly place. It would be great to see you there. It also gives you the opportunity to be first in line for any of the online courses that we’re having. That might not seem like a big deal until you see how cool the online courses are at Psychotactics. It’s not just another information dump, you actually get the skill. If you set out to be a cartoonist, you become a cartoonist. If you set out to be a writer, you become a writer. It’s not just information that you’re getting, it’s all very practical.

Being a member of 5000 BC gives you that little edge to get in there before everybody else. You have to read The Brain Audit, however. You can get that at psychotactics.com/brainaudit or on amazon. Com. If you’ve read The Brain Audit and you would like a special collector’s edition, then email us at Psychoanalytical. We’ll give you instruction on how to get the special collector’s edition.

That’s it from me at Psychotactics and the Three Month Vacation. Bye for now.

One of the biggest reasons why we struggle with our learning is because we run into resistance.
Resistance is often just seen as a form of laziness, but that is not true at all. There are hidden forces causing us all to resist doing what we really should do. This slows us down considerably. Find out how to work with resistance, instead of fighting it all the time. Click here to get the free report on ‘How To Win The Resistance Game’.

http://www.psychotactics.com/free/resistance-game/

What's wrong with this statement? 
Instead of wondering when our next vacation is we should set up a life we don't need to escape from.?
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, is there? And yet this entire line is based on a myth. And that's not the only myth that circulates so well and widely. Another myth is that a business has to grow; has to increase clients; has to increase revenues. But is that why you really got into business?
Did you set out to create a life that's work, work and more work? Join us as we explore three big myths, and destroy them:

Myth 1: That your business needs to constantly grow bigger. 
Myth 2: Somehow you'll have more time, and your business will be on auto-pilot / Myth 3: That we need to set up a life where we don't need to wonder about our vacations. / / Yup, incredibly silly business myths. Let's take them head on and get some sanity back into our lives, instead.

http://www.psychotactics.com/three-business-myths/

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In this episode Sean talks about

Myth 1: That your business needs to constantly grow bigger
Myth 2: Somehow you’ll have more time, and your business will be on auto-pilot
Myth 3: Vacation is the enemy and work is everything
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

The Power of Enough: Why It’s Critical To Your Sanity
Three Obstacles To Happiness: How To Overcome Them
5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems

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The  Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza. Imagine you’re a band, but not just any old music band. Instead, you’re the most popular band in the whole world. You’ve sold over 200 million records. You’re in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and probably only five or six bands have sold more than you in the entire history of pop.

Barry Gibb has never done this before, never taken the long walk to the stage by himself.

Speaker 2: Is it important for you to do this?
Barry: Yeah, it’s everything to me. It’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t know how to do anything else.
Speaker 2: t went pretty well, though.
Barry: I can’t get a job.
Speaker 2: He’s the only surviving member of one of the 20th century’s greatest vocal groups, and this night, at the TD Garden in Boston, he’s about to begin his first ever solo tour.

You have to ask yourself why. Why would Barry Gibb, with all his success and all the money that they’ve earned over the years as the Bee Gees, do his first solo tour. It’s not like he needs the money or the fame, because they’re the only group in history to have written, recorded, and produced six consecutive number one hits. As Barry Gibb himself boasted, “We weren’t on the charts. We were the charts.”

In that spring, as he hit the road across North America for six solo shows, every show was costing him half a million dollars a night. He said he would be lucky to break even. But that’s not the point. “I have to keep this music alive,” says Gibb. To me, that’s what embodies what I do. I want to keep the music alive. I think this is true for most of us. Most of us aren’t really looking for this magic pill. We’re not looking to double our customers, triple our income, do any of that kind of nonsense.

What we’re trying to do is keep our music alive. We’re trying to get some purpose in our lives. The money, the fame, all that stuff’s really nice, but does it matter in the long run? At the height of The Beatles’ fame, John Lennon said, “Work is life, you know, and without it there’s only uncertainty and unhappiness.” When you look at someone like the guy who runs Uchida, a little restaurant in Vancouver Island, the restaurant is only open from 11:00 to 2:00. When you get there you eat some of the most delightful Japanese food I’ve ever eaten, and I have traveled to many places, including Japan. That magic is expressed in his work. He gets to work and he stays until the restaurant closes at 2:00. It doesn’t open for dinner because from 2:00 to 9:00 he’s preparing the next day’s meals. Every day the meal is just so amazing. It’s different every single day. It’s a big surprise, and it’s always amazing.

Today I’m going to talk to you about three myths about business.

We’ve run Psychotactics for the past 13 years, but the business goes back a long way when I used to be a cartoonist. I’m going to bring to you these three myths which I think are important. I think they’re important because everyone is talking about the other side, about more money, more customers, doubling your income, doing all that stuff. As I said, that’s really nice, but is there a flip side to it? That’s what we’ll cover in today’s episode.

First up on the menu today is the fact that you have to grow. That’s myth number one.

Myth number two is that things get easier as you go along.

Myth number three is that you have to create a life that you don’t need a vacation from.

Let’s start off with the first myth, which is you have to grow.

Once a year, we have a really important meeting at Psychotactics. My wife Renuka and I meet with our accountant Steve, and we go over our accounts. We look at how much money we made in the year. How much are our profits? What are the expenses? All the stuff that you do with an accountant before you sign off everything. We’re in 2015, but when I look at the accounts, it looks exactly as it did in 2007.

2007 was a really good year. We earned twice, maybe thrice as much as we needed. Of course a third goes to the government. That’s just what you do; you pay tax. Even so, you had twice as much as you needed, and our needs are not much. We take our breaks. We go on vacation. We buy little goodies here and there, but we’re not flash people. We don’t have the flashiest car. We don’t fly business; we always friendly economy. We keep our expenses under control. But even so, having twice as much as you need, that’s quite a lot.

The way that a lot of businesses go about this situation is to say let’s double it, let’s triple it. Here’s what I’m telling you. You don’t have to double it. You don’t have to triple it. You don’t have to enter that rat race. All you have to do is stay comfortable. That was your goal in the first place. Your goal as a business owner was to start up a business, to have control over your life, and be comfortable. It was not to struggle anymore. It was never to double and triple your income.

In fact, when you read the stories of business owners that have doubled and tripled, and I don’t know, quadrupled, quintupled their income, you find that there is a huge sacrifice. That sacrifice is their family, their life, their health, everything else. When people talk about all of the extra stuff, the extra money that comes in, the extra fame, they don’t talk about that part until a lot later when they’re doing their memoir. The reality is you have to double or triple nothing.

When we look at our list, for instance, our list grew from 200-300 people. Now there are 37,000 people. It might seem quite small when you think about it, because we’ve been around since 2002, to have only 37,000 people. I know it sounds like a lot if you don’t have 37,000 people, but if you’ve been around since 2002, you should have 350,000 people. Here’s the reality. Those 37,000 people don’t open the newsletter. Maybe 4 or 5,000 people open the newsletter at any given point in time. This is a reality. Out of those 4 or 5,000 people, probably 400 people generate more than 90% of our income. Most of them are our members at 5000bc.

At this point, this whole message seems very conflicting, even hypocritical, because what we’re saying is we’re very comfortable. We are earning thrice as much as we need. We’ve got this huge list. I’m saying to you, don’t do that. Don’t go crazy over stuff. We could have had a list of 350,000 people. We could have ten times the income. What would we do with it? How many sacrifices would we have to make to just do that kind of stuff. Instead, the sacrifice comes from other places. This is where the growth really matters.

When you look at many of the products at Psychotactics, you will find that they have been polished over time. When you look at The Brain Audit, it started with version 1, and then version 2, and then version 3, and then 3.2. that’s where we grow exponentially. When you look at the courses, they improve by 10% or 15% every year. How do we know this? Because we get feedback. Every course has one full day of feedback where clients tell us what we did wrong and how to fix it. We have to fix it, and that takes a lot of time.

There there is the growth. We still take exactly the same number of clients for every course as we’ve always done. We never exceed 25. If you’re in a workshop, it’s never 30. There is never this need to continuously grow and grow bigger, and grow fatter, and grow … I don’t know. There is no need. The need is in making magic, in getting your work better. Why is this need so important? Because you as a person, you feel satisfied. You feel wow, my work has got better over the years. You’re fixing it and it’s improving and it’s evolving.

Then you look at your clients and see that they are achieving these skills. Their business is growing. They’re more satisfied. They’re taking more vacations. You think, my mission is on its way. It’s not finished. It’s on its way. The benchmark needn’t be the fame and the benchmark needn’t be the money, and the benchmark needn’t be the growth. That’s one of the first myths that I want to take apart. Because almost every book out there is talking about something quite the opposite.

In fact, yesterday I was on Facebook and there it was again: double your income, lessen your work. No, your work is interesting. Your vacations are interesting. I get the point. You can’t sell a book that says stay stagnant with your income. Stay stagnant with your revenue. Stay stagnant with your clients. It’s not going to sell. Maybe it will, I don’t know, but the point is it’s a myth. You have to be satisfied first. Your work has to bring great satisfaction and you have to be comfortable. That’s all that really is required from you as a small business. Let the Apple and the Google and all those big companies do whatever it is that they want to do. Let them double and triple and do whatever they want to do. That’s probably not for you.

If you’re the person that enjoys your family time, and enjoys your life, and enjoys the little things, then this is how you go about it. Because, as we saw with the Bee Gees and Barry Gibb, the fame didn’t make that much of a difference. It made a difference, but at the end of the day, it’s about keeping the music alive. It’s about keeping the magic alive.

That brings us to the end of the first part.

Now we go to the second myth, which is things get easier.

Back in the year 2000, if you went to a site called millionbucks.co.nz, you would find our site. Yes, I’m embarrassed by the name, but that was what I wanted to do right at the start. I wanted to grow the business, make a million bucks, do all the stuff that we’re told we are supposed to do. Unfortunately, no one, or very few people were making money online at that point in time. The online space was not seen as some place where you could go and by stuff. It was always about information and sharing that information.

It’s not until 2002 that we launched Psychotactics. That’s when we sold our first copy of The Brain Audit. That was a big surprise. We were forced to setup our credit card system by someone else who kicked us into doing it. Then someone showed up and bought the first copy, took us completely by surprise. Then my wife Renuka would do a happy dance. She would get up from her chair and do a dance in the room. Then of course, as the months passed, we would get some more sales, and every time a sale came she would do a happy dance.

It does get to the point where you can’t dance anymore and you have to sit down and do your work. You also buy into this idea that things will get easier. Because when we started out, we were working five, six, seven days a week. I realise there are only seven days in a week. But we were working all the time. We thought things will get easier, and they have got easier. But wait a second, we still put in five full days. We take the weekend off now but we still put in five full days, so how much easier has it got?

The point is that if you want to do superb work, things don’t get easier. Because you’re always making it somehow better. You’re always learning. You’re always getting feedback, and feedback kills you. Because feedback tells you that your work isn’t as superb as you think. That dish that you just cooked, that you’ve been raving about, that you think everyone should praise you for, it’s too oily. There’s too much salt in it. Or maybe there’s just over the top salt and it tastes good but that’s too much salt for human consumption.

You cannot take that feedback because that feedback means that you have to fix something. Clients will come back right after we’ve written a book and they’ll say, “You should fix this part or you should move that part.” They’ll get onto our courses and they’ll start to move things around. They’ll suggest different types of technology. We have to listen. All of that listening means all of that doing, and doing means that things never get easier. It’s like the story of the Golden Gate Bridge. They say they start painting at one end and by the time they get to the other end, they have to paint it again. I don’t know if the story is true, but that’s approximately what your business is going to be like.

It’s going to have lots of ups and downs, but more importantly, it’s not going to get easier. If you want to improve your work, if you want to make it magic, you’re going to get that feedback. You’re going to ask for that feedback and you’re going to get that feedback, and you’re going to have to fix things. When you fix things, it’s work. When you create new stuff, it’s work. All of this work brings an enormous amount of satisfaction. I can look back at a lot of the things that we’ve done, and if it weren’t for the clients, I wouldn’t have done it. If it weren’t for the deadlines, I wouldn’t have done it. But all of it is work.

You look at the storytelling workshop that we’re doing now in Nashville and Amsterdam. I would never have written the notes. I’ve written a series on storytelling. It’s available as a book. But this is more comprehensive. This is more in-depth. I’ve had to spend weeks working it out. I sit at the café looking pensive, drinking my coffee. Then it’s work. To me, it never gets easier, because you’re always trying to explore that depth, as it were. You’re trying to get that magic. You’re trying to keep that music going.

We all start out with this dream of sitting on the beach and doing nothing. That’s not how the brain works and that’s not how the body works. In fact, if we sat at the beach and did nothing, we’d soon be a vegetable in no time at all. If we don’t do our daily walks, and we don’t exercise, and we don’t meditate, and we don’t do all the stuff that we’re supposed to do, we don’t do all this “work,” there’s no satisfaction in life.

Today I can write an article in 45 minutes. I can do the podcast. I can do webinars. I can do a lot of stuff. What happens is you get much faster and better at doing stuff, and you want to get faster and better all the time because it improvements your work. You put more cartoons in the books. You tweak the workshops. You do stuff that only brings more work. Of course that’s why you need the vacations as well. Because you need to wind down. You need the weekends to wind down. That’s really how life continues. It’s not about the beach. The beach, that’s vacation time. There’s a separate time for it.

The third myth is that vacation is the enemy and work is everything.

Because we’ve been talking about work, haven’t we? Let’s look at this third myth, which is that vacation is the enemy. But is vacation really the enemy? It seems like it, doesn’t it? Because wherever you go on Facebook or on the internet, you run into this little saying by Seth Godin, and it says, “Instead of wondering where your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense to have a great life and you don’t need a vacation.

It doesn’t make sense to me at all. Because when you look at that saying, what it’s saying is that your job, whatever you’re doing right now, or your business, whatever you’re doing right now, is so tedious that you’re not enjoying yourself. It’s saying that the enemy is that bad job, that unsatisfying job, that unsatisfying business that you’re running right now. And that you need to find something that is satisfying. That’s the enemy.

Look what happened here. Vacation came in. Vacation came in as the enemy when vacation is not the enemy at all. That bad job, that’s the enemy. The good job, that’s your friend. Vacation is the time where you get better at what you do. You take time off just like a flight takes off, and it lands, and it has to refuel, and it has to be maintained. That’s what vacation is all about. It’s about going to new lands, learning about stuff, learning the different types of food, enjoying yourself, reading, sleeping, drinking, doing stuff that we did as kids.

When we grew up, we weren’t working all the time. We’d go to school and then we had vacations. Vacations weren’t the enemy back then. How did they become the enemy all of a sudden? It’s because we’ve got this crappy job or we’re doing this business that is deeply unsatisfying. Then you have a statement like this, which is probably just off the cuff, but it has made vacations the enemy, and vacations are not the enemy at all. They are the friend.

That’s myth number three, that you don’t need vacations. You need the break. Think of yourself back when you were a kid and you just enjoyed the time of absolute nothingness. You would like to get that again, wouldn’t you? What’s the point of sitting at work the whole time? There is really no point. You can fool yourself, but the reason why we sit at work the whole time is because we get what is called work momentum. We work and we work and we work and we work, and then that momentum takes us into more work.

The moment we go on vacation, we’re thinking of what? Work of course, because that’s what we’ve been doing for so long. Then when you go on a vacation, if you have enough time on your vacation, you get into vacation momentum, and then you get more and more relaxed. Then when you get back to work, it’s very hard to get back to work. This management is important, this management of work and life. It’s important not to just take anything you see on Facebook, this nice little phrase, just because it came from Seth Godin or some other guru, and then take it at face value.

You want to deconstruct it and understand why you did things the way you did. You want to see it from your perspective as a human being. You want to see it how you were when you were a child. Because vacations are like a drug. Once you take vacations, work becomes so much more satisfying. Okay, I’ll stop ranting and raving.

This brings us to the end of the episode.

What have we covered in this episode?

We covered three things.

The first thing we covered was this factor of doubling and tripling your income, and your customers. At Psychotactics we’ve grown organically. We’ve just done things and the list has grown to quite a sizeable number, but it’s very slow. It does matter. If you do what you love and you do it really well, and you will over time, then you will find that there are clients and there’s enough revenue, and you live a very comfortable life. You’re spending time with your family. You’re doing things that you really want. That’s what’s important.

That takes us to the second myth, and that is that life doesn’t get easier. It gets easier if you do nothing with your work, if you don’t take feedback, if you’re not big enough to take that feedback. Because most of us are insecure and we feel like someone is attacking us when they give feedback, so we don’t ask for feedback. We ask for praise all the time. But praise doesn’t improve your work so much; feedback does. When you get that feedback, you have to do some more work. Of course that takes more time, and so things don’t always get easier. You just get better at it and your work gets better, but never easier.

The final thing is that vacation is not the enemy. It has never been the enemy. We’ve made it the enemy because of crazy sayings that float around the internet. When you look into your childhood and your early years, vacation has always been your friend. You’ve just forgotten the friend and decided to adopt another friend, who’s a workaholic. Well, get rid of the workaholic and go back to your childhood. Go back to your young years and you’ll see that it’s a lot more fun.

That brings us to the end of this episode. What’s the one thing that we can do today?

Well this episode was not quite the things to do episode, but even so, one of the things that you can do today is make more work for yourself. Whether it’s in your personal life, the hobbies that you have, or whether it’s in work, you want to ask for feedback. You want to ask people to tell you what you can fix. Stop asking for so much praise. The praise is important, but the feedback is just as important. Create a little more work for yourself and then take a vacation. Because, as Barry Gibb said, you want to keep the music alive.

When you listen to this podcast, we’re likely to be on vacation. We’re going to Morocco. Our trip is across the United States, then to Europe, then to Africa, then to Asia, and then back to New Zealand. Amsterdam is one of our favorite cities on the planet, and after our trip Nashville we’re going to be in Amsterdam for quite a while before heading to Morocco. It’s going to be fun in Morocco. No tourists because it’s not as hot this time of year. We’re going to be at a seaside place, really nice place, do nothing, just relax, just paint, eat, drink and sleep.

The reason we’re headed back to Auckland in a bit of a hurry is because Auckland is amazing at this time of the year. It’s summer; there’s no one in the city. We go for long walks. When we get back after our vacation, we’re going to take another month off until February. That’s when we get back to work. If what I’m describing to you sounds so unreal, then remember that it was unreal for us as well. We decided that this is what we want to do. We want to take time off. We want to take weekends off.

We put these things into place, and that’s what you should do as well.

That’s exactly what the next episode is about. It’s about goal setting, but goal setting our way, and you would expect it to be different, so listen to it and tell your friends about it. If you haven’t given us a rating on iTunes, then please do so. If you would like to give us a one-star rating or a two-star rating, that’s fine. But give us a rating. If you haven’t done that already, go to iTunes, give us a rating, and total your friends about the Three Month Vacation. That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye from Psychotactics and the Three Month Vacation. Bye bye.

Still reading? Find out—The Three Obstacles To Happiness (And How To Overcome Them)

http://www.psychotactics.com/three-business-myths/

 

In the last three episodes we considered what makes a product or service irresistible. In this episode we tidy up things with a complete summary. Hooray! 

When you're so focused on a sales page, it's easy to forget that that sales page/landing page is just one tiny step in the whole sequence. There's a sequence that precedes the landing page. Most of us that create products or services ignore that sequence. We assume the product or service alone should have the spotlight. Which, as you're probably guessing, is a mistake. You need all the steps that come before the landing page. The landing page is the event? What comes before? Let's find out in this episode on the steps involved in creating an awesome buildup.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How do you create a build up for your product?
Part 2: Why you have to create a ‘moment in time’ for every product?
Part 3: What is the one biggest reason our product launch fails?
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

Something cool to read: Why “Failure” Is Just A Pre-Sell For Success
More cool reading: How Pre-Sell Sold The Article Writing Course In Fewer than 24 Hours
The Irresistibility Factor: A complete summary of this three part podcast.

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What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 3 of 3

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Build Up

“You do realize, you will never make a fortune out of writing children’s books?”

These were the words Joanne Kathleen—better known as J.K. Rowling heard from her agent when she first put forward the idea of Harry Potter. By 1999, Harry Potter was a global phenomenon. But how you take a phenomenon and make it even more phenomenal? You put it in a cage—that’s what you do!

At Waterstone’s in Birmingham, the third in the series, “Prisoner of Azkaban” was in a cage guarded by two mannequins dressed like Men in Black. The kids—and their harried parents—could see the book, but they couldn’t get at it. All over the globe, a similar rollout was in progress to create a build up for a particular moment in time. That moment was the release of the next Harry Potter book.

Let’s assume our products and services don’t have the cult-status of Harry Potter

In such a case, how are you supposed to create this moment where you get clients to sign up for a product or service? The wrong way to have a launch is to shout, “Surprise” and present your product or service to the client. The right way to do it would be to create a build up. A build up that may have started weeks, months, even years ago.

When you see a Psychotactics course sell out in less than an hour, there’s something important you don’t see

You don’t see the pre-sell in action. And yet if you were to read this article, you’ll spot the fact that the Article Writing Course is coming back around June next year. You’ll also get notifications of the fact that this extremely popular course is getting a big upgrade. It’s Version 2.0 of the course with brand new notes, audio and assignments. Bit by bit the information trickles out, with very few specifics until the date gets closer.

Build up is critical for both products and services

If you’re a web designer, and you sit around waiting for something to happen, well, something might happen. But it’s also likely that nothing might happen as well. That clients don’t come rushing to you. If you’re a copywriter, it’s the same scenario. You’re waiting and hoping, and hope is a pretty iffy strategy. When you look around you, the biggest names in the business don’t play the game with iffiness in mind. If the big new Bond movie is coming out, you’ll hear about it for weeks in advance. You’ll see videos on YouTube, magazines splashed with the actors from the Bond movie. They’ll be eating, drinking, be on the brink of affairs, separation—and who knows what else! But they’re building up for the event.

To make something—anything— irresistible, you have to create a moment in time

Like a lunar eclipse that causes everyone to dust off their telescopes at the precise time, you have to control the build up. Bit by bit the information needs to peter out from you to your clients. Almost without exception, clients should know of your product or service—and the day of the launch. It’s this rigour that allows a product or service to become an “instant success”.

Pre-sell involves buildup and the biggest reason for failure are that we’re too trigger-happy.

We expect to launch something and then it needs to take off like a rocket. And yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but by and large you’re going to struggle a lot if you don’t go through the steps of pre-sell and build up. It’s the patience and planning that counts.

The steps to a launch are:

1) Work on a date of the launch well into the future
2) Create steps along the way—and what you’re going to drip feed to your clients.
3) Keep adding different elements until the clients get caught up in the fever of the product or service. That’s when the product or service becomes irresistible.

This brings us to the end of the three elements that make your product or service irresistible.

So let’s summarise:  The Irresistibility Factor?A Complete Summary

In the last three episodes we considered what makes a product or service irresistible. In this episode we tidy up things with a complete summary. Hooray!
http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/69a_Irresistible_Offer_Summary.mp3

Still reading? Have a look at #45: The Secret To Getting Your Report Read (From Start To Finish) 

 

When we think of exclusivity, we often see sales pages that seem to have these ticking clocks. They're creating urgency by forcing our hand. And as small business owners, we often buy into that urgency. Yet, you don't need to resort to these cheap gimmicks when you have the twin factors of exclusivity. So how do you use these twin factors to your advantage. Here's Part 2 in a series of 3 on "How to Create the Irresistibility Factor".

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Power of Product Exclusivity
Part 2: The Benefit of Working with Smaller Numbers
Part 3: The Myth that you have to be Big to be Successful
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.

Useful Resources

5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems
The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t)
Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game

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What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 2 of 3

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The Power of Exclusivity

There’s an anecdotal story about the late Gary Halbert.

Gary Halbert was one of the best known direct-mail copywriters on the planet and so he decided to have a copywriting workshop. Even those he charged nose-bleed prices for the workshop, it was absolutely full.

So he hosted a subsequent workshop. That too was full.

He was on a roll, so another workshop was announced. Yes, it was full again.
And then it went quiet.

Deathly quiet, in fact.

You’ve probably figured out the reason why the workshops stopped filling up

My guess was that Gary ran out of people to attend his workshop. But remember this—Gary was super well-known. He had a list of thousands of subscribers. What he ran into was a problem of exclusivity. The workshops were being held at such a high frequency, that it seemed easy enough to put off attending the next workshop, because another one would always show up.

This is why we last had the Psychotactics Headlines course in 2013—then nothing until 2015

The headlines course is extremely popular—and hence full every single time we announce it. It’s not hard to see why, either. As a business owner you’ve got to send out newsletters, possibly make a presentation, write sales letters for your product or service, and if you produce podcasts or webinars—yes, you need headlines. Almost all marketing activity is directly linked to writing great headlines. Instead of guessing whether a headline is outstanding or just average, you know precisely why it works and how to fix it. The question to ask is this: Should you conduct the course on a frequent basis?

The answer depends on whether you want to create exclusivity or not

If you want a product to be exclusive, you have to create scarcity, because scarcity creates exclusivity. This exclusivity is exactly what Studio 54 used to their advantage. It’s what caused people to want to jump that “velvet rope”. There was a sense of desperation to get into Studio 54 night after night. If you don’t or won’t have exclusivity around your product or services, you’re telling clients they can have it at any given time. As you can tell, that lack of exclusivity reduces urgency. The client can come in any ol’ time and get the product or service—and often they do. They put off the purchase until later.

At Psychotactics, we haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel…

Instead we work on just two parameters to create a factor of exclusivity.

1) Reduce frequency
2) Work with small numbers.

Reduce frequency

If you look at the courses we host online (for e.g. the Article Writing Course, headlines course, copywriting course etc), they’re all held with a substantial gap. That gap is at least a year apart. It means if you miss signing up for the course, you have to wait at least a year, sometimes two. There’s no guarantee that the course will be held on a recurring basis, and this creates a factor of exclusivity. Let’s take the Article Writing Course for instance. Let’s just say we’re going to have a course in May next year (and right now we’re in November). When will we have the next course? We don’t know for sure. All we know is it’s not going to be in June, or July, or August—or even in that year.

But won’t that drive clients away to the competition?

There’s always a possibility that the clients would want to learn a skill desperately and hence head elsewhere. And yet, that’s not what a lot of our clients do. They’re clear they want to do the course with us, and so they wait for the announcement and they sign up. As you’re reading this information, you are clearly being pre-sold for the Article Writing Course being held next year. You are aware that there’s a sort of sales pitch in what you’re reading and yet you’re also keen to know why the course is so exclusive.

Why would clients wait?

Why would they pay a hefty fee of $3000 for the privilege? Why would they sign up for something that’s known as the “toughest writing course” in the world? It’s not like clients won’t try the competition. Even if you have the best products or services in the world, the clients will still buy into competitor’s products or services. Yet, we all want something that’s exclusive—something we can’t have.

Make no mistake

Just putting a tag of exclusivity on a product or service isn’t going to help you sell better.Your product or service has to be top-notch. No client is silly enough to spend $3000 on a course. They’re not going to get on a plane, take a whole week off from their work to get to your workshop. They certainly aren’t going to just throw money at whatever product you’re selling, if it’s not top notch. And while all product or services start off a bit less than great, with time they can all become exceedingly good.

That’s when the demand starts

That’s when you need to put a “velvet rope” around the product or the service. The greater the demand the more you’ve got to protect your property. Instead it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to make our product or service easily available. Yet, in some cases, availability is exactly what’s needed. Some products or services may need to be put in place so that clients can get to them at any point in time. These products and services provide a doorway to your business.

In our case, The Brain Audit is the doorway

Prospects find The Brain Audit on Amazon.com or on our site. And once they read it, they go on to buy more “doorway products”. We know this to be true because we track their progress. They’ll buy books such as “The Secret life of Testimonials” or “Chaos Planning” or “Story Telling”. Then they move up to buying more expensive products such “Black Belt Presentations”. But then they hit a wall. To join 5000bc, they can’t just waltz in. They have to pay to be on a waiting list.

Who pays to be on a waiting list?

It’s just $10, but you have to get on the list and then after we check out your history a bit, we let you in after 3-4 weeks. The same applies to any of the workshops or courses. Not only are they less frequent, but our members at 5000bc get the first chance to sign up. There have been numerous occasions where the product or service is sold out before the rest of the list can even have a crack at it.

The more expensive the product or service, the less the frequency of availability.

So yes, you want to start with looking at your product or service

Is it a doorway product? If so, it may not need that tag of exclusivity. But as it goes up in price, create a barrier—create several barriers—and make it exclusive. Even if you have a digital product that should be easily available, you can offer it only once a year and make it exclusive.

This takes us to the second factor: working with small numbers.

Working With Smaller Numbers

A 947 person waiting list.

That’s the Tory 2.0 dress by MM LaFleur. MM. LaFleur is a direct-to-consumer fashion retailer started by a former financial consultant Sarah LaFleur and Zac Posen designer Miyako Nakamura.  At $235 it’s not cheap, but the very fact that you can’t get it right away—that’s causing the waiting list to keep soaring.

The same applied to my Nakaya Naka-ai in Araishu pen

The pen is handcrafted from ebonite and Urushi lacquer, and comes a solid gold 14k nib. I ordered this handcrafted pen from Japan back in May 2014 and it arrived a year and a half later. My wife, Renuka, jokes that there’s some wizened old man in Japan somewhere working day and night bent over the nib. The price? After all the taxes, it hovered close to NZ$1000—for a fountain pen!

And yet, there’s a waiting list.

As if to underline the Japanese connection, here’s a third example

Jiro Ono runs a sushi restaurant under the Ginza railway station in Tokyo. Jiro has been honoured by Michelin—and gets Michelin’s highest three star rating. A meal costs approximately US$380 per person. So how many people would you expect to see at Jiro’s restaurant? A hundred, fifty, thirty—perhaps?

The correct answer is ten.

Night after night only ten diners sit in for a twenty minute meal. So does a restaurant that makes over $1 million a year sound like a good business?

It’s a myth that you have to be big to be successful

In reality, being small—and having small groups as your clients can be as, or even more successful than getting bigger all the time. This in turn creates an enormous amount of exclusivity—and makes your business irresistible. If you’re a woman who’s keen on a superb office dress, you’ll be checking out the Tory 2.0 dress. The foodie in you would want to experience Jiro’s food and the pen—no you can’t have it. There’s only one kind of it on the planet. In short, smaller numbers play a massive role in creating exclusivity.

And this factor of working in smaller numbers has a big, almost-guaranteed benefit

Let’s take the membership site at 5000bc, for example. 5000bc has been running since 2003 and yet it has fewer than 400 members. That may, at first, seem like an awfully small number when you consider that the Psychotactics list runs into several tens of thousands. Yet, that small number is responsible for generating almost 90% our income. The members know the benefit of being a member. They get first access to the courses or workshops. They get personalised attention. Being a member has its privileges both for the client as well as for the person running the membership site. The moment the membership site gets big, it almost always gets hard to handle. There are no personal relationships, everyone is trying to hawk something to someone else and there’s a constant show up of upmanship.

This concept of having smaller numbers applies not just to services, but training as well

At Psychotactics, we may boast that we don’t do joint ventures, affiliates, advertising etc., but why have we been able to get away with this for so long? The reason is because clients keep coming back. On average, if a client does one workshop (at a venue) or one live course online, they come back to do as many as four-five courses, buy several products and services. Even the clients who don’t do many courses, end up doing at least a couple.

I think you know where this line of thinking is going

The smaller numbers cause the product or service to be exclusive. The exclusivity leads to urgency. Add a good helping of lesser frequency and you have an even higher factor of irresistibility kicking in. But more importantly, this tiny number also allows you to pay closer attention to the needs of your clients. And if you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not even remotely expecting to rule the world. Your core goal is to live a comfortable, satisfying life; to have really good clients; to have a solid cash flow and money reserves.

But you can have your cake and eat it too

All your products and services don’t need to be out of reach. Some products may be produced in larger numbers. You may choose to have some events with 500 people—while others are just for 25. Not everything needs to be small, but you can put a ring around some products or services and decide to keep them small forever. Or, like Jiro Ono, you may decide you never want to have 11 people for dinner.

Smaller numbers work magnificently well to create a factor of exclusivity

You get to live your life on your terms—and because you have such small numbers your product or service is always in demand.

Go smaller, not bigger. Reduce frequency, don’t increase. These are the keys to creating a real exclusivity for your product or service.

This takes us to the third element: Build Up

Have a look here—for the continuation on How To Make Your Product or Service Irresistible: Part 3 and 3.

How do you make your product or service irresistible? With tens of thousands of similar products or services in the market, can you use simple techniques to create a great offer? This episode shows you two psychological methods that we can't turn down?as humans. We love both the buffet and the specialty. No matter if you're a small business or a big one, you can use these techniques and increase your product and service sales. 

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Buffet vs. Specialty Principle
Part 2: How Studio 54 put out a buffet of fantasy
Part 3: What does this mean for you when you’re selling a product or service?

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

 

 

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What Are The Factors in Play Behind An Irresistible Offer: Part 1 of 3

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Imagine you’re Frank Sinatra.

No matter where you go on the planet, people know of you.

Doors open magically for you.
People can’t help but gape in wonder as you show up at an event.
So imagine a place where the great Frank Sinatra can’t enter.

It’s inconceivable, isn’t it?

And yet it happened. When Frank showed up at Studio 54, he was turned away. So was the president of Cyprus, the King of Saudi Arabia’s son, Roberta Flack, and several young Kennedys. Even the famous movie star, Jack Nicholson was unable to enter on opening night.

Studio 54 was like no other place in New York

From the moment it opened its 11,000-square-foot dance floor, it was packed with celebrities dying to get in. Olivia Newton-John, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Dolly Parton, Mick Jagger, Tine Turner—you get the idea—they were just some of the visitors to Studio 54. Almost every night since it opened its doors on April 26, 1977, it was packed to its capacity—almost 2000 people a night. If you considered yourself cool, you wanted to get into Studio 54—but there was no guarantee you’d get in.

There was someone stopping the flow…

This someone was at the door Studio 54 night after night. He’d show up at the door at 11:30 pm and get on a step stool above the crowd. He’d pick who could get into the club that night—and who was to be turned away. His name is Steve Rubell, part-owner and the person who made sure the Studio was one of the most irresistible places in New York!

So what made Studio 54 so irresistible, when there were so many cool places in New York at the time? And what makes any product or service irresistible, even without star power? Let’s take a look at three core elements.

• Buffet vs. Specialty
• Exclusivity
• Build Up

 

Buffet vs. Specialty Principle

If you were to go to Lynda.com you’d be faced with a buffet.

On Lynda.com there are hundreds of tutorials on software, business and creative skills. In 2004 alone, there were over 100 courses on the site. And that course number has gone up exponentially. For the past few years, Lynda.com been adding more than 18 hours of content, almost every single day of the year. That means you’re likely to run into thousands of hours of tutorials topics such as Photoshop, computer animation, 3-D animation, photography—in all about 224,413 tutorials to date.

That’s a huge buffet, don’t you agree?

And as humans, we’re primed for buffets. We love the “eat all you want” concept and it’s even better if the “food” is of an extremely high quality. This means that a potential client of Lynda.com can access all their content for just $250 a year. Immediately you see why this kind of deal is incredibly irresistible. If you decide to learn a program like InDesign, you can easily do so, because there are at least a dozen courses on InDesign alone. If you want to learn to work with WordPress, hey, there’s a mountain of video instruction already in place. No matter where you look, the volume and quality of content tantalises you.

Which brings us to our first principle—the buffet principle

If you’re offering your clients an enormous amount of something, they’re instantly drawn towards it, whether they can consume it or not. When given a buffet option, few of us can stop ourselves from feeling the need to buy the product or service.

When you look at 5000bc.com, you get a buffet option

5000bc is the membership site at Psychotactics.com. The moment you get to the sales page at 5000bc, there’s a feeling of a ton of information at 5000bc. There are cumulatively, hundreds of articles on topics such as copywriting, web design, branding, lead generation etc. Which is why most clients tend to sign up to the membership site at 5000bc.

It’s more than likely they’ve been a subscriber at Psychotactics for a while, bought and read The Brain Audit, possibly even bought some other books from Psychotactics—and then they’re exposed to 5000bc. And the buffet concept kicks in. At $259 a year (remarkably similar to Lynda.com), clients can get not only a ton of curated content, but also have the opportunity to ask me dozens of questions—some of which are answered within hours, if not minutes. This concept of a buffet becomes impossible to resist, and has been the main factor in attracting clients to 5000bc since it started way back in 2003.

Studio 54 put out a buffet of fantasy

The magazine, Vanity Fair, describes it as the “giddy epicenter of 70s hedonism, a disco hothouse of beautiful people, endless cocaine and every kind of sex. Once you were within the velvet ropes, you were exposed to raunchiness, debauchery and creativity of an unimaginable scale.

“It felt like you were going to a new place every night,” says Kevin Haley, then a model, now a Hollywood decorator. “And you were, because they changed it all the time for the parties. Remember the Dolly Parton party? It was like a little farm with bales of hay and live farm animals—pigs and goats and sheep. The designer Karl Lagerfield’s party: an 18th century paty with busboys dressed up as courtiers, powdered wigs and then—a live reggae concert at 3 am in the morning. Another night might bring Bianca Jagger popping out of a birthday cake. Some nights might bring in a sea of glitter, another night Lady Godiva on a horse—or Hell’s Angels on Harleys on the dance floor.

Ironically, the buffet-concept represents just one way to create an irresistible offer.
The other way is the exact opposite—where you take away everything and create a specialty offer.

Remember Lynda.com where you get over 200,000 tutorials?

Remember the price? Yes, it’s $250 a year. And yet, at Psychotactics we sell an InDesign course that’s $269.

It’s not an entire course in InDesign. It’s not even a partial course. All the course promises is ONE thing. It shows you how to create an e-book in InDesign in less than an hour. If you were to learn a course in InDesign, you’re likely to take at least 18 hours—and that’s the first time around. It’s likely you’d have to go through the entire course (or at least part of the course) a second time. And then when you’re ready to create your snazzy e-book, you have to work out which part of InDesign will help you get the result you seek. It’s not inconceivable to spend 40-50 hours just to get your e-book going.

Now the specialty offer makes a huge difference to the client

Instead of wading through hours of material, they get right to the point. And this specialty concept applies to more than just courses or training. A phone. Most of us want smartphones that have all the bells and whistles. But what if you want just a cell phone that makes calls? The Doro Phone Easy 626 does just what you’d expect a cell phone to do—it makes calls. Like the InDesign course, it’s not meant for everyone, but just a smaller audience that finds it irresistible.

What does this mean for you when you’re selling a product or service?

It means you can have your cake and eat it too. When we sell the book, The Brain Audit, it is akin to a buffet (like most books). It has several chapters and spans 180 pages. Yet, elements of The Brain Audit are then isolated. For instance, one of the elements, uniqueness, is a complete course. Another element, testimonial is a 100+ page book. Clients who buy The Brain Audit are extremely satisfied with the content and applications. However, when they want to go deeper on an isolated topic, they will buy the other products as well.

Studio 54 catered to almost 2000 people a night—yet there was isolation in place

If you were part of the select few, you could go down to the basement. The basement was essentially a storage area connected by zigzagging passageways. The in-crowd was in the basement, away from the party upstairs, mostly talking through the night and drinking bottles of a vodka brand— Stolichnaya.

Even if you’re no Studio 54, you can have a smörgåsbord of goodies while at the same time putting a velvet rope over other product or services. And since we’re talking about buffets, a restaurant could have the buffet, while at the same time offering a special meal for just a tiny audience. A website designer could put together a website with all the bells and whistles—then create a service or product that was very niche and hence, irresistible.

To be irresistible, you don’t have to choose between buffet and specialty items

In reality a specialty item is easier to put together (because it’s less stuff, rather than more). In the grand scheme of things, it’s also easier to market as it has a clear point of focus. While we’ll look at all three elements: buffet/specialty, exclusivity and build up, it’s important to note that specialty is a great starting point. So start small—and charge more.

This takes us to the second element: Exclusivity.

Have a look here—for the continuation on How To Make Your Product or Service Irresistible: Part 2 and 3.

Success is good. Focus is good. Until it’s bad.

Incredible as it may seem, focus can cause a massive blindspot in our business.

So what’s the option? Surely it can’t be distraction?

Actually it’s a mix of both that’s required. Using the concept of “spinning plates”, you can avoid the blind spot of success and the mindlessness of distraction.

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

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Once upon a time in New York’s Catskill Mountains lived a man called Rip Van Winkle.

You’ve probably heard of this story. I heard it when I was a kid. I’ve kind of forgotten what the story was all about. As the story goes, one autumn day he wants to escape from his wife’s nagging so he wonders up the mountain with his dog. He hears his name being called out.

He sees a man with antiquated Dutch clothing. This man is carrying a keg up the mountain; he wants help. They proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of the noises. There are a group of bearded men who are playing nine pins. Rip doesn’t ask how they know his name but they offer him moonshine, which is a kind of whiskey, illicit whiskey, not legal. He decides to drink and then he falls into a deep sleep.

When he wakes up, it’s pretty strange. His musket is rotting; it’s rusty. His beard is a foot long. His dog is nowhere in sight. He returns to the village and he finds he recognizes no one. His wife has died. His close friends have fallen in a war; they moved away.

This is often what happens in business, especially if you’ve got a successful business.

You get a blind spot.

You start focusing on what works for you, and then you work at it and you work at it, and it works even better for you. The longer you work at it, and the more successful you get, the more you have a blind spot to everything else.

Now, almost instantly you’re wondering where is this going. Focus is supposed to be good, right? If focus brings success, then what’s the problem with having the blind spot? There is a downside, and that’s what this episode is all about. It’s about understanding that you can have focus and you can have success, but that you can also have a blind spot.

In this episode we’re going to explore three elements.

• First is the concept of the Rip Van Winkle effect.
• The second is the opposite, which is the danger of not having that focus.
• The third is the solution. How do we solve this problem of focus and not focusing at the same time?

 

Let’s start off with the first, which is understanding the concept of the Rip Va Winkle effect.

If you look around you, you will find that a lot of blogs have shut off their comments. Why have they done this? This is not just little blogs, but big blogs and mega-sized blogs. They’ve just shut off their comments.

Why is this the case? The obvious reaction is maybe they’ve decided that they’re big enough they don’t need the comments, but that’s not true. Everyone likes to hear back from their customers. Nothing boosts the ego more than having 50, 70, 100, 200 comments on a single post that you made. Remember, when people comment they also send it off to Facebook and Twitter and every other place.

Why turn off that channel? Why turn off the chance for people to experience your blog at a different level?

The reason is very simple: that group has moved on. When you look at the most of the blogs today, even the really big ones, they have far fewer comments. It’s embarrassing, so they have to turn it off.

Same thing with Facebook. At one point in time you could effectively run a business off Facebook. Slowly but surely, that tide is changing. Suddenly you find that Facebook has all these restrictions in place. Suddenly there are too many people looking at your stuff, but not the people that you want, so the tide keeps changing.

If you made a successful out of blogging

Or Facebook or any other medium, then it’s very simple for you to focus on that medium and not pay that much attention to everything else, so suddenly someone comes around and says, “Hey, podcasting is a big thing.” You look at them with skepticism because you tried podcasting four or five years ago and now this stuff, whatever you’re doing right now, is still working for you, so you get into that moonshine mode. You fall fast asleep, and that becomes your blind spot.

This is true even for us at Psychotactics.

We had a blog going around 2003 before blogs became popular in 2005; we dropped it. We had podcasts going around 2008-2009 before podcasting became popular; we dropped it. We never really stepped onto YouTube or Facebook or Twitter in a big way, or even a small way. The reason why we did that is because we had a blind spot.

We had courses that were filling up super fast. I mean every single course fills up in less than an hour. We’ve had workshops in New Zealand, in the US, Canada, Netherlands, the UK, and they all fill up almost instantly.

Of course we send out a newsletter weekly.

We’ve done so since 2002 without missing a single week. We’re able to sell products for as little as 9.99 all the way up to $400, $500. When you look at that kind of model, you say, “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? It’s great focus,” and it is.

But the ecosystem is connected.

When we first started out in 2002, if we wrote an article and we published it on another site we’d get 200 subscribers. Yes, for a single article. Then we had the blogs come out and we’d get about 50 to 60 subscribers per article. Recently, with all those comments of the blogs turned off, we probably get 2 or 3. We’re talking about really big blogs.

You would think that the really big blogs would drive traffic towards you. It’s not true anymore. They’ve had to relook their strategy; we’ve had to relook our strategy. Focus is a great thing, but things can change around you and you’ve got to be watching for what’s happening around you.

This takes us to our second part of today, which is chasing everything that is around you.

The opposite of focus is distraction. Most of us are not very good at focus. We are very good at being distracted. Every time someone comes up and says, “Hey, here’s a new method,” they just put the word new, improved, and we’re off like a bullet. It’s almost like the diet syndrome: the South Beach Diet, the paleo diet, the Atkins diet, the Zone diet, every single diet. We think that the next diet is going to solve our problem, but it never does.

It’s the same thing for business.

If you get into doing, say, podcasting, then you have to be prepared to enjoy it. You have to be prepared to love what you’re doing so that you can do it for the next five years or ten years. When we do our courses, they’re very tough. They’re very tough for me. They’re very demanding for me. When we do our workshops I’m on my feet for three days.

I never sit down. I’m always running around teaching and doing stuff. Even these podcasts, I’ve already told you before, they take between three to four hours to produce even though they’re just 15 minutes or 20 minutes long.

If you want to make a success of anything you’re going to have to be willing to be there for the long run

But as we found out, the long run can change over time. It can twist and change, and suddenly blogs are no longer fashionable and Facebook is no longer fashionable. Maybe podcasting will not work out as effectively as it does today. It might still be good. It might not be as effective.

…to continue listening or reading the transcript of this podcast
Right click here and save-as to download—How Success Causes A Blind Spot (And Creates A Rip Van Winkle Effect)
To continue reading, download the transcript

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There’s a difference between the “four-hour work week” and magic. You can create revenue in a short week. You can’t create magic.Magic is what we all want to create with our work. Most of us love our work. It gives us purpose and satisfaction. And yes, we’d love a “three-month” paid vacation—or just any vacation at all. And that’s the goal. The goal is to work hard, but to also have a great time.

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

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I don’t mow the lawns. I outsource it.

I don’t do my accounts. It’s what keeps my accountant in business. I bake my own bread, cook my own food, but at least half of the time it’s all outsourced. In fact, when I think about it, a good chunk of my life is outsourced.

I don’t build my own computers, code my own programs, generate my own electricity. I didn’t even bother to weave my own carpet.

So yes, you could safely say that outsourcing is a good part of my life.

What I don’t outsource is magic

It’s magical to write my own articles. Do my own books. Draw my own cartoons. Answer my own email.

When I think about those who keep yearning for a “four-hour” work week, I find it incredibly weird and unsettling. I think of Leonardo da Vinci spending only four hours a week, painting. I think of Michelangelo goofing off on David and just putting in the least amount of time.

I think of the wine I drink and how it would taste if the wine maker decided not to put in 50-60 hours a week. I remember the movies that moved me, the food that tantalised my taste buds, the books that have elevated my senses. I think of all the magic the world has seen, felt and experienced over the years and a “four hour” workweek makes zero-sense to me.

You can create money in four hours

You can’t create magic. Money isn’t magic. It may seem that way, when you’re slogging in a job that you have no control over. A life that seems to pull and push you in all directions. At that point, money and magic may seem like one and the same thing. And yet it’s not.

Work is magic

Work well done, is something we all yearn for. And try as you may, you can’t outsource the important stuff in life. So when some internet marketer comes along and tells you that a four-hour work week is magical, they’re just equating work with money. That somehow you could work for four hours in a week, and make all the money and you’d be happy.

I can assure you that you’d be happy for a while, but then you’d seek magic.

And magic yup, that takes a lot more time and effort.

I wake up at 4 am every day and have done so for many years

I don’t have to wake up. We’ve done well over the years. We have a business which attracts really phenomenal customers. Some of them have been with us for over 12 years (considering we’re Internet-based, that’s like a hundred years).

Our workshops are always full. Our courses often sell out in an hour or so sometimes 20 minutes. We’ve banked enough, own enough, travel three months in a year. Truly speaking, if we were to stop working now, we could go for at least another 20-30 years, living our comfortable lifestyle.

So why wake up at 4 am?

Why put in 99 cartoons in a book when people are happy to just buy text? Why bother to re-write, re-engineer our courses by 20-30% every year? It’s all extra work, isn’t it? More hours in a day, month and year that seems to slip by increasingly faster.

The answer lies in magic

You can outsource some stuff, and you should. But to create the Mona Lisa, David and some fine wine yup, that’s going to take a chunky 50-60 hours a week. Get used to it!..to continue listening to or reading the podcast

Right click and save-as to download this episode: Four-Hour Work Week A Waste Of Time?

When we sit down to write a landing page, we usually have a ton of confusion in our heads. We have so many elements on that landing page. What should we put first? What should we leave out? The sales of our product or service depends on us having incredible focus. So how do we get that focus? The answer lies in the "pebble system". The moment we apply the "pebble system" we are able to prioritise what's important to our client—and to ourselves. The sales page gets crystal clear and we stop going around in circles. So what is this "pebble system" and how do we use it right away?

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Useful Resources
To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/64

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com
Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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Improve your planning (with chaos): http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos

Write your home page/about us page: http://www.psychotactics.com/web

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How To Find The Confusion On Your Sales Pages
Part 2: How To Use The Pebble System On Your Sales Page
Part 3: How To Expand The Sales Message
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

1) How To Avoid Dragging Out A Well Known Story (And Boring The Reader)
2) Why Stories Are Great For Sales Copy
3) How to put that Zing-Kapow in your articles (with story telling)

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The  Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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This is the Three Month Vacation, and I’m Sean D’Souza.

Every evening at about twilight in New Mexico and Arizona, thousands of bats stream out from caves.

One of the most famous of them all, at least among biologists, is the Mexican free-tailed bats, because they’re known for their hunting sprees. Like all animals, bats communicate with each other. But these Mexican free-tailed bats, they not only communicate; they also confuse. Aaron Cochran is a biologist who’s at the Wake Forest University. He was studying the hunting habits of Mexican free-tailed bats in Arizona and also in New Mexico. What he found was that his ultrasonic equipment was picking up two completely different sounds. When the free-tailed be able to was trying to communicate it was one sound, and then, the moment they had competition in the area, they would send out a send that was totally different. What these bats were doing was jamming the signals of other bats.

Usually when a bat is hunting, what it does is it sends out a signal. It sends out what is called a feeding buzz. That bounces off the prey, and then they know, “Hey, it’s time for dinner.” What these free-tailed bats were doing was jamming the signals. It reduced their capability of capturing moths from 64% down to just 18%. This confusion, this reduced capability is a lot like what happens on our sales pages. When we are trying to write sales pages, we’re trying to get too much information across. It sounds like there’s one buzz and a second buzz, and now there is confusion and we miss the point.

Today what we’re going to do is we’re going to stick to the point and we’re going to use pebbles. We’re going to use pebbles to figure out how we get to exactly what we want to say to the client, and then how we continue to say that over the rest of the sales page. The three things that we’re going to cover are, one, we find the confusion. The second is we use the pebbles. The third is we expand each issue all by itself. Let’s start out with the first one, which is finding the confusion on your sales page.

Part 1: How To Find The Confusion On Your Sales Pages

About two weeks ago I was on Facebook. I learn a lot through Facebook, despite what I say. Yet, I was watching this video by this conductor called Alondra de la Parra. I was so taken by this video that I saw on Facebook that I went to YouTube. On YouTube, there she was directing the Paris Orchestra. One of the songs that really got to me, one of the pieces that really got to me was “Huapango.” I started listening to “Huapango,” and then to another piece, and another piece, and another piece. Before I knew it, I had three albums of Alondra de la Parra. Of course I was driving Renuka crazy because I was playing this music all day long.

Now the interesting thing about this music is it’s classic music, and like a lot of classical music, it requires an orchestra. An orchestra is complete confusion if you let it be. That’s what a conductor does. A conductor has to stand up there and somehow know that music in advance, and push and pull so that instead of cacophony we have music, we have this beautiful-sounding orchestra all playing together, but somehow separately at the same time. Your sales page is not difference. It’s got to have all of this information, but it’s got to play something louder than the other. This is why you have to first find the confusion, because when you find the confusion you know exactly what’s driving the sales page crazy.

The answer is usually with the clients. When you ask your clients questions about why do you choose our business, they will tend to use a single word or a single phrase. Theygive you a line that you then try to put on your sales page, and of course it’s total confusion. Let me read you a line from the Running Coach. Now we’re talking about head coach Ken Rickerman, and he runs 5speedrunning.com and he teaches people how to run faster and better and with fewer injuries. Of course help go and help speak to a client, and help ask them, “What is it that drives you to come to 5speedrunning.com?” Of course they’ll give their response, and it sounds like this: “I want to move more freely. I want to go longer on the runs, and I want to improve my form.” The question is, does that help?

It doesn’t help, because when you look at it, there are three points there. One is move more freely. Second is longer runs. The third is improve form. It sounded like a single sentence, but there are three whole topics in there, and that’s what we have to do. First we have to find the confusion. In that single line, there is enormous amounts of confusion. You can’t write a sales page or you can’t write an email if you’re trying to cover three points at the same time. You have to cover one point, just like this podcast. We’re going to cover three points, but hey, let’s start off with the first point. Let’s go into a lot of detail with the first point. Then we’ll go to the second point, detail the second point. Then we go to the third point.

This is how we do stuff, or we should do stuff. Instead, we end up like those Mexican free-tailed bats, and there’s all this confusion because we’re trying to cover all of it together because it seems like one sentence. We take that sentence and we break it down into bullet points. That’s how you sort out any confusion. Take the sentence from your client, whatever that might be, and then break it up into bullet points. Once you break it up into bullet points, you will see very quickly that hey, there are four or five points here, or there are two or three points here, but there is almost never one point. That’s where the confusion lies. First step: make sure that you break up the sentences into bullet points.

Part 2: How To Use The Pebble System On Your Sales Page

That takes us to the second step where we start using the pebbles. As you know, we take three months off every year. We work for three months, and then we take a month off. For at least two of those months, we travel internationally. We’ll go to places like The Netherlands, or Japan, or Sardinia. When people ask me, “Which is your favorite city?” that’s not a fair question to ask because every city is completely different. The people are different and the food is different and the experience is different. Even so, you could specifically ask me, “Here are three cities, like three bullet points. Now, can you allocate pebbles to them?” If we took three cities like Amsterdam and Kyoto and Cagliari, then I could allocate pebbles. Because when you rank cities, it’s very difficult. You could say Kyoto is one, Cagliari is two, Amsterdam is three. But that doesn’t give us a sense of weight. What gives us a sense of weight is the pebble system.

The pebble system is very simple. If you said, “Now allocate ten pebbles. You’ve got ten pebbles and you have to allocate them to these three different cities,” and then Kyoto would get maybe four or five pebbles. Because Kyoto is old Japan. It’s got temples and shrines and gardens. It’s got lots of ramen, lots of it, great food, great people, and these amazingly sublime gardens where you can sit there for hours and do nothing, just like you would imagine Japan to be, this very quiet, non hustle bustle place. In my ranking, Kyoto would get five pebbles. Now we have just five pebbles among the rest of the cities. Now we have Cagliari and Amsterdam. Amsterdam is amazing. It’s got lots of cheese, and Renuka loved that place more than any other place. But I would give Cagliari three pebbles, and then Amsterdam two pebbles.

Now we have a weighted system. We have this concept of Kyoto, five pebbles; Cagliari, three pebbles; and then finally we get to Amsterdam, which is two pebbles. Now, if we have those three bullet points, we’re clear which one is the most important. When look at what Ken had, he had move more freely, longer runs, and improve form. Longer runs got five pebbles. What we’re going to do is we’re going to start off with longer runs. The next thing was improve form; that got three pebbles. Finally, move more freely got two pebbles. Now, what we have with this pebble system is clarity. We know that the most important thing for that runner is for longer runs, so we’re going to deal with longer runs on our sales page. For now, we totally abandon the other two, which is move more freely and improve form, and we focus on the problems that runners have with longer runs: the injuries it causes, all that stuff, but only with longer runs. Then you’re able to get that message across very clearly. You might never have to go to point two and point three. Because, as Ken mentioned, with the longer run you get tired, you get physically exhausted, you lose focus, you get aches and pains, you have oxygen problems, you go out of breath. Then finally, you lose motivation and confidence. There is a lot of stuff to cover with just one topic, as you can see.

What we do on the sale page is do the Mexican free-tail dance. We try and put all the points together, when this one point itself could drive half the sales page. Imagine yourself as a client. You get there, you’re having trouble with longer runs, and you see so much information in the form of a sales page about longer runs. That’s when you realize, “My goodness, this guy knows exactly what he’s talking about. This is the stuff that is of interest to me,” instead of all of this confusion and all of these bullet points bouncing back and forth.

What we’ve covered so far is we’ve found the confusion. Then we started using the pebbles. Now we’re going to expand the issue.

Part 3: How To Expand The Sales Message

Yes, we’re on the third and final part of this podcast. Let’s expand the issue, shall we? Let’s go back for a minute to Alondra de la Parra. There she is in front of this orchestra, and there is this accordion. Now this was a different piece altogether, and not “Huapango.” In this accordion we have the analogy that we need to understand how you expand that one point. In the last section we looked at this one concept of longer runs. What we have to ask are three questions. The first is what does the solution look like? When someone goes for a longer run, what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? The best thing to do is not to answer this question yourself, especially if you’re writing the sales letter. Because we’re hopeless at writing sales letters. It’s better to call up the client, get a recorder going, and ask them: What does it feel like? What does it look like? They will give you two, three paragraphs.

Then you ask that client the second question, which is: When it doesn’t work out? How does it feel? What are things that stop you, slow you down? What they’ll do is come up with that list. I get tired, I lose focus, I lose motivation. What they will do as well is they’ll give you the words that you need to use on that page. If you’ve got that recorder going, you’ll find that the client is giving you the exact words and the exact feeling and the exact emotion that you want from them. The most important thing for you to figure out at this point is that you stay one point. Even when we have gone to just longer runs, we still have five subtopics under that, which is get tired, lose focus, aches and pains, can’t catch breath, and then lose motivation. We have five topics, and you have to be very careful. You have to stick with one thing at a time.

Among those five topics, which are the most important? Then you drive that. You address that one topic. Then they answer in a paragraph. That paragraph goes on your sales page. Because they will tell you exactly how they feel, what’s happening in their brain, and what’s really important to them. The client might say that the aches and pains are the most critical of all. That’s where you start. Then maybe they go to the fact that the aches and pains make them lose focus. Then you continue down that path. Let them speak for a while. You just have to transcribe. Maybe you have to tweak a little bit here and there, but most of the time you’re just doing a transcription.

This is the beauty of the pebble system. Instead of dealing with all of these things, we go down to one point. From that one point, we get another five points from those five points. We still have some level of ranking. In this case, you can have the ranking, all the pebbles all over again. The client will explain to you how they feel. Then you want to take that and put that on your sales page.

What about the other points? The move more freely and the improve form? You can put that in your bullets. You don’t have to put that in your main text. You can put that a lot later. What you’re really trying to do is drive home one problem. That is longer runs and what it means not to run that long. What are the consequences of not running that long? Then you bring up your solution: introducing the long run system. Then you explain your solution. How do you explain your solution? The client told you, remember? We asked them what did the solution look like. In effect, the client is writing your entire sales page. The critical thing is to use the pebble system. Because the pebble system allows you to focus. Otherwise, we have all this confusion, too much information. When someone reads your sales page, they don’t get a single message.

We often try to write sales pages ourselves, and it’s a big mistake. Even if you’re a copywriter, it’s a big mistake. The client can come up with terminology that you just cannot dream of, because they live it and they breathe it and they feel it. They have this specific information, the specific term that they want to use. You want to use that on your sales page. The best way to do it is to ask them. First you have to clarify. While I’m talking about clarification, let me reiterate what we’ve covered in this episode.

Summary

The first thing that we looked at was finding the confusion. We saw that it didn’t matter what we’re doing, there were several points that need to be covered. What we’re going to do is isolate them. We isolated them by using pebbles. We then said five pebbles for this place, three for that, two for this. The same thing applies to your website. There are all of these points, but you allocate pebbles. Then you take the one that got the most pebbles. Then you expand on them. That was the third part. When you expand, you ask them, What does the solution look like?” and let them talk, and let them talk, and let them talk. You keep recording. You’re the transcriber. You’re the person asking the questions. Let them talk. Then you ask them what the problem looks like. Then they will give you four or five points. You can ask them more details about those points. Now you have enough content to put on your page. It’s not just content, but emotion-filled content on that one single topic. That is why the pebble system is so powerful, because it helps the client focus, helps you focus, and you’re able to create a much better sales page than just sitting at your computer and churning something out.

What’s the one thing that you can do this week?

The one thing that you can do is to help yourself find that confusion factor that you’re dealing with every single day. Do this with your grocery list. Just take three items and then allocate those pebbles. This is five, this is three, this is two. Get into the habit of allocating for pretty much everything. Your to-do list looks a lot better when you allocate pebbles, because you know exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you have any questions, I’m at Twitter, Sean D’Souza; Facebook, Sean D’Souza; or sean@psychotactics.com. To get this episode, go to psychotactics.com/64, and you will get the podcast as well as the transcript.

There are still a few seats remaining for the storytelling workshop both in Amsterdam and Nashville. To find out more, go to psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. This is on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of December; and the 13th, 14th, and 15th of December in Amsterdam. Storytelling is critical. Most people think of storytelling as just telling stories, but no, it’s a branding issue. It gets your message across in a way that is so amazing and so powerful. As you’ve discovered on this podcast, there are all these stories, and that’s why you’re listening to the podcast right to the end. When you read The Brain Audit, when you read Dartboard Pricing, when you read the book on presell, when you go through any of our courses, there are stories. It’s not just about telling stories to sell, but also your books and your podcasts and your webinars, and your pretty much everything. The reason why stuff is so boring is because it doesn’t have stories. This is what the storytelling workshop will do for you. It will show you how to construct those stories for business rather than just telling another story. That’s psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now from Psychotactics and the Three Month Vacation. Bye bye.

Do you know—Why Clients Buy And Why They Don’t? In this free except on—The Brain Audit you will  find out why customers put off buying your product or service.

Why do we learn so slowly? Is it because we're not good learners? Is it age? Or is it something quite different? The problem of learning (and teaching) is dependent on the concept of Teacher vs Preacher. When you're a preacher, you give the feeling of a ton of information, but there's no true learning, no true application. A teacher, on the other hand, is completely tied to getting the student to apply the skills. When you're creating info-products, writing books or articles, this what needs to be kept in mind. Are you a teacher or a preacher? And are you following a teacher or preacher? Here are three benchmarks to watch for!

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Useful Resources
To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/63

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

The Brain Audit: http://www.psychotactics.com/brain

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Responsibility Factor
Part 2: The Three Step Benchmark To Teaching
Part 3: When Does The Student Become The Teacher?
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

Audio and Transcript: How To Incredibly Speed Up Your Skill Acquisition
Free Goodies: Why Clients Buy And Why They Don’t
Audio and Transcript:  Deconstructing Why Bad Habits Succeed (And Good Habits Fail)

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The  Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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This is The Three Month Vacation, I’m Sean D’Souza.

If you were to step into India today and go to most Indian households, you would be surprised at what you saw at the doorstep. You would see a Swastika. Yes, the very same Swastika that the Germans used in World War II, the same Swastika that came to be hated by everyone who saw it then, and today. What is a Swastika doing on the doorstep of so many Hindu households? The reality is that the Swastika comes from the Sanskrit word Swastik which means good luck. It has been around for thousands of years. While it’s prominently found in Indian culture even today, it was also found in ancient Greece, it can be seen on the remains of the ancient city of Troy which existed over a thousand years ago. The Druids and the Celts they also use the symbol, the Nordic tribes, the Christians, the Teutonic Knights. The Swastika goes back a long way.

In modern history, Coca Cola used it, Calsberg used it on their beer bottles, the boys’ scouts adopted it, and the girls club of America, they called their magazine Swastika. It was used on playing cards, and even by the American Military Units during World War 1. It can be seen on RAF planes as late as 1939. And then, Hitler came along. He took something that was wonderful and incredibly powerful and made it something evil. He took something that was empowering and twisted it in his own way to make it work for him. He changed the meaning of the word. That is the kind of thing that happens very often when we look to learn. When we look around we see that people call themselves teachers, but in reality they are not teachers, they are just preachers. When you get this kind of information in the form of video, and audio, and PDF, you think, well, I am being taught by someone, but in reality, all you’re doing is getting a ton of information. You’re getting a preacher instead of a teacher.

While it might sound like just words being twisted or replaced, there is a very big difference between a preacher and a teacher. How do we know what makes a preacher thus as a teacher? That’s what we’re going to cover today. We’re going to look at three things, the first is the responsibility factor. The second is the three benchmark system. The third, the ability for the student to become the teacher.

Part 1: The Responsibility Factor

Let’s start out with the first one which is the responsibility factor. If you try to learn a language like Spanish, or German, or French, it will take you many, many months to get there. In every classroom, you have the bright students and the not-so-bright students, or at least until Michel Thomas came along. Michel Thomas was a language teacher, and he didn’t believe in bright students, and dull students. He believed that the responsibility lay with the teacher. He made a bold claim, he made a claim that you could learn the fundamentals of grammar in any language within 10 hours, and then he set about proving the fact. The BBC followed him around for several days. If you look up Michel Thomas on You Tube, you will find a three part episode that shows you how he taught these students. Students who were told by their teachers that they were not supposed to learn a language, that they were stupid, that they were dull, that they should never bother to try and learn any language.

He sat them down in a classroom. In a week or so, they were already speaking the language. This is the language, the very same language that they were told they should give up, they should never try this anymore. What happened? When we ask what happened, we’re trying to solve the problem of the language. What did he do, how do we learn languages like that? We don’t look at that, we look at what was the core of Michel’s system. The core of Michel’s system was responsibility. He felt that the responsibility of the teaching didn’t lie with the student, it lay with the teacher. When you think about that statement for a few minutes, it changes your whole mindset. It means that the person learning under you is not responsible. You think, well, how is that possible, you can’t control what someone is doing. May be you have online courses like we do and they’re sitting in South Africa, or Australia, or the United States, and you can’t control what they’re doing. Yes you can.

This is the difference between a preacher and a teacher. A preacher simply gives you information, you get more CDs, more information, more PDFs, more videos, but whose responsibility is it for you to succeed? The teacher on the other hand changes the way they give you information because they realize that if you don’t get these tiny increments, you will start, and you will go few steps and then you will give up. That’s the difference between a preacher and a teacher. A teacher doesn’t believe in stupid students. A teacher doesn’t believe in dull students. A teacher believes that it is their responsibility to figure out how to get across to that student.

Let’s say you have a web design company, and let’s say you’re giving instructions to your clients how to set up their websites. Let’s just say for a second that the client comes back and asks you a whole bunch of questions. Are they dull? The answer is, whose responsibility is it. It’s your responsibility. The reason why that client has not figured out what they should do and how they should go about it, is because you haven’t given them precise instructions, you’ve hurried through the process. Or, you just have the curse of knowledge. You know so much that you don’t realize that you’re going through so many steps. Therefore, you have become a preacher. You’re no longer a teacher, you’re not breaking down things into steps that are foolproof.

When we see clients doing silly things, what we say is, well, they’re not smart, or they’re silly, or they’re stupid, but, the responsibility lies with you. If they fail you have failed. That’s the difference between a preacher and a teacher. One of the best examples I have for you is this yes and yes pricing grid on the Psychotactics website. When you go and you buy any product, or any service, or any course on Psychotactics, you will encounter the price grid which is where you click the button to buy now. We have a regular and a premium pricing there. As the teacher, it is my duty to get that message across. How do you create a pricing grid so that you can earn 10% or 15% more when you have the pricing grid on your own website. People make mistakes, if there is one thing that I’ve seen where clients consistently make mistakes is on this pricing grid. We tell them to put ticks, they put crosses, we tell them to put red ticks, they put blue ticks. This is because everyone interprets your information in their own way, and that’s absolutely normal. They want to be creative but their creativity doesn’t end up being beneficial to them, and clients end up buying the regular instead of the premium.

What’s my job as a teacher? My job as a teacher is very simple, my job is to make sure that they get it. If they don’t get the pricing grid right, then I have to take responsibility for that. In the book which is Dartboard Pricing, it goes through steps. One step, second step, third step, then it shows the mistakes you can make, and the mistakes other people have made. What it’s doing there, even with the book, even when I cannot be there, I have to make sure that’s it’s my responsibility for you to get your pricing grid right. It’s very easy to say that people don’t understand. “Look, I told them how to do it and they didn’t do it,” but no, it’s your responsibility. That’s the critical element, the difference between a preacher and a teacher.

Two and a half years ago I started coaching my niece Marsha. She wanted to get better at her studies and so we started the coaching. I sat her down on the first day and I said to her, “Marsha, if you get everything wrong at school whose fault is it?” She said, “It’s my fault.” I said, “No, no, no, it’s my fault, if your get everything wrong, it’s my fault as a teacher.” She said, “Cool.” That’s the whole point, that’s the difference between a preacher and a teacher. You have to take responsibility. That’s how you know that you’re picking the right teacher because they take responsibility for you. They don’t just dump information, they make sure that you get it right.

Part 2: The Three Step Benchmark

This takes us to the second part of this podcast, and it’s called, the three step benchmark. What is the three step benchmark? When I was 12 years old I used to come home from school and I’d very hungry. School would finish at 4 pm and then it will be a long wait until dinner. Dinner in India is a lot like Mediterranean countries and it’s late, so it’s about 8:30 or so. I’d come home and I’d be ravenous, I want to eat something, and no one would be at home. But there in the pantry on the shelves would be a packet of Ramen Noodles, in this case it was Maggi Noodles. This had a masala flavor which you don’t get in other countries, but you do get in India.

What I’d so is I would boil some water and add the noodles, I’d add the taste maker which is the masala flavor, and then five minutes later I’d be eating it. Notice what I did, I only took three steps, boil water, add noodles, add taste maker. This is the difference between a teacher and a preacher. They use these three step benchmark system if they are aware of it or not. The preacher will not do that, a preacher will give you a lot of instructions, they will tell you, you should do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and you get lost in that whole sequence of things. I know this because this is what I used to do. I would give people instructions, here’s what you need to do, step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, not anymore. You need to solve the problem in three steps. If the client cannot get to the other side within three steps like Maggi Noodles, then you have given too many instructions. If they keep coming back to you and asking you something, then you’ve given too many instructions. There is no other way, the responsibility lies with you.

We just finished the headlines course for 2015, and there are many ways to write a headline. A lot of people will tell you to just copy headlines but that’s stupid. You should know how to write headlines just like you know how to speak, how to write. There is a structure, and a system, and a format, to write headlines. The problem is also that there are many ways to write those headlines. If you want your student to get their mastery, then you have to follow these three step benchmark. If you give them an instruction and they can’t get there within three steps, then you have made a mistake. Let’s take an example of the headlines, let’s say I needed to get you to write better headlines in the next few minutes. Well, how I’m I going to get this done on a podcast?

Here’s how you do it, you’re restricted to just three steps or fewer. What you’re going to do is going to put either “even” or “and.” You’re going to put this in parenthesis or brackets as you call it. Here’s how you do it, you say, how to raise prices “even” when clients are price-conscious, how to raise prices “even” when the competition is offering discounts. The headline with “even” in it, it creates a contrast. It’s a headline going one way and then it starts to go the other way. Now let’s use “and.” How to consistently raise prices “and” still keep 95% of your clients, or, how to tell amazing stories “and” connect the stories to your business articles.

What we have here is “and” and “even.” The “and” moves the idea forward, and the “even” takes it a step back, or, it provides contrast. If you’re thinking to yourself, wait, that was such a small step. That’s the whole point, this is how teachers teach. The preachers will give you 7, 8 different steps to do. In the headline course, we spent a week doing this, and people still make mistakes. Bit by bit we outline it. A very small thing can be interpreted in many different ways and a preacher will just dump information on you. A teacher will take a very small element, just three steps. If you can’t get that client to do what you want in three steps, it’s your fault, it’s your responsibility. When you’re looking for a teacher, look for a teacher that has these tiny increments. That helps you get there to the next stage instead of telling you how silly you are, or how dull you are.

Part 3: When Does The Student Become The Teacher?

This takes us to the third part which is the most scariest benchmark of all, which is when the student becomes the teacher. When I go to seminars, I notice something very interesting. A speaker will stand up and make this presentation, and then they’ll have all these slides, and all of these information, and all of these statistics. Then at the end of that presentation, they get a rousing applause, they get a lot of [inaudible 15:24] they get all of that stuff, but, what is the benchmark of the presentation? The real benchmark of the presentation is that the persons sitting there in the audience should be able to say what you said in their presentation. That sounds bizarre doesn’t it? Of course it is bizarre, but that’s what a teacher does. A teacher makes sure that you don’t go out there with your head full of information. All this shock and awe that you bring to the presentation, that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is what the student can then teach. When that student goes out, can they repeat exactly what you said and often in the sequence that you said it?

If you come to a Psychotactics course, or you come to our workshop, or you come to our presentation, one of the most important benchmarks is that you should be able to repeat what I have just taught you. You should be able to tell someone else exactly what you learned, the sequence in which you learned it, and then you have become the teacher. If the person cannot do that, the client there, the person in the audience cannot do that, then there’s something wrong with the way you’re teaching, it’s that simple. If all you have done is given information, then they’re going to cling on to some fact or the other. They’re going to cling on to one fact, or two facts, or three facts, but they don’t have that system in place, because you didn’t put that system in place. That’s the difference between a teacher and a preacher. A teacher will make sure that the student knows how do whatever it is that they are teaching. Their responsibility is to get that student to know what they are teaching. It’s not just information being given out, it is application, and it’s instant application.

When there is complication there is no application, when there are too many steps there is no application, and so you start to see the difference between a teacher and a preacher. In fact, let’s summarize because you’ll need to be the teachers. If someone asks you what did you learn on this podcast, well, you’ll need to know the difference between the teacher and the preacher. You’ll need to know how to change your methods, you’ll also need to know how to choose a teacher versus a preacher.

Summary

The first thing that we covered today was the factor that Michel Thomas taught us, and that is the responsibility lies with the teacher, you are responsible. The student is not responsible, you are responsible. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, you are still responsible. When you take on a task you have to make sure that you formulate your teaching in a way that enables the student to learn. That changes the whole perspective of teaching. You can do this very simply by having the three step benchmark in place. If the student cannot get from this point to that point in three steps, then you have given too many steps, you have to reduce those number of steps.

That takes us to the third part which is, how do you know that the student is now smart enough and that is because they have become the teacher. You go from this factor of changing your mindset, responsibility, to then boiling down to just three steps. Then finally, you know that they have reached there because now they can teach what you just taught them. That is the difference between a teacher and a preacher. Whether we are in the service business or a product business, we have to make sure that we get this message across. This is not just about training, this is about getting your clients to achieve what they want to achieve. Most of us will blame the client. If you find yourself blaming the client, listen to Michel Thomas’ words yet again, “The responsibility lies with you, it’s your fault, it’s always your fault.” When you say that to your client, they’ll be like Marsha, they will say, “Cool.”

This brings us to the end of this podcast. You can find me always on Twitter or Facebook, I’m @seandsouza. You can also email me at sean@psychotactics.com. However, if you are listening to this podcast in sequence, I won’t be available for the next two weeks, I will be in Uluru which is in the middle of Australia. There is this massive rock there, there is nothing else but this massive rock and three hotels, and that’s where we’re going to be, we’re going to be in Alice Springs. It’s going to be really hot there, I hear it’s about 33 °C, which is 91 °F, I wish it were cooler. But hey, I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, this part of Australia specifically. You can only ever go there in the colder months, and now we have slipped past the cold rainy months and we are into October, so we’re going to have to put up with some of the heat.

While we are away make sure that you read The Brain Audit because it will show you why customers buy and why they don’t. There is also the Web Component Series which is website secrets and you’ll learn how to create your home page, or About Us page, your download page, very effectively. You can find it at psychotactics.com/web. If you’d like to join us at Five Thousand B.C that’s fivethousandbc.com, that’s the community of mostly introverts, and there is me, the extrovert. You’ll find that Five Thousand B.C is a membership site like no other because I’m there all the time, 17,000 times a day, except for the next two weeks when I will be in Australia. That’s it from Psychotactics and The Three Month Vacation, make sure you send this over to your friends as well so that they can listen to The Three Month Vacation podcast. Bye for now.

One of the biggest reasons why we struggle with our learning is because we run into resistance.  There are hidden forces causing us all to resist doing what we really should do. This slows us down considerably. Find out how to work with resistance, instead of fighting it all the time. Click here to get the free report on ‘How To Win The Resistance Game’. (http://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-audit-excerpt/)

 

When you're giving away bonuses, it's easy to believe you don't need to give away your best product or service. The best information always needs to be sold—so you can earn a decent living. And yet, this podcast episode takes an opposite stance. You need to put your best stuff out in front—free. Yes, give away the goodies, no matter whether you're in info-products or content marketing; services or running a workshop. Giving away outstanding content is the magic behind what attracts—and keeps clients.

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Resources
To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/62

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic
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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Concept of Consumption
Part 2: Why Package Your Free Content
Part 3: Why You Must Feel Pain
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

5000bc: Where smart people come together to help each other honestly
Goodies: How to design a visual “yes-yes” pricing grid for all your products
The Brain Audit: Why clients buy and why they don’t 

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The Transcript

“This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”

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What are the three benchmarks that you need to create this magic?

Many years ago when I started my cartooning career, I used to get all kinds of jobs. What I really loved was the plum jobs, the jobs where you had this fabulous stuff that you could do and used to get paid really well. I would spend hours and days and weeks doing those kinds of jobs. Then you had the recurring jobs. These were tiny cartooning assignments which didn’t pay very well, so I’d just work very quickly through them because well, they weren’t paying that much anyway. One day, my neighbor, who happened to be an art director of Elle Magazine, he stopped in and said, “Sean, why are you doing such a bad job with these cartoons? Why is it that this work looks so shoddy?”

Of course I said, “Well, they don’t pay much.” He said, “I don’t really know how much they pay when I look at your work in the newspaper. I only look at the work and I say, ‘This work is shoddy. This work is sloppy. As a reader, I’m not supposed to know how much you get paid. I only see the end result.'” This is true for us as well. In today’s world, where we’re giving away free stuff, we look at the stuff we’re giving away and we think, “Wait, we need to put in all our efforts into creating great products and great services. But if it’s going to be free, then we need to pull back about it. We can’t put in all the effort into free.” My art director friend would tell you, “I don’t see it that way. It cannot be shoddy. It cannot be sloppy.”

That’s what we’re going to cover today. We’re going to cover how you need to make your free product as valuable or even more valuable than your paid product.
What are the three benchmarks that you need to create this magic?

Part 1: The Concept of Consumption

The first thing that we’re going to cover today is the concept of consumption. The second thing is how it needs to have that unhurried look, that unhurried texture, that unhurried feeling. Finally, we need to feel pain, real pain. Let’s cover these three topics. Let’s start off with the first topic, and that is one of consumption.

In case you didn’t already know it, Netflix has been monitoring your behavior for a very long time. Netflix is big time into consumption. The reason for that is very simple. The more they get you to come back and watch serials and movies, the more likely you are to renew your subscription month after month, year after year. For ages, the television industry has suggested that the pilot episode is the most critical of them all. If someone watches the pilot episode, they’re going to watch all the rest, or at least that’s how the philosophy went until we ran into Netflix.

Netflix started pinpointing the episodes for each show season in which 70% of all users went on to complete the entire series. Here’s what they found. When they looked at Breaking Bad, the hook was not episode number one; it was episode number two. When they looked at the prison comedy, Orange is the New Black, they found that episode number three was the one that made the difference.

In some cases, it was episode number eight that made the difference; in some, four; in some, three; in some, five. What they found, however, was that people wanted to get to the end, and that if they got them to binge watch, they would watch all of them one after the other. What does this tell us about our clients? What does this tell us about our reports and our newsletters? It tells us that people are a lot more willing to give us a chance than we think, if we can get them to the end. This is why consumption becomes so critical.

When you look at all of those signups, you know those little boxes that say just give me your name and your email address, and let’s do this quickly. Well, that’s not how people really behave. When you do the study, people behave differently. They want to consume stuff. They want to spend more time at your site. They want to read a little more before they commit. When you’re creating a product, maybe it’s just a report, maybe it’s an article, a series of articles, maybe it’s a webinar or a podcast, people will take their time. They will give you more than one chance. It’s not like you need to have a sloppy first time, but it’s not like you have to convince them either. Because they take their time.

What you have the ensure is that they get from point A to point C at the very least. You have to get them through the stages. This is what we do with the Headline Report. When you get 2 Psychotactics and you subscribe to the newsletter, you get a headline report. It shows you how to write headlines, just taking three easy steps. But there is no hurry. You go through the introduction. It gives you the philosophy. Then it takes you to step one, and you’re able to create a headline, and then step two, and you’ll be able to create another headline, and step three and the third type of headline.

In under ten minutes, you can create headlines just reading the report, but it gets you to the end. When you get to the end, you already have this superpower. You have this ability to write headlines, to figure out which headlines are missing those components. It’s complete. What’s happened there is it has been designed for consumption. It has been designed to make sure that the client gets that superpower, that ability to do something.

When you look at a lot of the webinars online or the podcasts, a lot of the stuff is based on information. It is more and more and more information, but not stuff that you can directly apply. This is what we have to work at, because we’re not in the entertainment business like Netflix. Their goal is to make sure that you get to the end of the episode, of the next episode, and then right to the end of the series. They’re totally in the entertainment business, and we are in the information business, but we need to make sure that we’re not just giving information but we’re giving that client a superpower. We’re giving them the ability to write headlines. We’re giving them the ability to do something specific at the end of it. We need to start off with the end in mind. That’s probably what Netflix is doing anyway. They’re going, “What is the end point of this series?”

That end point is then creating all of the series back to back so that you get hooked. You need to ask yourself that question as well. When you’re creating a report, when you’re creating an article, when you are doing anything that you’re giving away free, the shoddiness comes from the fact that you were just going to give away information, more information. In reality, if you think about it from a perspective of when they finish this, what superpower will they have, that changes everything doesn’t it? That makes your client more likely to binge read, binge listen, binge watch, whatever it is that you’re going to throw. Then the free becomes more important than the product itself because they haven’t paid for anything and they’ve got this value which they just didn’t expect.

Consumption comes in very quickly and consumption becomes more critical than attraction and conversion, which gets bandied about all over the internet. You need to know how to attract. You need to know how to convert. Once you’ve gone through that, the third stage, consumption, that’s the most critical of all. You can start off with your free product or your report, or just about anything, as long as you know what is the end in mind and how will it help the customer get to that end and have the superpower.

That brings us to the end of this first section. Let’s go to the second section.

Part 2: Why Package Your Free Content

Let’s explore why your free product content needs to look very unhurried, and yet, very unpackaged. On Fridays, something very strange happens at our café. The usual baristas disappear and someone else takes their place. Now it bugs me when baristas get changed on Friday, because you’re starting to settle in, you’re starting to relax a bit, and then your whole routine has changed because of this change in barista.

Anyway, this new barista, she’s making the coffee and she places it in front of us. She goes away and the café is reasonably quiet, almost too quiet for a Friday. She comes over and she’s asks for my opinion. She’s says, “How did you find the coffee?” Of course I’m the wrong person to ask for an opinion because I will give it. She’s standing there for about 20 minutes listening to what I have to say, because I’m telling her how I evaluate the coffee. The way I evaluate coffee is I look at the barista themselves and I look at how they’re dressed. Maybe this is just me, but every time I see an untidy-looking barista, I get bad coffee.

The first thing I’m looking for is how tidy does the barista look. Then the second thing I’m looking for is how tidy does my cup of coffee look. Is there art on it or is it just coffee in a cup? Before I’ve even tasted the coffee, I have a pretty good idea whether the coffee is going to be good or bad. Then of course there are variables; that can be humidity, the temperature of the milk. There are so many variables in the coffee, but at the very core I’m looking for this unhurried professional cofee that comes out in the midst of a deadline. This is what your client is looking for as well. They’re looking for this report, this article, this information that is unhurried. They know that you’re busy, but they don’t care. They’re the clients. They want this product or this service to look professional long before they open it.

Packaging becomes very critical, and packaging needs to look unhurried. It needs to look like someone has spent a little time despite the deadline. You see this a lot in Japan. I have mentioned this before on the podcast, that Japan is probably the best place in the world to buy pretty much anything. You can go to the smallest store and ask for food, and you’ve seen how sushi and sashimi has been packaged. It’s always very cleanly packaged. There’s this design element around it. You can go and buy some sweets. You can go and buy a little pendant. You can buy pretty much anything in Japan and you get packaging. You get this look of unhurriedness.

When you have this product, whether it be a webinar or a podcast, you need to feel that packaging. What sets off that packaging? For instance, in this podcast. The story that starts up right at the beginning, that tells you that some amount of research has gone into the whole Netflix story. The fact that there are three points that we’re going to cover, that tells you that’s a very clear outline. This is like the barista. You’ve not really listened to the episode yet, but you get this feeling. You get this feeling that there is a logic and there is work put into this, and it’s unhurried.

That is what is critical, because it sets you up for the rest of the binge listening or the binge reading or the binge experiencing. You can tell the difference between a great presenter and a crappy presenter. You can tell the difference between a good writer and a bad writer. There’s always this factor of unhurriedness. We need to get the client to feel this packaging long before they get to the meat of the content.

Netflix, their research has shown exactly that: that clients are willing to go the distance before they decide this is really good or this is really crappy. We will walk into cafes and look at the barista, and either stay or walk out. It’s based on this factor of unhurriedness. How do they present themselves? How do they present their coffee? It’s the same thing for your product. You cover your introduction, your structure. That needs to be very clear before I get into the meat of the matter. That’s what you really need to work on.

That’s what makes the difference between a free product and a paid product. It needs to look like a paid product. It needs to look like something you paid a lot of money for, and yet you got it free. Now you don’t have to spend months and years working on this free product, but make it tidy. This takes us to the third part, which is the pain that you must feel when you’re giving away your free product.

Part 3: Why You Must Feel Pain

As you know, I like to cook Indian food. Two dishes that make me very happy are butter chicken and a dal. A dal is a lentil, by the way. If you were to ask me to give away the butter chicken or the dal, I would hesitate. Now I like them both as much, but I like one better than the other. Well, not really, but here’s the thing. I still would hesitate to give away the chicken, the butter chicken. That’s the kind of dilemma that you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with a situation where you’ve got this really good stuff and you’re not really that keen on giving it away.

You think maybe it would be a good idea to give away something that is not quite so salable. Because when you look at what you’ve done, you’ve spent a lot of time and effort, and somehow it seems like a shame to just give it away. You’ve got to feel that pain. You really have to feel that pain, because when you feel that pain, that’s when you know that the client is going to feel wow, this is amazing. It’s almost too easy to give away something that is not quite up to that standard. You know the standard. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, you know your standard and you know what’s possible, and you know your best. When you’re giving away your best, you feel that pain.

I remember the time I went and met a friend of mine. He is a world-class watercolorist. He had just finished a workshop in Auckland. Of course we met, we had a beer, etc. After that, he gave me one of his sketches. He just pulled it out from his bag and he gave it to me. What did I do with the sketch? I look at it, I said thank you, I took it home. Do you think it was his best sketch, his best watercolor? Of course not. It was just something that he was doing, just a rough sketch. It stayed around the office for a while, and then it went under the bed. Then I don’t even know where it is anymore.

Now, even if he were listening to this podcast, he would not know that I’m referring to him, because I know quite a few watercolorists. If you’re a watercolorist and you gave me a painting, there’s a pretty good chance that I don’t know where it is right now because it wasn’t your best. This is the whole point. When you give away stuff, give away the best stuff, or at least part of the best stuff.

Now we sell a course called the Pre-Sell Course. This teaches you how we sell our courses, how we sell our workshops, how we sell our products. We sell our products faster than pretty much anyone on the internet. Courses that cost $3,000, in 20 minutes the course is full. No strategic alliances, no ads, no joint ventures, no nothing. How do we do it in 20 minutes? The Pre-Sell Course shows you that. It’s not cheap; it’s almost $400. But we wanted the audience, our members, our subscribers, to understand how powerful this course was. What we did was we sliced it up into about a fifth of the course and gave it away. You know someone wrote back to me and said, “You know, I didn’t buy the rest of the course, but just using that one-fifth, I was able to launch a product very successfully.”

Are you thinking what I’m thinking right now? We’re giving away stuff that is so powerful that the client might not even need to come back for some more, but they will come back. That’s what we’ve found consistently. We’ve found that when we give away stuff which is useful, that is consumable, that is powerful, the client comes back. Because that’s what happens in real life when you give away a sample.

Something that’s amazingly tasty, it’s not like the diner goes away and just doesn’t come back. We’ve found time and time again, and this isn’t the Pre-Sell Course by the way … There’s a whole section on sampling. It talks about how sampling increases sales by 200, 300, 400%. It’s incredible. I didn’t think that sampling could do that, but it does it. There are statistics to prove it. But if the sample itself is not so powerful, not so outstanding, why is the client going to buy a product or service from you in the future?

Summary

This brings us to the end of this podcast. We covered three things. The first thing was the factor of consumption. You need to get the client from one point the other. Interestingly, as we saw in Netflix, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to speed up the process. You don’t have to get people to sign up right away. They read, you know? They read a little bit. They read the introduction. They look at how it’s constructed. That takes us to the second one, which is your packaging needs to be great and unhurried. It’s like every time we go to the café, we look at the barista and we say, “How are they? Are they neat? How’s the coffee presented? Is it perfect?” That’s how you know you’ve got a great coffee. That’s how you know you’ve got a great product.

Finally, you have to feel that pain when you’re giving away your product. If you don’t feel that pain, it’s like giving away the dal instead of the butter chicken. It’s not that the dal is bad; it’s just that the butter chicken, well, you would rather be eating it yourself, right?

What is the one thing that you can do today?
The one thing that you can do today is to look at whatever you’re giving away and see is it built for consumption. Can they go from A to B to C and then have that superpower? If no, then you’re just giving information. We don’t need more information. We’re done with information. Just give me some skill that I can sort out in the next ten minutes, or 15 minutes, or 20 minutes, whatever, but quickly.

We’re done with this podcast episode. I store all my podcast ideas in Evernote, so if you’ve got some ideas, some questions you want to ask me, send them to sean@psychotactics.com, or on Twitter @Sean D’Souza, and Facebook at Sean D’Souza. If you’d like to join us at 5000bc.com, then please do so. It’s a place where introverts gather, and we talk and we discuss, and there’s a huge amount of information. I’m there 17,000 times a day answering questions, writing articles in response to your questions. It’s a cool place to be.

If you would like to meet us live at a workshop, then there’s a storytelling workshop in Nashville, Tennessee, and in Amsterdam, which is in The Netherlands. You can find out more about this on psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. Be sure to read The Brain Audit before you arrive, because The Brain Audit is compulsory for any course that you do with Psychotactics. Yes, it’s a barrier, and we’re happy to keep that barrier in place. You will find The Brain Audit a tremendous read. It is really fun to read and to understand how people think. That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now. Bye bye.

Still Reading? Now that you understand why free products need to be better than paid products or services, do you know how to price your products? Here is a detailed visual “yes-yes” pricing grid, to help you—Dartboard Pricing: Yes and Yes Grid. You’ll see how to construct the pricing grid (it’s easy), and then you can adapt the concept on your own slides, pricing sheets, or website. And yes, increase your prices! (http://www.psychotactics.com/cb)

 

 

Starting up is always rough—and especially when you're a small business that at first has no clients and no credibility. In this episode, 5000bc member, Christopher Cook talks to Sean D'Souza about how to get over the inner chatter. How to get past those starting blocks and whether it's possible to be superhuman.

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Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/61
Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com
Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza
Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems?(http://www.5000bc.com/)
Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t) 
(http://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/)
Goodies: How To Win The Resistance Game
(http://www.psychotactics.com/free/resistance-game/)
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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Why Roadblocks Are Universal
Part 2: Why Talent Is Not Inborn
Part 3: How To Successfully Get Rid of Self-Doubt

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The  Transcript

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This is indeed The 3 Month Vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza.

 

Back in the year 2000, I was still a cartoonist and I was doing both cartooning and marketing at the same time.

At that point, I decided that I wanted to be the best in the world at marketing, but that meant that I had to start up. I had to start up all over again. I don’t know much about marketing. I hadn’t read that many marketing books and this whole factor of starting up was hard enough just as a business. I was also new at New Zealand. I just moved in from India and so it was like a double start up.

Often people ask me this question, “How did you manage? What was the start up like? Does this internet marketing thing work just for some people and not for others? These are the questions that Christopher C was asking me and this interview is about that. It’s about debt start up, the obstacles. It’s a whole bunch of questions that Christopher C decided, “Let him answer it,” so here I am answering it.

Interestingly, as I was going through this whole interview and listening to it, it seemed like almost a compellation of many of the podcasts that I have done before. We’re covering topics like roadblocks and mindset and routine and you probably heard it before. It’s just a different version of it you could say. It’s on Skype, but it’s still live and we started out with roadblocks. Christopher asked me what the roadblocks are, what do I see as roadblocks in day-to-day life.

The thing with roadblocks is that most people think that it only happens to them and it’s not true at all.

Part 1:Why Roadblocks Are Universal

The first thing is that roadblocks are universal. They don’t care about you and don’t care about me. Their only real purpose in life is to teach you a lesson. When people don’t learn the lesson the roadblocks pop up again and again and again. When you learn that lesson, they disappear and other roadblocks show up. If you don’t deal with the roadblocks in the first instance, they pile up and they become bigger and bigger and bigger and that’s the part that people don’t get. They think that somehow the roadblock is going to disappear and it doesn’t disappear. It’s there specifically to teach you a lesson.

I’ll give you a simple example. We have several websites. Over the years, we’ve made them very popular or they’ve become popular and so they attract hackers. In 2014, 3 of our websites attracted hackers. They didn’t really tear it down, but they created enough havoc so that we had to change our whole system. We had to from Dune to WordPress. We had to move all the stuff across and now we’re in the process of redesigning all 3 websites, which is it might seemed like just a simple project but considering the size of our websites that’s about probably conservatively a year, a year and a halfs’ work and this is working very quickly.

We ignore that. We ignore the hackers. They’ve been sniping away and then we’ll just fix it, a little bandage here and there. Then eventually they came in a big way and got us blacklisted on Google and all those kinds of things. That’s when we had to pay attention and this is what I see as roadblocks. I see that everyone has them and if you don’t do something when you have the time to do it, which of course we don’t, then they will come back again.

Part 2: Why Talent Is Not Inborn

The second question is something that I’ve heard many times before and that is, “You, Sean, have natural talent and skills and I don’t have these skills and I don’t have this talent. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I don’t believe in inborn talent.” That’s a completely different topic, but the question was, “You seemed to be superhuman that is Sean, you are superhuman. You get so much stuff done. You draw cartoons. You cook. You write books. You do workshops. You do all of this stuff.”

This is not me praising myself. This is just what Christopher brought up. He said that at some level it’s intimidating. At some level it feels like only some people can do it. Is it true that just some people can do it or can anyone do it? That’s when I launched into my answer.

They’re exactly right. The reason why I said they’re exactly right is because the person I am today was not the person I was 10 years ago or the person I was 20 years ago. When I look back at what I could do 10 years ago or 12 years ago, it was a lot less than I could do today. I knew a lot less than I know today. I’m not just saying I read more books or did learn some more stuff and went to more seminars. What I’m saying is that even a simple task like writing an article, a simple task like writing an article would take me 2 days, 2 whole days. I don’t know many people that take 2 days to write an article, but it was sure frustration for me.

It sounds like marketing, because I sell an article-writing course and it sounds like a good thing. You take 2 days to write an article, now you do it in 45 minutes. It was a reality and the problem was I didn’t know how that article would turn out. The question of me doing any podcast, the question of me doing any webinars, any speeches, anything of that sort it was totally out of the question. The first time I spoke when I got to Oakland I forgot what I had to say. We had to take it in mid-break.

When I wrote my first book, it was only 16 pages. We put some cartoons in it and it became 20 pages. When I look at all the cartoons that I did back then, they were pretty amateur and people say, “Yes, but at least you could draw.” Sure I could draw, but I couldn’t write. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do a lot of things that I can do today. Not only am I good at what I do today, but I can be very quick and very effective so I’m not the same person.

When you say someone is superhuman, it means that along the way that person has spent a lot of time and a lot of effort and continues to spend a lot of time and effort to get to that superhuman status. You know this to be true because you look at top performers. You look at the top tennis player in the world, the top swimmer, the top runner. You can say you can go blue in face saying that they have natural abilities, which we will talk about, but look at what they’re doing. They’re still in the track 4 or 5, 6 hours a day. They still have coaches. They still have all kinds of training.

Then you look at yourself and you think, “I manage to get half an hour of listening to a podcast last week because I was too busy.” I’m sorry but it’s not going to happen by magic. The way to get to that level where you are superhuman is to be able to do something that superhuman people do. The reason why they got to superhuman and I’m sorry that I’m referring to myself as superhuman; that was not the goal, the point is that I see myself completely differently from 6 months ago or a year ago or 2 years ago or 10 years ago.

As much as I like, what I’m doing right now I like the articles that I write. I like the cartoons that I draw. I like the stuff that I do. I know that it will be totally crappy in my own eyes 10 years from now. I know that because I’ve learned so much I will change so much, everything will change. Everything has to change because that’s how it works.

At this point in the interview, we shifted into the key elements or keystone. Keystone is the foundation on which a lot of things are built. The question was, what keystone elements do you need to be superhuman? I’m still not comfortable with superhuman but since that’s the term being used in the interview, we continue with the term superhuman. I’ll go and get my kryptonite on the side.

I think the first element is that it has to be daily. You have to take an analogy of brushing teeth. You can brush once a week. You can brush once a month. You can brush once a year. It totally depends on you. What sets in is a factor of decay and your reign is exactly the same. It’s not going to turn on lights and keep them on if you decide that you’re not going to learn. It just going to switch them off or it’s going to put them in dimmer setting. You know this because you can learn something and you can forget about it and then you learn it again and then it comes up a little brighter.

Unless you keep adding to it, unless you keep polishing and unless you have what is called a daily routine it’s not going to work. There is no way on earth that you can be where you want to be unless you have a daily routine. It might be just 15 minutes. You might just take a walk for 15 minutes and listen to something and you never remember anything. You don’t have to remember anything. You just have to listen. Just listen to it like radio, just like you went for a walk with a friend and you listen and you can’t remember 99 percent of what they said.

That 1 percent when you add it up, add 1 to 1 you think they would end up as being 2, but it doesn’t end up as being 2. Eventually, the 1 percent plus 1 percent plus 1 percent becomes exponential and suddenly you jump up 20 percent and then 50 percent and that’s how it works. The first thing is definitely that you have to do something on a daily basis. How long? I can’t say. I spend at least an hour learning every day if not longer and I have a very busy day, busier day than most.

The second thing that you have to look at is a teacher. You have to. You can waste so much time trying to work your way through a system that if you don’t find the right teacher then you’re just wasting time. The point is how do you find the right teacher. It’s the same thing as trying to find the right spouse in life or right girlfriend or boyfriend or friend for that matter. You have to reject a lot of people. If you go out there and say, “I’ll go to the first person that’s promising me all these instant happiness and riches and stuff,” that’s what you get. You get no instant anything. The teacher makes a huge difference. The daily stuff makes a huge difference.

Part 3: How To Successfully Get Rid of Self-Doubt

The third thing is just that a lot of people have to get rid of the self-doubt. It doesn’t matter who you are and how successful you are. You are going to have self-doubt. There is no one on the planet who doesn’t have self-doubt. The doubt performers they all have self-doubt. What they do is they have to work out a system to get rid of the self-doubts so that when they run their next race, they’re thinking, “I might not win this race,” but they still end up with the gold medal or the silver medal. Maybe they showed up in that race, but the next race and the next race and the next race.

I hate to nail anything down to keystone stuff but this is it. If you find the teacher and the teacher will have a system, they will have a group and you do something daily that helps you get rid of the most critical element that stops you, which is self-doubt.

This took us at the topic of daily routine, what I do every single day to make sure that my daily routine stays daily. The thing that you have to do is when you create a habit, you’ve got to understand that there is a cue, routine, and reward. These 3 elements have to be in place. Cue is like an alarm clock. You wake up on cue and then there’s a routine. You put on your shoes and you go for a walk and then there’s a reward.

The point is that without that reward in place, the cue and the routine are not going to happen. You decide I’m going to listen to podcast every day or I’m going to read every day. What’s the reward? That’s what I would ask first, what is your reward? If you don’t have the reward every single day, there’s a very good chance that’s it’s going to fall by the way. There’s a pretty good chance that your cue will set up, your alarm will set up, you’ll get into your shoes but then you’ll decide it’s raining I’m not going to go. Cue, routine and reward have to be in place but first you have to ask yourself what is the reward.

Some people say, “I don’t need the reward. I have to be self-motivated.” No, no, no, that’s not how it works. You first figure out your reward if you want to learn something what happens at the end of that something, if you want to do something what happens to the end of that something. When people do courses, for instance, the first time we did a workshop that’s speaking engagement very early in our career in 2002. I spoke at this event and there were about 30 people in the room and most of them bought this PDF from me. Right after we did that, we went out. We bought a bottle of wine and we celebrated and I still have that bottle with me; the empty bottle obviously.

The point that the reward matters, every time when you have the reward in place you know. This is what going through this whole routine. Once you have that in place you then have to seek out what is called group, because an individual is not usually capable of going by themselves. When you have a group, the other persons buzz you on. They say, “Are we going for a run today?” You go, “We’ll go.” Having these elements in place make a difference. This is how I go for a walk every day. When I go for a walk, I have my iPhone with me so I listen to podcast or I learn languages or I do stuff like that. I listen to audio books so for 1-1/2 hour I’m learning.

Some days I’ll just speak to my wife. We’ll brainstorm, but at the end of that there’s a cup of coffee. Then I have my cup of coffee and I come back and I’ve learned something and I’ve done something and that’s the reward. You have to determine the reward and that’s my routine. That’s how I go about stuff.

At this point in the interview, Christopher brought up something that I’d mentioned when I just started doing watercolors. You may or may not know the story but in 2010, I went out to learn watercolors. I’d gone to several courses and learn anything. I went to this guy Ted and he told me that I should practice every day. He said, “Get watercolor book and just paint every day.” I decided to paint what I did every day, which is just my life.

When I started, I mentioned in 5000bc, which is the membership site, and in the forum I said, “I’m starting on this watercolor journey. I’m not very good at it but I will be in 2 years’ time.” That is what Christopher brought up. He said, “That mindset stayed with me the fact that you said you will be good in 2 years’ time.”

I’ll give you a better thing than that. I’ll give you an analogy. Imagine for some reason you went blind. It sounds terrible and I wouldn’t want to be blind, but lots of people go blind for whatever reason. What’s going to happen in the next year, for one, you’re going to be able to find your way around the city almost by yourself. That’s the first thing that’s going to happen. The second thing is you’re going to learn a brand new language that you’ve never encountered before, which is braille. Third, you’re going to be able to hear stuff. Because of how your brain functions, you’re going to hear stuff more profoundly than ever before because you can’t see anymore.

When you look at the mindset of what happens to a blind person in a year’s time, they have got 3 sets of you can call them skills that they never had before. It is beyond any doubt that if you decided that you’re going to do something and you do it on a regular basis, you will be better in a year’s time. You don’t have to do much. You don’t even have to have a great teacher. You don’t have to have a great system. You can get there, say, record a podcast everyday. You can, say, do a drawing every day. It’s not going to be very fulfilling because what are you going to do. No one sees it. No one looks at it.

The point is that after a year you will be better. If you find a good teacher and you find a good system and you do all that other stuff then you will be a professional in year’s time. It’s not an if or a but, but it is a guarantee. You will be professional in a year’s time. That’s how blind people learn to type. That’s how they learn to write. That’s how they learn to read. That’s beyond any doubt.

Then we came full circle with the hardship bit. We talked about scarcity, about not having that skill or resources and how to still go forward. A lot of people they believe that they can’t make that they don’t have the skill. They don’t have the resources. Frankly speaking nobody does. A lot of people when they say they don’t have resources they don’t really understand what they’re saying.

I didn’t grow up in a very poor family. I grew up in a middle-class family, but even so I didn’t have access to a library. I had to go out there and buy my books. My father had to subscribe [the stuff 19:44]. A lot of the things that people take for granted especially in western countries you can go to the library. You can get any book you want. You have an internet connection. You have all these things. Even if you just look at yourself going back 25 years, you didn’t have an internet connection. You didn’t have so many things like a mobile phone, all these things that you take for granted today.

In that sense, you are quite deprived. You may do with what you had and you were very creative. It’s when a person becomes saddled, all those equipment and this excess that they become worse at what they’re supposed to do. Probably the smartest people work with very little information. They work with very little resources and information is one of those very critical resources. One of the things that stop people consistently is this information. They go, “If I have more information about this house then maybe I’ll buy it. If I have more information about how my business is going to go in six months then maybe I’ll do it.”

The people who succeed on a consistent basis they don’t have this resource. They have the same resource as you. They have the same amount of information as you and what they do is they do it anyway. They go ahead anyway and then they keep going and they find the group, they find a teacher, they keep going, they keep going, they keep going. What happens over time is you just get very quick at something. As I said, I used to take 2 days to write an article, it takes 45 minutes. I now have one day and another 14 hours of whatever to play with. What you are really doing is you have to understand that to be very good at what you do you have to work with very little information and just keep going.

The second thing that I would add just to finish this off is that something that I had to learn which is rest. We’ve take three months off every year, but the point is that even so I wasn’t taking weekends off. Let me clarify what I mean by that. I wasn’t working the whole weekend but I’m going on a Saturday morning and then I’d work for a few hours and then before I knew it, it would be 9:00 or 10:00 and then someday maybe two or three hours.

The downtime is critical. You can’t compensate for downtime. If you don’t take a break, if you don’t disconnect your email, if you don’t disconnect your phone, you are going to find that your work is not as good. When people go and they say, “We went on a vacation,” and all they did was see 700 monuments, that’s not a break. When you were on your weekend and you just check email, that’s not a break. Your ability to work when you have to work goes down and you get more and more tired, more exhausted and then eventually there’s nothing left. There’s no energy left. That’s pretty much what I’d say.

Summary:

That brings us to the end of this podcast. What we’d covered was the whole concept of roadblocks and how we think that someone else is superhuman. They’re not really superhuman. They just started along time ago and what they did was continue. A lot of people stop. They pause. They think that the other people are somehow succeeding because they have some special gene. If that other person has special gene, it is just to persist over and over again until they get it right until they eliminate all the errors and that makes them what other people call them which is superhuman.

The second thing that we covered was this concept of keystone habits. We found that you have to have to work on it like your toothbrush. Your toothbrush does a job and it does it very well. If you can think of your learning and your application as a daily routine, then it changes everything.

The third thing that we talked about was the future and how you have to have a mindset for the future that you might not be very good at watercolors today, but in two years’ time you will be. You might not be very good at podcasting today, but in 2 years’ time you will be. It doesn’t matter what you undertake if you go about it with dedication and you find the right teacher. Even if you don’t find the right teacher you still in 2 years’ time you will be far down the road than where you are right now. If you stop today, you’ve just wasted 2 years. In 2 years’ time, you will still know nothing and that is the reality for most people.

That brings us to the end of this podcast. We still have the storytelling workshop in Nashville, Tennessee on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December and then the 13th, 14th and 15th of December is in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. People wander why they have to tell stories and it’s the flipside of the coin. You have logic and you have facts and you have to have stories, because stories they keep the audience alive and they keep things memorable. You can run on facts and logic alone, but who’s going to remember your story? Who’s going to pass it on?

Storytelling is incredible. You read The Brain Audit and you’ll find that almost the entire book is one of storytelling. Read The Brain Audit and also join us at 5000bc.com. If you want to go ahead you need a group and that group is in 5000bc, we don’t have these spammers and these loud mouths. We largely have a group on introverts even though I’m an extrovert. Join us at 5000bc.com and if you like to come to the workshop it’s at psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. That’s me Sean D’Souza saying bye for now and here’s to your talent 2 years from now.

How much is enough? And where do you stop?
It’s easy to get all wrapped up in this whole concept of passive income and how smart it seems. Yet, you can work yourself crazy if you’re not careful. You can work too much, do too much? And even vacation too much. Click here to find out more about—The Power of Enough. (http://www.psychotactics.com/power-enough-critical-sanity/)

What is the meaning of life? This utterly vast and philosophical question pops into our lives with amazing frequency. But is it the right question to ask? What if we move the words around a bit and asked another question. Like: What gives your life meaning? Hmm, that changes things a bit doesn't it? And even when we change the words, we may still move towards the specific. So why does the abstract help more?

Find out in this episode.
http://www.psychotactics.com/meaning-of-life/

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The  Transcript

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What gives your life meaning?

It was 6:20 AM. I was close to the beach, halfway through my walk, listening to this podcast on Transom.org. There was this reporter who was asking older people how they went through their lives. They were 100 years old. She started out with this question, which was: What is the meaning of life? I’ve grappled with this question before, and it sounds very philosophical, but then somewhere in the middle, the question changed. Those words just interchanged somehow and it became: What gives your life meaning?

I had to stop. I had to stop on the road just to absorb what that meant. Just by that little interplay in the words, suddenly the whole sentence, the whole construct changed. It was amazing to me. As you tend to do, you tend to try to answer the questions. I tried to think of the people in my life and I tried to think of the things that I do. Then I realized I was going about it the wrong way.

In today’s podcast we’re going to cover three elements as always, but the way I’m going to cover it is, I’m going to talk about me me me. I’m going to talk about the three things that give my life meaning and why I approached it the wrong way. But I think it is the way that we need to approach it. Of course you might choose to borrow these, or you might choose to bring up your own three elements, but this is the way I think that you’ve got to approach the question: What gives your life meaning?

Part 1: Space

I think the right way to approach it is to go through an abstract sort of thinking. The three things that give my life meaning are space, deadline, and elegance. Let’s start out with the first one, which is the factor of space. About a month ago, it was August in New Zealand. Well, it was August everywhere, but it’s wintertime here in New Zealand. I had this little piece of paper in my pocket. I’d been carrying it in my wallet for well over a year, maybe a year and a half. This piece of paper had been given to me by my doctor. I’d done my annual checkup the year before and I was supposed to get the blood test done. I had been procrastinating for quite a while, as you can tell. That day I decided I’m going to park the car and I’m going to walk to the lab and get the blood test done.

I wasn’t expecting anything. I’d been walking every day. I’d been eating sensibly, I think, drinking sensibly. Yet, the very next night I got some news from my doctor. He said, “Your cholesterol is high.” I went and looked it up, and I found that there was no real linkage to what you eat and cholesterol, but there is a very distinct relationship between stress and everything, not just stress and cholesterol but stress and everything. That is when I started taking the weekends off.

Now we fool ourselves. We say we’re taking the weekend off but we check email and we work for a couple of hours, or do this and do that. Suddenly, the weekend is not really off. I found this to be true for me. I used to get to work, even on the weekend, at 4 AM because I wake up at that time. Before I knew it, it was 9:00, 10:00. I put in five or six hours on the weekend, on Saturday and Sunday. Of course I had my excuses. The podcast takes so much time, and we’re doing this course, and I have to write this book.

When I got this report, I suddenly realised the importance of space. I realised that there is no point in me doing this stuff on a consistent basis and driving myself crazy, and that the weekend was invented to give us space. Now we take three months off, and you know that, but these minor breaks become very major breaks on the weekend. I had to find a practical use for this, because at the same time we have courses going on, like we have the headline course going on. Now our courses are not about just information. They’re about practical usage. Clients will come in five days a week and they’ll do their assignment every single day.

This is a problem for me, because in the US it’s Friday, but here in New Zealand it’s Saturday. That means I have to look at the assignment on a Saturday. That’s what I was doing. I convinced myself it was only going to be a couple hours here or there. I had to then go to all the participants and say, “I’m going to take the weekend off, but my weekend, is it okay if I take it off?” I had to take their permission. No one had a problem. I don’t know I was expecting that they would have a problem, but no one had a problem.

This is the concept of space. I’ve had to use this concept of space over and over and over again. Every time, it drives me crazy when I don’t. For instance, now I’m preparing for the storytelling workshop and I have to write the notes and do the slides. I have to create this space. I have to go away from the office and sit in a space that is quieter and less disturbing, and then work through that. This factor of space had an effect that I didn’t expect.

Whenever you’re in any business, you’re always going to be slightly envious of someone else. If you’re a writer you’re going to be envious of other writers. If you’re a dancer you’re going to be envious of other dancers. It’s just natural human behaviour. Now a lot of people interview on their podcasts. Once we finish what we’re covering, they will talk to me just casually. Occasionally someone will say, “Oh, I’m so excited. We’ve just finished 1.8 downloads,” or, “Oh, we’ve got 5,000 more subscribers.”

This used to drive me not crazy, but you think about it. You think, how come? We’re putting in as much effort into this podcast. How come? The question changed the moment I realized that space was important to me, the moment I realised that weekends were important to me. I started asking myself, are you getting the weekend off? I’d listen to that person saying that they made so much more money or they got so many subscribers. I couldn’t get myself to be envious. This was a change for me. This was a big change for me, because I thought that somehow that would never go away. The space became the benchmark. It was no no no, this is more important to me than the money. It’s more important to me than your subscribers or your downloads. Having that space allows me to think and relax. I have not felt this way, like I’m feeling right now, in a very, very long time. It’s taken me about a month to slow down completely, as in to feel really relaxed. It’s just because of space.
This takes us to the second element, which is in direct contrast to space and quiet. That is deadline.

Part 2: Deadline

In 2014, we had one of the most harrowing years of our lives. It wasn’t harrowing personally, but professionally it was a real pain. That was because we had hacker attacks. It first surfaced on psychotactics.com. Now that is a very popular site, and for over a decade it has been in the top 100,000 Alexa ratings. It’s natural that hackers like that site. We put a little Band-Aid on the system and we fixed it, but they came back, and they came back, and they came back. They wouldn’t stop until the entire website had to be completely reorganised and rebuilt from the ground up.

Then after that, they went after 5000bc.com, which is our membership site. They did the same thing. Then they went after the training site, which is training.brainaudit.com. You can just tell how frustrating this is. You’re going about your business as passively as possible, trying to keep your head above water, and these hacker attacks continue to come and disrupt your life and drive you crazy. When I think about it, the hacker attacks were the best thing that happened to us because they gave us a sense of deadline.

When we think of deadline, we only think of writing books or an article or finishing this project, but the hacker attacks were so cool. They forced us to do what we hadn’t been doing for several years. We’d been putting off tidying up the website and making it just resistant to these fun-filled creeps. They came there and they went through the system, and then we had to pull up our socks. We just had to do whatever we had to do. This is the beauty of deadlines.

A lot of people consider me to be a pretty crazy person, as in I’m doing a lot of projects. I don’t see myself that way at all. I see myself as a very lazy person. I see myself as someone who loves to lie on the sofa and get a lot of that space and not a lot of deadline. Yet, without the deadline nothing happens. All the books that you read on Psychotactics, starting withThe Brain Audit, they were written because someone forced me to do it. The cartooning course, I didn’t want to do it. Someone said, “Oh no no, you have to do this. I’ve tried all the cartooning courses. They don’t work for me.”

I’ve written a book on storytelling, but to do the course was something completely different. I’m discovering elements of storytelling that I didn’t know existed, or I’m discovering depths that I didn’t know existed. Of course it’s frustrating to have to build a whole course from nothing, to write notes, to create slides, to get all the event venue, to get everyone to sign up. We could do without it, but putting that deadline in place gives my life a lot of meaning because it enhances what I do and it forces me to do it by a specific point in time.

Take this podcast for example. In October we’re going to Australia to Uluru. For those of you that don’t know, this is Ayer’s Rock, that big red rock in the middle of Australia. This brings up its own set of deadlines, which is I have to write extra newsletters. I have to put in extra vanishing reports for 5000bc, and of course podcasts. I have to do more of these podcasts so that it covers all of October. Then in December we’re going to Morocco. I know, I know, it’s a hard life.

The is that the deadline brings meaning to my life. Without the deadline I wouldn’t achieve as much as I do. Those creeps, those hackers, I wish I could send them chocolate, like howwe send our clients chocolate. Because they made such a difference to my life. They brought in this deadline, this “you have to do this right now.” It’s made our life different and I would say a lot better. The first thing that we talked about was space, and having the space creates so much of quiet in your life, and of course a lot less stress. The second thing is this factor of deadline, which forces you to rush, rush and create that stress. They both coexist together just like music. There is quiet in music and there is this huge flurry of notes. They both have to be that way because that’s what makes music.

This takes us to the third element, which is one of elegance.

Part 3: Elegance

Now I thought about it a lot. Why elegance? Why not simplicity? Simplicity is so difficult. Why elegance? In 1990 I was still living in India. A pen panel from the United States came across. She was there for a couple of weeks. She created a deadline of sorts for me. I hadn’t seen a lot of India at that point in time and she wanted to see India, so we booked a trip. We got to the Taj Mahal. Now by this point in time I wasn’t doing very well with this pen panel. When I was in university we were sending each other letters, ten pages, 12 pages, really long letters. It seemed like we would get along fine with each other.

Yet, the moment she landed that wasn’t the case at all. Something about her drove me crazy. Something about me drove her crazy. By the time we had reached Agra, which is where the Taj Mahal is located, we were pretty much going our own ways. She’d set out later, but me, I wake up early in the morning. I decided one day to go to the Taj Mahal as early as possible. There was this huge fog that was in front of the Taj Mahal. I couldn’t see it until I was very close, and it was amazing. It was stunning beyond my understanding. I’ve seen thousands of pictures of it over the years, but nothing came close to standing there right in front of it in that fog.

As I got close to it, what struck me was the elegance. It was just so beautiful. It was simple. There wasn’t anything fancy about it. Sure, it was big, it was really big, bigger than I ever imagined, but elegant. It was so elegant. As we’ve traveled the world, we’ve run into places like Japan. When you buy something in Japan, it’s amazing. It’s like you never want to open it. You can buy the smallest thing in Japan and they put it in this little box and this little wrapping. Then they put this ribbon on it. Everything in Japan is so beautifully packaged that you never feel like opening it. There is this elegance to it. It’s not just thrown at you.

As I started to be more aware of the world around me, it struck me that there are three ways to do pretty much anything. When you look around you, you see stuff that’s really crappy. We don’t want to go there because that’s just crappy and sloppy. That’s just how it is. Then you go to the next stage, which is where it’s simple. When I look at a book on Kindle, it’s simple. There’s just text. It’s been thrown in Microsoft Word. It’s out there, nothing to it. Then you look at something’s that’s elegant and you know that someone has spent some time and effort and simplified it so it looks beautiful and it reads beautiful. The words work together and the pictures work together. Suddenly you have this feeling of the Taj Mahal. It’s beautiful. It’s a monument. There are thousands of monuments in the world, but some stand out for their sheer elegance.

To me, that’s my third principle, that when I create this podcast I somehow have to be dissatisfied with it. I’m happy, but I still want to improve it. That quest for improvement becomes quest for elegance. The best example of elegance is a software program, because when you look at a software program it comes out as slightly crappy. You have version one and it’s not so great. Then version two and it’s a little better. Then it gets bigger and more bloated and it stops being elegant. Now you have to improve things without making it bloated and terrible. You have to bring in elegance.

That is the thing that gives my life meaning: to create information, or to create product, or to create a cartoon, or to do anything that is more elegant. The beauty of elegance is that sometimes it doesn’t get noticed, like when you’re watching a movie and there’s this music that enhances the movie and you don’t notice the music. That is elegance: that feeling of creating something that’s so beautiful that it doesn’t matter that no one notices it, as long as you know.

Summary

This brings us to the end of this podcast. I know it was about me, but I think it resonates with you as well. To me, the most important things, the things that give my life meaning, we could summarise them with three words, and that is space, and deadline, and elegance. Your three words might be similar, they might be different, but I think we have to stop asking ourselves what is the meaning of life, because that question is too big. Instead, it’s what gives our life meaning. Then bring it down to this whole abstract feeling. I think that’s the one thing you can do today. I think you can just sit down and write down these three terms on paper and start to think about it. What are three things that give your life meaning? Because even hackers can give your life meaning.

That brings us to the end of this podcast. As you know, we’re doing the storytelling workshop in Nashville, Tennessee and in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We’ll see you there. You need to find your way to psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. You would also need to read The Brain Audit. That is at psychotactics.com/brainaudit. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, then leave a review for us at iTunes. That really helps. The show notes, the transcript, all the goodies, they’re always on the podcast number. This is podcast number 60, so that’s psychotactics.com/60. You can get all of that. It’s 5:32 AM and I have to go for my walk soon. Just on cue, it has started to rain, but I’ll take my umbrella and I’ll head out for the coffee. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.

So how can be solve the eternal problem—The Meaning Of Life? Or A Life of Meaning?
Especially when Chaos hits us everyday. Click here to find out—Why and how to make chaos your friend. http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

The reason why we find writing to be such a tedious task, is because we don't understand the barriers that get in our way. Instead, we write, edit, write, edit — and drive ourselves crazy. One of the ways to get over the barriers is to use the Captain Kirk and Mr Spock method. What is this method all about? Find out in this episode of the podcast.

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 Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/59

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How to use the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock method of writing
Part 2: The power of preparation
Part 3: How to decide on your ‘One Word’
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t
Article and Audio: Three Unknown Secrets of Riveting Story Telling
Live Workshop: How to create amazing stories—and connect them flawlessly to your articles, newletters, podcasts, etc

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The  Transcript

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Imagine you’re the athlete who’s trying for the Olympic gold in high jump.

You look at the newspapers that day and there is the Los Angeles Times and they’re saying that he goes over the bar like a guy being pushed out off a 30-storey window. Then you flip to the next newspaper which is The Guardian and it says, “He is the curiosity of the team.” Then you pick up the magazine Sports Illustrated and it says, “He charges up from slightly to the left of center with a gait that may call to mind a two-legged camel.”

We’re talking about Dick Fosbury here, the guy who first did the Fosbury flop. While all these newspapers and magazines seem to make fun of Dick Fosbury, it’s unlike he had a great opinion of himself either. It’s unlike Dick Fosbury was arguing with their comments because at college someone bet him that he couldn’t get over a leather chair. He couldn’t jump over that leather chair and he said he tried, but not only did he lose his bet but he also broke his hand in the crash landing.

In  1968, when he arrived at the Mexico Olympics he was relatively unknown and yet days later he not only captured the imagination of the Mexican public, but also the rest of the world. He sailed over the bar at 2.24 meters, which is 7 feet and 4 inches. It wasn’t that he sailed over because that wasn’t the world record. It’s that he did it by overcoming the obstacle with his crazy jump which was called the Fosbury flop.

What’s interesting about the Fosbury flop is that no one ever did that kind of flop before. No one ever tried to get over the bar in that manner. It was considered extremely weird, extremely camel-like and yet today it’s extremely weird to see people jumping over the bar as they did back in 1968. Today the Fosbury flop is the way people jump over a bar at the Olympics in any sports stadium. What Fosbury did was he looked at the obstacle and he said, “Let me get over this in another way because there’s no way I’m going to be able to do it the usual way.”

That’s really what this podcast is all about. We’re going to look at writing and why we struggle with writing, why we have these obstacles with writing. If we go about it the way we’ve always done, that doesn’t seem to work for us because you’re going about it the same way that I used to do back in the year 2000 where I would look at the article and then try to write it and then spend a day, spend 2 days writing that article and getting very frustrated and not knowing what was going wrong. We have to look at the obstacle that bar and look at how we can over that bar in a completely different way. That’s what this podcast is going to cover.

We’re going to cover 3 things. The first thing is about editing. The second thing is about preparation and the third is about the one word or the one term. As always, we’ll start with the first, which is editing.

Part One: Editing

I love making a rice dish called biryani. It is a dish meant for kings. It has all of these yummy elements. If you’ve ever eaten a biryani, you know exactly what I mean.

Here’s how you go about making a biryani. You have to get all the things together, like spices and the yogurt and other stuff like saffron and ghee, which is a clarified butter. When you get all of those things together, you got some onions. In fact, you got a lot of onions and then you caramelised the onions. When all of that is done you, marinate it. A few hours later it’s time to cook the biryani.

I put it all in a dish, which we call handi. You would call it a saucepan. Before I turn on the flame I have to do one very important thing. I have to seal the handi or the saucepan with dough so that it becomes like a pressure cooker and the meat cooks in it and the rice cooks in it and all the flavours cook within it and it’s all sealed you can’t get in. Did you notice the problem? Sure, you did. It was the dough. It sealed the vessel. There is no way to know whether the rice is cooked or the chicken is still raw. The dough prevents me from editing.

Editing is the first big obstacle to writing. Why? Because the writer and the editor are 2 completely different people. The writer is like Captain Kirk; you watched Star Trek, didn’t you? The writer is like Captain Kirk and Captain Kirk has all these great ideas. He wants to go where no man has ever gone before and he is a bit out there. Then you have Spock and he needs to be logical and that’s how your editor acts every single time. We have these 2 people, 2 completely different people and they’re at log ahead with each other.

What we do when we write is we put both of those people on the same seat. Of course they’re going to fight. Of course they’re going to continuously argue with each other and of course that’s your obstacle, isn’t it? You’re not going to get over that obstacle because you’re treating both of them as the same person when they were completely different. The first thing you’ve got to realise is that it’s not Captain Spock, it’s Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. You’ve got to start with the writing process and then let it marinate and several hours later you have to bring in Mr. Spock. Just like the biryani, you’ve got to let that marination process take its own sweet time.

You probably want to write at one part of the day and then one look at it maybe later in the day or even the next day. This is what I had to do when I first started out. I was not very good at writing. I was not very quick at writing. I would send my article to a friend and a client, whose name is Chris Ellington. Chris would look over it and then fix it and he had a million fixes and then it will come back and then I would send it out again this time to Rochelle. Rochelle would look at all the grammar and fix it and all of this editing process would drive me absolutely crazy plus there was my own creative output as it were.

This is the process. There is the writer and the editor. There is this time in between and what we do is we make a Captain Spock out of it. Of course it doesn’t work and there is no reason why it should work, because editing and writing just do not mix. That’s our first-grade obstacle and we have to learn that we’re going to have to do thing differently, do a bit of a Fosbury flop if we want to get over that bar and write great content.

This takes us to the second one and the second one is all about preparation.

Part 2: Preparation

On June 29, 2007, Pixar released a movie about a rat and it was called Ratatouille. It was a story about an inspiring chef called Linguini and her rat called Remy, a rat that loved to cook.

Speaker 1: Animation is a very, very complicated business. There’s hundreds of people involved in the actual production.

Speaker 2: Many things that we take for granted in real life are difficult to do in the computer.

Speaker 3: Pixar is really very good at addressing complex problems. By far, this is the most complicated clothing that we’ve done.

Speaker 4: We went to a special sequence on that with the character with Linguini jumps into the sand to try and save Remy. He comes out dripping wet and we had to try and figure out a way to get that look when claw sticks to the skin and you can see just a little bit of colour coming through it.

Speaker 5: What do we do? We abused one of our poor coworkers. We make him dressed up in a chest outfit. We doused him with water and we filmed him. What does it look like? We’re on the clothing. Can you see it through to his skin? Where do the chips come off from his face? It’s our excuse to abuse coworkers actually not to think about it.

Sean D’Souza: What you just heard in that clip is preparation, preparation and more preparation. The reason why Pixar has to do so much preparation is because they’re not amateurs. They have million dollar budgets and of course they’re wasting a lot of money. They’re also wasting time and they’re wasting energy. When you think about it, that’s exactly what we do when we sit down to write. We don’t create that moment of preparationor really that hour of preparation and that’s how you know the difference between an amateur and a professional.

The amateur just sits down and begins to write. They sit at their computer and they decide, “I’m going to write an article today. I’m going to create a podcast today. I’m going to create a webinar.” The professional on the other hand sits down to plan. I was to listening to a podcast earlier today and there was this interview between Brian Orr and Jeff Brown. Jeff worked in the radio industry for many, many years and now he has his own podcast. He was talking about how people just show up on podcast and they start to ask questions and they don’t prepare and how all the preparation is critical.

If you listen to Ira Glass on This American Life and he’s on videos on YouTube, he talks about the preparation and how finding the stories takes half the week even though they have so many people in their staff. We think, “We’re just business people. We just have to write an article. Let’s sit down and write,” and that’s not how professionals work. You are a professional when you sit down to write and therefore you have to sit down to plan.

What are you going to plan? You’ve got to figure out what topic are you going to cover, what one word are you going to cover, what 3 sub-topics you’re going to cover or at least how you’re going to structure the article, how you’re going to structure this podcast. When I sit down to do this podcast, most of the work is done outside. Admittedly, the music takes a lot of time but the podcast takes only about 45 minutes to record and it takes me an hour and a half to put all the details together, sometimes longer. I’ll go to the cafe. I’ll sit don and I’ll put it all together. You can see a photograph of that. I’ll put it in the show notes.

It takes a lot of preparation to create something that is more than average and that’s what professionals do. This is the obstacle that we run into. It’s not I don’t try to beat the system. I try it. I’ll show up here at 4am and I’ll try to record a podcast and then it’s 4:30 and 4:45 and then 5:30. It’s very, very frustrating and so I’ve given up. I’ve totally given up.

Every time I want to record a podcast I will go to the cafe and sit there and plan. I don’t have the time that’s why I go and that’s why I plan and this is what professionals do. They plan before they execute. They get the ingredients, put the biryani in the fridge, let it marinate and then later they are cooking it. Amateurs? We just go there and we cook it right away as if something magical is going to happen.

We’ve looked at 2 main obstacles and the first one was editing, the fact that we get Captain Spock together instead of having Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. The second thing is this whole factor of preparation and how we want to bypass that process of marination.  This takes us to the third part, which is the one word or the one term.

Part 3: One Word

This podcast started with the story about Dick Fosbury. You have to ask yourself, “Why did that story exist? What is the point of that story?” the story was about obstacles and overcoming those obstacles, but why did the story matter? The story mattered because of that one word or one term and in this case the one term is a different perspective. Right until that moment in Mexico when Dick Fosbury sailed over the bar like a 2-legged camel, there was only one perspective and that perspective was to jump over it, straddle over it. He went over in a completely different way.

The one term is about different perspective and that’s how we look at the entire article. We didn’t go about how do we construct our article and what is the structure of the article, but we looked at things that stop us. We don’t realise that they’re stopping us and that is editing and preparation and the one word that one word or one term which is different perspective. It allows me to do both the preparation and the editing.

When I’m preparing, I’m thinking of how can I have a different perspective on article writing. Then when I’m done and Mr. Editor has to show up, at point in time I’m going, “Did I do this? Did I actually adhere to the one word or one term?” In a way the one word or one term satisfies the needs of those fresh 2 guys, which is preparation and editing and he does so, so brilliantly.

When you’re siting down to write something, create something ask yourself, “What is the one thing that I want to convey here? What is that endpoint?” Once you know the one word or one term you will be able to communicate in a way that you’ve never communicated before. You’d be able to edit it in a way that you’ve never done before.

Can it be more than one word or one term? One term is a couple of words. Maybe you could stretch it to 3 words. The problem is that you may want to put in 3 words or 4 words or 5 words to describe your article and the further away you go from one word the more complicated it becomes. It’s very, very hard to then edit something or nail it down so find one word. Ask yourself, “What am I going to talk about today? Is it endeavour or is it scarcity or is it premium?” The point is once you get the one word and the one term that becomes a lot simpler and that’s really what we want.

Summary

That brings us to the end of this podcast. What did we cover today? We covered 3 things. The first thing was the factor of editing that the editor and the writer they’re 2 different people. They show up at different times of day, probably on different days as well. When you write and you edit on the same day or write and edit, write and edit, write and edit, thank you. You’re just frustrating yourself and driving yourselves completely crazy. Do not edit. Come back another day. Do not become Captain Spock.

The second thing is the preparation. The professionals they don’t sit down to write. They don’t sit down to create. They sit down to plan. You need to go away somewhere. Plan, come back then you start to write. If you have to learn how to write, you can deconstruct say this piece because it’s there. It’s there in the show notes. You can deconstruct how it is created and then recreate it or you can do an article-writing course and learn how structure is built and how articles come together and how podcast come together and how … It’s all based on structure and once you understand the structure it’s just a matter of unfolding it like any language.

The third thing that we covered was one word. The one word comes before you head out to the cafe, before you sit down to plan. It’s what am I going to cover today, what is that one thing that I want my audience to get. Once you know that and you should know that, then it’s very simple or rather a lot simpler to get to the end result. What’s the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you should do today is just sit now and say, “I’m going to write an article. What is the one word that I’m going to cover?”

If you’re not sure what you should do, I would suggest you go to the show notes and look at some of the links that I put there. Then deconstruct it and see how you can actually work out what one word was I trying to cover. You’ll start to see a pattern and once you get that pattern you will learn how to do it yourself..

Of course there is no substitute for being with a good teacher and I am a good teacher and you know that. I’m going to be there alive in Nashville, Tennessee and then in Amsterdam in The Netherlands and we’re going to do a storytelling workshop. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m sure you did, this podcast and every podcast is full of stories and that’s what keeps you going. As you’re walking, as you’re driving, suddenly in the middle of all those facts and figures there’s the story unfolding how does that story unfold.

When you read the book The Brain Audit or you read the book on pricing or you read the book on testimonials, when you read those books you don’t always know why you like the book so much. Sure there’s a structure. Sure there’s a system, but more critically there are case studies and examples and analogies and stories and that’s what keeps the progression going ahead. Fact and figures they are very good but they are very tiring. Storytelling becomes very critical. It’s not only critical to get the message across in a meaningful way, but it’s also very helpful to know how to construct stories so that your audience remembers them.

There are lots of storytelling books and there are lots of storytelling workshops, so why is this one going to be different?

This one is different because this is storytelling versus storytelling. When you open a book on storytelling, essentially they’re teaching you how to write short stories or they’re telling how to write a script or a movie. Very rarely are you going to get storytelling that helps you construct stuff from business, for writing articles, for adding to podcast or seminars or just about everything that you do in business.

How do you connect it back to the business? How do you create books? How do you create reports? How do you create witch stories embedded in them so they become irresistible? That’s not what most workshops and books online are going to be able to teach you and that’s why this workshop is so critical.

Come join us in Nashville on the second, third and fourth of December or if you’re in Europe it’s the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth of December. You can find everything at psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. The prices are going up. We always raise prices and they’re going to go up every 20 days or so. By the time you get to it several months later, which is when the workshop begins, it will be at its highest price. We are still in the early bird stages so go to psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop and we’ll see you there.

If you haven’t read The Brain Audit, you should read The Brain Audit. Why? Because it’s one of the coolest business books you will ever read. It has lots of stories and it’s the barrier to the workshop. You have to rear The Brain Audit before you get there, so either the workshop and The Brain Audit or join us at 5000bc.com.

That’s it for me on a Friday evening, not 4am, so that’s a little different. Bye for now.

Storytelling is “persuasion with class”
Does the brain actually process thoughts in a step-by-step manner? You can use all the “buy now” buttons and countdown clocks, but it just comes across as aggressive. You can use facts, figures, and yes, they all work to persuade, but storytelling does it with finesse. See how stories are used in the excerpt of The Brain Audit to get your attention with finesse.

Storytelling struggles without a catalyst. And yet a catalyst doesn't have to be in your face. It can be quiet, almost introspective. So how do you create powerful catalysts for your stories? And then once you have the catalyst in place, how do you connect the story back to your article, podcast or presentation?

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Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/58

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this storytelling episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What is a catalyst and why you need it in your story
Part 2: What is the point of a story
Part 3: How to use storytelling in your presentations, articles and sales letters
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.

Useful Resources and Links

Live Workshop: How to create well-told stories that create a bond with your audience without sounding unprofessional
Article Writing Article: Why We Struggle To Write Articles: The Myth Of Unique Content
Story Telling Goodies: Coming Soon. Email Renuka for more details. renuka@psychotactics.com

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The Transcript

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This is The 3 Month Vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza.

In 2003, I stopped watching TV. It wasn’t like I didn’t like TV. In fact, I probably liked it too much. I’d spend two, three hours every single day, watching TV. It didn’t seem like two or three hours; it seemed like just might be half an hour. I’d switch it on at six o’clock in the evening, then it would be seven o’clock, then eight o’clock and then nine o’clock. And of course, there was the morning news. In effect, I was spending three or four hours watching completely crazy stuff. At this point, my brother-in-law Ranjit moved to New Zealand. He lived with us for several months before finding his own place. In the month before he left, we had a conversation. It wasn’t a conversation really. It was more like a bet. He said that I watched too much TV, and I said, “No, no, no, you watch too much TV.” We took this bet, and the bet was that the next person that switches on the TV loses. We didn’t say what that person loses, but right after that discussion, not one of us touched that remote control. The TV sat in the corner for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. Ranjit moved out, and it still sat in the corner. We didn’t switch it on.

A few months later, we put the TV in the closet and eventually we just got rid of it. What’s the point of the story? What we’re listening to here is this unfolding of the story, but right at the core of it is a catalyst and that catalyst is causing us to move the story forward because that catalyst has speeded up some action, and that’s taking us towards an endpoint. When we look at the same story without the catalyst, it becomes very boring. Let’s run that same story once again. Let’s say, my brother-in-law, Ranjit wasn’t around and that one day I decided to stop watching TV and so I kept the remote to the side. That was it, 13 years have passed, and I haven’t watched TV. It’s not as interesting, isn’t it? That one little factor that came into play, which is my brother-in-law stepping in, the bet and then both of us being very pigheaded about it and not watching TV that’s what causes all the drama.

You’ve got to have a catalyst in your story, but you also have to get that story to an end point, and that is what we’re going to cover in today’s podcast. We’re going to look at this understanding of the catalyst, which could be an active catalyst or an inactive catalyst. The second thing that we look at is what is this catalyst leading to, why are we doing this whole story thing in the first place? What is the endpoint? The third thing that we’re going to look at is how are you going to use this storytelling in your presentations, in your articles, in your sales letters? We’ll take a look at some of those things.

Part 1:What Is The Catalyst

Let’s get started with the first thing, which is understanding the catalyst and how it can be active or inactive. If you look at the rating of all the podcasts, you’ll see a little C symbol on it. That C symbol, it stands for clean. It means that you’ll never get any bad language on this podcast, you’ll never hear any swear words, you’ll never hear anything that you would hear on another podcast. All of this goes back to one moment in time when I was in school. I didn’t use any bad language and then suddenly when I was in the sixth grade, I decided that every third word had to be a swear word. I don’t know how it started. I don’t know why it started, but the moment I’d get on to the playground with my friends at school, I would start to use the swear words. One day, my brother showed up, and he’s standing there and he’s watching me. I’m playing and using all these swear words. Suddenly I realize, “Oh, what is he doing standing there?” He’s got this evil grin on his face, and he goes and he says, “I’m going to tell daddy about this.” That’s the first moment that I realize, “Oh, all these swear words, all the stuff that I’ve been doing, he’s going to report me.” He’s my brother; I couldn’t do anything to him. He still had to get home in one piece.

I go home, but now I’m terrified. I know my brother, he is going to tell his story. He is going to tell my father that I’m using all these swear words. I’m expecting some real trouble. I don’t know what the trouble is going to be, but I know there is going to be trouble. My father says to me, “Sean, I would prefer that you didn’t use bad language anymore.” “That’s it?” That was it. That was pretty much it. Over 30 years have passed since that moment and to this day, I am deeply embarrassed if I have to use bad language even by mistake. What we’re experiencing here is this concept called the catalyst. For the story to reach dramalevel, you need that catalyst. You need something to happen; you need something to speed up those bunch of events, so that you get to the other side, whatever that other side is. When we examine this, we say, “Well, what was the catalyst or who was the catalyst?”

We could say that my brother was the catalyst because if he hadn’t gone on this big tell-tell mission, then I wouldn’t have had the problem. Somehow I think that wasn’t the catalyst. It was the calm. The fact that my father didn’t punish me that struck a chord. That calm, it became the inactive catalyst. When we look at the catalyst, we look at something that’s active and something that’s inactive. To me at least, the active catalyst is someone or something that’s pretty much in your face. When I told you some stories in some other podcasts about how my friend Joan, she got into the space and she asked me about my trip to New Zealand. When we were immigrating to New Zealand, she became the active catalyst. She was that one force that pushed me along the journey or did I tell you the story about my mother-in-law and how we went for a week into Northland, which is just a couple of hours from Auckland. These were the early days of Psychotactics. I took some books with me, some business books and she said, “No, no, no, we’re going on a break, and you’re not going to read anything on that break.”

Here’s what I did, when they went for a walk, I read my business books, sitting in the hotel. When they went to the beach, I continued to read my business books. When I got back to Auckland several days later, I’d finished all those books. I didn’t get any walk and didn’t go to the beach, but I finished reading my books, and that catapulted me into this world of Psychotactics, which is what you know of today. When I’m looking at story-telling, I’m looking at, “Well, is this an active catalyst or is this an inactive catalyst?” To me, an active catalyst is something like the drip drip, drip that water that leak that instant fix that has to happen now. The inactive catalyst is something that is introspective that you have to think about. I would say the mother-in-law story that would be an active catalyst. The story by Joan and how she got us moving to New Zealand that would be an active catalyst. The story about my father and how he was so calm, to me that became an inactive catalyst. It became something that was introspective, something that I had to go back and think about what I was doing.

If you want to segregate them into two bits, you can say, “Well, we’re going to have an active catalyst here, someone that is agitating you to move towards that destination that urgency is in place and then you see the interactive catalyst, where you ponder, and you think about it or you read a book and that book changes your life and that becomes the inactive catalyst.” Whether you choose an interactive or an active catalyst, the point is that when you’re telling a story, those elements need to be in place. When you write your story, you need to know very quickly what is that catalyst, who is that catalyst and how did it change whatever you were doing? All that bad language that I was using with my friends that was my everyday life, nothing was changing, nothing changed in that world until the catalyst came along. The catalyst became calm and then I got to a destination.

Part 2: What Does The Catalyst Lead To?

That takes us to our second part, which is what is the point of this story? What is the point of the catalyst? Christopher Vogler has this story telling seminar, and it’s about the hero’s journey and how the hero goes on this massive journey somewhere and then he comes back a changed person. In one of his story telling seminars, he talks about this sheriff. The sheriff decides he wants to retire, so he’s hanging up his guns. He doesn’t want anything to do with all this violence and gun slinging. He just wants to live peacefully, and while he’s going about doing this peaceful routine of his every single day, he notices this pretty woman. He sees her buying some groceries and then another time; he sees her walking down the street and slowly he’s falling in love with this woman. Suddenly, a group of bandits ride into town, and one of the people that they kidnap is the woman.

Suddenly, his whole peaceful routine, it’s finished. Now, he’s got to pick up those guns and get back into this world of violence that he has left behind. Let’s assume the story unfolds as it should. He meets the bad guys. He gets rid of them. He gets the woman back, but what’s the point of the story? When I tell you the story about how Joan got us to New Zealand, there is a point to that story. When I tell you about how I read the book by Jim Collins, which is “Good to Great” and it asked me, “What can you be the best in the world at?” Well, there is a point to that story. When my father said, “Hey, Sean I would prefer you don’t use this filthy language,” there was a point to that story, and that is critical. Most people think that if they just tell the story that’s fine, but it’s not. You have to have a point through the story. As kids, we know that this is the moral of the story, and it’s not necessarily the moral that we’re looking at here. We’re looking at why are you telling me the story?

When we started selling the Brain Audit, which was way back in 2002, I had written this book, this PDF and then I went to this guy who was selling stuff online. His name was Joe Vitale. Joe was very excited with the book. He said, “Hey, this book is really good, I could promote it for you.” He got us to do stuff. He got us to get our credit card system in place. He got us to get the sales page up. All of this had to be done in a week and then we were waiting for him to promote it. A week passed, and he didn’t do anything. A month passed, he didn’t do anything. Suddenly, we noticed that people were buying the Brain Audit. The point of the story is that Joe was not supposed to sell anything for us in the first place. He was supposed to be a kicking angel. What I call a kicking angle and kicking angle is someone that comes in there and kicks you and gets you moving and then moves out of the way. They don’t buy anything from you. They don’t sign up for any of your courses. They just make sure that somehow you get moving. Now, you know the point of the story because if I wrote an article about kicking angels, and I started out with the Joe Vitale story, you know Joe was the kicking angle.

The point of the story is that when someone promises to sign of course or they decide that they want to come to your workshop, or maybe they just decide to promote your book, but do nothing and yet there is a point to that story. There was a catalyst that catalyst was Joe. He came and he created all of this boat rocking and then he disappeared, and that was the point of the story. His disappearance was the whole point of the story, and so you’ve got to have these two elements in your storytelling. You’ve got to know who or what is the catalyst? Is that catalyst just something that you’re thinking about? Is it something that is introspective and inactive or active like Joe, like, “Come on, get your credit cards together, get your stuff together.” Once we know that catalyst and then we need to know well what was the point of the story because that point of the story helps us reconnect to the article, to the sales, to everything else. Without that point of the story, it doesn’t matter. The story is just a story with no real connection.

Part 3: How To Use The Storytelling In Your Presentations, Articles And Sales Letters

This takes us to the third part, where we start to look at how do we use this in our communication, whether we’re doing sales letters or articles or presentations or anything at all, how do we use it? On the Psychotactics website, there is a product called Black Belt Presentations. In Black Belt Presentations, I talk about how we manage to sell $20,000 worth of product at a single conference. The story that precedes that conference is even more interesting. That is because I went to Australia, and I spoke at this conference and I hardly sold anything. I watched as other presenters not only sold stuff, but people were stampeding to the back of the room to get their stuff. I wanted to create that stampede, so what I have there is this whole point of the catalyst. I stood there like an idiot, watching as other people succeeded while I failed miserably. The point of the story is very simple; I needed to figure out what they did and how they did it and how I could do the same. That day when we sold $20,000 in a single hour at a conference, it goes all the way back to the point where I failed, and that point of failure was the catalyst. What is the point of the story?

Well, if we were just at a party, and we’re drinking some wine and eating some cheese, it makes for some great entertainment because hey you succeeded, but what are you going to do with it when you get to the sales page? This is where stories are so effective because they help the reader to get into that same mindset that you were in. When this goes on to a sales page, and I tell the story, I can then connect it to the Black Belt series. Then you realize, “Well, if I’m going to make a presentation, if I’m going to fail, then no, I’d rather not fail, I’d rather figure out how to be able to set up my slides, how to work out, how the audience participates, how they react, I need to know all this information and me need to know how to put my presentation together.”

The reason a client is going to buy the Black Belt Presentations, even though it’s not a cheap product is because of the story. The story starts them on that journey. It sends them through the catalyst and eventually there is a point that you do not want to be standing there and watching while others sell and you do nothing. You don’t always have to tell a story to sell a product, but you have to tell a story to get an idea across. Let’s say I was going to tell a story about how kindness is more powerful when dealing with human beings than say brute force or anger or frustration. Then, I could tell you the story of how my father said, “I wish you wouldn’t use that language.” Now, we have a point to the story. The whole point of the story is that you’ve created change, and so this takes you right into writing your article about change, about kindness. You start off with the story about the father and the son, you then move through the catalytic moment and then finally what’s the point of the story. It’s kindness works better and then talk about how kindness works with dolphins and dogs and people and how all the elements that you’re going to cover in your article. The storytelling that’s the whole magnet. That’s the thing that sucks me into reading the rest of the article.

If you do not have the skills to tell a story and you don’t get it through the catalyst and you don’t finally get to the point of the story, well it’s a not wasted exercise, but it’s entertainment, possibly entertainment is good enough. When you’re in business, when you’re writing that article, when you’re writing your sales letter, you need to be able to tell those stories using this catalyst.

Summary

Let’s summarize what we have covered today. We covered three things. The first thing is the catalyst and how we can have that active catalyst and the interactive catalyst. The active catalyst is something urgent. The roof has just fallen, you have to fix it. Your friend runs into you while you’re grocery shopping, and she says, “No, no, no, you have to get to New Zealand now.” Then there is the inactive catalyst, something you read, something that’s introspective. The catalyst alone is not that important if there’s no point to it, so there must be a point. It’s like, why is this happening? Why is my brother-in-law stepping into my life and taking a bet with me about the television? It’s changed my life. I stopped spending two, three, four hours. I thought I was spending just a little time in front of the TV, but when I stopped watching TV and when I threw it out and gave it away that’s when I realized, “Oh my God, I was spending so much time in front of this stupid device that taught me nothing.” There was a point to the story, and it wasn’t just entertainment. Now, it could be entertainment, but in business, you’re going to have to connect it to something that you’re selling or something that you’re telling. If it is something you’re telling, like an article, then how does it connect?

We saw that with the Black Belt Presentation, the whole story could then fit in, so that you would decide, “Well, yes I don’t want to be in that situation,” or if I’m talking about my father’s story then I could connect it to kindness and how kindness works very well in changing the perception of other people. There you have it, the catalyst, the point of the catalyst and then how to connect it back to whatever you’re telling or whatever you’re selling. What’s the one thing that you can do today? Well, the one thing that you can do today it start off with the point of the story. Why are you telling the story? What change do you want to occur? When you do that, then you have to go out and seek the story that fits into that point. You can work it from there forward. It’s not easy. We have to learn how to do this, but always there has to be the point. Otherwise, it’s just entertainment.

Talking about entertainment, have you been to a Psychotactics Workshop? Well, there is one showing up in Nashville, Tennessee on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December, and then we go to Amsterdam, the Netherlands on the 15th, 16th, and 17th. Psychotactics Workshop is a lot of fun. I know lots of people promised fun, but this is a lot of fun and you learn systematically, just like you’ve been learning on this podcast, there is a system and by the end of it, you are exceedingly good at story telling. That’s the goal. The goal is not to give you information. Information will come to you in notes and like in all workshops, there will be slides and presentation, but most of the time you will be working and having fun in your groups and learning to write stories, which is what the goal is after all.

You go to www.Psychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop. You have to read the Brain Audit before you get there. You can get the Brain Audit at Psychotactics or on Amazon, but you have to have the Brain Audit, otherwise you cannot attend the workshop and learn how to tell stories like really good stories, stories that you can use in your articles, in your podcasts, in your presentations, on your website, on your About Us page, pretty much everywhere. Storytelling is a craft. You can learn it and you can become very good at it. You also want to check out the membership at 5000bc.com. That’s where we hang around, where there’s lots of information, but also where I am on a consistent basis, answering questions. That’s 5000bc.com and as always I’m on Twitter and Facebook at Sean D’Souza and Sean@Psychotactics.com. Bye for now.

Do you want to write that article, because you do have something to say?  And your audience wants to hear it. So what is stopping you? Find out ‘Why We Struggle To Write Articles (And The Myth Of Unique Content).

No matter where you go, you run into people with the same problem?time. Whether you're a small business owner, or run a big company, it's all about time, and getting things done. A lot of time saving can be done without too much effort on your part?and by simply using software. Software that does very smart stuff is what we all need. Here's the list of three core areas where I use the software.

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Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/57
Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com
Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza
Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

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Software and Hardware Mentioned In This Episode: Mac 

Default Folder: http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/
Text Expander: https://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/index.html
Dragon Naturally Speaking: http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm
Mailbox: http://www.mailboxapp.com
Evernote: http://www.evernote.com
Dropzone: http://www.mailboxapp.com

Plantronics DSP400: Plantronics DSP-400 Digitally-Enhanced USB Foldable Stereo Headset and Software

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In this episode Sean lists three core areas where he uses software to save time.

Part 1: How to handle repetitive tasks
Part 2: What are the factors of communication
Part 3: How to store all your ideas
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

Read about: The Four Critical Zones Required to Speed Up Your Learning
Episode 3: Unusual Time Management Ideas (Audio and Transcript)
Chaos Planning: Why you should Forget Business Planning and Goal Stting

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The Transcript

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This is The 3 Month Vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza.

It was almost the end of the Second World War when Boeing came out with a plane that was called the B-29. It was the first ever high-altitude bomber. It could fly at over 22,000 feet. It’s one thing to have a plane that can fly at such heights, but you also have to be able to predict what’s going to happen to the plane at that height. These planes they were at a Pacific air base and 2 Air Force meteorologists were given the job to prepare wind forecast so that they could figure out how they could get that plane going in that height. Using the information that they had, they decided that the speed was 168 knots.

However, their commanding officer could not believe the forecast. He thought that they had overestimated the speed of the wind. He thought it was too high. However, on the very next day the B-29 pilots reported wind speeds of 170 knots and that moment in time was when the jet stream was discovered. The question is how do you get to jet stream, because when we look at very successful people what we’re seeing is that they’re flying at these very high altitudes at very high speeds. While our lives might be completely different from these people, what we have in common is the factor of time. They have the same 24 hours as we do and they make use of their time.

Today I’m going to talk about time yet again, but this time I’m going to focus on software. We’re going to look at how software can make your life a lot better and a lot quicker and, of course, you have more time to do the things that you really want to do. In today’s broadcast we’re going to cover 3 elements. One is repetitive tasks; the second is tasks that involve communication; and the third one which is tasks that involve storage in finding things. This is where we come to a fork in the road because many of you might be using a PC and I’m using a Mac and I switched from a PC to Mac in 2008 and I have never looked back.

There is going to be some overlap. You’re going to get some of the software that is available both in PC and Mac, but what you’ve got to understand is the concept. The concept is more about repetitive, about communication and storage software. You’ll find that on a PC. Don’t be too stressed out that this is like a Mac presentation. Let’s start off with the first one, which is the repetitive task that I have to do every day.

Part 1: Repetitive Tasks

The first thing that you have to do every single day no matter whether you’re a PC or Mac is to find folder. You save something and you need to find a folder and on the Mac you get something called Default Folder. This is one of the best tools that I have found. What this does is immediately it gives you a little heart option and that makes it a favorite, which means that when you’ve got sudden folders that you use on a regular basis you can assign a little heart to them and then every time you save it you click on the heart, those folders show up and goes to box.

My set up is across computers. It would be this folder and subfolder and I would spend a few seconds maybe 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds trying to get to that folder and what Default Folder does is it takes me there in 1 second. I can also set up Default Folder so that it very quickly gets me to that folder by pressing a shortcut and this is in the preferences. Without getting very technical about it, what you’ve got to do is have a software that can get you to the folder very, very quickly. You can generate thousands of shortcuts all sitting on the desktop.

This saves you 10 seconds here, 5 seconds there, 20 seconds there but more importantly it saves you all that energy of opening up folders and subfolders, which is what we do on a regular basis. That’s the first thing that is very repetitive.

The second thing that we do, which is very repetitive, is answer the same questions over and over again, like for instance your email address. You might be typing it several times a day, maybe your website or a website that you go to. The point is that software like Text Expander will do that for you. You just have a little shortcut, like for instance with me, I just type SX and it types out sean@psychotactics.com.

If I type browser X, it will spit out 3 paragraphs that tell the person who’s just emailed me, “Wait a second. You want this download, you have to go and check on another browser because maybe this browser is not working.” It gives us long message of 2 or 3 paragraphs and it does so in 1 second. Every single day what I have is a whole bunch of messages that come to me that are quite repetitive in nature. When I answer, Text Expander will actually say, “You have been using this on a regular basis. You have been answering this way on a regular basis. Would you like to save this as a snippet?”

For instance, I use the word The Brain Audit several times, because I wrote the book. Text Expander will watch while I’m doing this The Brain Audit, The Brain Audit, The Brain Audit and then it will say, “Do you want to save this as a snippet,” and then I can put in a little shortcut like TBA and then I have The Brain Audit. Not only do I have The Brain Audit, but it’s capitalized like T capitalized and B capitalized and A capitalized. All of this stuff is very repetitive and within The Brain Audit I have terms like target profile or reverse testimonials and I have shortcuts for all this.

Who’s going to remember all those shortcuts? The program does it for you. It reminds you every time you don’t use the shortcut, “You had the shortcut TBA for The Brain Audit. Use it the nest time.” After a while, the program is starting to think for you as well. These are 2 repetitive things that you have to do, open up folders and store things in folders and for that you have Default Folder.

The second thing is just answers that you give clients, stuff that you have to write in email, email addresses, maybe just your address, maybe you just have to type in your address send this to whatever PO Box number, whatever. That can be made very unrepetitive with this software called Text Expander, which then takes us to the second one which is a factor of communication.

Part 2: Factor of Communication

When I moved to New Zealand in the year 2000, I moved into a rental place. I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money so I bought myself a little plastic chair, which was about $10 at the store. Every one who was back home; my wife Renuka was still in India, all my friends were in India, I didn’t know anyone in New Zealand. What I was doing is using messenger. Back then I was using the PC, so MSN messenger. I would spend several hours on MSN messenger just chatting.

At some point I got what is called RSI, that’s Repetitive Stress Injury. The RSI got so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night. My shoulders hurt. My forearms hurt. My fingers felt like there was an electric current going through them. I had to go for physiotherapy and then I had to go for acupuncture and it seemed I was so afraid of so much as opening the garage door because I was in so much pain all the time. If you just wrapped me on the knuckles, I would fall down on the floor in pain.

At that point in time, I didn’t have this software. When Renuka got to New Zealand, she was actually doing a lot of typing for me. I wasn’t working. I had to stop working and she started doing typing and the point I was building websites. What is the point of this story? The point of the story is that you don’t need to get RSI to get on to the software. This software is Dragon Naturally Speaking.

If you use Dragon Naturally Speaking several years ago, you’re probably very frustrated with the way it worked. You needed to practice for about half an hour train the system then it would get most of the stuff wrong. It wouldn’t work on browsers. It wouldn’t work on forums. It would do this and it would do that. It is got very good in recent years. You can now train it for as little as 5 to 7 minutes and it will recognize your accent and it will start to work just out of the box. Almost out of the box, 5 to 7 minutes is not a lot of time.

The point is that it’s not very easy to get into that mode where you’re dictating, but think about every single bus in the ’60s and ’70s was already doing this form of dictation. They would say a sentence, putting the punctuation, do all that stuff to their secretaries. It’s not like it’s something that is very hard to do. You just have to get used to it and the way to get used to it is to use a phone.

A lot of phones have this system where you can dictate into the phone and that’s how I started. I started using Siri on my iPhone and I would just respond to emails and after a while I got used to speaking like this, which is I will return your email later, full stop. In fact I got so used to it that one day I had to leave a message on an answer phone and I said, “I will call you back later, full stop.”

You can actually switch very quickly between the way we speak or the way I’m speaking right now and then moving into punctuation. This saves you a lot of time, because you cannot believe how fast you can go through this whole system of dictating answers and that is how I get through a lot of my email every day. I have to be careful that I read whatever I have dictated, because the pronunciation is not always very clear.

The computer will spit out whatever your say, because fort may sound like fourth and that’s what the computer will type. You’ve got to do the editing and you can’t afford to be sloppy. I’ll admit I had been sloppy and then I’ll hit send too quickly, so you have to do that a little bit at least, but it saves you enormous amount of time. This is just communication and this is just 1 software in communication.

The second software that I use with communication and this saves me an enormous amount of time is something that Dropbox gives absolutely free. It’s called Mailbox. What it does is it allows you to postpone your email for later. You can postpone it for a month or you can postpone it for a day or tomorrow or later this evening or whatever. When you think of it the first time you think, “Wait a second. You were just procrastinating.” No, what I’m trying to do at all times is keep my inbox down to zero.

Here’s the reason why I have to do that. I have to do that because every time the inbox is filled with, I don’t know, a dozen, 2-dozen, 3-dozen, 4-dozen emails I have to scan through all those emails and that’s no good. Either I act on the emails or I put them off until later. What I do is supposing I have to get in touch with someone a month later. I will swipe and say, “Get this email back to me after a month,” and then exactly a month later it will show up and then I can act on it, so it acts like a to-do list.

Of course, you’re human and you don’t want to deal with some email and you will procrastinate and that’s fine. Most of the time your goal should be to get that email box down to zero. There is other software like SaneBox and other stuff that you can use. This Mailbox it’s free and it works really well. The goal is to keep your inbox down to zero. You cannot believe how addictive this is. After a while you’re swiping and deleting and responding and finishing off your email so that you don’t have to deal with it and you don’t have to scan through al those read emails and figure out which one do I have to get open into the box and put in that folder and this folder; no, nothing like.

I know you’re skeptical. My wife Renuka she is skeptical off a lot of stuff that I think I wonderful because I think a lot of stuff is wonderful. I showed it to her a few months ago, she wasn’t interested. I showed it to her 2 weeks ago, she wasn’t interested. Then last week for some reason she got interested and now she’s hooked. I can tell you, you will be hooked. Try and get your inbox down to zero by using Mailbox.

With communication, there are these 2 things that helped me get to jet stream and that is Dragon naturally Speaking. It’s amazing and often enough they give it to you at a discount so go and look for the discount. You’ll get a Dragon Naturally Speaking and get yourself a Plantronics. If you’re swayed by Dragon telling you to buy their own microphone, don’t do it. Get yourself a Plantronics 400 and that’s a very good microphone. I’ll list this at the bottom of the podcast. The second thing you want to do is you want to get Mailbox.

What we’ve covered so far is we’ve looked at stuff that’s repetitive in nature and Default Folder will help you there and Text Expander will help you there. We’ve also looked at communication and what I use a lot is Dragon Naturally Speaking and Mailbox and finally we’ll look at storage. Let’s go to the third part which is storage.

Part 3: Storage

When you write articles, when you create presentations, when you have to write books, you’re going to put facts and figures and let me tell you this. Facts and figures are really, really boring. They are so boring because they first of all are intimidating the hard to remember. The only thing that your clients really remember are stories, but the problem is that you cannot the stories. You cannot get to the case studies. You cannot get to the examples and so then you spend enormous amounts of time in research.

The worst time to do research is when you’re sitting down to write your article. The worst time to do research is when you’re sitting down to do your presentation. You need to have all of this information in advance and episode 41 covered that. It said, “How to save 2 zillion hours in research using Evernote.” Go back to episode number 41. Listen to that or read the transcript and you will learn how I use Evernote.

The second thing that I use and we have brought Default Folder right back. Default Folder allows you to tag your files. If you’re even slightly interested in finding a file then you want to tag it when you save it. This is very important because let’s say you did a cartoon and the cartoon was about a bear. Then later on you wanted to find something to do with intimidation or fear and you typed in intimidation or fear. What kind of results would you get? Nothing.

What you do when you save a file is you put in some little tags. When you put in those tags and Default Folder does this really well then every time you type in those keywords or something close to those keywords it will bring up that file, which is called bear.psd. You look for intimidation and fear and you got bear and you go, “I could use the bear,” and that’s what I do. When I’m saving files, I’ll give them little tags.

You might not do this because you think it takes time, but it only takes time on the front-end. Once you get started and you really are in a project you need all the energy and all the resources at your disposal and all of this software really comes to help you and that brings us to the end of this episode.

Summary

We’ve covered 3 things. The first is repetitive, the second one is communicative, and the third one is the storage. We looked at Default Folder and how it will take you exactly where you need to be. We also looked at Text Expander and how it expands little snippets of text or huge amounts of texts and it does it in a matter of seconds. We then went to communication. We looked at Dragon Naturally Speaking and we looked at Mailbox, which can also be procrastination heaven, but let’s face it. Your inbox is procrastination heaven already. You might as well have an empty inbox.

Finally, we looked at storage and we looked at Evernote and that’s episode number 41. Go and listen to it, read it. Default Folder, if you use tags well you will find things like you can’t imagine. These are the 3 things that will get you into jet stream, but what’s the one thing that you can do today?

The one thing that you can do today is find a Text Expander. I know this for sure that the PC has Text Expander as well. I think one of them is called Breevy that is B, R, E, E, V, Y. I don’t know how well it works. I know Text Expander works really well. Get yourself a Text Expander and stop this typing over and over and over again. You will thank me later. You will send me chocolates. You will send me to Disneyland. You will be really thankful that you use this software. When you finish this podcast, go back to your office and buy a Text Expander, whichever one for the Mac or the PC and there you will enter your own jet stream.

An interesting fact about the jet stream with climate change that jet stream has changed. It’s taking pilots 11 minutes more to get to their destination. Of course, when they spend 11 minutes more in the sky they are causing more climate change so it might take you longer to get to your destination. You don’t want to do that in your office. You want to get to that jet stream and you want to get there as quickly as possible. Get the software and start using it today and then you can send me the tickets later. You can send me the chocolates later.

Before we go, there is a storytelling workshop coming up. It’s in Nashville, Tennessee and it’s on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December. We have dates and we’re also in Europe in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and that’s on the 15th, 16th and 17th of December. Story telling is used everywhere, but the beauty of storytelling is its stickiness. When I tell you the story about The Brain Audit, I only have to tell you that story once and then you can tell it 100 times over and never lose the impact and that is the beauty of storytelling,.

Storytelling is used for podcast that’s why you like this podcast because there are so many stories. You read The Brain Audit, there are so many stories and so many case studies and so many examples. It’s not enough to just tell the story. It’s how you craft the story and that’s what we’re going to learn. We’re going to learn how you find the story, how you craft the story and then how you connect the story to your business.

It’s very easy to create … It’s not easy to create story but once you know how to do it, it’s easy. The hard thing is connecting it back to your business in a professional way and we’re going to do this at the storytelling workshop, where learning how to create a driveway moment, where people just want to listen to the end of your story. Go topsychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop and we’ll see you either in Nashville, Tennessee or in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

You have to have read The Brain Audit however, because that’s the condition, that’s the barrier. If you haven’t read The Brain Audit, you should be reading it anyway. It’s at psychotactics.com/brainaudit. Read the stories. Read the examples. See for yourself how facts and figures intimidate and get yourself into the jet stream of storytelling.

That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now and thanks for listening to The 3 Month Vacation. Bye-bye.

Still Reading?  In business to save time, we have to learn time crunching software. And to get better at our marketing, we have to understand our customers. One of the ways to get better is to understand how the brain works. Does the brain actually process thoughts in a step-by-step manner? Click here to get a free excerpt on Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t). Get ready to enjoy the concise and easy to absorb information.

 

Storytelling has a lot of guidelines and rules. Yet, some of the critical elements slip under the radar. You don't realise storytelling elements and secrets that are hiding in plain sight. And storytellers can't always explain what they're doing?and so these elements of storytelling get left out. And yet, they're incredibly powerful. Like for instance, the concept of "anticipation" before the "problem". It's nowhere to be found? Unless of course you listen to this episode on how to tell riveting stories. Welcome to Goldilocks land! 

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Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/56

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this episode Sean talks about how to create stories that are very powerful.

Part 1: How the ‘The Wall’ changes the pace of a story
Part 2: The power in using the ’The Reconnect’
Part 3: Why anticipation is so critical in storytelling
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

The Brain Audit: How to introduce your product in a language the customer understands
Read or listen to: How to double your writing speed
Special Bonus: How to design the pricing grid for your product

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The Transcript

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This is The 3 Month Vacation, and I’m Sean D’Souza.

I was about 2 years old when I first had a bout of convulsions. It didn’t start up as convulsions. I was standing there on the balcony, looking out on the road, and then I fell off the stool that I was standing on. As the story goes, I ran to my mother. She noticed that I was having convulsions, and she panicked. Now, panic would be the wrong word to use because what she did next was bundled me in her arms and ran with me to the hospital.

To put you in the frame of mind of what India was when I was growing up, there were no phones or most people didn’t have phones. They didn’t have cars. You probably had a scooter if you were well off. That’s just how things were back then. What she had to do was run a distance of 2 kilometers, maybe 3 kilometers to get to the nearest hospital. When she got to the hospital, they wouldn’t admit me because I had meningitis and the hospital was not in the position to deal with cases of meningitis. Somehow, she managed to get them to admit me.

At that point in time, they asked for the mother. Now, my mother was very young at that point in time and they assumed that she was somehow the sister. They said, “No. No. No. You have to get the mother.” This is very odd in India because people tend to get married very early in India and yet they were insisting that they had to have the mother before they could go ahead with anything. There I was, not doing so well and the hospital authorities wouldn’t go ahead without dealing with the mother. Now, she convinced them but once they admitted me, there was one more problem. The doctor wasn’t so sure that I would survive the meningitis. He told my parents, and by that point, my father was there as well. He said, “I have to tell you this. Your son will either die or he’ll go mad.”

What you just heard was the story of my youth. The question is, why did you keep listening? Why did the story work? What is it that caused you to pay attention and not move away from the story?

In today’s episode, we’re going to cover storytelling elements: How to Avoid Boring Articles? The core of avoiding boring articles is to be able to tell stories, but stories are useful for presentations. They’re useful for books. They’re useful for webinars. They’re useful for pretty much everything. What happens is most of us load up our information with facts and figures, and those are very tiring but stories, they encapsulate everything. We’re going to learn how to create stories that are very powerful.

The 3 things we’re going to cover today are one, the wall; second, the reconnect; and third, the anticipation.

Part 1: The Wall

Let’s start off with the first one which is the wall. Every afternoon, every weekday, I go through the same routine. I pick up my niece from school. She’s now 11, that’s Marsha. We speak about stuff in the car. We do multiplication tables. Recently, we’ve been doing storytelling. I usually when I asked her, “Tell me of story about what happened in the weekend.” She goes, “Nothing.” Then I say, “What happened in class?” She goes, “Nothing.” This is the interesting part. You think that there’s nothing happening in your life, but there is a lot happening all the time. Then, we have to zero in onto one little thing and make it interesting, just about anything becomes interesting in the way you dealt it.

I said, “Tell me about your piano class on Saturday.” Her little face brightens up and the smile comes on, and she goes, “I didn’t practice before going to piano class on Saturday. Then when I got to the piano class, I was really afraid because I thought I would the play the piece really badly. But as it appears, I played quite well. In fact, I played it so well that the piano teacher said, ‘I’m going to put you on a more advanced piece.’ Of course, once she gave me the advanced piece, I couldn’t play it. She said, ‘No. No. No. No. No. You’re playing it in the wrong key.’ I should try to play in the right key, but it didn’t worked.”

The piano teacher gave her another chance. Of course, she was not playing the piece well, so they went back to the old piece, which is what she had practice. Marsha was quite happily playing her old piece, but playing it by ear, not reading the notes. Happy as a luck when she looked at the corner of the room and there was her mother. According to Marsha, her mother was glaring at her because Marsha hadn’t improved and she was back to square one. How could the day have been worse for Marsha?

Now, that was a really short story. Why would you hook in to the story? The reason the story works is because there were these little blips along the way, what we call the wall. What is the wall? The wall is … Think of it as like a heart monitor. The heart monitor, when it’s absolutely flat, will go “Beeeep.” There is no sound. Then when the heart is beating, it will “Dub dub, dub dub, dub dub.” There is this little spike that jumps in every now and then, and that creates a wall. That creates that fact that you know that your heart is actually working. This is what happens in storytelling. Most people tell a story in a very boring fashion. The reason why they tell that is because there story would just go from one end to the other without the spikes.

What were the spikes in Marsha’s story? The first spike was the fact that she was afraid she hadn’t practiced. That got your attention. Then she went on to a new problem, which is that she had to go there to the class and then play a new piece. Then when she couldn’t play that new piece, she ran into a whole bunch of problems. She was thrown back to the old piece, which was a good thing, at least, to Marsha’s eyes but bad thing in the mother’s eyes, which is why the mother was glaring at her from the corner of the room. Then as Marsha finished the story, she says, “How could the day get worse?” This is a perfect, little story just told from one end to the other with all of these little blips, these little blips, the other wall. The other wall that you have to climb across so you can get into the alley and there’s a wall there and you have to climb over that wall to get to the other side. This is what creates interest.

The wall can be an obstacle. It can be something funny. It can be something unusual. As long as it changes the pace of the story, it becomes the wall because you now have to get over that wall onto the other side before the story can continue. More stories don’t run that way. For instance, if we look at Marsha’s story, we could say, “We went to piano class. On the way, I almost slipped in a banana peel, but then I recovered because I wasn’t feeling so well. Anyway, I got to the class and I played my piece. Then, I played the second piece.” You can see where the story is going, but at one point in time, when she slipped in the banana peel, you got that spike in your head. Even though you might not have thought about it at the time, there was that spike and you see the spike everywhere.

What’s more important is the spike has been with you right since you heard your first story being read to you as a kid. If you look at something like Red Riding Hood, it’s a very simple story. The girl goes to her grandmother’s house and she’s got this bag of goodies that her mother has packed for the grandmother. What happens along the way? Red Riding Hood runs into the wolf. Before that, there was no problem at all. The forest was not that intimidating. She got flowers along the way. Then, along came the wolf. The wolf creates the spike in the story. Now, this is a wall that she has to get over. She has to solve that problem.

If you look at all the stories that you heard or have told your kids, you will find a consistency in this wall, this obstacle, which means that we have to create stories with these spikes, with these obstacles. Then, we have to climb over these obstacles or rather take the reader or the listener across the obstacle and then to the other side.

Here’s what I do with Marsha. I make her sit down with a sheet of paper. Then I get her to draw a line across. At the starting point, she has, say, maybe she’s going to piano class. The ending point is whatever happens at the end. In between, I get her to draw little dots or little spikes, whatever you want to call them, and she has to put in those obstacles. As soon as she puts in those obstacles, we fill in the rest later. The point is once you identify those obstacles, you are able to turn out far better stories because now what you’ve done is you have created that bounce, you have created an obstacle, you have created a wall, and of course, people have to then go over it.

When I started out this podcast, I started out with a story about meningitis. I didn’t spend time explaining to you how I was looking out of the window. I went straight into the bounce, straight into the wall. I had convulsions. I fell down. I then had to run to my mother. You have been thrown right in the middle of this bounce. Of course, the bounce didn’t stop until we got to the hospital because now you’re thinking, “Okay, things are going to get okay.” Then, we have another wall. They won’t admit me to the hospital. Then, we get over that wall. Now, they were asking for the mother because they don’t believe that my mother was the mother, that they thought that she was the sister. Then, when all of those problems have been resolved, the doctor says the chances are not good. What we have of these bounces all along the way, these walls all along the way, and you have to cross over, get over these walls to create a great story. This is just the first element of storytelling.

Part 2: The Reconnect

The second one is the concept called the reconnect. What is the reconnect? Right at the end of the previous section, which is when I was talking about the wall, I went right back to the story of meningitis. Immediately, your brain went from wherever it was right back to that original story. This is what storytellers use very effectively. They use the reconnect. They connect back to something they told you a while ago. It’s very powerful because that creates a bounce of its own. It takes you from where you are to where you used to be. If you’re to watch the movie Star Wars, there is this concept called the force. It’s used the force. Luke used the force. How many times does the word force show up in Star Wars? Apparently, more than 16 times. There you are in the cinema or watching the movie on a DVD or maybe on your computer, but you run into this concept of the force. Every time that reference to the force shows up and you don’t really notice it, but it just shows up, it takes you back to wherever you originally heard it or saw it.

Why is this reconnection so cool? The first thing is that often, it makes you feel very intelligent. The story is set up in a way that you know what is coming. When it does arrive, it makes you feel extremely intelligent. That’s what storytelling is about. It’s about making the reader feel a lot happier or a lot sadder, that they use to feel. You can feel that happiness or sadness as I edge into the meningitis story. You know what is coming next. You know how that story ended. It makes you feel very intelligent. It makes the reader or the listener feel very intelligent.

The second thing it does is it creates bounce. It bounces you back to wherever you were, and that creates that spike. It’s doing a dual job, but it does one more thing. It closes a loop. You can start off a story, and then knot in the story. Noticek what happened with my story. I can close that loop. I told you that the doctor said I would die or go mad. The loop wasn’t closed. What you can do is if you’re reconnecting at some point, you can close that loop. It’s very trendy to keep the loop open, but it drives people crazy.

This morning, I was on my walk and I was listening to an audio book about the brain. This author was talking about how he was at a David Attenborough conference. He was sitting there with someone else. They were having a discussion. Then he went into the discussion. About 20 minutes later, I’m going, “What did David Attenborough had to do with it?” He never closed that loop, and he will never close that loop. It will leave that gap in my brain, and that’s not a good thing. You want to create that disconnect, but then you want to reconnect later, you want to close that loop. That is the power of the reconnect.

Part 3: The Anticipation

With that, we go to the third part, where we talk about anticipation and why it’s so critical in storytelling. We were doing our workshop in Campbell, California around the year 2006. One of the participants stood up. She was going to tell her story. She told us that her mother was very, very beautiful. She also told us that her sister was a lot like her mother. She then went on to tell us how her father would take photographs, but photographs of the mother and the sister. Notice how we haven’t completed that story. We haven’t really told you what comes next, but the anticipation is killing because you know what comes next. This is the beauty of anticipation. You create anticipation knowing fully well that you’re not leaving any gaps, but that the client, the listener, your reader is filling in the story, that 10%.

This is what Anil Dharker told me when I was growing up and I was just starting out in my cartooning career. Anil was the editor of a newspaper called Mid-day. I was drawing cartoons for that newspaper. One day, he came up to me and he says, “Sean, you’re giving too much away. You need to get the customer, the reader to anticipate that 10%. You’re giving away 90% of the story, but you are getting them to anticipate the 10% because readers and listeners and clients are very intelligent. What you should do is leave out the bits. Don’t give the entire story.”

Now, when you think about the advice you’re getting here on this podcast, you think, “Wait a second, you just said not to leave out gaps.” Yes, you don’t leave out the gaps. You reconnect, but you don’t tell the entire story upfront either. We’re taking the example, you got the story about the meningitis. You’ve got the story about how I got admitted to hospital. What happened next, you don’t know the rest to that story. That gap hasn’t been closed and yet you’re intelligent enough to figure out that there was an ending and how that ending shows up, that we’ll find out.

The reason why we have anticipation is because it creates suspense, it creates unknowing suspense. When you say the boy got on the bus, he would never get off. What you’re doing is you’re going into the brain of the customer and they can see something bad unfolding. When I told you about that father that never took photographs of one of the daughters, you could see that insecurity building up. You could see that loneliness, that detachment. No one had to explain that you, but you can do this very simply by saying, “I woke up expecting it to be a great day.” Within those few words, you have already created anticipation. The reader knows, the listener knows that it’s not going to be a great day.

How is it going to unfold? These are the lines that you have to put in your speech, in your presentation, in your writing because when you put in these lines, they create that pause, they create that white space, they create that breathing space. It allows the reader to anticipate what’s going to happen next. How is it going to twist and turn? Into Marsha’s story, where she talks about just how she went to piano class, she could say, “I thought it was going to be a very bad day.” Immediately, your mind goes [whizzing 00:19:00] forward to, “Wait, she said bad day but she didn’t sound like it was going to be a bad day. Did it turn out to be a bad day or not?” When she got to the piano class and she was able to play, now you’re relaxing. Then she puts in the other spike, and she goes, “I played that piece really well.” That created another problem for me. You notice what’s happening, the anticipation is setting you up for that spike, the problem that comes next. For us, the anticipation, then the problem. The anticipation, then the problem.

Really this is what you have to do when you’re writing great stories. You have to get the reader in the framework, in that frame of mind so that they know that there is something going to change, something I was about to open the drawer when or I walked down the garden, expecting it to be a completely miserable day. It had been raining all morning. You know, even though you don’t know the story is going to unfold, you know that there is going to be a change. You’re creating anticipation. You’re creating that space for the reader and the listener to fill in the gaps in the head. That makes them again feel very intelligent. It also sets it up for that spike that we talked about in the first section.

Summary

What we’ve covered in today’s podcast has been 3 things. The first thing has been the wall. The wall creates those spikes. It creates that drama. It creates all of those blips that cause you to pay attention to the story. The second thing we looked at was the reconnect. How we start of something at the beginning; then somewhere in the middle, we connect; and then, we connect at the end, and there are these connections all over.

If you listen to Episode #54, you can hear all of these connects. Go back to Episode #54 and you can see all these reconnects, walls, and anticipation. Of course, that takes us to anticipation, which is that moment that tells you that something is going to change. It creates the suspense. It’s very, very powerful in storytelling. It’s this breathing space, this quiet just before the storm.

What’s the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you can do today is go back to Episode #54 and listen to that episode because I listened to it just a few days ago. It has all of the stuff. Most of the podcast have it, but I just listened to Episode #54, so I know it’s there, so go back and listen to it. You will see that the wall, the reconnect and the anticipation is there. You’ll get a much better idea because you’ll be able to know in advance when that’s showing up.

I had mentioned that we were going to do some workshops in Nashville, Tennessee and in Amsterdam, which is in the Netherlands. We are still looking for a venue. If you know some venues, let us know. In the meantime, if you would like to sign up for a storytelling workshop, then just email me at sean@psychotactics.com. We will send you more details. It’s still work in progress. As you know, we still haven’t found venue, which is the first step. If you know something, let us know.

Storytelling is incredibly important. A lot of us leave out storytelling. We give facts and figures. This is why most books and presentation and webinars are so boring. The reason why you find the Brain Audit so interesting is the number of stories and analogies and examples, and then go back and read your copy of the Brain Audit or go to www.psychotactics.com/brainaudit and buy a copy, and you will see how critical it is to have these stories and how it reminds you of what you learned weeks, months, years after you learned it.

In the end, statistics don’t sell. The story, the emotion that’s built in within that story, and a story well told is what sells a product or a service. You go for this year and the years to come must be to tell better stories, not to give more information. That brings us to the end of this episode. If you’re in 5000bc and you’re a member, then, please go in and ask questions about storytelling and I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions. If you haven’t joined 5000bc, then get your copy of the Brain Audit first, read the stories and then join 5000bc.

You know how I started this episode with the doctor saying that I would die or go mad. I didn’t die. That’s me, Sean D’Souza from The 3 Month Vacation saying bye for now. Bye-bye.

Still reading?
When we try to tell stories, we get stuck. When we try to learn a new skill, we get stuck. So, how do you dramatically increase your rate of learning without getting stuck? Find out here—Accelerated Learning: How To Incredibly Speed Up Your Skill Acquisition: Episode 52

When you're writing articles, it's easy to get locked into the mistake of simply starting up the article. That's a mistake—a big mistake. Outlining is what counts most of all, and yet outlines are hated with a vengeance. Is there a way to create outlines so you don't drive yourself crazy? And how do you create outlines for products, workshops etc? Let's find out in this episode on outlining, in The Three Month Vacation.-

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Note:

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/55

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What is the ‘Concept of Curiosity’?
Part 2: The Three Part Outlining System
Part 3: What is the Extraction Method?
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

5000bc: How to help you layer out distractions, and focus on the things you want.
Read or listen to : How To Get Ideas When Writing Article.

Special Bonus: How to increase your prices using the ‘Yes-Yes System’.

 

The Transcript

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This is The Three Month Vacation, I’m Sean D’Souza.

In the Antarctic summer of 1912, a rescue party set out in search of Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition team. Scott and his group of explorers had been missing for over eight months. Now, when the search and rescue team found Scott’s body they were horrified at the irony. All of Scott’s men were dead, but not just lying in the snow a million miles from nowhere. They died just eighteen kilometers from a supply depot. This supply depot would have given them all the food and the heating they needed. This depot could of saved their lives.

Instead, there they were frozen to death in the unrelenting snow. What was even worse was what Scott and his team knew when they died, and that was that they had missed their opportunity to be first at the South Pole. Roald Amundsen got there first. Now, the difference between Scott and Amundsen could be attributed to many things including bad luck, but the core of Amundsen’s team was based on planning. Amundsen’s team had no friends, they just had experts that would know what to do when things went wrong, and of course there were details. Amundsen labored over the team’s clothing, the ambiance of the prefabricated Norwegian cabin, the supply chain depots. He just went over everything in great detail.

In the end, luck played its role, but the better planner won. Amundsen was not only the first one to get to the South Pole, but he also managed to get back safely and to glory. His guide through the entire process was planning the journey. Outlining is about planning. When I was growing up I didn’t have any outlining lessons. I don’t remember going to school and doing any outlining, but I do know that when we do the article writing course we run into a lot of people that have these problems with outlining. Something happened at school that caused a lot of people to absolutely hate outlining.

If this hate is so great we miss the opportunity of doing better work and quicker work, and so we have to get over this hate of outlining, because it’s critical not just for your day to day planning, your weekly planning, but it’s also critical for books and podcasts and webinars, and yes of course for articles. Today I’m going to talk about articles, and how you’re going to use outlining, or three methods that you could use to create an outline, without all of that hate of course. One of the biggest objections to outlining is the fact that we don’t have time, and this is critical. When you don’t have time, that’s when you have to outline, because outlining saves time.

We spend about a third of our time outlining in different ways. Whether it’s a plan for the week or the month, or if it’s a book that I’m writing, or an article, or even this podcast it has been outlined in great detail, and that’s what enables me to go start at 5:00, by 5:45 I’m done. The second element, which you probably haven’t considered is doing the outline on paper. I always leave the office, I always go some other place, maybe to the library, maybe to the café, but you want to do the outlining on paper. This saves you an enormous amount of time. Again, because you don’t have to deal with phone calls, or technology, or Facebook popping up. It’s just you and the paper.

Now that we’ve got these couple of things out of the way, what are the three things that we’re going to cover today? The first thing that we’re going to cover is the concept of curiosity. The second is the three part outline, and the third is extraction.

Part 1: Concept of Curiosity

Let’s start off with the first one which is curiosity. Let’s say I throw three words at you, and those three words are organic sourdough bread. Now, what is your reaction? Immediately what you have is a factor of curiosity, so you say, “What is it? How long does the bread last? What’s the best way to keep it? Can I freeze it? What are the types of bread? Do you get white bread, and grain bread, and specialty bread?”

Effectively what you’ve done is stepped into the shoes of a five year old kid, and that five year old doesn’t know stuff about bread, or clouds, or recording software. What they do know is curiosity, and so what they end up doing is asking you a whole bunch of questions which involve how, and why, and when, and where, and all of these questions, and this forms the basis of an article. This forms the basis of a book. This forms the basis of any kind of planning that you’re doing, but of course it’s the most critical when you’re writing an article, because we tend to write articles more often than anything else.

Now there are two ways to do this curiosity based planning or outlining, and you have to go through two stages for this. The first thing you have to do is list a topic. For instance, in The Brain Audit we talk about the concept of target profile. Now, when you have that target profile you have to come up with the subtopics. What you do is you brainstorm. You just sit at the café and you write everything you can think of, not analyzing what you’re writing, just keep going at it. This is how we teach outlining on the article writing course and on the headline course.

For instance, we had Kai on the headline course, and he came up with his topic which is search engine optimization. Then he came up with his subtopics, which is Google, Bing, Black Hat, White Hat, spam, Google Update Keywords, keyword, Intent, Biointent, Long Tail, Short Tail, Competition. What he is doing there is he’s got this topic, and then he’s brainstorming all the subtopics. When you look at it, all those subtopics look like big topics in themselves. You look at something like keywords, and that’s a topic in itself, but then you go down to a deeper level and you say, “Okay, let’s talk about keywords. What is a keyword? Why is it important? How does it work? When does it work? Where does it go wrong,” and effectively you’ve stepped into some five year old’s shoe.

Almost instantly an objection seems to pop up. You think, “Well, someone has written about this before.” Search engines and keywords, this is not new stuff. Do you have to write new stuff? No, you don’t, because the questions that are being asked are being asked by someone, but the answers that you give they are your own answers. They’re written in your own style. They’re written with your own experience in mind. Even if you have very limited experience, still I want to know it from you, that’s why I’m reading your article. When you are sitting down to outline, you need to do this brainstorming. Without really thinking about anything, and that’s what I do.

I’ll just sit there and just write a whole bunch of stuff without analyzing anything, but some days you will notice that I will ask for questions. The reason why I ask for questions is not because I don’t know how to ask how and why and when, it’s just that you get the energy from someone else. If you’re struggling to do this, this brainstorming, just come up with a word, maybe like keywords, and then call a friend. Ask them to pummel you with questions, or take them out to coffee, and ask them to ask you all the questions pertaining to a topic. If they don’t know the topic it’s even better, because that’s when they’re going to ask you the questions that come to their mind.

Which of course takes us back to the organic sourdough bread, and you have this factor of what is it, how long do you keep the bread out, what’s the best way to keep it, can I freeze it? Maybe, just maybe at some point in time that topic of freezing just becomes a topic in itself. Now you have to go down, what is this freezing? How do you make it work for you? How do you unfreeze it, what’s the best thing to do, and it becomes a whole new topic in itself and that’s cool. For this podcast, I got all this information about the bread, because someone asked the question. When you go to this website on bread, they ask all the questions, and they answer all the questions, and of course all of them go into the website and in the brochure.

When you look at outlining at the very core it is stepping into the shoes of a five year old. In asking all the curiosity based questions, and if you can’t do it get someone else to help you. That takes us to the end of the first part, which is curiosity as a method of outlining. Let’s go to the second part, which is the method I use most of all because it’s the most efficient, and it’s called the three part system.

Part 2: The Three Part Outlining System

When kids grow up they usually have different sorts of treats. When I was growing up my grandma gave me bread. Bread was my treat.

During my vacations I used to go to my grandmother’s house, and when the bread man came, and the bread man used to come to the house with the bread. The bread was always very hot, and they were these little squares of bread, which in India we called pav. Yep, that’s what she’d give me as a treat and I loved it. That’s just a story about bread, but if you would take that story anywhere and split it up you could create three parts. You could say, “Tell us about your love story of bread. What is the state of bread when you were growing up,” and, “How is it different now?” Of course I’m making this up as I go along, but the point is anything can be split up into three parts.

When we took that topic of freezing bread, we can ask why do you freeze bread, how to freeze bread, and finally how to defrost bread. What we’ve done now is split up the topic into a whole bunch of subtopics. We answer those questions, and this is what I do in every call, on every workshop, on every book. A topic is split up into three topics. This topic of outlining we’ll split up into curiosity, and three part, and extraction. If you look at just about anything else that I do it’s always three parts. I’m only trying to do three parts always, but the three part system of outlining is more sophisticated, and I’ll tell you why in a second.

When we looked at pure curiosity we went what and how and when and where, but when we go through the three part system we say, “Well, freezing bread.” Then we look at what is freezing bread, why is it important, how do we go about it, and so what we have here is a much higher level. Where we take a topic, break it up into three subtopics, and then we go into the curiosity. It becomes a far richer experience simply because of how we’ve approached the outlining. The question that arises when we’re doing this assignment is not that we can’t take a topic and break it up into three parts. We can all do that, the question that arises is, “Well, there are a hundred things to talk about anything.”

For instance, if I’m talking about microphones, you can talk about storage, you can talk about how to buy it how to sell it, how to get the best out of your microphone. The topics are endless, how am I going to pick three? The answer is, you just pick three. I always just pick three. There is no specific logic to the three. You have to just connect part one to part two, part two to part three, and as long as you can make the connection there needs to be nothing else that is common between them. If you took a topic like buying bread, and storing bread, and freezing bread, it looks like there’s a logic, but there is no logic. Those are just three topics.

If you go into a bread website, you can find a hundred topics. It’s just that what we’ve done is said, “Okay, we’re going to take these three topics, and then we’re going to connect them one to the other,” and that’s how you create an outline. What we’ve covered so far are two ways to create an outline. The first is curiosity. Just sit down and write who, what, why, when, et cetera, and you will start to outline something in a way that a five year old does. Then we looked at the three part system, which is we take one topic and then we purposely split it up into three topics. Knowing fully well that there are probably seven or eight or a hundred more things that you could talk about that topic, but the third part is what I often use as well.

Part 3: What is the Extraction Method?

Which is called the extraction method. What is the extraction method? They already know that we have a membership site at 5000bc. At 5000bc people, clients will often ask me a question, and I encourage them to ask me a question. Then I answer, but I don’t answer in the form of an article, or I don’t outline anything, I just answer. This is a forum, at least part of 5000bc’s a forum, and I will answer as if I were answering in a forum. Which is just a free flow of information. There is no specific structure to it. Of course, there will be some structure in my mind, but it’s just a free flow information, and then as I’m writing it I realize, “Okay, I’m covering this point and that point and that point,” or at the end of it I could go back and go, “What were the points I really covered in this?”

You will find that when you do this free flow you just answer a question, you will find that you’re covering two or three points in a longish answer. If someone were to ask you, “Which are the best places to visit in your city?” You could answer that question. You could say, “You should go here, and you should go there. You should go there,” and there you go. Once you’ve gone into that one, two, three, you’re now going to go into a lot of detail, and that is because you have to justify what you just said, and so you will talk about those three points in great detail, but you’re doing it in a free flow system. I don’t want to call it a system, because it’s not even a system, it’s just free flow.

This may not sound like outlining but it is, because you come back and you look at the points that you’ve covered, and there will be three things that you’ve covered. Then you have to go backwards into the three part system, and then further back into the curiosity, and take every one of them and expand them. Now, you’ve written all of that stuff, so you’ve covered a lot of that just by answering their question. Maybe you don’t have a forum, but then you do have email. Clients will ask you questions on email, and if you don’t have email you have Facebook. You can ask people to ask you questions on Facebook, and if you don’t have Facebook you can go to another forum, you can go anywhere.

You have to get into this habit of getting this free flow answer out, because there is no pressure when you’re in this free flow mode. Go for it, just answer the question, then pull out the stuff, and now you’ve got another form of outlining. I know all of these three systems of curiosity, of three part, and extraction seem relatively easy, and they are and they will become very easy over time. I use all three of them in different situations. I don’t have a system in place, as in I don’t sit down and go, “I’m going to do a three part. I’m going to do curiosity, I’m going to do extraction.”

It depends on what’s in front of me. If someone has asked a question in email, I will take as much time as I can to just free flow an answer, and then I will extract. Put it into three parts, then go to curiosity, and now we have an article. Now we have probably a booklet, or if there’s enough information, and there always is, it can become a book, or even a course. This is the beauty of outlining. If you use one of these three systems, or all of these three systems whenever you feel like, but what’s the one thing that you can do that gets consistent results? That to me is the three part system. I will take a topic, and I will make three subtopics or six subtopics.

I will pick a subtopic, and then that’s subtopic will be broken up in three parts. Like bread, which is the main topic, and then storing and freezing and cutting, whatever and then I’ll pick freezing. I’ll say, “What three things can I cover in freezing?” If I have to look up information and research that’s fine, but I can cover three things. Then I will expand that, and that’s how I get pretty much everything I do. The reason why you find that Psychotactics runs all these articles, and reports, and websites, and all of this stuff, this whole element of being prolific comes from planning.

It comes from being Roald Amundsen. It comes from making sure that you have all of your stuff ready for this South Pole expedition, and you can’t take anything to chance. You’re definitely not going to go in an article sitting at your computer and trying to work it out, no, no, no. You’re going to work out all the details at the café, on a piece of paper, and especially if you don’t have time, because outlining saves you time every single time. When in doubt use the three part system, because that’s the most efficient of all. That’s your one thing that you have to do today. Take a topic and break it up into three parts and work from there.

Summary

While that brings us to the end of this podcast, there are a few announcements. The first is a storytelling workshop that we’re going to have in Nashville, Tennessee, and probably in Amsterdam, which is in the Netherlands. If you’d like to register for this workshop, and yes there are no prices and stuff, but if you want more information email me at sean@psychotactics.com. It’s a really good price, because this is a beta workshop doesn’t mean that it’s going to be crappy. It’s going to be as good as any workshop. For the first time we’re having it, it’s going to be three days, it’s going to be in December, email me for details.

While you’re waiting for the workshop get to 5000bc.com, that’s our membership site. Why is it important to you, because you get questions answered. Most of the stuff on the internet … Well, you don’t know if it’s pertaining to you. You can’t ask back and forth questions. In 5000bc I’m there 5000 times a day, so that’s 5000bc.com. I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook at Sean D’Souza, and of course my email sean@psychotactics.com. That’s it for me, and The Three Month Vacation. Bye for now.

Still Reading? One of the biggest reasons why we struggle with our writing is because we run into resistance. There are hidden forces causing us all to resist doing what we really should do. Find out how to work with resistance, instead of fighting it all the time. Click here to get the free report on ‘How To Win The Resistance Game’.

It's easy to pick up bad habits. Knowing what causes bad habits to succeed enables you to make good habits meet with similar success. In this episode we dig deep into the trio of trigger, routine and reward mechanisms. And how every one of them play their role. But then we go deeper into the world of groups and how the groups matter.

If you've struggled to maintain good habits on an ongoing basis, this audio (and transcript) will show you the elements you have to put in place to succeed.

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Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/54

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

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

iTunes   |  Android   |  E-mail (and get special goodies)   | RSS

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In this episode Sean talks about

To create a good habit or a bad habit you have to have three core elements in place.
Part 1: How a good habit start with the cue
Part 2: Why routine is important
Part 3: Why no reward  leads to failure
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
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Useful Resources and Links

5000bc: How to get helpful and specific feedback for your complex marketing problems?
Episode 14: How to Get Things Done: The Power of The Trigger
Resistance: How To Win The Resistance Game

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza.

You’ve probably heard of Batman. Now how does Batman get summoned by the police commissioner, who happens to be Police Commissioner Gordon? Apparently Batman was being summoned by a pager. Every time there was a crime in Gotham City that pager would go off in Batman’s pouch and he would have to respond to a crime.

Now you compare this with the bat signal. The bat signal is a distress signal that appears in various interpretations of the Batman myth. According to Wikipedia it is a specially modified Kleig searchlight with a stylized symbol of a bat attached to the light so that it projects a large bat on the sky or the buildings of Gotham City. No one knows for sure how that pager got thrown away and this elaborate bat signal came into play, but one thing we know for sure: that pager was no match for the elaborate bat signal that came up after one of Batman’s encounters with The Joker. Batman said that he was no longer happy to get this pager and skulk around in the shadows. He wanted this elaborate bat signal that would be projected on the building, that would be projected in the sky. That was his trigger.

Most of us don’t have such an elaborate trigger every time we want to achieve something. Let’s say we want to go for a walk every day or maybe we want to wake up every morning and do yoga. Maybe we want to learn how to draw or write or do something and learn a scale or a language. We seem to fall by the wayside simply because we don’t have the trigger. Is it just the trigger? In episode number 14 I covered this concept of the trigger, but since then I’ve realized that it’s a lot more. In the Power of the Habit by Charles Duhigg he specifically talks about three elements that need to be in place. In this episode we’re going to cover those three elements, and then we’re going to add the fourth missing element that makes the big difference.

To create a good habit or a bad habit you have to have three core elements in place. They are a cue, a routine, and a reward. What makes that cue, routine, and reward more powerful, especially when you’re trying to get a good habit rather than a bad habit? That’s the power of the group. In this episode we’re going to look at what is a cue, what is a routine, what is a reward, and how the group helps tremendously. Let’s start off with the first element, which is a cue.

Part 1: The Cue

Let’s go back to 1900. In 1900 one of the biggest problems that America had was that most people didn’t brush their teeth. Not a few people but most people. Now imagine you are someone who manufactures toothpaste and you want to get an entire country, probably the entire world, to use toothpaste. What do you do? If you’re lucky you have someone like Claude Hopkins around. Who was Claude Hopkins? Claude Hopkins was one of the first advertising geniuses of our time. He wrote the book Scientific Advertising. If you haven’t read that book, you should read it.

As the story goes, Mr. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with an amazing new creation. It was a minty, frothy toothpaste named Pepsodent. He somehow had to convince everyone that they needed Pepsodent. He has to create this habit from nothing at all. He has to create a cue. He had to create a trigger. What was that cue or trigger? In the book The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg goes on to talk about how this trigger came about. It seems that Claude Hopkins signed on to run the ads on Pepsodent but he had to go through a pile of dental textbooks. In his autobiography he wrote about how it was terrible, dry reading.

In the middle of one of the books he found a reference to something. That something was mucin plaques on teeth, which Claude Hopkins then called the film. When you wake up every morning you have this kind of film on your teeth. Most of us don’t notice it. Well, we didn’t notice it back in 1900. Now this film is a naturally occurring phenomenon and you don’t really have to worry too much about it, but Claude used it as the trigger, as the bat signal. He started running ads all over the place. He said just run your tongue across your teeth and you will feel a film. That’s what makes your teeth look off-color. That’s what invites decay. Then he pushed that button further. He said millions are using this new method of teeth cleaning. Why would any woman have dingy film on her teeth? Pepsodent removes the film. In that one action with that poster and that ad campaign, Claude Hopkins changed the habit by sending out that signal that when you wake up every day you’re going to have that film on your teeth. You’re going to run your tongue over it and you’re going to feel that. That became the trigger.

This is the starting point for any habit. We do this. We have an alarm clock that tells us we have to wake up and go into our yoga, or in my case I have Tuesdays, which is when I record my podcast. I know that by Tuesday morning I’ve got to get this podcast out 4 in the morning. It’s not enough to have the cue because we all sleep through the alarm. We all let Tuesdays slip into Wednesdays. Before you know it it’s Friday and then you’re all stressed out. To solve that problem you have to have the second element, which is the routine. Let’s look at routine.

Part 2: The Routine

When I started out as a cartoonist many years ago I used to do two sets of comic strips. These are daily comic strips. You do them every day five days a week. Now I had to do two sets, which means I had to turn out ten comic strips a week. The thing is that I was young. I was in my 20s so I didn’t have time to think about my actions. I just said yes when the newspaper editor said, “Would you like to put your comic strips in five days a week?” Then when you sit down and think about it, do you really want to do a comic strip every single day? Wouldn’t it be better to just do it once every week or once every 15 days?

Instead, what I found surprised me a great deal. I found that it was easier to do one or even two comic strips in this case and to do it every single day rather than to do one every 15 days. You know this to be true because it’s much easier to go for a walk on a regular basis or do something on a regular basis than to do it once every 15 days. Then when we went front cartooning into marketing, I started up this website called 5000bc.com. Now it’s the membership site of Psychotactics. It started out in 2003 and it’s still going. We still have our members and we still have a great time, but that’s not the point.

The point was when I started out 5000bc I had no ability to write articles at high speed. I was taking two days to write a single article. Then I started 5000bc and I promised the readers that I would put in five articles a week. Now how did I come to this five articles a week? I don’t know. I looked at some other membership sites and they were doing five articles a week so I decided to have five articles a week. So the habit started.

The routine was that somehow I had to have that cue, which is Monday morning or Tuesday morning, and then there was the routine where I had to go one, two, three, four, five. It was the end of the week, and then the next week. What you find with routine is that it’s much easier to do things on a regular basis than it is to do it every now and then. We took these concepts and we started applying them to our courses. In 2006 to 2008 we ran a completely different article writing course than we do today. At that point in time someone would write an article once a week. Then I would look at it and then comment on it. Then they would go away and then they would write another article once a week.

When you think about it, that’s pretty good. To write an article once a week, that’s pretty phenomenal. Around the year 2008 my instructions were misunderstood. I started up the article writing course as always and one of the participants … yes Paul, you know who you are … Paul decided to write an article every day thinking that’s what I meant. The rest of the group, they thought they had to write an article every day. I was sitting there looking at them writing an article every day and thinking should I tell them. I went to my wife Renuka. Should I tell them? I let them keep on writing.

Now this should have been amazing to me because to write an article every single day, how difficult is that? It wasn’t amazing. I’d learned this with the cartoons. I’d learned this with 5000bc. I’d learned this before. I knew that the routine helps you move along at a far greater speed. We see this with our daily brushing as well, which what Pepsodent started all those years ago. We brush our teeth once a day, many of us brush it twice a day, so the routine sits in.

What we’ve covered so far are two things. First is the cue and the second is the routine. This takes us to the third part, which is the reward.

Part 3: The Reward

If you started out that yoga routine every morning and then you suddenly find yourself not continuing, there is a reason for it. It’s not because of the cue or the routine. It’s because of the reward. What you have to do to get a habit in place is you have to have the reward in place. All bad habits are created by rewards. You start eating a muffin today at lunch time and then tomorrow at lunch time and the day after at lunch time. Suddenly you know the reward before the cue or the routine. Afternoon doesn’t have to show up. In the morning you’re thinking about that muffin.

For good habits you need so much more energy. You have to have the reward in place. When we go for a walk every day, and I’ve said this before, the reward is coffee, but not just any coffee. Because if the coffee wasn’t so good and in between we started running to these cafes that were not so good, your reward falls apart and then everything else falls apart with it. We had to look for this café that was open at 6:45 in the morning. Not 7:00 but 6:45, because that’s when we reach our destination, have our coffee, and then turn around.

We found this café where the barista was one of the top three in the All Japan Championships. As you can tell, the coffee is consistently good cup after cup after cup. That becomes the reward. That becomes the reason why we wake up when it’s raining, when it’s windy, when you have good weather or bad weather. We’re on the road and we get that reward. This is what you have to set in place whether you’re writing a book or learning a language or doing just about anything. Pepsodent had an in-built reward that no one really talked about.

When you have a great product, then you have great competition. Other toothpaste companies tried to sell their toothpaste just like Pepsodent had and they didn’t meet with a lot of success. This left all of those toothpaste companies totally confused. As far as they were concerned, there was a cue, that was the film, and then there was the routine, and that was waking up in the morning. The reward was clean teeth, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t, because Pepsodent had citric acid. It also had mint oil and it had some other exotic chemicals.

When people brushed their teeth they got this tingling sensation. That tingling sensation was their reward. It took the other competing companies a long time to figure out what this secret ingredient, this reward was really all about. If customers didn’t feel that tingling sensation in their mouths, they would feel like they hadn’t brushed their teeth at all, so there was no reward and the whole exercise fell flat on its face.

This is the reason why Pepsodent’s sales continued to soar and the habit continued to set vs. the other one where it wasn’t so good. That’s the same thing with the coffee. The fact that we know that there is a cue and the routine doesn’t make any difference if at the end of the trip the coffee is not stunningly good. I have the same kind of reward with the podcast. When I finish recording the podcast I have to then put in the music. The music is my reward, because I enjoy the music. I enjoy putting in all those little bits of music and increasing the volume just a little bit and reducing it. That’s my reward. All those cues and all those routines make no difference if there is no music.

If you told me to record this podcast without the music, yes I would do it but I would not have fun. If I don’t have fun, there goes the habit. This is why bad habits are so good, because they have fun, they have reward. Every time there’s that muffin at the end, you don’t need much of a cue or a routine. You can quite easily get to the muffin. When you have a bad habit, it’s very easy because there’s always that reward in place. This is thefundamental flaw with habits: that the reward needs to be in place right at the start. We have to do this in the article writing course or all our courses.

On Friday you get a gold star. You have to do your assignment on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday you get a gold star. Now it’s just a little icon. It’s just a little icon in the forum and you would think people would not be interested with that icon, but they are. That’s the reward. People crave that icon. How do we know that? We know that because you take it away and you see their reaction, and people say, “Hey, where’s my gold star for this week?” The reward can be tested.

If you put a reward in place and you take away that reward, that is your benchmark. That’s how you know that the reward is really good. If you take it away and no one cares, you have to change your reward system. This is whether you are setting a benchmark for yourself or for your clients. You have to start off with the reward, then work out the cue, then the routine. Then we have a habit in place. What we’ve covered so far is the cue, the routine, and the reward, which can be benchmarked. But we found out that there is something else that matters. That is the group.

Without a group it’s far easier to fall off the bandwagon. To give you an example of the group, let me talk about having a bad group. Now how do we define a group? A group is just more than one person. Two people, that’s a group. Four people, that’s also a group. Eight people, that’s also a group. 25 people: is that still a group? Apparently not. This is what we found when we started doing the courses. Now when you look online at many marketers they talk about how a thousand people turned up and 500 people turned up and 200 people turned up. Does that lead to change? Does that lead to a change in the habit? It doesn’t.

The reason why 95 or 98% of those people don’t reach their goal, whatever it is, to write a book or sing a song or do whatever it is, the reason why they don’t is because the group is too large. What we did was we had to break it down so that we had, say, only 25 people. Then the introverts stood up and they said, “No no no, 25 people is like having 500 people.” We asked them, “How many people do you need?” and they said, “How about six?” We found that six or seven people constitutes the right group in terms of the maximum number of people. Two people, that’s just you and someone else, that’s the smallest group possible. You have to have the group if you want to set a habit in place, especially because we’re so hopeless at creating and sustaining these habits all on our own.

The reason the group is so important is because one, you get to know other people, so it becomes a social environment but with just five or six other people, not with 500 people where you can get lost and no one can notice if you’ve dropped off. Even in the group of 25 it’s very easy to drop off and no one would notice. The may need to you have a tiny group, everyone notices. You know that everyone is noticing and so you show up. Once you show up, you become a responsible memorable of that group and you start pushing the group forward, the group starts pushing you forward. Now you have a habit.

Now there are other elements of the group that make it so powerful but at the very core, that element of someone else needing your support, that is what makes the group so powerful. Again, like the coffee, if the group doesn’t know each other or if they are anonymous, it doesn’t work because you have no connection to the group. The may need to you have a connection to the group you have a responsibility to the group. As soon as you have that responsibility, then you know that the other person is waiting for you to go for the walk. It sounds crazy. When you’re looking at a course there are people from South Africa, there are people from the United States, from New Zealand. Why would they be interested in someone else? But they are, and that’s the power of the group. That’s what creates that habit. That’s what sustains the cue, the routine, and the reward.

Summary

If you really want to create a habit, you have to start off with the reward, then take away the reward. Does it make any difference to you? That’s when you know that it’s a great reward or not. Then you find a group. Once you have the reward and the group, then you go into setting up the cue and setting up the routine. Then you have cue, routine, reward, and group. That is how you get a habit in place.

It’s 5:46 AM and at exactly three or four minutes from now I’m going to get my cue. It’s going to come through Facebook Messenger. Yes, my wife Renuka, she’ll Facebook me and say, “I’m up. Are you ready?” I have to respond, “I’m ready.” The group forms at that point in time. Then it’s time to hit the road and get our cup of coffee. When you’re working all by yourself it’s very difficult to form a habit, so here’s what I would suggest. At a primary level, join 5000bc.com. That’s our membership site. It’s very reasonable. It’s just $259 a year. Once you join, there are groups there and they will help you move forward. We purposely keep the groups very small. For instance, we’ve taken the info products course and we’ve set up groups. They’re working through the info products course.

The second thing that you want to do is you want to join one of our courses. You missed the headlines course and you’re probably missing the cartooning course, but there will be a course, there will be a workshop. You want to come to these events because you want to see how we implement these things. The reason why clients come back and pay $2,000 and $3,000 for the course is not because of the content alone. A lot of people give great content. It’s not just us. Now our system is different and we have the system of tiny increments, but at the very core we have this core of cue, routine, reward, and group. You’ll want to do one of the courses just to work through the system and see how it works for you and how you can implement it with your clients. That is the magic of Psychotactics.

Start off with 5000bc.com. Go there today and sign up, because there is a waiting list and we take two or three weeks to approve you before you get in. Get there quicker, get on the waiting list, and then you can join 5000bc.com and see how this reward system, how this cue and routine is put into place. Later, much later, you can do a course with us and you can see how that system works as well. It’s not just about courses but the applications are for pretty much everything whether you’re doing video games or just about selling toothpaste for that matter. That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now. See you in 5000bc.com. Bye bye.

Once we have good habits, we have to then maintain the good habits—but we run into resistance.
Resistance is often just seen as a form of laziness, but that is not true at all. There are hidden forces causing us all to resist doing what we really should do. This slows us down considerably. Find out how to work with resistance, instead of fighting it all the time. Click here to get the free report on ‘How To Win The Resistance Game’.

Haven't you visited a web site and left shortly after reading an article? Why did the site fail to get you to sign up? Or why didn't you buy a product or service? The answer lies in the content of your articles and the way you structure them. Article writing is about creating a solid "next step", so that clients follow one of three sequences.

What are those sequences? Find out in this podcast on the "next step".

In this episode Sean talks about

The 3 successful ways to creating a next step with your articles.
Using these steps you will sell more products or consulting or workshops or whatever it is that you want your customer to go ahead or go forward with.

Part 1: The importance of the 'Editorial Next Step'
Part 2: The 'Sales Next Step' and how it causes resistance
Part 3: The 'Embedded Next Step'  and how to use it.

 

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 This is The Three Month Vacation, and I'm Sean D'Souza.

Christmas for me was the most fun time of the year when I was growing up, and that was because as a kid, there were always presents and gifts. Then as I grew up and entered my 20s, we used to go dancing. In Mumbai around Christmas time, we have this very unusual setting where whole football stadiums are allocated for Christmas dances and New Year dances.

Several months before Christmas rolls along, you have to the buy the tickets to the event, you have to book your table and then it's the night of December 25th, and you have to put on your best suit and your tie and get your partner and go to the dance. The music would start at about 9 o'clock at night and go until 6 in the morning when we'd stagger home after this night of revelry. It was at one such dance when I met my wife, Renuka.

Because we used to go in a group, I didn't really know the names of all the girls that were around and I suddenly didn't know Renuka's name. All I know that she was wearing a red dress and because of the red dress, I called her Santa all night. Well, that caused a problem because I didn't really ask her name and then the dance was over and she went her own way and I went my own way. I happened to have her sister's phone number so I did call up their place and I was about to ask for her when I couldn't remember the name. What do you do on the phone? Do you ask for Santa? I very quickly put the phone down and I let it go. There was no next step.

Having a next step is extremely important when you want to go ahead with anything in life. The same applies to article writing. When you're writing an article, you think, "Well, I'm creating all these credibility," but that's not the end point. The end point is the next step. Where are we going to go from there. Today, we're going to explore 3 ways in which you can create a next step with your articles so that you can create even more credibility and then that finally ends up with either selling more products or consulting or workshops or whatever it is that you want to go ahead or go forward with.

In this episode, we'll look at the 3 methods. The first is the editorial next step, the second is the sales next step, and the third is the embedded next step. Let's start looking at the first one which is the editorial next step.

Part 1: Editorial Next Step

What is the editorial next step? In every article, your goal is to get the reader to experience a new world. The reason the reader gets to your article at all is because you're taking them on a journey, and this journey depends on what you're covering in the article. Now you may be showing the reader how to increase prices without losing customers. You may be showing them how to fix a roof on a garden shed. You may be asking them to watch a specific video. In every case, you're setting out to change or at least to nudge the customer into doing something. Now that is your goal right from the start or you wouldn't have written the article in the first place.

Let's say you've written the article and the most obvious thing that you want to do is you want to direct the reader to go forward to the next step. Now this step has no sales edge to it. There's nothing that you are selling, no products or services or workshops. You're just creating a deeper sense of credibility, and the way you do that is just to put a little link at the end of your article. It's the most obvious one but a lot of people don't do this, and that is either read more articles on pricing strategy or read the continuing series on how to create more durable roofs or watch this video and you'll see how the soil erosion is affecting our planet. The point is you are really not trying to sell anything. You were just moving them to the next step.

When you write your article, you have to ask yourself, "Do I have a next step? Are they doing something as a result of reading that article?" When we look at our own website or our own blogs, we'll have an article and then we won't have a next step. When we look at us posting our articles on someone else's blog, what we'll have is some kind of footer information and that is not good enough for people to go to the next step. What you've got to do is create some kind of encouragement. What we found very effective is to have a kind of report.

When you look at a lot of the articles that we'll post on guest blogs, at the end of the article, before that footer information, we're going to have a little report and that creates a next step. That creates the enticement for the reader to continue into that same trip as it were. If the article is about pricing, then the report will be about something that the reader has not considered about pricing and that will be the enticement so that they come to your blog or your website and then sign up for that report and of course they get into your subscriber list.

On your own website as well, you want them to move along so either you give them a report, yes you can do this on your own website, or you can drive them to read about more articles on the same topic or similar topic and that gets them deeper into your website and deeper into your information.

You have to remember that a customer buys long before they pay, and when they're buying into your stuff, they're buying into you and your credibility and your ability to transform their lives. The more time they spend on your podcast, the more time they spend on reading that information; the more they are going to like you, the more they are going to trust you, and the more they are likely to buy from you in the future. When you write your article, the first thing is the editorial next step. What is that editorial next step? Is it going to be a report or is it going to be another series of articles? Whatever it is, you need to have that at the end of every article.

This takes us to the second type of next step which has nothing to do with editorial at all.

Part 2: Sales Next Step

This is called the sales next step. The sales next step is simply a call to action to buy something or to do something that is more likely to lead to sales. How would you know if the nudge is leading to sales or to editorial? You have to ask yourself this question, will the customer feel a bit of resistance when they go to that next step? If so, then you're actually selling. It's a sales next step. If the customer has to fill in a form or they have to opt in or they have to jump over some barriers, they have to sign up, pay for something, then it's a sales next step.

The editorial next step, it seems like friendly advice. It's like, "Hey, see this movie," or "You should read this book," or "Go read other articles," or "Watch this YouTube video." The sales next step is different and you know there will be at least some resistance when your reader reads your message or listens to your podcast or watches your webinar. It's more likely that your message will be sales. It will be sign up for this course, sign up for this workshop.

For instance, we have a sales letter for the article writing course. When you read the sales letter, it doesn't read like a sales letter. It actually reads like an article. It talks about how I struggle with my article writing, how I used to take two days to write an article, and how I wished I had a fairy godmother, and what the fairy godmother would do to make my life simpler when it came to article writing. Then at the end of it, there is the link to the article writing course. It seems like editorial and it yet leads to a sales pitch. In advertising, they call this the advertorial; seems like editorial, it is editorial, it helps you a lot, but at the end of it, there is some kind of decision that you have to make that involves resistance.

You want to put this in all of your articles at some level. You could have this as links in between your articles. Let's say I'm talking about the Brain Audit; I could hyperlink that as I was talking about it. Or right at the end, I get them to move to the next phase, that next step. That next step is very important. If a customer spent all their time reading your article, they want to know what to do next and if you just leave them hanging there, then it doesn't really work in their favor or your favor.

We've covered 2 ways that you have to move that agenda forward. The first one is the editorial step and the second one is the sales next step. This takes us to the third one which is the embedded next step.

Part 3: Embedded Next Step

The embedded next step is where you have the entire sales pitch within your editorial. Let's say I was talking about pricing and then within that whole pricing model, I talk about a membership site at 5000bc and how it was priced and then I go on to how to increase the prices and what was the effect of that on 5000bc. I bring up 5000bc half a dozen times but all the time, it's editorial; all the time, it's informing you; all the time, it's giving you examples about 5000bc.

What this is doing is embedding 5000bc in your brain and there's nothing subconscious about it. It's pretty straightforward. However, there's no doubt that at the end of it, you're going to be curious about what lies behind this doorway. What lies behind this membership at 5000bc. Even as you're listening to this, even as you're reading this, you will start to think, "Well, I wonder. I should go and explore what 5000bc is all about." This is what an embedded next step is, where you're giving complete examples of something else. Maybe it's a product that you have or a service that you have, but you're breaking it down into editorial. You're giving where you succeeded, where you failed, what happened, what didn't happen, all the time that brand name, that product name is coming into the picture.

Yes, we're talking about articles here but I do this in presentations as well. A podcast is a presentation and if I were to give you a lot of examples from the Brain Audit about how customers buy and why they don't buy that eventually, you're going to be curious about the Brain Audit. Even as we're doing this podcast, you can see how this is working. You're thinking about 5000bc, you're thinking about the Brain Audit. It's part of the editorial and this is called the embedded next step.

Is the embedding sales pitch? It is. Some people may not see the sales pitch in it at all. It may appear to be 100% editorial and really, that's the beauty of the embedded next step. It has no next step involved. It's not asking you to buy anything. There is no link inside anywhere. There's nothing, but part of or the entire article revolves around their product or service. It creates the curiosity and so you take that next step. Should you put a link at the end of it? If you do, it looks like you are pushing me towards that all the time. I avoid it, but it's up to you to decide what you want to do. My advice would be to create it as editorial only, giving all these examples, creating that embedded next step, and then the customer makes their own mind up and goes to the next step.

Summary

Lets summarize what we've covered today. The first thing is the editorial next step. The editorial next step is part of the article itself. Often, it's just after the summary. It's towards the end of the article. It's more than likely to be the last few sentences of the article where you're driving the customer to read more, to watch more, and to create greater credibility for you, for the future is an investment in the future.

Second type of next step is the sales next step. Now that has a clear demarcation. It sits away from the editorial and it's clearly a sales-based nudge and anyone looking at it should be able to tell that it's a next which is going to have some resistance involved. You either have to fill in an opt-in form or you have to have some barrier or you're going to have to pay for it in some way, and they should be clear.

Sometimes we can put links within the article that leads to a product or a service, but having it at the end is also a very good strategy and that is the sales next step. You'll see this at the end of all the Psychotactics articles. There is this nudge. This is how customers go and they buy products and services from us.

Finally, you have the embedded next step which is embedded in the article itself. If I were to talk about 5000bc right through the article and explain how it is built and how we went about stuff and how we were pricing it, eventually you get this feeling that you want to go to 5000bc. It's the same thing with any product or service when you break it down and you explain it as a case study. Now what you're doing is creating an embedded next step. People want to part of that experience, they want to know more, and the logical step is for them to go and find out more about it.

When do you use these next steps? You can have the editorial and the sales next step in every other article. However, the embedded next step you need to use with some amount of prudence. You use it every now and then and clients get to know your products and your services in great detail to get the inside view, but you don't want to use this a lot. The other ones, use it freely all the time, there's no problem. This takes us to the one action that we have to do.

One of the things that you can do right away is go and look at 3 of your articles, any 3 articles, and look if there is a next step. Is there an editorial next step, because there should be one. Even if you don't have anything to sell at this stage, you need to have an editorial next step. If you're writing an article about pricing, then lead them to other articles about pricing. If you're writing an article about article writing, lead them to other articles about article writing. That way, you're creating credibility. People are buying long before they pay. You will get your payment at some point in time but you need to create that credibility, you need to get the customer that crossed you today. Having that next step makes a big difference, which also takes us back to our Christmas ...

I couldn't get in touch with Renuka after the Christmas dance because I really didn't know her name and I was too embarrassed to ask for Santa, and so I let it slide. Luckily, 3 months later, all the friends gathered around for a picnic and there she was yet again. This time, I made sure that I asked her name, got her phone number, and yes we worked out the next date and that's a long time ago and we've been pretty much together ever since. I say pretty much together because there is some story there as well, but that'll have to wait for another podcast. Right now, we have to go to our next step, don't we?

A good next step for you would be to send me an email about the questions that you have so that I can answer them on this podcast. I can create new information based on your questions. You can send it to me on Twitter on @seandsouza or on Facebook, again Sean D'Souza or sean@psychotactics.com. If you haven't already done your good deed for the day, then go to iTunes and click on the subscribe button so that you can subscribe to this podcast and of course, you can also leave a review because hey, that's your good deed for the day.

I have been embedding 5000bc and the Brain Audit in this podcast. If you haven't already read the Brain Audit, you should. It will completely change the way you look at how clients think and why they do what they do and why they back away at the very last minute. You can find that at psychotactics.com/brainaudit. That's it for me, Sean D'Souza and Three Month Vacation. Bye for now.

Still listening? Often, you want to organize a next step but sometimes life takes over. Like for instance when we had the InfoProducts workshop in Washington, DC and there were 2 belly dancers in the group and they decided that everyone in the room would like to do some belly dancing. Off we went, half of group formed the instrumentation as it were and half of them did the belly dancing. There was no compulsion, but everyone took part in it, took about 15, 20 minutes and we all had a great time. There you go. You don't always have to have this organization. Sometimes you just go with the flow. That's your little snippet from the Psychotactics archive. Bye for now.

 

How do you dramatically increase your rate of learning? And why do we get stuck when we're trying to learn a new skill? Strangely the concept of boxes comes into play. We move from beginner to average—and then we spin in that middle box, never moving to expert level. So how do we move to expert level? And how can we do that without instruction? Interestingly, there's an answer. Listen to the episode to find more about not just how to learn, but how to teach as well.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Understanding the three boxes of learning
Part 2: How construction and deconstruction plays a role in learning
Part 3: How you can start using this accelerated learning system, today.
Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer. 

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

Useful Resources and Links

 Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game
DaVinci Cartooning Course:  How to draw cartoons to liven up your website, blog or presentations?
Story Telling: How to craft amazing stories
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So how do you subscribe to this free podcast?

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

 

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza.

It's a relatively unknown fact that the world's best chicken sexers come almost exclusively from Japan. Now chicken sexing is simply about telling the male chick from the female chick. For poultry owners, especially commercial poultry owners, this knowledge of which is a male chick and which is a female check is very important because that enables them to feed the female chicks and basically get rid of the male chicks, which are unproductive.

In the past, the poultry owners had a problem. They had to wait for about five to six weeks before differentiating male from female. When you have a problem there's always a solution, so from that problem you got the Zen Nippon Chick Sexing School. It began courses in training people how to accurately discriminate the sex of a day-old chick, not five or six weeks but day-old chick. People were able to discriminate instantly.

Of course you had all these experts who over time became very good at distinguishing the male from the female. Well, then you came along. What are you going to do? How many months or years are you going to spend trying to learn this skill? As it appears, you can do it extremely quickly. But you can't do it through traditional methods, which is where someone tells you exactly what you have to do. Instead, it's more a factor of the brain taking over.

We see something very similar unfolding in the Psychotactics cartooning course. If you went into a café and asked about 10 or 15 people, "Can you draw cartoons?" there's a very good chance that almost all of them will say no. Yet within just a few weeks of starting the cartooning course you will find that people are drawing cartoons like Snoopy and Sid from Ice Age and all these complex cartoons with relative ease. How does this transformation occur? What's really working? What is causing this factor of accelerated learning? That's what we're covering in the episode. Because accelerated learning enables you to do the very same task at a very high speed. Therefore you can go on more vacations. Yes, I know, everything ties up to the Three Month Vacation. You want to get very good at your skill and be very quick at it. That's what this episode is all about. It's about accelerated learning and how we can get there in a fraction of the time.

To understand this concept of accelerated learning we have to look at three elements. The first is box one, two, and three. How do they play a role and what causes us to get bogged down, and how can you move past that? Then in the second part we'll look at construction and deconstruction, and how that is important. Finally, we'll look at the practical usage of all of this stuff that we're going to look at today. How are we going to actually use this so that we can learn but also teach, because we're all teachers.

Let's start off with the first element, which is understanding box one, two, and three.

Part 1: Understanding Box One, Two, and Three

Let me tell you the story about my hairdresser. His name is Francis. Now Francis grew up in Samoa and he was brought up by his grandfather. His grandfather was a fisherman, but he also cut hair. Now Francis was 11 years old when his grandfather got him into their saloon, or what he considered to be a saloon. Francis was not allowed to touch the scissors. He was only allowed to sit there and watch or sweet the floor and watch, but all he was doing was watching and watching and watching. No matter how many times Francis asked, his grandfather said, "You're not ready, Francis. You're not ready."

Francis went through several years of just sweeping the floor and watching. Then one day when he was 15 he came home from school and he walked through the door, and his grandfather says, "Francis, you're ready." Francis turns around, "Ready? You're ready for what?" He says, "You're ready to cut hair." He gives him the scissor, and there is this guy sitting in the barber's chair. Now that happens to be Francis' grandfather's friend, so obviously he was ready for that kind of haircut from this absolute beginner who hadn't touched the scissor, who hadn't cut hair. He was trusting him to do a good job. As Francis tells the story, he had no problem whatsoever.

What's happening here? Why is Francis able to cut hair when he has no experience whatsoever? Why is he not feeling any fear when he's cutting the hair, when he should really be extremely fearful? This is the concept of box one, box two, and box three. Box one is when you are kind of hopeless at a task. We want to do something. We know we should do it, but we're not very good at it. Box two is the middle box. We're kind of good at the task but not that great. Eventually we get to box three. That is when we have this fluency and when we don't have to drain our brain's resources.

The problem is that most of us get stuck at box two, and it's the middle box, but you can effectively call it the muddle box. Because when we go from box one ... say we're learning a language like Spanish, so we go from box one to box two, and then we get stuck. We have phrases like "where you from" and "what's your name," and "I'm a professor" or "I'm a student," whatever. Then we're stuck there and we're spinning there. Why don't we go to box three? Because it's very difficult to go to box three.

That's what the chicken sexers learned. They learned that it was very easy for them to tell the male chicken from the female chicken, but they couldn't tell you how to go about it. Here's what they had to do. They got you to lift the chick and for you to guess. You could guess and you could say, "That's male," and they would say yes or no. Then you would go about putting the chick in the box, and so you'd go forward. Male chicken, female chicken, male chicken. They would say yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Then suddenly you get it, and no one gave you any instruction.

You can probably imagine the surprise on their faces when they figured out that they didn't have to teach. The students were learning all by themselves. What was really interesting was that these beginners were doing as good a job as the experts. Now granted, chicken sexing is not a very complex job like drawing cartoons or writing a book or flying a plane. Still, to move from box one to box three, how do they do that?

The answer lies in how the brain works. The brain really has two parts: the left brain and the right brain. The left brain is the bully brain. This requires all the steps and methods and logic. This requires all the steps and methods and logic. Then you have to right brain. It doesn't require all of that stuff. It's the creative brain. The creative brain is able to work out the elements that you need to get to that point and then feed it to the left brain, and then work out all the logic. Sometimes that logic never has to happen, which is why those chicken sexers couldn't pass on that skill by telling them do this and do that, and go here and do that.

What the right brain is really doing is it's identifying the errors and eliminating them. When you look at talent, talent is a reduction of errors. These people are getting this skill by reducing the errors, but not knowing what errors they are reducing because the right brain doesn't care. Eventually you're able to get to that skill without having the steps and the logic and the system in place.

There was another part of the secret that needed unfolding, and that was that you needed to learn by example. You know when they were picking up those chicks and going male chick, female chick, male chick, female chick, well you had to go through about 300 examples before you figured it out. But not just 300 examples, but 300 good examples. This is where the expert came into play. The expert was accurate every single time, so they were able to tell you that you were wrong, so you had 300 great examples.

Then you were able to do the task. We see this on the cartooning course as well. What we do is we put people into groups. The groups don't matter as much as the examples. Year after year we get lots of good examples. You curate those examples and you show those groups the examples. What they do is they start to recognize a pattern. They see all these different examples. If you were to tell someone draw a circle, how many ways can you draw a circle? As it appears, many ways some people draw circles with pencils. Some people draw big circles. Some people draw complete designs or a swimming pool with circles. Some people draw characters with circles.

Suddenly the brain is working out a pattern. It's working out how to get from box one to box three, completely eliminating box two. Those 200 to 300 good or great examples of what people need to learn, or rather to eliminate the errors, and that makes them great artists, or great chicken sexers, or great writers, or great speakers. When we look at the Renaissance, we see Michelangelo Buonarroti. We see Leonardo da Vinci. We see Rafael. We see Donatello. We see all of these great artists.

But what's really happening at that point in time? What we are seeing is 200 to 300 great examples, all of them in the same or similar workshops experimenting but also comparing each other's work. There is an explosion of talent. There is this moment in time and history when you have amazing art and amazing architecture, and we can't explain why it happens, but we can. It's going from box one to box three requires those 200 to 300 good examples. That's how you move ahead, especially when a skill cannot be taught.

We see this in the article writing course or the cartooning course, or any of the courses that we've constructed. We've constructed it in this way because we know that if the clients just show up and they do their assignments, and we give them those great examples, they will get very good at that skill. Now granted that cartooning or copywriting or article writing is far more complex than, say, chicken sexing. Still, when you go through those examples and you go through a system, that's when your brain eliminates or reduces the errors, and that's when you get talent. It's not something inborn. It's something that can be acquired. You can go from box one to box three in an accelerated way if you know how to get there with those examples. The key to a Psychotactics course is the quality of the examples. There is another element, and we'll talk about that in the next section, which is construction and deconstruction.

This takes us to the second part, where we're talking about construction and deconstruction, and how it plays a role in learning, but learning in an accelerated format.

Part 2: Construction and Deconstruction

I think most of us remember when we learned to ride a bicycle. One thing becomes very clearly apparent, and that is no one can actually teach you how to ride a bicycle. You can have a mother or a father or some kind of guide, and they're teaching you how to ride. They're saying just pedal pedal pedal, balance, go to your left, go to your right. But they're not giving you an instruction.

In effect, the left brain, the bully brain, it can't do anything. It's stuck because it requires this instruction and it requires it in a systemized way, and it's not getting it in a systemized way, and you're crashing to the floor all the time. Then the left brain takes over and it works out the errors and eliminates those errors, and soon you're just riding down the road at top speed with no problem at all.

Most of us are not prepared to fall down and get bruised all the time when we're learning a skill like cartooning or when we're learning writing or storytelling or presentations. What we need now is a factor of construction. This is where a good teacher comes into play. Good teachers are teachers, not preachers. There's a huge difference between a teacher and a preacher. A lot of information that you have in books or courses or workshops, or even presentations, is based on preaching, not teaching. The reason why it's based on preaching is because it's easy. You can take information and stack it up one over the other and you can have a book, you can have a course, you can have anything you want.

Teaching, that requires deconstruction, so the teacher must be able to break it down to a very, very small part that you're able to apply. When you're looking at how you're going to learn very quickly through the method of deconstruction, you have to look for the teacher, because the teacher will have a system, and the carrier will have a group. Within that group there will be examples.

To begin with, the system will have very tiny increments. This is what we do at Psychotactics. We make sure that you go one inch or even one centimeter a day. You move very slowly ahead, because you master that skill and then you move to the next, and then you learn skill A and skill B, and then skill A and B and C, and you have this layering system. Groups make a huge difference as well, because groups or members of the group start to make mistakes. When they make mistakes, those mistakes can be identified, those mistakes can be corrected, and essentially that's what talent is. Talent is a reduction of errors.

You have to know the errors in the first place to fix them, and that's how the group works. A great teacher will have that system, will have those groups, will have those examples. That's how you learn, because they have deconstructed everything down to those tiny increments. You only have to do one little step every single day. You will still make the mistake. When you make that mistake, others learn from it, and of course the teacher can step in and fix the mistake.

You compare this with learning by yourself. First of all, you have this book and it has chapters. Within the chapters there are subchapters, and there's more and more and more information. There's not this factor of tiny increments. When you don't have tiny increments, and you don't have examples, and you don't all of this facility to learn, then learning becomes very difficult. This is why we abandon learning. This is why we need to change the way we look at learning, which involves the teacher, the system, the group, and the examples. Because the examples, those 200 to 300 examples, they're very important. Examples can come in many forms. They can come in stories, in case studies, in how to. But essentially those examples become the critical element that allows the brain to filter out all the rubbish and keep what is important. Suddenly, you become talented.

This brings us to the end of the second part where we look at the system that you could use to learn. One is through construction, which is what the brain does automatically. The second is to find a teacher that is really good at having the system and examples and group. They will teach you through these tiny increments and you get deconstruction. Then you can put the bits together and improve your skill, and become talented very quickly.

Now this takes us to the third part, which is how do we use this?

Part 3: How Do We Use This Accelerated Learning System?

How do we use this while learning or teaching? I mentor my niece Marsha every day. Marsha was having a problem with writing stories with drama. Now all of us know that we have to write better. One of the critical elements of stories is drama. How do you create this intensity where people want to listen to you, where they want to read your stuff? She was writing these stories that just didn't have any drama.

How are you going to teach an 11 year old kid how to work with drama? As it appears, it's remarkably simple. what I did was I used the same concept of chicken sexing. I started out with a good story, then a boring story, then a good story and a good story, and a boring story, boring story, good story. You know how this is going to unfold, don't you? Marsha was able to identify which was the boring story and which was the good story. Once I gave her a number of examples, and I continue giving her those examples whenever she's writing, what we have is a situation where she'll go back and she'll write a great story.

Now notice that I haven't specifically given her any method to write great stories, but she's worked it out. Her brain has worked out what is a boring story, what is a good story. Without too much effort, it has gone from box one to box three, and there's very little input except identifying which was good and which was bad. This is now where the second part comes in, which is the construction bits.

Now when you have to system, when say now we're going to concentrate on this little bit, then you can build on that, and that's when that skill goes from just average to brilliant. It goes from box one to box three, and then box 3.1 maybe. We do this on the headline writing course. You are soon able to write hundreds, even thousands of headlines, which incidentally you do on the course. You're able to do it because you can identify the good from the bad, but more importantly, you also have the construction methods, which is what makes a great headline.

Most people, they guess. They expect that they can just copy your headline and change the words. They don't understand what's happening. It's important not to understand, but it's also important to understand. The construction and the deconstruction is very critical. The ability to let your brain figure it out all by itself is very critical, but then to get to 3.1 it really helps to have those methods in place as well, the system that a teacher will bring, the tiny increments, the examples. You have high quality examples and high quantity examples.

That is precisely what happened in the Renaissance. All those great artists, sculptors, engineers, they all came from one age because they had high quality and high quantity. That is the same reason why Francis could pick up that scissor and cut hair when he came home from school. Which of course brings us to the end of this episode, in which we have covered just three things, which is very critical when you're teaching and when you're learning to learn just a little bit, very tiny increments.

Summary

We learned about box one, box two, and box three, and how we get stuck in that middle or muddle box, and how it's important to jump from box one to box three. How do we do that? We do that through high quality and high quantity examples. That's when we get to fluency.

The second thing is when you're looking at deconstruction and construction. While it's fine to fall around like we're doing on bicycles, it's not very helpful. What we have to do is find a teacher, a teacher with a system, a group, and of course tons of examples. Because that's where the magic really lies. Finally, when you're learning, you want to find 200, 300 great examples. But when you're teaching you can create the situation where you're creating good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. The client is then just made to identify it, and they become very good at it. Then you can bring in the construction bits. Then you can layer over your system and they move from box one to box three, and possibly 3.1.

What's the one thing that you can do today? It's going to be very hard to find examples, and hundreds of good examples, and high quality examples. What you can do is you can start to accumulate examples so that when you're teaching someone you have those examples in play. Then you stop becoming a preacher and you start becoming a teacher. Because they can learn just on the basis of the examples that you put together. That takes them to a whole new level of accelerated learning.

This brings us to the end of this accelerated learning episode. By the time you listen to this podcast, you've probably missed the headline writing course, so you missed a great opportunity to see how this unfolds. But there is also the DaVinci cartooning course. That's at psychotactics.com/davinci. If you've enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends. They need to learn how to learn better as well. This episode will really help them, so share it with them. If you've already done the sharing, go to iTunes and leave a review, because that really helps. You go to iTunes, leave a review, and there is the subscribe button, the purple subscribe button, hit that purple subscribe button, and yes, you get subscribed to this wonderful Three Month Vacation that comes to you week after week.

Finally, if you haven't already subscribed to the Psychotactics newsletter, then you should do so because you can get a great report on resistance. Go to www.psychotactics.com/resistance, and you'll find out why resistance plays an important role in learning, and how it's not just about laziness. That's psychotactics.com/resistance. That's me, Sean D'Souza, saying bye for now. Bye bye.

Don't forget to listen to this episode: The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand: Episode 50

 

How many hours do you work on vacation? You don't. But then what about the e-mails? How do you deal with clients? Are you supposed to just close down your business? This episode shows you how we deal with vacations at Psychotactics. We've been going on our "three-month" vacations since 2004 and have had to work out a few "tricks". And you can use them too—and ensure a splendid vacation, instead of just "work by the beach".

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Secret to handling email on holiday
Part 2: How to handle social media while on holiday
Part 3: How to deal with clients if there is an emergency
Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources

About Time management—The Carpe Diem Method of Finding Work (And Vacation) Time
5000bc—How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems?
Bonus Book—How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Products under $50: http://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/

So how do you subscribe to this free podcast?

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

iTunes   |  Android   |  E-mail (and get special goodies)   | RSS

 

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The  Transcript

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Hi, this is Sean D’Souza from psychotactics.com, and you’re listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast.

This podcast isn’t some magic trick about working less. Instead, it’s about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.

This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza. In February of 2005 I had no intention of checking any email. That was because we were on our vacation in the South Island. Now New Zealand is a set of islands, as you probably know. There’s the North Island where we live, and the South Island. In the South Island, it’s truly breathtaking. It’s got rivers and mountains and glaciers, and there we were at Fox Glacier. Now Fox is an amazing glacier because it’s in close proximity to both the rainforest and the ocean. Now that’s pretty rare with a glacier, but the ice flow on Fox Glacier is also amazing. It changes as much as three meters a day, so it’s a pretty crazy place to be, and there we were walking on the glacier.

When we had done that walk, we came down to check email. I didn’t check email for several days, and there was this little hut right next to the glacier. Yes, there’s email everywhere these days. I switched on the computer expecting nothing much, and there it was: an email telling me that our entire membership site was non-existent.

This is the power of email. It can take a perfectly good day and make it an absolutely rotten one. In today’s episode we’re going to cover this topic of no work on vacation. We’re going to look at email and how to deal with email in vacation mode, and then how you deal with social media, and finally what do you do about clients while you’re on vacation. Let’s start off with the first thing, which is dealing with email.

Part 1: Dealing With Email

Imagine you’re having a great day and then you get a phone call. It says a child is in hospital, your child is in hospital. It doesn’t matter how happy you were at that moment. Your mood changes. Immediately you want to take control. Immediately you want to be with that child. Immediately you’re transported right back to that situation that in a way you can’t control, but need to be there. Now email isn’t quite the same situation, but it still has that power. It still has that power to pull you back into that work mode. You’re sitting somewhere having a margarita enjoying the sunset, and then you read email and your mood changes. You’re back in work land.

It can be a good email, a bad email, a frustrating email. It doesn’t matter. You’re no longer where you are and you’re some other place where you shouldn’t be, which is back at work. How do we deal with this at Psychotactics? Remember that incident at Fox Glacier where I read that email? It made me feel terrible. I’d just gone up the glacier. I was in this absolutely stunning mood. Then I had to read that email. The point is that I couldn’t do anything. That website was down. They had erased it down to zero pixels. Then they did a backup of that website, the one that they erased, so we had nothing. Then clients started writing in telling us that the website was down. Then I had to write back to clients. I spent several hours at that little hut responding to email.

How do you deal with such a situation? How do you control this so that you’re not completely dealing with work the whole time that you’re away? Because you need to leave email at home when you go on vacation. Here’s how we do it. For one, we don’t check the primary email. We get someone else to check email while we’re away. Here’s how it works. When that someone else is checking email, they’re getting rid of all the stuff that really takes up a lot of your time, so any spam, any offers, all that just goes in the trash straight away. Now on a day to day basis I probably read it because it’s valuable and I’ve subscribed to it and I want to read it, but while I’m on vacation I don’t need that email. All of that goes trashed right away.

What else is left? There are emails where someone has not got a download or someone needs some kind of help. Usually there are canned messages, so there are messages where they can get their downloads or things that come up on a frequent basis. It’s very rare that you’re going to get new episode all the time. Most of the emails that you’re responding to, they are old matters, and if you have canned messages, and I use Text Expander on my computer, and those canned messages go out and the matter is resolved.

This leaves us with the urgent email, the email that simply cannot be ignored. There are two ways to handle this. The first way is to create an email address like, say, vacation@psychotactics.com. Then you instruct that person to send email there only if it’s absolutely critical, that it cannot be put off in any way. If it’s super critical, than they should have your phone number and they should get in touch with you. Then again, let’s assume you want to keep it just to email. You have the special box with a special email address, and you notice nothing is showing up day after day, because after all, the box is for urgent stuff and there isn’t any urgent stuff.

You don’t give up. You just and you check that email repeatedly several times a day. Then you realize there’s nothing there after all. You wait for the phone call, and the phone call never comes. We have been going on vacation since 2004. We work for three months, then we take a month off. In that month we almost never have to deal with email because all of it is taken care. The stuff that needs to be attend later is put in a box. When we get back, we deal with that. And so you remain email-free.

But email isn’t the only way that people can get in touch with you these days. There’s also this menace called social media. Let’s talk about social media, shall we?

Part 2: Social Media

In May 2015, after doing an infoproducts workshop in Washington D.C. and speaking at an event in Denver, we headed off to Sardinia. We moved from the south of Sardinia right up to the north. There was this wonderful hotel called Hotel Cuncheddi, or Cala Cuncheddi. I had 500 megabytes of data, so guess what? I was going to use it. Except there was a small problem. This data was connected to a satellite. You only got 500 megabytes, and if you exceeded those 500 megabytes you had to buy more data. I went outside and I took some pictures of the beach. It’s a glorious beach and beautiful views, and I uploaded three pictures.

Instantly, my 500 megabytes was exhausted. I couldn’t surf the internet anymore. Now if you know anything about the internet and technology, that’s impossible. Anything uploaded to Facebook is probably going to be a few megabytes, maybe four or five megabytes. You can’t use up 500 megabytes in about 30 seconds, but there was a glitch in their system. Because of the glitch, I couldn’t access the internet, I couldn’t check Facebook, I couldn’t go on any kind of social media platforms. And so I didn’t.

I found the beach. I found that I didn’t have to look at my phone, I didn’t have to look at the iPad. I did what my grandfather and my father did. I actually went out and enjoyed myself. Just because you’re not checking email doesn’t mean that you’re not connected. When you get into this whole deal of Facebook or Twitter or any social media stuff, you get involved in something. Maybe someone is going to talk about global warming or gun control, or something about some politician or something, and immediately it yanks you back into this frustrating situation where you’re either for it or against it and your mood is spoiled. You’re not looking at the beach. You’re looking down at your phone. You’re looking down at your iPad.

It might not be work, but it still takes you away from where you should be. It still messages to ruin your mood. It still creates that state change. That’s not usually for the better. I hope that I’m going to take Cala Cuncheddi with me wherever I go, where I can upload three photos and then I’m done and then I can’t access the internet anymore. It is a price to pay because we’re so tied to our phones and our iPads and our mobile devices. Yet it’s so critical that we step away from it, because somehow it pulls us back.

Remember that clients can still contact you. They can send messages to you through Facebook Messenger or through some method like Skype. Immediately you’re yanked back. I know that asking someone to get rid of their internet while they’re on vacation is like asking them to get rid of one of their arms. But I can tell you from experience that it’s good. I say this with a lot of reluctance because I want to hold that phone, I want to take the pictures, I want to upload them, I want to do stuff like that. The moments that I’ve not done it, the days I’ve not done it, they have been truly splendid. So no email, and definitely no social media. That takes us to the third part, which is how are we going to deal with clients? What if there’s an emergency?

Part 3: How Are We Going To Deal With Clients?

I remember the year that Renuka and I got married. We told clients that we were going on our honeymoon. It was amazing, because everyone said, “We wish you all the best.” One thing that they made sure was not to contact us in any way. How about making it a honeymoon every single time? How about staying away from clients while you’re on vacation? This is what your parents did. This is what our grandparents did. They went on vacation. No matter how rich they were or poor they were, they just left their work and in the summer they would go to some place like a village or their hometown, and they were completely cut off from work. We live in a different world and we think we should be connected to our clients all the time.

Really this depends on you. It depends on how you set up things. When we have courses we make sure that the courses end a week before we go on vacation, so we can tidy up everything and then we can go on our vacation. In fact, before going on vacation we pack our bags three or four days before we have to get on the flight, and then the vacation starts while we’re still in Auckland. Then we leave.

No one contacts us about the courses. No one contacts about products that they can’t download or can’t get, because someone else is handling that. Only while we’re away someone else is handling that. Then it’s the third thing which is the membership site. I go into 5000bc.com, that’s our membership site, and I go there, I don’t know, 15, 20 times a day. If you ask a question, I respond with just the answer or sometimes I’ll write a series of answers, do an audio or video even just to give you the answer. Our clients, they get used to this level of response, but the moment I’m away they know I’m away.

If I were to pop in, and it’s not like I haven’t tried, they instantly tell me I should leave. That I need to go and enjoy my vacation, because that’s what vacation is all about. What you’re doing is you’re actually setting up the client’s so that they tell you to go away. That’s what our members do. If I try to check email or if I try to get back into the membership site, they tell me to go away. What we’ve done from the very start is inculcated in our clients the fact that our vacation is sacred, so they treat it like that. They treat it like as if we’re going on honeymoon. Every time we try to get back, we get a rap on the knuckles and we’re back in Margarita land.

We’ve made a big deal about the vacation, and I think that’s what you need to do as well. You need to tell clients that while you’re away you can’t be reached. Of course they don’t reach you, but are there any exceptions to this rule? Of course there are exceptions to the rule. The point is that you are checking email. I’m checking email 270 days in a year. When I’m at work, I’m checking email, I’m go to the forums, I’m go to the membership site, I’m going on social media. It’s very hard to just slow down and go okay, I’m not doing this anymore. I’ll try, but it’s nice to get booted out. It’s nice to go and enjoy yourself and have a good time.

Even when I got that email at Fox Glacier it wasn’t like I could do anything. I couldn’t bring the website back up again. In fact, the website was down for 17 days. When we got back, we apologized to our clients. Then we got back to work. We got to building 5000bc. That’s where it is today. Many of those clients, they’re still with us today after all of these years.Vacation time should be sacred, should be a place every go to where you can re-energize and relax and learn stuff about cultures, and then come back and get back to work with full gusto.

Summary

That brings us to the end of this podcast. Three things that we covered. The first thing is if you need to have email attack you, then create a separate email address and only the urgent stuff goes there. Even better, just don’t get any email. If there’s something utterly urgent, they’ll then call you. Otherwise, get someone to deal with the email with canned messages. You want to stay off Facebook and Twitter and any kind of social media. You want to put yourself in a situation where you’re just disconnected. Finally, you want to train your clients right at the start. You want to let them know that vacation is a time when I’m going to be away. You will be surprised at how they respect this almost like it’s a honeymoon, every single time you go on vacation.

It’s 5:59 AM and it’s time for that walk and to listen to some audiobooks and podcasts. I hope you’ve been enjoying this podcast. If you have been enjoying it, please go and leave a review on iTunes. If you haven’t already subscribed, it’s that big purple button. All you have to do is go and click it. If you’re on Android you can go to Stitcher and download the Stitcher app, and you can get all the downloads. I’m on Twitter @seandsouza and on Facebook at Sean D’Souza. You can email me at vacation@psychotactics.com. No, just kidding. I’m at work right now. Email me at sean@psychotactics.com.

This episode, for instance, was a response to someone asking how do we deal with work on vacation. The answer is you don’t. We’ve got to cartooning course starting off shortly. I don’t know when you’re going to listen to this podcast, but if you don’t get the cartooning course this year, then it’s all the way into 2016, so the cartooning course, which is thatwww.psychotactics.com/davinci. At the end of the year in November, we’re going to have the first 50 words course. This is a course that shows you how to start a podcast or webinars or write stuff in your articles. The first 50 words it drives us absolutely bonkers, and the first 50 words course shows you that. You’ll never have to struggle with the first 50 words ever again. You’ll become an amazing storyteller. That’s the first 50 words course. You have to be on the Psychotactics newsletter list so that you can get the notification when the course is due. That’s pretty much it for this episode. Thank you for tuning in. Bye for now.

You can also listen to or read this episode: #50:The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand

How did you get to New Zealand? That's the question I get most of all from clients. And there's a story, a very interesting story behind our move from India to New Zealand. Here it is?and with some cool music too.

 How did you get to New Zealand? That's the question I get most of all from clients. And there's a story, a very interesting story behind our move from India to New Zealand. Here it is—and with some cool music too.

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What I was looking for, when I was 13 years old
Part 2: Getting to New Zealand
Part 3: What were the early years at Psychotactics like?
Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

The Power of Chocolate: The Power of Psychotactics Chocolate Marketing
Episode #8: The Power of Enough—And Why It’s Critical To Your Sanity
The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

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So how do you subscribe to this free podcast?

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

iTunes   |  Android   |  E-mail (and get special goodies)   | RSS  

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The  Transcript

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Hi. This is Sean D’Souza from Psychotactics.com and you are listening to The Three-Month Vacation Podcast.

This podcast isn’t some magic trick about working less, instead, it’s about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.

This is The Three-Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza. One of the questions that I get most of all is how we got to New Zealand. What caused us to leave India and to get to New Zealand? What were the early days like? These are questions that subscribers at Psychotactics want to know all the time.

This is the 50th episode and so I thought that’s good idea. Let’s puts in the Psychotactics story here so that you can listen to it and enjoy it.

Part 1: What I Was Looking For, When I Was 13 Years Old

When I was 13 years old, I had a thought. I wanted to live in a place that was half-city and half-country. Mumbai or Bombay as it was called back then, was very polluted and noisy, not good enough for me, obviously, and I wanted to move to a place that was half-city and half-country except I didn’t know about New Zealand. I’ve never been to New Zealand, probably never even seen any photos of it, but in my mind, I was clear that it had to be half-city and half-country. I say half-city because I love the city. I like people. I like going out and seeing people, and I like the energizer level of the city, but I love the country as well, and I thought if I could find a place that was half-city and half-country, that would be great.

I wasn’t thinking of New Zealand. I wasn’t even thinking of leaving India. I was thinking of moving to a place like Bangalore which is in South India. It’s called the Garden City. As I grew up, Bangalore got more congested and busier, and it became just another city, so we started looking out for other countries. We looked at the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These are mainly the immigrant countries.

Canada was very cool. I went to the Canadian Embassy and they said, “What’s your profession?” I said, “I’m a cartoonist.” In that documentation that they gave me, there were six different types of cartoonist to choose from, and I thought, “Wow, this is a very sophisticated place,” because when you go to most of these places, you don’t find cartoonist listed as a profession. We didn’t go to Canada. We didn’t fill out any forms. We didn’t do any of that stuff.

We did the same with Australia. We went to the embassy. We got some forms. We didn’t do anything. Then, eventually, a lawyer came from New Zealand. He was an immigration lawyer and he looked for our papers, and he said, “No.” He said we didn’t have enough points to get to New Zealand. He said that we needed to try later, but it didn’t look good, and so, we gave up. We just gave up just like that.

Part 2:  Getting to New Zealand

Then, I was walking down the street several years later, grocery shopping, and I ran into this friend of mine. Her name is Joan. Joan says to me, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I’m grocery shopping.” She said, “No, no. What are you doing in India? Weren’t you supposed to go to New Zealand?” I said, “Oh, yeah. We were supposed to go, but we did all these paperwork and they said that we couldn’t go.” Then, she said, “You should try now.” She gave me a card and I contacted the immigration lawyer, and that was the start of our merry dance with Indian bureaucracy. I don’t know if you’ve been in a bureaucratic country, but Indian bureaucracy is way up there. You have to go to the police and to the passport department, and you’re going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and spending enormous amounts of time just in this back and forth movement.

Anyway, nine months passed, suddenly, late at night, almost midnight, we got a call wherein we have 12 months to make that trip to New Zealand. That’s when something amazing happened. Everything became lopsided in our favor. I know this sounds crazy to say lopsided in your favor, but it was almost like there was a design to stop us from leaving. Everything that came our way was amazing as long as we stayed in India.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we had a rough life in India. The Renuka’s company was a Swiss company and it is the largest fragrance company in the world, and they used to pay for everything; for our stay, our car, we had a chauffeur. It was good life, but the moment we decided we wanted to move was as if a force came in, trying to keep us back.

At that point in time, Renuka’s boss, he didn’t know that we were leaving. Almost at the moment we decided we’ll be leaving, he decided to put her in charge of the entire Asian region, which was a big job. When he found out that we were going to New Zealand, he offered to pay the entire airfare. He said, “Go to New Zealand. Have a good vacation. Come back and take your job back,” and we said, “No.” It was the same for me, I had an office. I had staff. I have three-hour lunches. We used to go bowling in the middle of the day. It was a very good life and we had to check up that life and then go into this complete uncertainty of New Zealand.

When we left the country, I had just a handbag full of clothes. Not because we didn’t have clothes, but because I wanted to bring all my computer equipment along, so instead of the usual baggage that people bring with all their staff, I had my huge monitor, and then the CPU which weighed a ton, then a scanner, then a printer, and that was what I brought to New Zealand. Everything else was coming in bags later on, but that was the stuff that came with me on the flight.

When I’m talking about New Zealand, I often say that we didn’t know anyone in New Zealand, but that’s not quite true. We knew one person and that was Wayne Logue. Wayne was someone that I had met on an internet forum. I was part of a cartoon forum called the Wisenheimer, and Wayne, he was part of that, too. I said I’m coming to New Zealand and he said, “Oh, I can help you.” This was the amazing part. It almost seemed like, “Wow, where did Wayne come from?” We didn’t know whether he was just a crazy guy, a serial killer, and I think that it crossed his mind as well because that’s what … We had a conversation one day and that’s what he said.

He didn’t know anything about me. He didn’t know whether I was going to show up, but Wayne actually got my mobile phone, he got my P.O. Box, he got a rental apartment, he did all this stuff not really knowing whether I existed or whether I was just pulling one big April Fool’s Day joke on him. Then, he showed up at the airport and I was able to stay at his place for a week.

He had got this rental apartment. He moved me to the rental apartment. He had a hamper full of goodies for me like Kiwi stuff, red socks. When I say “red socks” I mean red socks because we were doing this whole America’s Cup campaign and those are the red socks that they were selling. There were all these things that were essentially very New Zealand-based in that hamper.

The landlord’s name was Barry. Barry showed up. He said, “Do you need anything?” I wasn’t quite sure I needed anything. Barry shows up later with half-a-full of forks and spoons, and iron and ironing board, and he just leaves it outside the door so that I can get started.

This was New Zealand for me. It was full of friendly, wonderful people that just went out of their way to do stuff. This was a fairy tale start to New Zealand, but it got even better before it got worse.

Within a week, I was calling up people from the phonebook. I called up maybe 200 people. These designers and marketing agencies and advertising agencies, and I had a job. I had a job as a web designer. I’d studied a bit of Flash. I didn’t know much of it, but the company that hired me, they didn’t know any of the Flash stuff, so it was very new, very interesting, until I got the job. By day two, I was sick of the job. I wanted to quit.

I emailed Renuka. Renuka was still back in India at that point in time. She was going to follow in month or so. I said I wanted to quit the job. She said, “No, no, no. Hang in there.” Renuka has always been this person who had a job and I’ve always been this person who never had a job. I always ran my own business freelance. This job, I don’t know what it was, but it just drove me crazy. I had nothing to do. The whole time I was there, I probably built one website, which if you know me, that drove me absolutely crazy. It was like being in prison.

Then, I got made redundant, and that was the second happiest day of the entire year. The first being the day I got to New Zealand, but this was fabulous. There was just one little problem though. We had just bought a house the week before and we had a mortgage for over $200,000, and now, we both didn’t have jobs and we had to pay that mortgage.

Part 3:  What Were the Early Years at Psychotactics Like?

What were the early years at Psychotactics like? For one, it wasn’t even called Psychotactics. It had this very embarrassing name called Million Bucks. As you probably heard before, I was headed back to India and I had this book called “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, and it asked a question, what can you be the best in the world at? I was a professional cartoonist at that time and I couldn’t answer the question. I thought that Calvin and Hobbes was the best cartoon in the world and I couldn’t beat that, and so i wanted to do something else. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a new county, but I wanted to do something else, and so I just decided to jack up everything I was already doing, and then, throw myself into this crazy crevasse.

One day, I just decided I was going to get into marketing. I don’t know what happened. It was as if I took a billboard and put it up on Main Street, and said “Sean D’Souza is not going to do any cartooning anymore,” because all the work I was getting, book covers and magazine covers, and illustrations, and advertising agencies, stuff to be done, and it all stopped. Just overnight, it just stopped. It was as if I’d made these announcements all over town. It just stopped. Then, I had to go out and find some consulting work to do.

Now, I was part of a networking group, but would you trust a cartoonist to then advise you on your marketing? Plus, there was this terrible name called Millions Bucks. Even so, I remember what Wayne had told me when I got to New Zealand. He was talking about the cartooning stuff and he said, “John found the pavement. Just go and meet people.” That’s what I did. I just founded the pavement. We used to go to all these events to speak where there were two or three people, or people who were half-asleep, and the amount of mistakes that we had to make along the way were phenomenal.

As you know, the Brain Audit itself came about from this very, very bad episode where I stood before an audience of about 20 people and started speaking about the Brain Audit, and then I forgot what I had to say. Then, Renuka had to come and take me aside and we have to have a break for 10 minutes, but from that came the Brain Audit, and from the Brain Audit came our entire business.

Along the way, we had all of these little speaking engagements at this rotary and what they call SWAP here, which was sales people with a passion, I think. We’d go to these events and it was this drill over and over again, and this is what I tell people, “You sit behind your computer and yo expect things to happen, but there is a lot of ground work that’s happening, a lot of ground work, and we had to do all our ground work.”

The years just flew by until one day, I was sitting at this restaurant called “D-72″ with my friend Eugene Moreau. We were talking about this whole badly-named company called Million Bucks. He said, “You send out a newsletter and you call it Psychological Tactics, and you call the newsletter Psychotactics, so why don’t you name your company Psychotactics? I thought that was a good idea, and so, we named it Psychotactics, and that is how Psychotactics came about.

It wasn’t like Million Bucks was totally hopeless. We had millionbucks.co.nz. If you know what a frame-base site was, it was a frame-base site, that means Google couldn’t index it, and yet, we had 1000 subscribers to that website. Now, if you go back to archive.org and search for millionbucks.co.nz and go back in time like the year 2000 or 2001, you will find this terrible-looking site with very small fonts, probably 5 or 6-point. Then, right at the bottom, you had to read all the stuff and then get right to the bottom, and it said, “Subscribe Here.” You literally had to read every word before you subscribe.

Today, I sound very confident, but at that point in time, I wasn’t feeling confident at all. I always felt like a fraud. I always felt like someone was going to tap me on the shoulder. Even when opportunity was thrown in our face, we were reluctant. At one point in time, a guy called Joe Vitale, he decided that he was going to promote our book, the Brain Audit, which was just a PDF. It was just 16 or 20 pages. We didn’t have any credit card facility. New Zealand was way back then anyway. It was like you couldn’t get any facility and we’d been looking for three months, and doing the research and spinning, and spinning, and spinning, which is what a lot of people do, and that’s what we did anyway.

He gave us a week, and in that week, we had to figure out something and we found ClickBank. Sure they charged over 7.5%, but it was wonderful for us. It was fabulous that we could actually take a credit card. We got back to Joe and said, “We are ready.” He said, “Oh, this week, I’m busy.” Then, the next week, he was busy. The next month, he was busy. Several months passed, but in those months, someone found our website and they started buying the Brain Audit, and that’s how we started selling copies of the Brain Audit online. We didn’t change that 20-page book for ages, for probably over a year, and we sold about $50,000 worth of that book before we even made a single change.

By this point, we started speaking at events and getting more confident about selling the book at the events. People will buy the book just on the enthusiasm. Back in 2002, the whole concept of any book was like weird. Some people didn’t even have an email address back then. They would ask for the book on a CD. We kept pushing and we kept going to events, and we kept contacting people on the internet, and we still do that today. After all these years, we’re still doing exactly what we did back then.

When I started out, I always believed that things would get less busy, and yes, they do get less busy if your goals are very limited and you want to earn just as much as you did before. We earn a lot more than we did before, but now, the money has become less a focus. Now, just writing books that nobody else is writing, doing them in a way that nobody else is doing them, all of that takes a lot of time and effort, and that’s why I wake up at 4am everyday. In fact, as I’m doing this recording, it’s now 5:52am, and I enjoy every moment of it.

Auckland is half-city and half-country. It’s an amazing place, and New Zealand, no matter how much you read about it or look at it in the pictures or in the movies, it is absolutely astounding, and you should visit.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little, mini episode on the Psychotactics history. If you’d want more of this, how we started up our workshops, how we started up our courses, the kind of trouble that we went to, and these personal history stories as it were, write to me and let me know so that I can give you some more stuff.

If you haven’t already subscribed to this Three-month Vacation Podcast, then make sure to go to iTunes and hit the “Subscribe” button. Every subscribe really helps the rating of this podcast. If you’ve already done that, then, make sure that you tell your friends about it. Two or three friends that you tell today make a big difference to this podcast.

That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now. Bye-bye and do write in.

 You can also listen to or read this Episode: #49:How To Get Better, Higher-Paying Clients With Testimonials

How do you avoid losers as clients? How do you completely sidestep the clients that don't pay, cause trouble and push you around? Surprisingly, the answer lies in testimonials. There are elements of testimonials that cause clients of a certain kind to get attracted to you. So how do you harness that latent power of testimonials? And how do photos, details and tone come into play? Find out in this podcast.

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In this episode Sean talks about

The whole concept of testimonials and why we are more like elephants. He covers:
Part 1: How photos act as a mirror on your website
Part 2: Why you need to explore the detail in your testimonials
Part 3: What is tone and how does it affect your testimonials
Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer.
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Useful Resources and Links

5000bc—How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems?
Learn more about Testimonials—The Secret Life of Testimonials
Psychotactics Newsletter—Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing newsletter
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To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

 

iTunes   |  Android   |  E-mail (and get special goodies)   | RSS

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

African elephants are one of nature’s most amazing communicators. They rumble, they roar and snort, scream, and they trumpet. Yet most of their communication is never heard by humans because it is on the level of infrasound. Infrasound is an extremely low frequency rumble that falls way below the hearing range of human, and yet humans can feel t sound.

Michael Garstang, a meteorologist at the University of Virginia explains how elephants communicate. Many of the rumbling calls occur at the level of infrasound. This is a very low frequency rumble that’s below the audible hearing range of humans, he said. Humans can hear the upper end as a rumble, although you’re not hearing it in your ears. It’s more like feeling the vibrations in your diaphragm. This feeling, rather than hearing, is what we encounter when we run into the concept of testimonials.

Today we’re going to look at this whole concept of testimonials and why we are more like elephants. We’re communicating through this infrasound, this low level. We can see the testimonials but we’re not exactly paying attention to what’s written there or what’s presented to us. Instead, we’re kind of communicating in a completely different way. What are the way that testimonials communicate that we’re not aware of but we can feel? The three elements that we’re going to look at today are the photo, the detail, and the tone.

Let’s start off with the first one, which is the photo.

Part 1: The Photo

If you were to go to a dating site today and start to look at the photos, you would find that something very interesting starts to fall into place. That is you are choosing some people’s photos over other people’s photos. Why do we do this? It’s because we recognize something within the photos, and that something draws us to that person. Now this doesn’t just occur on dating sites. If you go to a marketing site, and let’s say you look at the site where you have all these promises like become a millionaire overnight or get these results very quickly, look at those photos. As you scroll down to photo after photo after photo after photo, you find that you don’t really like many of those people, but you haven’t read any of the testimonials. You’ve scanned them but you haven’t really read the detail in the testimonials, and yet the photo is sending this low frequency message.

This photo is telling you these people aren’t like you. They are different somehow. They’re more greedy or they want quicker results. They don’t want to work for it. Even if you had not a single word of text on that page, you would still feel uncomfortable. Then you could sense someone who wanted that kind of result, who wanted to be that millionaire overnight, who wanted all those quick results. They would find those photos very appealing.

This is what happens with photos. Photos send out this message, which means when you’re putting your photos of your clients on your website, you can’t just take the clients that give the best testimonials. You’ve got to put clients that are very, very reliable, clients that are ethical, clients that you like, clients that you want to work with in future. Those are the photos that you want to put on your website.

Why? Because it’s like a mirror. There is a message that’s coming out from those photos. That’s why on Psychotactics we have photos of people that we like, clients that we’ve worked with, clients that we’ve gone out with, clients that we would love to have all the time. The results have been very clear. People often get on our courses and they say, “How do you get such great people in your courses?” They come to our workshops and they go, “Wow, this is amazing. What kind of filtration system do you have in place?” When you look for that answer, at the very core it is the photographs.

Whenever we put up a photograph of a client that we didn’t like just because we needed a testimonial, we start to get other clients that are similar to that client. If you want to try an experiment and put all the bad clients, all the clients that don’t pay you on time, they give you a lot of trouble, put their photos and you’ll start to see that low frequency rumble going through, that communication going through, and you get more clients just like that. You put in some good clients, clients that you like to work with, and you start to see the clients that you want to work with show up time after time. It’s a simple filtration system, and yet it works amazingly well.

But photos alone will not do the job. Of course they’ll attract clients that you want but they still need some more information. What is that more information all about? The more information is the detail that is in your testimonials. This takes us to the second part where we start to explore the detail in your testimonials.

Part 2: Explore the Detail in Your Testimonials

What is this detail all about? Let’s take a look at one of the testimonials at 5000bc.com, which is our membership site. The testimonial reads like this: 5000bc is one of the few sites I’ve been a member of that has so little drama. There are no huge fights, no negativity. Everyone tries their best to be helpful.

Then it goes on to talk about how he’s been a member of several membership sites over the years and how they’ve charged over $100 a month. They were big and crowded and scary. Some had just a handful of members and some were strictly moderated, and some were just overtaken by promotion from the members, and how 5000bc is the only membership site that he’s stuck with year after year after year for over nine years.

As you’re reading that testimonial, what you’re getting is a feeling of safety, of being in the safe zone. That when you’re in 5000bc you don’t feel overcrowded and pushed around and all these promotions coming at you. You suddenly feel that you can ask a lot of questions, that you can get the answers, that the people out there are people like you, because that’s what we’re looking for. That’s what we’re looking for in the photos. That’s also what we’re looking for in the detail.

The testimonials start to reflect what you want to be, where you want to go, how you want to be. A lot of testimonials don’t do this. They don’t explain that experience or they don’t give out that experience. What they do is talk about how great they are. It doesn’t come from a user experience. It comes more from how great that website wants to be rather than how safe you need to be. When a customer comes to your site and starts to read the testimonial, they need to read the experience from the user’s point of view. When they do that, then they feel that mirror effect. They can feel that low rumble coming through and they know this is the place where they would thrive and succeed and move forward.

Whether you’re selling a product or a service, what you’re looking for first are photographs, because photographs form that first mirror. But then the second thing you’re looking for is the user experience. It’s not so much about how great it is but how the user has gone through that feeling of feeling insecure and now you’re feeling great. Or they needed some questions answered, and how the questions were answered. Or how they weren’t expecting to find such a fun group, and then how they ran into an honest, fun-loving group.

All of this becomes the experience. It becomes the mirror. Immediately you feel I need to be part of this place. I need to be part of this experience. As you ask the six questions that I mentioned in The Brain Audit, you start to get this response from your clients. You start to get the response that you’re looking for, which enabled them to give their experience. That is what others get attracted to. Suddenly 5000bc is filled with all these happy, friendly people and you have a great experience.

This is true for your own product and your service as well. When you have your workshops, when you have your training, when you have your courses online, when you sell your products you will find that most of the people, if not all the people, are remarkably similar. Their ethics are similar. Their behavior is similar. You don’t have trouble. Or you can have a lot of trouble if you start to put in photographs and experiences that are not congruent with what you really want to achieve.

This takes us to the third part, which is the tone.

Part 3: The Tone

We looked at photos and we looked at detail, but what is tone? This part we cannot control. I don’t know what it is, but when people speak like right now I am speaking to you, what kind of feeling do you get from me? That’s the kind of question that cannot be answered. You feel this at a diaphragm level like the elephants feel … You feel their energy at a diaphragm level. You can’t hear it. You don’t know what it is but you feel there’s something happening. The tone comes from clients as they answer your testimonials. The testimonial tone is not something that you can control, but you need to know that when you appeal to those first two elements where you put the right photo and you ask the right questions and you get the right clients in, you will definitely start to get a tone that is consistent.

The tone you find with most Psychotactics lines is one of warmth and helpfulness, and it’s right through the website. You can look at all the products and all the services, and the membership site, and the workshops, and the courses, and it’s there. It’s warm, it’s friendly, it’s helpful. Where did that tone come from? The tone came from us, and the tone can come from you. We tell people to be kind, be helpful, or be gone.

When that message goes out on a consistent basis like it is right now on this podcast, then the people that are interested in being kind and being helpful, they join our courses, they come to our workshops, they deal with us. The rest of them just go away. They go to other sites where probably they’re promised riches or quick results or whatever. It becomes a filtration process. You wouldn’t think of testimonials doing such a fabulous job, and that’s what they do. When you get those testimonials, you get that warm helpful tone in it as well. You can’t control it, except to send out that message on a regular basis.

Let’s just summarize what we’ve learned today.

Summary

We looked at three elements. The first was the photo. We found that the moment we put in photos that don’t appeal to us, rather photos of clients that have given us trouble, we’re going to get clients that are going to give us a lot of trouble in the future. You want to pick photos of clients that you like, clients that have worked with you and are enjoyable to work with and pay on time. You will start to see that mirror effect almost immediately.

The second thing is one of detail. When you ask those six questions that you get in The Brain Audit, you will get that detail. In that detail people will talk about warmth, the friendliness or fun. Someone else reading that information also gets that feeling, that user experience. Finally, it’s a factor of tone, but how do you get that tone? You get that tone by first sending out a message that we’re kind, friendly, helpful, whatever message you want to send out. Then you get that same feedback. It comes through in the testimonial. It’s not something that you can control except to send it out in the first place.

Now, every product or service is not going to have testimonials right at the start. We’ve been in business since 2002 at Psychotactics, and yet when we bring out a new product or a new service we don’t have testimonials for that product or service. You’re always the new kid on the block no matter how long you’ve been around. The trick to getting those testimonials is to ask people that you like. Now you can’t always control this when you’re just starting out, but find people that you like. Don’t go for people that you don’t like. Even if you’re looking through forums or Facebook or Twitter, any place, look for people that you already like because that will have the mirror effect, that will have that elephant-like low intensity rumble that other people get.

Yes, it’s always going to be trouble finding testimonials, but this is how you go about it. Then once you’ve got it up and running, you’re going to get testimonials from people who bought your product, and then you don’t have any trouble anymore. When we first started out, it was very hard for us to get testimonials for The Brain Audit, which was our first book. Then we got over 100 testimonials, and then 200 and 300 and 400. At one point we had 800. Today there are over a thousand testimonials. The same applies for all the other books and the products. It’s just a system that you have to keep following, and you get more and more testimonials.

If you would like to learn more about testimonials you can go to www.psychotactics.com/testimonial. There is a book there, The Secret Life of Testimonials. It shows you a world of testimonials that you didn’t know existed. It’s not a very expensive book but it changes the way you respond to things and the way your clients respond to you. At the end of the day, all of us want is to do our work well, to get great clients that respect us and trust us and work with us, and to be able to take the break and go on our three month vacation.

Really, getting the clients is the critical part. If you go to psychotactics.com/testimonial you can read up and you can decide for yourself whether you want the book. I think you’ll like it a lot, so go there and check it out for yourself. On another front, I’m still working on the stock cartoons. They’re turning out to be a lot of fun. I listen to a lot of music and podcasts, and we’re turning out these very elaborate cartoons that you’re going to love to put in your blog posts, your website, your books, pretty much everywhere.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, so get on the Psychotactics list if you haven’t got there, because when I announce this I promise you there will be a bit of a stampede. These cartoons are absolutely stunning. I might even give quite a few away. Get on the Psychotactics list. Yes, also, psychotactics.com/magic. That’s where you get information about the podcast so that you can keep on top of them, but you also get some bonuses from time to time. Either psychotactics.com where you have to subscribe. If you’re already already subscribed, go towww.psychotactics.com/magic. That’s pretty much it. I’m on Twitter @Sean D’Souza. Send me your questions there, or at sean@psychotactics.com. Yes, also on Facebook at Sean D’Souza. Bye for now.

Still listening? One of the best testimonials that you can ever get is the unasked-for testimonial. We were at this workshop in Washington D.C. when one of our clients stood up. We didn’t ask him to stand up and give a testimonial, but he stood up and he started talking about the cartooning course that he had done with us. Then he went out and he got his books and he showed the cartoons that he had done. He showed it to the entire audience. Then some of the group had also done the cartooning course with him, and one of the terms in the cartooning course is “circly circles,” which of course, circly doesn’t exist as a word, but it’s part of the cartooning course. You learn it and you say it.

Suddenly there was this kind of little rumble going through the room and people were interested in the cartooning course. You can see this at psychotactics.com/davinci, because we were recording at that point in time so it’s on video. You can feel the enthusiasm. You can see what is happening there. You can see the person themselves, the tone. It’s just amazing, that detail. There you go, a little snippet from the Psychotactics archives.

You can also listen to or read this episode: How To Build A Cult-Like Following By Using An Adjective In Your Branding

 

Is it really easy to build a cult-like following for your brand? Yes, but the core of that branding lies in the "adjective". Yes, that very same grammar lesson you had at school. When you look at the biggest and most well-defined brands in history, you find they are defined by a single word. Let's take Volvo, for example. The word "safety" came to mind, didn't it? That's the power of the adjective. Let's learn more in this episode of the Three-Month Vacation 

Details

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/48

Email me at sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What is the adjective and how one little adjective can define your business?
Part 2: How we get to this adjective and the biggest mistake you can make
Part 3: How do we expand it further so that it becomes your whole DNA

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

--------------------
Useful resources and links

Free Uniqueness Series: How to find your uniqueness
Uniqueness Stories: Why Uniqueness Stories Are Better Than Slogans
Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

When I was growing up in India, all plywood was sold the same way. You went to a store and you picked some plywood. Then you took it home. There was no branding; it was all very, very generic.

At some point, a company called Kitply, they decided that they didn’t want to be generic anymore. They decided they wanted to charge a premium on this plywood. Now why would you go and pay a premium on plywood when you could just enter the store, get your plywood just like everybody else? Well, Kitply, they wanted to do something different. That is exactly what they did.

The Indian coastline, it’s about 7,000 kilometers; that’s about 4,500 miles. When you have a coastline that is so extensive, it also means that you have a lot of water around you. Water means humidity, and humidity means disaster for plywood, at least the plywood that you were getting in the store at that point in time. After you spent all this money on a carpenter, which is what most people did, they got a carpenter across and they built cupboards and they put the plywood in the cupboards. Then the rains would come. In India, you don’t just get rains; you get rains in June, all of July, all of August, and a bit in September as well.

That plywood would get all the moisture sitting in it. After a while, it would start to warp. Your beautiful cupboard, all your furniture, it would have this warped plywood. It would drive people crazy, but there was nothing that you could do until Kitply came up with a solution. They made their plywood waterproof. But Indians are a skeptical lot, and rightly so. If you’ve got a monsoon that goes on for several months, you want to be sure that the plywood is exceedingly good. So, Kitply not only said that their plywood was waterproof, but that it was boiling waterproof.

Now no one was going to take boiling water and throw it on the plywood, but it made a point. What is the factor that caused Kitply to stand out? Incredibly, we have to go back to a grammar lesson, because what we’re doing here is just looking at the adjective. What we’re going to cover in this podcast are three elements. First is what is the adjective. Second: how to pick it. Third: how to refashion your product around it.

Let’s start off with the first one, which is what is the adjective.

Part 1: What is the Adjective

Now, I don’t have to tell you what an adjective is. You did that in grammar class. But here’s the point. When we started out the article writing course it was very difficult for us to position it against other article writing courses, because ours is almost $3,000 and, well, the others are $400 and $500. Some are even free.

What we did was we put one little adjective. We called it The Toughest Writing Course in the World. That changed everything. Because not only did it change us, but it changed the perception of all the customers that were going to buy into that course. They knew that it wasn’t a stroll in the park. They knew that they were to expect a lot of work and effort going into that course. That one little adjective made all the difference.

This is what you need to do for your business as well. You need one little adjective to define your business. What is this business all about? When we look at a brand like Volvo for instance, immediately an adjective comes to mind, doesn’t it? It’s safety. Now Volvo hasn’t really pushed this concept of safety for a long, long time, and yet we remember it. We remember it because of that one adjective, which was safety.

If you go and read any of a dozen books, you’ll find another case study showing up, which is Domino’s Pizza. Now Domino’s Pizza has not advertised its speed for a very long time. That is because every pizza parlor will deliver it very quickly. But it still helped them make it a billion dollar brand all on the basis of one adjective, which was speed. Adjectives play an extremely important roll, and what we’ve got to figure out is how do we create our adjective.

This takes us to the second part, where we’re going to explore how we get to this adjective.

Part 2: How We Get to This Adjective

One of the big mistakes that people do when they’re coming up with their adjective is they sit down with their company, their brand, and they try to come up with an adjective for the company. At this point in time, that’s not really what you want to do. You want to come up with an adjective for a product or a service and not for your company, because your company has so much ego, so much of your ego invested in it, that it is difficult to nail down an adjective. You want to start off really simply by working with a product or a service.

When we started out, we didn’t do Psychotactics. We started out with something like the article writing course. What you need to do next is to make sure that you sit down and write about ten adjectives for that product or service, whatever it is. Just write down those ten adjectives, and then you cross out seven. This is not going to be easy, but cross out seven. You’re left with three. Out of those three, you cross out two. This is going to be extremely difficult because you think it’s this and that and that, but you want to cross out two. That leaves you with just one adjective. That defines your product or your service.

Now most people go through this procedure in one of two ways. One is absolute fluke, and the second is this organized system of ten and three and one. When we did the article writing course, we didn’t go through this whole system of ten and three and one because a customer, she suggested that it was the toughest writing course in the world, so we adopted that adjective. It became that pivotal point, that pivotal turning point where the course started to get more customers simply based on that one adjective. They wanted to sign up because it was difficult, not because it was easy.

This gives us a good chance to actually compare one course with the other. We also have a copywriting course. Now the copywriting course doesn’t have an adjective. When you describe the article writing course you say it’s the toughest course in the world. When you describe the copywriting course, you go, “Um, uh, wait. I … ” You’re lost for words. This is what the adjective does. It boils it down to one single world, but it does so much more because everything extends from there. This is what we’re going to do in the third part. We’re going to look at how it becomes the DNA of your product or service, and how you can build out from there, how it creates this whole structure, this whole ecosystem around your product and service.

Let’s go to the third part, which is how do we expand it further so that it becomes your whole DNA.

Part 3: How Do We Expand It Further So That It Becomes Your Whole DNA

When we just look at the adjective like safety or speed, it doesn’t mean anything. When we look at safety and we look at how do we make this car really safe, then we get to what Volvo has done over the years. They’ve created seat belts and crumple zones and crash test dummies and a whole range of safety devices for your car. So they are known for their safety, and the kind of people that buy a Volvo are those who are obsessed with safety.

The whole ecosystem grew around that one adjective. When you look at brands around you, you start to notice that it’s not just Volvo and Domino’s and the article writing course, but when you look at the Benjamin. This is the Benjamin Hotel in New York. They are focused on a good night’s sleep. It’s restfulness that’s their adjective. They have all kinds of pillows. They have a sleep concierge. They have cakes and stuff that help you sleep better, and they’ll even give you a guarantee if you don’t get a good night’s sleep, even if someone else is drilling in the building next door. Everything they do is built around that one concept of sleep, that one adjective of restfulness.

When I was growing up in India we had a television. It was called Onida TV. When they launched that TV, the slogan was “Neighbours envy and owner’s pride.” They didn’t talk about the features of the TV, the size of the TV, nothing. It was just this devil the whole time, this sneaky little devil. He showed up on the screen and he did all kinds of antics. At the end of it, it was just about envy. They didn’t talk about anything. That one adjective made Onida one of the largest-selling televisions in India.

We live in New Zealand, as you know. If you think of New Zealand, what do you think of? You think of beauty. You think of purity. That’s what New Zealand is all about. It’s 100% pure. That’s what their advertising and marketing is all about. That’s their adjective. But that’s not what New Zealand had about a hundred years ago. Their slogan was about cure, not pure. You came here for health benefits, not to go around and look at the waterfalls and go over the mountains and do all those fabulous things that you can do in New Zealand.

That adjective can change over time. Funny, no one even noticed, did they? In fact, some adjectives are under the radar. You look at Facebook for instance, and you think what could be the adjective for Facebook. But it’s very obvious, isn’t it? It’s sticky. Everything they do is designed to make you get back to Facebook. Recently they even made you, forced you to get the Messenger app if you wanted to get some of the messages that friends would send to you.

Why did they do that? Because if you didn’t go to Facebook, you’d probably miss out on the messages. If you had the Messenger app, that would pop up on your phone and you’d see it, so it would pull you back to the site. Facebook is all about stickiness. It’s about going there several times a day, being addicted to it, communicating with your friends, doing whatever you have to do, but you have to go back to Facebook. It’s an addiction.

When you think of Amazon, you think wow, that’s a great selection. Maybe that is their adjective. But no, it’s below the radar. Amazon’s entire business is built around speed. They have two-day shipping, one-day shipping. This time I was in the United States and I was in Washington D.C. I had bought this mic that I’m using right now. Well not quite, I had ordered the wrong mic. It got shipped in and then I wanted to return it, so I did. I packed it up and I was waiting for the courier to come in.

By the time the courier came in, the new mic had already been delivered. There’s an adjective in place even though we might not see as part of the slogan. Sometimes you can have an adjective that is defined by the title. For instance, when I wrote Dartboard Pricing, the concept of dartboard itself talks about something that is unusual, that is kind of random. That gives it that adjective. It gives it that curiosity factor, and it attracts you to that product or to that service.

Now, the question does arise: can this adjective last forever? In most cases it can go for a very, very long time. In Domino’s Pizza’s case, it didn’t last forever, but they’re still a billion dollar brand. When you are selling your products or services, it’s critical to have this adjective because this is what we do in normal life. We describe other people. We describe places. We describe movies. We describe products. When you have that adjective in place, it not only helps to create that description, but it becomes the DNA for your product or service.

The reason why you see so many products and services without any game plan is simply because they don’t have this simple grammar lesson in place: the adjective. Once you have the adjective, everything builds around it. That is really what we’ve covered today.

Summary

In part one we just looked at the fact that our grammar lesson was very important. We needed to have an adjective. In part two we looked at the fact that we could probably list ten adjectives and then get rid of seven, and then get rid of another two until we had a single adjective. Finally, we looked at all of these products and services like the Benjamin, and Onida, and New Zealand, and Amazon, and Facebook. There are dozens of examples of very successful brands. At the core of them is the DNA. At the core of them is this factor of the adjective and how the whole ecosystem is built around this one adjective.

If you’re wondering what is the adjective for Psychotactics, well, there is an adjective for the brand itself. The adjective for Psychotactics is elegance. When you buy a product or a service from Psychotactics, you experience that elegance. There is an elegance int system which goes with very tiny increments. There’s an elegance in the cartoons. There’s an elegance in the way the text is written. The same thing applies to the podcast. There is the music and the way the whole podcast is recorded. We’re always working towards that elegance. But on a ground level, every product and every service is going to need their own adjective as well.

Yes, your company is going to need some kind of adjective. It’s not critical right now but it’s going to need it over time, and you’re going to have to bring out that adjective in your marketing material. Which we haven’t done, by the way, but we will once the new website is up. Companies need the adjective but every product and every service is going to need the adjective as well.

That brings us to the end of this podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you do enjoy it, then share it with your friends. Talk about it on Twitter or Facebook. That will really help. Leave a review on iTunes; it really helps us. What’s happening in Psychotactics land? Well, you can still get the Dartboard Pricing at whatever we launched it at. We’re going to have the sales page up, so if you want to get it quickly, go to psychotactics.com/ttc. You can also join the headline writing course or become a headline trainer. That’s at the end of this month, so you want to be on the Psychotactics mailing list if you want to get these notifications, because the courses fill up pretty quickly.

You can find me at sean@psychotactics.com or Twitter @Sean D’Souza, and at Facebook at Sean D’Souza. Very, very sticky place, but I’m getting out of the sticky zone and I’m going for my walk. That’s me from the Three Month Vacation and psychotactics.com.

 

Also listen and read: #47: How We Sold $20,000 On Stage (In Under An Hour)

 

 

 

Imagine you got on stage and you had an eager audience ready to buy. Of course there are a few obstacles. The first obstacle is that you have just an hour to convince the audience to buy. The second is you're not the only one selling products?there are others. The third obstacle is that a good chunk of the audience doesn't know you that well and aren't on your list. So three big problems to deal with.

Now you may never have the desire to get on stage, but the issues are similar when you're selling a product or service. You have very little time to convince a prospect. You're battling it out with others selling similar products and services. And you're a bit of a stranger to the audience. / / So how do you overcome these issues, and win?

Notes:

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/47

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Art Of Preparation And The Importance Of Pre-Sell
Part 2: The Importance Of The Document Before The Event
Part 3: The Whole Factor of Urgency
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer. 

Useful Resources and Links

Black Belt Presentations:  When you make a presentation, wouldn’t it be amazing to completely control the room—without turning anyone off?
Special Bonus: How To Win The Resistance Game
Psychotactics Newsletter: Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing business newsletter

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

I was speaking at a conference in Chicago to about 200 to 300 people. I had just finished my speech and I met this guy in the corridor. He was rushing. I asked him, “Why are you in such a hurry?” He says, “I have to go upstairs and get my credit card.” I said, “Why do you have to get your credit card from upstairs? Why don’t you have it in your pocket?”

This is the story of how we sold $20,000 worth of product at a conference. This is digital product. This is not physical product. This was The Brain Audit and the membership to 5000bc. I was asked this question by Alison Beere from Cape Town, South Africa, and you want to know the answer. You probably think that the answer lay in the speech. There might have been some triggers in the speech. There might have been some information that caused them to act. Sure, there would have been some urgency, but what was it that caused all these people to buy? What caused them to trust me after speaking to them for just over an hour? Why did we manage to sell more than all the other speakers on that day?

These are the questions that we need to answer, and not because you want to go out there and sell 20,000. Of course you want to do it, but you have to understand that sales is not a one-time hit. That’s what it looks like. If I put this on a sales page, that’s exactly what it looks like. It looks like a one-time hit. It looks like I went there, made the speech, and they bought everything.

As we’re about to find out in this podcast, it is a matter of preparation. Whether you’re selling a very small item off your website, a course, or in our case, this $20,000 day that we had, it all involves preparation. What are the steps that you have to get all of these ducks lined up in a row? How do you make things work for you? Let’s find out

But wait, wait, wait. Let’s not go into how we did that just yet. Because we have to go back in time to 2003 when I was in Sydney, and I bombed in a big way. I sold very little, just enough to cover the cost of the airfare. What was the difference between the two events? Why was that guy so eager to get his credit card? Okay, enough teasing. Let’s go into the main section of today’s podcast and let’s cover the three points. What are the three points that we’re going to cover?

The first is the preparation. The second is the document before the event. The third is the very tight deadline. Let’s start off with the first one, which is the preparation.

Part 1: Preparation

If you had been a subscriber of Psychotactics you would have run into a statement that almost sounds like hype. That is that we sell out our courses maybe within half an hour, sometimes 20 minutes. Now these aren’t just $20 courses. These are courses that go up to $2,000, $3,000, and yet they fill up in 20 to 30 minutes. We do with this without any joint ventures, without any affiliates, without any publicity, without any advertising. It’s done with a very small group of people, and yet time after time, all the way since 2006, the courses have been consistently filling up. Not that it doesn’t make me nervous every time I launch a course. I still think somehow this time it will be jinxed, but it just keeps going.

What’s really happening? The first thing is the prep work. It’s what I call presell. When I went to this event in Chicago it was completely different from the event in Sydney. When I went to Sydney, I had great slides, I had a great presentation, and I give that presentation. I did exactly the same thing in Chicago. What a big difference. The difference was the preparation. Before we went to the event in Chicago we had done some prep work, some ground work. Before the event, Ken McCarthy, who was hosting the event, he had done some interviews. What did I do in those interviews?

The first thing I made sure was that I was empowering people. When we did the interviews, instead of answering a question, I gave away almost the complete system. When you give away a system, what you do is you empower people. You don’t cover a lot of points. You cover just a few points. I cover three points as you know. There are steps. You do this and you do that and you do the third thing, and you get to an end point.

When we did those interviews, people were listening at the other end. Now frankly, I don’t know what the other interviews were all about. Ken was interviewing a lot of folk, but I made sure that when someone finished my interview they had a task so simple that they could apply it. You see this in the free headline report that we give away, or you see this in the books that we write. You see this empowerment factor, and it’s very critical. Because there are several other speakers and they’re all going to make their pitch. You somehow have to stand out from it.

How do you stand out? You start right at the beginning. You start before the event. A lot of people don’t realize this. They don’t realize that people buy long before they pay. I’ll say that again. People buy long before they pay. What we were doing is getting them into the buying process. We were giving them information that was empowering that they could take right after the call and use it. Immediately, instead of just being another interview, instead of just being another speaker, now we were getting them to buy into our system, into our method, into whatever we were offering them. We hadn’t got on stage yet and people already buying into us.

Then you’d think that was enough. That if you just gave away that information, which is a system, a small system but a system nonetheless, that would be enough. But we gave away further goodies. We gave away information that we could easily sell. Of course people go through it. Not everyone goes through it but enough people go through it. Now we’re working on a second level where people are buying through us.

What is really happening here is when people encounter you for the first time, you’re a stranger. When you go back to 2009, there were already a whole bunch of experts in the marketing field. Now when you look around you, it has increased exponentially, whatever your field is. When you get that opportunity you have to take that opportunity with both hands. You have to create something that’s empowering, create something that’s a system, create something that your audience can immediately use. Then on top of that you give away further goodies. Again, the goodies are empowering. They’re short, they’re powerful, they get the point across and they now create this connection with this audience that didn’t know you at all, and you haven’t even stepped on stage.

Now this podcast is about what we did on stage, but it applies to pretty much anything. We’re going to have some cartoon stock, which means that you can use these cartoons anywhere. How do I go about that? I have to empower you. How do I empower you with cartons? Because I’m not teaching you to draw cartoons. I’m actually selling you the cartoon. I empower you by giving away a cartoon. When I give away a cartoon, now you’ve got something. You don’t know me but now you’ve got something, and something that is extremely good. Now the connection has been made.

You’re not going to buy all of those cartoons, not 100, or 200, or whatever you offer in the end. You get just one, but that one is so good that it empowers you. It’s isolated, it’s small, it gets your attention. That’s the first point: that you have to do the prep work well in advance; four, six, eight weeks in advance. Some people do it a year in advance. You might not have the time. You might have very little patience, but you’ve got to start off with the prep work because people buy long before they pay.

This takes us to the second part, which is the document before the event.

Part 2: The Document Before The Event

What is the document before the event? When you go to any event, what you get is a badge. Then you get some kind of bag with lots of goodies in it. Then you take that to your hotel room, and you might look through some of it, but most of it gets tossed in the corner because you’re more focused on the event. You’re more focused on what you have to learn.

What if you get something that is not connected to the bag, not connected to that registration process? Now that’s what we did at that Chicago event. We were speaking on the second day of the event. On day one we got the organizers to announce that everyone who was coming to my presentation would need to read about six or eight pages of stuff. This was just photocopied and given to everyone. Now when you go to an event you obviously want to get the best out of it. You’re not considering that bag and the badges and all the goodies. You’re now focused on those six to eight pages. Again, those six to eight pages were directly linked to what I was going to speak about.

Now this may sound really odd. If you’re going to give away the information that you’re already going to present, won’t they get bored? Won’t your whole presentation fall flat? As it turns out, the answer is no. First, let’s backtrack a little bit. Those six to eight pages, they had information on pricing and how to increase your prices without losing customers. In those six to eight pages, what you’re trying to create is a report. You want to go back to episode number 46 and see how you create a great report. That report was something that hit you between the eyes. It was still about the presentation I was about to make, but it was now getting the customer completely absorbed.

Now they had been through two or three levels. First it was the interview, then the goodies. Then we give them this third thing, which was wow, I never thought of it this way. Now they are primed to listen to you. They read those six to eight pages and some of them are reading it just before they enter the auditorium, but they’re reading it. All of them are reading it. That sets you up nicely for when you get up on stage. The people, the customers, they’re buying before they pay. You are setting up all these little bits of information that are empowering them, so that even if they buy nothing from you, they will buy in the future. Can you take that risk? No, you shouldn’t take that risk.

That takes us to the third part, which is the whole factor of urgency.

Part 3: The Whole Factor of Urgency

That’s part three: the tight deadline. I had finished my speech and I had stepped out in the corridor. That’s when I ran into the guy, the guy who was running upstairs to get his credit card. Why had he kept his credit card upstairs? You know the answer. He knew that he would get swayed by some of the speakers. He knew that he would buy something that he didn’t need. Yet, when we gave that presentation, he found it so useful that he decided he was going to buy, so he was running up to his hotel room to get his credit card. He said, “Hang on, I have to get the credit card and I can’t speak to you right now.”

What did I do before that that caused him to get his credit card? I was on the podium and my wife Renuka was at the end of the room. We didn’t have anybody else. It was just the two of us. You have to have someone else at the back of the room. Even one person handling 300 orders, not a problem. I said to the audience, “Here’s the thing. This is a great offer. It’s not a discount. You’re getting this great bonus.” We gave them some really good bonuses.

“When Renuka leaves the room, it’s over. You don’t get any of the bonuses. You don’t get anything that we’ve offered in the room.” Some people think it’s a bluff. Who’s going to turn down money? Yet, when we leave the room, that’s it. That guy was running up to his room to get his credit card so he could stop Renuka before she left the room. Now it does take some time to go through 200 or 300 orders, so she was in that room for at least 20 minutes, but we had prepared everything. There were sheets with details. Back then they had to write out their credit card details on a sheet of paper and sign it and give it in. All of that ground work, all of that prep work was in place. The sheets were on their seats before they sat down. Again, they were going through another step. Eventually what they had to do was just fill in the form, step up to Renuka, give her the sheet, and it was done. Then we left the room.

Then someone came up to me and said, “Are you Sean D’Souza?” I said yes. He had been to another presentation, and he said, “I want to buy what you just sold.” I said, “You don’t even know what I was selling.” He said, “Yes yes, I know, but my friend told me just buy whatever he’s selling.” You know how the deal was. The deal was that once we left the room, the offer didn’t exist. You would think it’s a bluff, and it’s never a bluff. You should always have this. It’s a tight deadline. When this happens, it doesn’t exist anymore. The offer doesn’t exist anymore. That creates an urgency that you will not find otherwise. You see this urgency on Christmas day for instance. People will not buy on the 28th of December. They have to buy everything before Christmas day. There is an urgency.

You have to use the same concept of urgency. Once people leave the room, who knows what happens. Some people run into other people, they change their minds. Yes, there is pressure. You might not like this pressure. As a person selling something you’re always a little unsure of this pressure, but this is how we buy everything. We don’t fix the roof because we want to fix the roof. We fix the roof because there is pressure. It’s leaking. We don’t buy a new phone because we need it desperately. We do it because there is external pressure, maybe social pressure. You may not admit to it, but the pressure exists. This is what Apple does as well. They create that momentum towards that event, and this is what you’ve got to do as well.

It’s not easy. It’s not easy to be a speaker there, to do all these steps and then finally to go through this sales process. Because what I used to do and what I did in Sydney was I didn’t really think through the last bit, which was the sales process. You have to be extremely calm and very enthusiastic when you’re selling your products or services. You get very nervous. You speed through it. You miss points. I had everything on slides so I didn’t miss anything. That is the way you go through the whole process.

Summary

To summarize what we’ve just covered, we did three steps. The first was we did all the prep work. I did the interviews. We gave the goodies. We had the sheets on the seats. We had everything in place. That was the first hit, because we know that people buy long before they pay. The second thing was that you need to have one little trigger before the event. We had this six to eight page document that people were reading, and they were reading just before they got into the event as well. Finally, there was a tight deadline. That deadline is sacred. You can’t say I’m going to change my mind. Hey, we’ll take your credit card. No. That’s what we do for all our courses as well, for all our products as well.

I said this in another podcast. Who’s going to know if three or four extra people sign up for a course? Who’s going to ask you? Those three or four extra people would be another $12,000 in the bank, but we say no. There is a tight deadline. You meet the deadline, you get in the course. It’s first come, first serve. At the event, it wasn’t first come, first serve, but it was pretty close. It was 20 minutes. She leaves the room, you’re toast.

This brings us to the end of the podcast and the one thing that you can do today. I think the one thing that you can do today is plan. What are the steps before the event? What are you going to give away before the event? What are the things and the goodies, and what are the little bits that you have to prepare? When people get on stage, when speakers get on stage, there are so many things that they have to do before the event and they never do. They just stand up and speak and they think everything is going to be all right. It’s never all right. You have to do all the little bits in advance. That’s what makes for a great event.

I would say sit down and draw a line from left to right. Then put in all the little bits that you have to do. Because when you get on stage, that is like the middle of whole sequence. Then finally, you have to still sell, which is the end of your sequence. You have to be very careful about that as well. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

Now, there is a book on this at Psychotactics. I wrote a book shortly after I came back because people wanted to know not just about this event and how we sold $20,000 worth of stuff, but also what goes into the slides. How do you control the slides? Because the slides also create this enigma factor. It creates this factor where people say wow, this is so well designed. It’s so well structured. You’ve got to have the structure for the slides.

You also have to have great visual appeal. You have to have control of how the slides look, how the presentation rolls out, and finally how you control the audience. All of this is in the Black Belt Presentation Series. If you’re really interested in how to create a great presentation, then that becomes very critical. These elements that we talked about, these help to create that $20,000 moment, but all of the stuff in the book, that helps you understand all the other elements that you have to do. It’s a lot of work. No one said that this was easy. This podcast is not about easy and outsourcing and all that stuff. It’s about doing the hard work and getting the rewards.

That’s what takes you to a three month vacation. When people say, “I can’t get to a three month vacation,” it’s because they don’t have the time, the money, and the resources. You have to put in the time and the resources, and yes, some money before you can get to that three month vacation. You have to start somewhere and put in the work. That’s how you get the results.

Now for some presell. We are having the headline course and the headline trainer course, and for the first time ever the headline trainer course. I don’t know when you’ll get to this podcast, but if you get to it on time, then get to psychotactics.com and look for headline course or headline trainer course. The courses fill up very quickly. You want to move quickly. I mean really, really quickly.

We’re also going to have the first 50 words course at the end of the year. That’s in November somewhere, so you can prepare yourself for that. This is about writing the first 50 words of, say, a podcast or an article. This is where we slog the most, struggle the most. The entire course is about the first 50 words. We probably have The Brain Audit trainer program around that time as well. That’s more expensive. It’s about $10,000. It’s more detailed. It goes over six months. We’ll go into more detail in the future, but for now it’s just the headline course, the headline trainer course. I’ll also be bringing out those cartoons that I talked about in this podcast. Expect to see some of that soon.

A lot of stuff happening, a lot of stuff happening. If you want to ask me more questions, email me at sean@psychotactics.com, also at Twitter @Sean D’Souza, and yes, on Facebook at Sean D’Souza. Yes, we give away goodies, as you know. If you want to be on the goodies list, you go to psychotactics.com/magic. That’s www.psychotactics.com/magic. You will get those goodies from time to time.

That’s it from Psychotactics and the Three Month Vacation. Still listening? I’m giving you this advice, but recently what we’re in Denver and there were about 400 or 500 people in the audience. How many subscribers did we get? 20. Why did we get 20? We got 20 because we didn’t follow the advice that I’ve just given you. We didn’t do as much prep work. We didn’t have the sheet before the event. Of course there was no tight deadline. We goofed up, too. You can do it too if you don’t take your own advice or don’t listen to this advice. Then failure is always around the corner. That’s a little snippet from the archives at psychotactics.com. Bye for now.

You can also listen to or read this episode:  Why Identity Helps You Surge Ahead In Work (And Life): Episode 46

We're all pounded with the whole concept of success. We think that it means more money, more fame, more power. And yet when confronted with defining our own success, we realise there's something we haven't quite defined. In this episode we explore why feeling like a fraud is normal; why seemingly successful people define themselves differently when the spotlight is removed; why space is so critical to creating that identity. / / Identity is what holds us back. Identity is what can take us further. You'll love this episode!

Links:

To get the special "Resistance" PDF (It's cool, so get it)
http://www.psychotactics.com/resistance
To get some magic, go to magic:
http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

To get The Brain Audit, go to:
http://www.psychotactics.com/brainaudit

To leave reviews at iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 

To leave reviews on Android

http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=57686&refid=stpr

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Why It Is Okay To Feel Like A Fraud
Part 2: How We Define Success And How It Becomes Your Identity
Part 3: The Factor Of Space And Why It Is Critical To Your Life
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.

Useful Resources

How To Increase Your Pricing— Dartboard Pricing
Why Headlines Fail—The Report
Psychotactics Newsletter—Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing newsletter
Audio and Transcript—Three Obstacles To Happiness (And How To Overcome Them)

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

The Cherokee elder stood before his students and he told them of two wolves that live and battle within each one of us. One of these wolves, he explained, is ill-natured. It sees the worst in people and things. It thinks only of itself. It is vengeful, jealous, arrogant. It’s full of ego and false pride. The other wolf sees the best in people and things. It is kind, it is generous, it is peaceful. It is full of integrity and respect for love itself and others.

One of the students asks the chief which one of these wolves wins the battle. The elder replied, “Whichever one you feed. Whichever one you feed, that is your identity.” When I started out in marketing, it was very easy for me to get fed by a lot of stuff around me. When you’re on Facebook, when you’re on the internet, there is a whole lot of junk out there. That junk makes you feel small. It makes you feel insignificant, and you’ve got to build an identity with the situation around you. How do you do it?

In today’s episode we will cover the three elements of what was my journey. Also, it’s going to be your journey. The first element is one of feeling like a fraud. The second one is just one of success. What does it mean? Finally, the third one, which is one of space and why it’s so important.

Part 1: Feeling Like A Fraud

When you look at January of 2001, I didn’t really feel like a fraud, but by December of 2001 I was feeling more and more insecure. What happened between January and December to create all this insecurity? For many years, even as I was a kid, I used to draw. I was extremely shy, and I’ve been drawing my whole life. I became a cartoonist. I became a writer. That’s what shy people do. As I moved into the world of marketing, that completely threw me. I didn’t know that much about marketing. I didn’t know how people think, what they do, how they buy, the prices that they decide on.

But I read this book by Jim Collins, which was called Good to Great. It asked what can you be the best in the world at. I thought I love the cartooning, I love the writing, but I want to do something different. The answer lay, strangely, in marketing. I was not into marketing. I just didn’t understand it. In all the years that I had run the cartooning business, I had done very little organized marketing. It was a good thing, because we moved to New Zealand and the public library was accessible, which was different from India.

I stepped into the library and I picked up ten books. Then I picked up another ten books. Then eventually the librarian realized that I was picking up a lot of books so they gave me an allocation where I could take 30 books at a time. I read those books. The more I read it, the less confident I got, the more I felt like a fraud.

But because I had no choice, I went out there and I spoke with clients. I spoke at small little events. The feeling of being a fraud didn’t go away. It always seemed like someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Okay, your time is up. You’ve been talking nonsense for quite a while now and it’s time for me to get in here.”

Six months passed, and a year passed. That tap never came. Then I did a trip to the US and I met with other marketers and I spoke with them. An interesting thing happened. I realized that these guys don’t know that much more than I do. In fact, I know quite a few things that they don’t know. That’s when that fraud label just slipped off and fell into the drain. It never came back again.

It never came back again for me as a marketer but it came back again in different ways. When I write a book, for instance, I just wrote the book on Dartboard Pricing, again, that whole fraud feeling came out. I have made this presentation in Chicago. I made another presentation in Denver. I’ve written so much about pricing. It’s all on the website. It’s on the blog. It’s in our membership site at 5000bc. I’ve explained it at length.

The feeling of being a fraud comes out because you feel what else is there to say. If I write this book, people will have read all of this information. They will think wait a second, he’s just rehashing everything. Then when I send out early copies of the book to clients just so that they can read and send out some testimonials, and they come back and go, “I’m so excited,” and I think what, I already said all this stuff.

It’s different. They haven’t experienced it from the concept of a book, a system, step by step going through the whole logic. Even though I may feel like a fraud when I’m writing the book or putting it out there, that’s just a bit of my own insecurity coming in. They don’t feel that at all. They feel this stuff is really cool.

This feeling keeps coming back. I remember when we were in Washington D.C. and we did a workshop on The Brain Audit. I was very nervous. I didn’t sleep that night simply because when I stood in front of that audience I thought they’ve already read The Brain Audit. These were people who bought the first version of The Brain Audit, version two, version three. Now they’re sitting in the audience and I’m going to say the very same thing. I’m going to tell them exactly what they read about.

I should have paid attention. They bought version one, version two, version three. Obviously every version was bringing them a different angle, a different perspective, and my presentation was going to bring a different perspective. That’s not how I felt. I felt like a fraud. I felt like something is going to go wrong. Someone is going to tap me on the shoulder.

No one did. In fact, when we came out after the first break, everyone was going, “Wow, I didn’t know The Brain Audit was like this. I perceived it to be different.” That’s it. You start out in life feeling a little insecure. You change professions, you feel insecure. You change your system. You write a book. You give a presentation. It doesn’t matter what happens. The moment you change midstream, it’s like being in a strange city and you’re not very confident. You’re completely lost. Your GPS is not working, and your soul needs to be a pilot, as Sting would say.

But Sting isn’t sitting in my chair, is he? I didn’t feel that way, and it comes back. What you’ve got to understand is that part of your identity is always going to be that you’re unsure, and that’s great.

This takes us to the second part of today, which is the whole feeling of success. What is success, and how do you cope with it?

Part 2: The Whole Feeling of Success

When you ask people what is their definition of success, they come up with various definitions. The thing that shows up is a lot of philosophy. People get very philosophical about the fact that success is this and success is that. When you look at the books and you look at the awards, the success parameters become very claustrophobic. In New Zealand we have an award for the Fast 50. On Forbes you have maybe the top 100 companies or the top 100 CEOs. Their success is all benchmarked by how many dollars they have in the bank or how quickly they got to the top.

When you look at so many blogs, what you find is the definition of success becomes one of taking shortcuts, of things like the four-hour work week. Four hours? What kind of genius can you create in four hours in a work week? Sometimes you’ll get the contrast. They will talk about quick meals and then slow cooking. Mostly success is benchmarked by money, by speed, and by shortcuts.

That becomes our identity, because it’s all around us. This is how it’s always been. It’s not just something that showed up yesterday. When we go back 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, success has always been about money, speed, and shortcuts. And power, let’s not forget about power.

The point is, as human beings this makes us very happy: the money, the speed, the power. All this stuff makes us really happy. Fair enough, because we can’t really do without it. But we can also change things a bit and we can set a different benchmark.

When I started out Psychotactics I didn’t know how to set this benchmark, but I knew that I wanted to be different in some way. Over the years, this difference has morphed. Suddenly our books, the ebooks, are different from everybody else’s ebooks. They’re different because they have less information but more depth of that information. Instead of pummeling you with endless amounts of data and more data, they cluster around a few important elements.

For instance, if you read Dartboard Pricing you would find that when we deal with sequential pricing, only three points are being covered, but those three points are being covered in-depth. When you cover this in-depth, what you have is the power to empower. No, yeah, power to empower. Empowerment is really what happens there. Over time, this has become one of the more important elements of what we would define as success. It’s not the ability to sell more books or courses or workshops, but to be more like a pilot that takes all the passengers across. It’s very easy to start a course or a workshop or have a book and not have everyone consume it. Our goal has been different. Our goal is how do we get them to the endpoint. That becomes a benchmark for success.

On a personal scale, the Three Month Vacation becomes a benchmark for success. How can we run our business so that we can get away, that we can eat the food that we want, travel the way we want, relax, and then come back refreshed so that we can do better work. That has become a benchmark for success.

Now invariably, the money and the shortcuts and the power and all that stuff has got to sneak in, but it doesn’t become the whole reason why we do stuff. When I go to events, I meet with a lot of speakers. They’re all hanging around the corridor. They’re not essentially speaking to anybody else but the other speakers. All of them are saying exactly the same thing. They want to be home with their munchkins and they want to spend time with them at the swimming pool. They want to go to school with them. They want to do all this stuff.

Yet when they present themselves to the world they’re talking about I did three million miles. I made so much money. I spoke at so many events. They present a completely different view to the world, yet when you’re backstage, when they’re in the corridor, they’re talking about being home, about not wanting to friendly, about being sick about getting on another plane.

What they seem to present as success is not really what they feel is success. Going to that school event, going to that pool and jumping in the pool with the kid, that’s success to them. I thought that the Three Month Vacation was kind of normal. I thought that people needed breaks. Maybe not three months, but I thought that they needed breaks.

When I meet with a lot of my friends in marketing and they talk about wow, it’s amazing that you’re able to do this … These are people who are extremely, what we call, successful. That’s when I realized that setting these benchmarks for myself, setting this identity of who I really am, is critical. This is what you’ve got to do as well.

What is really your identity of success, other than the money and the power and the shortcuts, which are fine. It’s just that you’ve got to have that other identity that you know wow, I’ve reached this goal. Maybe that benchmark, that identity is just to get to the beach 300 days in a year and that’s it, and then you know. This is measurable. I can do it and it doesn’t involve that other stuff that other people are portraying.

Our identity is almost restricted to being a fraud at some point right through our career. The second thing is one of success and how we define success, and how the world defines success. The third one, and this is something that a lot of people don’t talk about, is just the factor of space, how space defines who we are as human beings.

Part 3: The Factor of Space

What is this factor of space? I was on my way back home after a walk. I always listen to the podcast on the way back home. I was listening to this writer, Pico Iyer, speaking on the TED stage. He came up with a statement that I had to stop and I had to write it down, because it was so interesting. He was talking about home and movement. He said it’s only by stopping movement that you can see where to go. It’s only by steeping out of your life and your world that you can see what you most deeply care about, and then you can find a home.

To me that has been home, that peace, that pause, that stop for refuelling. That has been the most critical element of my life. It’s what gave me identity. It’s what allows me to come back refreshed and do stuff that I want to do.

This resonates with me at a different level as well. Because, several years ago I listen to philosopher Wayne Dyer. He used to say it’s the silence between the notes that make the music. I heard it a dozen times and I couldn’t really figure out what he was saying. Then one day I rushed out to the car and I was telling my wife, “Do you know what that means? It’s the quiet. It’s the quiet that makes the music, because when there’s just note after note after note, we get cacophony.” She gave me that look that wives often give you, like what took you so long.

Even if you go back in time to one of the greatest masters of our time, Leonardo Da Vinci, he said you have to step away from your work to get perspective. Without space, it’s hard to have an identity that you’re really looking for, that you want to create. It becomes what people call the dream. They’re always searching for it, but to create a real identity instead of a dream, you have to step away and you have to look at yourself from a different space. Then you come back a changed person. You’re not completely changed but somewhere some of those notes have changed. That makes for beautiful music.

The Cherokee elder stood before his students and told them of the two wolves that live and battle within each of us. One of those wolves, he explained, is ill-nature. It sees the worst in people and things. It thinks only of itself. It is vengeful, and jealous, and arrogant, and full of ego and false pride. The other wolf sees the best in people and things. It is kind, it is generous, it is peaceful. It is full of integrity and respect for love itself and others.

One of the students asks the chief which one of these wolves wins the battle. The elder replied, “Whichever one you feed.” You’re going to be fed with this concept of being a fraud. You’re going to be fed with this concept of imaginary success, what the world defines as success, not what you define as success. The wolf that you really need to feed is the one that brings you peace, that brings that space so that you can create your own music.

Summary

That brings us to the end of this podcast, but before we go, let’s see the one thing that you can do today. Personally, I think it’s hard to get over that feeling of being a fraud. It comes back no matter how confident you are. Believe me, I’m a very confident person. Yes, we’ve got to create that space. We have to say let’s not take a three month vacation right now but let’s take a weekend maybe two weeks from now, just a break. No email, no phone, just a break. Definitely no Facebook.

What’s the one thing you can do today?

What you can do today is to define your benchmark, your identity of success. What is it that brings you or will bring you the most happiness? That will make a huge difference. It will make a difference to who you are and where you’re going to go tomorrow. That will determine which wolf you’re going to feed.

I appreciate all of you who’ve been writing in about this podcast. If you want to reach me, I’m on Twitter@SeanD’Souza, on Facebook at Sean D’Souza, and then at sean@psychotactics.com. If you’re listening to this podcast it’s more than likely that you’re a subscriber at psychotactics.com, but if you haven’t gone there already, go topsychotactics.com and subscribe.

Yes, one very important thing: I struggle to get to iTunes and leave a review because every time I’m listening to this I’m away from my computer, but I am on my phone. If you look below your phone, there is a little I button, especially if you’re on an iPhone. If you click on that I button you’ll get more information and there a link to the iTunes site. If you can leave a review, that would be really, really cool.

That’s me, Sean D’Souza, from the Three Month Vacation, saying thanks again and bye for now. Go feed that wolf.

You’re still listening?

People often ask me: Have you ever skipped a vacation? The answer is yes. We did that once. We thought it was more important for us to work and complete some projects and stuff. We did in four months what we normally do in three. That time that we should have been spending away, we were working and getting more and more tired and frustrated.

Then eventually we just got on a plane and went off to Sydney for a week. It was terrible. Not Sydney, just the week. It was like you just did something for the sake of doing it. It wasn’t planned or interesting. Then we came back and we were different but not as different as if it were planned. Yes, we have skipped it. There you have it, a little snippet from the Psychotactics archive. Bye for now.
You can also listen to or read this episode: #45: The Secret To Getting Your Report Read (From Start To Finish)

When your client picks up your report, can you guarantee they'll read it from start to finish? No matter how good the content, there are precise elements that cause a client to completely consume the report. This episode delves into three of the most important elements that makes your report stand out—and more importantly—get read.

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: What makes a report powerful?
Part 2: What are tiny increments?
Part 3: How to empower your reader
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

Dart Board Pricing: How To Increase Prices (Without Losing Customers)
The Headline Report: Why Headlines Fail
The 70% Principle: Why It Knocks Procrastination Out of the Ball Park

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The  Transcript

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Back in the year 2003  I wrote an article where you just had to take three steps to write a great headline. You could test the headline and you could find out in minutes that it worked for you, and it also got the attention of your customers. I wasn’t prepared for how popular that article would be. As we were looking at the statistics of the Psychotactics site, we saw that the article got picked up over and over again. Then we decided, let’s make this a report. Surprisingly, when I took that same article, which was just about 800 words, and I put it into a PDF and put some graphics and an introduction and some cartoons, it became close to a ten-page book. That is the headline report.

This is the interesting part.

The report was nothing more than an article. Can we all do the same? Can we just write an 800-word article, put it in a report, and make it powerful? Not quite. You have to understand why the report works. We’re going to break up that headline report here today on this podcast. You’ll see for yourself, there are three elements that make it work. Let’s explore those three elements.

What makes the report so powerful?

The key factor is not the elements but the overall concept. The overall concept is one of empowerment. We are so hung up on the concept of information that we forget what we really have to do as teachers. As teachers we have to empower. We know we’ve done our job correctly when the client is able to do exactly what we’re doing, and possibly even better. Frankly, when I was writing the headline report I wasn’t thinking of this. I wasn’t thinking of empowerment. I wasn’t thinking of the elements. But when you deconstruct the report you can see there are three very specific elements that make it that empowerment tool. The first of the elements is tiny increments. The second is the length. The third are the examples in the report. Let’s explore each one systematically. Let’s start off with the first one, which is the tiny increments.

What are tiny increments?

About a month ago I got myself some recording hardware. It has all these buttons and it’s very hard to figure out which button to press and when to press it. Of course you don’t want to look at the manual because that’s really badly written. Maybe you go online like I did and you go to YouTube. There are lots of tutorials on how to use it, but there is all this unboxing and then something else and something else. 35 minutes later, you have no clue what you’re supposed to do. Then I found a video that was only three minutes long. The video only covered turning on the device. Now, it was three minutes long. How much can you learn about turning on a device? It’s a little switch. But it was so cool. I could actually do it. It was a tiny increment.

You don’t have to put in a ton of information for people to be impressed.

You have to empower. At the end of the video, what could I do? I could turn on the device. So I go to the next video. In the next video, they cover a little bit again. This is the concept of tiny increments. When we’re teaching, we don’t understand that the client doesn’t get what we’re saying. Let’s say you’ve come to one of the Psychotactics workshops and we’re doing an experiment. We’re saying we’re going to take steps now. I say, “Okay, let’s take a step.” Then you watch the people in the room. What do they do? Almost everyone will take a step forward, but someone will take a step to the left, or someone will take a step to the right, or someone will take a step back. Now we have all these permutations where people are going off-tangent. If they just take one step, they just make one mistake, you can pull them back and then say, “What I meant was take a step to the left.” Now the whole group can go one step back, one step to the left, and now we’re on target.

When you have something that has a very tiny increment, the customer can only make a very small mistake.

You can spot the mistake and pull them back, or you can show them that mistake in your report and pull them back. When you have this wealth of information, all these buttons to press and all these things to do all at once, suddenly the customer is lost. When they’re lost, they’re intimidated, and intimidation doesn’t create a safe zone, and when you don’t create a safe zone then of course you don’t get empowerment.

The first factor you have to look at when you look at the headline report is this concept of tiny increments.

You only have to take a very tiny step to get from point A to point B. When you’ve taken that step, you can go from point B to point C. This is what struck me when I stepped into an Apple store many years ago. It’s one of the reasons why I bought an Apple even though I’d been using a PC for ages. When I got into the store, I just had to do one thing. That one thing led to the next thing, and that next thing led to the next thing. This is very cool. You see it on the iPad where you just have to press a little button, and that one thing leads to the next thing. This is the concept of tiny increments. You see this in the headline report. It’s what you’ve got to do in your report: just one little step.

Now this takes us to the second one, which is the concept of length.

Length really helps in empowerment. Every time I speak to someone about this podcast, I will say, “The podcast is only about 15 to 20 minutes long.” But what if were to say, “It’s only two to three hours long’? There would be a very clear difference. When you say 15 to 20 minutes long people think, “I could go for a little walk and I could listen to the podcast.” This principle of length is critical, especially when a customer doesn’t know you that well and you have to get your message across without going crazy on them. It has helped me when I was trying to work out that audio hardware. I just had to deal with three minutes, and then after that the next three minutes, and then the next three minutes. Every one of those three-minute capsules, they empowered me. They moved me forward. The headline report does this in a really fascinating way. It moves youforward. Within ten pages, you’re done. Now the question arises: Is that it? Is that all you could write about headlines? No, of course not. You could write 300 pages or 500 pages. There is a wealth of information in the world of headlines. But do you have to put in the report?

The core of empowerment is simply one of length.

When there is not too much of it, someone is able to consume it. Once they’re able to consume it, you have empowered them. You know that because you can get them to teach you what you’ve just taught them and they will do that spectacularly well. We take the first concept, which is tiny increments, and we take the second concept, which is length, and that leaves us with just the third one.

What is the third concept?

The third concept is simply one of examples and case studies. When you listen to this podcast, you got a whole bunch of examples about the recording device and how I had to fiddle with it. You also got the example of how the iPad worked, and of course my visit to the Apple store for the first time in 2008. Those were examples. Why were those examples there? They weren’t just random stuff. For one thing, the example lowers that intimidation factor.

Immediately you’re taken on a little side journey, a little detour.

That helps you to focus on the idea, but it also helps you understand the concept in greater detail. When you look at the headline report you’ll find that there is an example of how the headline is being built stage by stage. If all you had was a concept of how to write a headline without the example it would be so much more dreary and harder to achieve the same result. As a teacher, that’s your goal. Your goal is to empower. Examples empower. Case studies empower. Stories empower. Go down that path and put it in your report. Whether you’re reading The Brain Audit, or Pricing,or any book, you will find that we use this concept. That’s what clients read and go, “Wow, I should delve more into this stuff.” The biggest problem that we have is we know too much. We try to put all that too much into our reports, into our books, into our presentations. Does it empower? It’s easy to give information. A lot of people are giving a lot of information. It’s all stuff coming at you left, right, and center, and you don’t know where to go. Your client doesn’t know where to go either.

Have this little guiding light of empowerment and everything changes.

We started out with a report. We started out with just a little article, but that article had steps, and it went from one step to another to another. When it got into the report stage it was clearer because of the graphics, because of the layout. That’s how you should go about writing your report. Think about empowerment and think about the three things that we’ve covered today. The first thing that we covered today was tiny increments. Remember that even if you say take one step, people can steps in all directions, show you take very tiny steps. The second thing is one of length. A three-hour podcast, a 300-page report, very interesting but no one’s going to read it. You want to keep it simple. You want to keep it within ten or 12 pages. Finally, you want to reduce that intimidation factor. It’s very hard to understand the new concept. Having examples, having stories, having case studies, this really makes it easier for me to figure out what you’re saying.

Which brings us to the end of this podcast. What is the one thing that you can do?

I think the one thing that you should do is to just boil it down to three things. You’ve seen how this podcast just covers three elements. If I wanted to write a book on how to create a great report, I could write 200 pages. But this podcast, it’s a report. It’s just got three points, three simple points, and you’ve been empowered. I think you should do the same. Just jot down three points. I know there are 700 points on the topic. Just focus on three and you’ll have a report that someone actually consumes. Now isn’t that a novel idea?

What have we been doing in the past six weeks or so?

If you’ve been following this podcast, you know that we went off to Washington D.C. to have the information products workshop. It’s just 25-30 people in a room. Everyone gets to know each other. Everyone works with each other. It’s an amazing event. We don’t do the Psychotactics workshops very often, so if you ever get a chance to get to a Psychotactics workshop, you should come. It’s empowerment at its very best. You’ll see it at the workshop. From there we flew to Denver and I presented at the Opera House in Denver and lost my voice, got it back, struggled through the whole episode. My wife gave me an eight on ten. She has given me a -2 in the past, so I think I did a pretty good job. That comes down to practice and getting all your act together.

During the event, some things went wrong for speakers.

The video didn’t show up at the right time, or it didn’t sync with the audio. The way to solve this problem is to do all of the groundwork. I was there a few days in advance, getting over the tiredness factor, making sure that I knew the length of the stage, looking for any light distractions. Because when you’re on a stage a lot of lights hit you, especially on a stage of that size. You need to know where you need to stop before light hits you in the face and you can’t see a thing. You also need to speak to the audio and the video people, because they recommended stuff to me that ensured our whole presentation was absolutely flawless. There’s a lot of background stuff that you have to do, and that marks you out as a professional. I was completely hampered on stage there. I was sniffling and I could barely speak, but that eight on ten, that was because of all the groundwork that went before. As much as I would have liked to get full marks from my wife, at least I was able to struggle to an eight. You know it goes well because when you step out of the auditorium, people come up to you and go, “I’m going to make this fix today. I’m going to make this change today.” You have empowered them.

Once we finished with all of the work and the presentations, we went on to Sardinia.

We had a great time. Sardinia is this big island off Italy. You’ve probably heard of Sicily. If you look to the left, there is Sardinia. The food is absolutely stunning. We go on vacations because of the food. We really don’t care that much about the monuments. The food has to be good. We gorged a lot and we walked a lot of slopes. That’s how we keep our weight in check. Three weeks in Sardinia, a stopover in San Francisco, and now we’re back in New Zealand. I have to admit it’s been hard getting back to work, even though it’s been a week. This nasty cough that started in Washington D.C. followed me through Denver, through Sardinia, through San Francisco. It’s okay now but it’s been a long run. Nonetheless, it was worth doing the info products course in Washington D.C..

If you missed that, then I would strongly suggest that you get the home study.

How much is enough? And where do you stop? It's easy to get all wrapped up in this whole concept of passive income and how smart it seems. Yet, you can work yourself crazy if you're not careful. You can work too much, do too much?but even vacation too much. Understanding the power of enough allows you to have a great business plan and a great vacation plan. Whether you're in online marketing or just have a small business, your strategy should be about "enough".

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Some goodies

To find more podcast options, go to http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast

To get a short, yet beautiful headline report on "Why Headlines Fail", go to http://www.psychotactics.com

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Transcript: Power of Enough

Sean D'Souza: There's a comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes. Obviously, many of you have read it. In one panel, Calvin is ramping up for Christmas and so is Hobbes. Calvin asks Hobbes, he says, "What did you get on your list for Santa for Christmas?" Hobbes says, "I asked him for a tuna sandwich," and Calvin goes ballistic. He's like, "How could you do that?! I asked him for a rocket launcher, a train," and he brings up a list that's a mile long.

 

Of course, the scene shifts to the day that's Christmas Day and Calvin is stomping around the house shouting, "I'm going to sue Santa!" Obviously, because he's got nothing and there's Hobbes, ever the philosopher and saying, "Well, I got my tuna sandwich." At this point, I turn to people and ask them, "Do you know what your tuna sandwich is?"

 

Before I get you all hungry for sandwiches, let's talk about the first episode. I don't know if you've listened to the first episode, but it was outsourcing versus magic. You need to go to number one and start listening from number one, not because they're in sequence, but just because the first episode is so important. It's just the philosophy and this is another philosophy piece. It's about the power of enough. What is the power of enough? What is our tuna sandwich?

 

One of the things that probably drives us crazy is this keeping up with the Joneses. A good example would be just the three month vacation, so let's say you take three months off this year. Then what do you do next year? Do you take four months off? What about the year after next? Six months off? I could go on, but how long would I go on? Six, eight, ten, twelve? What is the limit?

 

When we run our businesses, one of the quests is just customers. We want more and more and more customers and the reason for more and more customers is not because we love more and more customers, but because it represents money and it represents more money and more money and more money. For me, money is like fuel. It's like putting fuel in a car. It's finite. You have a fuel tank and you fill it up and then as it empties itself out, you make sure that you never run out of the fuel, but you don't go out there and you store up more and more and more and more because there is a price to pay and that price is that the whole thing might just blow up in your face one day.

 

So we had to work out our own tuna sandwich. At Psychotactics, we had to define what was our enough. For instance, we have a membership site at 5000bc.com and when you go to 5000bc, you'll find that our membership hasn't dramatically increased from the year 2003, 2004. Considering the year that we are in right now, you'd say, "What's happened?", but the point is that we don't have to double or treble the number of members that we have currently. Sure, some members leave and you have to replace those members with other members, but there isn't enough. There is actually a benchmark at 5000bc of how many members we're willing to accept.

 

The reason is very simple. It's like having kids around the place. I mean, you have x number of kids and you can handle them, you can look after them, but if you have an enormous number, you can't really give them your attention. The same thing applies to our courses. We do an article writing course. We do a cartooning course. We do copyrighting courses. We do a lot of courses online and we always have waiting lists. Now, when you consider that some of the courses are $3,000 or $5,000, it's very easy to sneak in a few and make another 10, 20, $30,000. Who's going to ask you? Who's going to say, "Hey, you've got three or four more." Who's going to say that? No one's going to say that. Still, we have a limit. We have our enough.

 

If you come to a workshop like any workshop that we have; we don't have them very often because we know what is our enough, but when we do have a workshop, you have a maximum of thirty-five people in the room. Could we get more than thirty-five people in a room? Of course we could, but at thirty-five, we stop because once it goes beyond thirty-five, you stop becoming a teacher and you start becoming a preacher. It just becomes a blah blah session. You can't really help people.

 

At least when it comes to work, we have our courses, our workshops, our membership sites. It's all based on a factor of enough, of a limit, a fuel tank and we're not going to overfill that tank. You might say that well, it's easy for you because you are already established. You've been in this business for over twelve years. What about me who's just starting out? The point is that our workshops, our courses, our membership site, they had these limits right at the start. It wasn't something we figured out along the way and while we did really well at work stuff, we didn't really figure out our vacation bit.

 

When we started, we figure nine months of work and three months of vacation seems like a fair deal, but we didn't understand what the concept of the three months vacation was all about. We overdid it. Now, you'd say how can you overdo a vacation? But you can. The first year we took a vacation was in 2004. We had just started out business towards the end of 2002, so within a year of starting up, we just decided that's it. We're going to take a three month vacation and we took three months off and it drove us crazy. We weren't enjoying that time that we were supposed to spend because it seemed endless. It seemed like we had to fill in those days.

 

Then of course when you come back from the vacation, there's this big void. You've not been working for so long, you don't feel like working anymore or for a very long time, so we had to juggle it a bit. We had to go okay, let's try six weeks and we tried six weeks and six weeks was too long. Then we tried four weeks and that was too long. Three weeks seemed just right, so three weeks plus a week of going back and forth to whichever place, so we never go directly to a place, we'd stop over for a couple of days. On the way back, we'd stop over a couple of days, so we're away one month at a time. We realize what is enough: Three weeks plus a week of travel and that is enough.

 

But it's really crazy to have a running tally that continues to increase. You're continuing to add holidays or money or whatever to where you're just putting in more and more fuel into that tank. For what reason? While I'm an information junkie - I just love information. I'm learning in design and Photoshop and my camera, which is the X100, that's a Fuji film. At the same point, I'll be tackling lettering and studying some stuff on learning, etc., but even that has that point of enough.

 

Often when I'm talking about how I go for a walk with my iPhone loaded with audio books and podcasts and stuff and people think well, you must be doing that all the time; you're completely crazy. Yes, of course, a person like that would be completely crazy, but today I was listening to Billy Joel and all of this summer, I will be listening to Andrea Bocelli, so you have to understand what is enough.

 

This brings us full circle to Calvin and Hobbes. Sometimes, we just slip into the Calvin mode. We overdo stuff. We are built to overdo stuff. We want to be part of the human race where we're always going to just push our comfort zone quite a bit actually, so we always have to get into the Calvin mode and then decide I want to be like Hobbes sometimes. In fact, I want to be like Hobbes a lot. I want a tuna sandwich.

 

So what's your action plan? It's simple, really. Think about it. How many customers do you want? How many people do you want at your workshop? How much money do you want to make from now to whenever, just a finite amount. Maybe even how much silence do you need? Everything with definition becomes a fuel tank and you fill it and you're happy and you have enough.

 

Coming up next week, we have the bikini principle. Interesting topic, isn't it? It's appropriate because it's summer here in New Zealand. I know it's freezing in other parts of the world, but it's appropriate here. We're going to find out exactly what is this bikini principle and how does it apply to stuff that's not related to the beach at all?

 

We learned a very good lesson when we were selling the brain audit about this bikini principle and it has stayed with me. It was one of the most read posts when we first had the consumption blog which no longer exists because there were too many blogs to manage, but it was one of the most read posts ever.

 

If you've been a subscriber, then you know that you automatically get the downloads on your phone or on your computer if you subscribe to iTunes. You can also get our podcast on Stitcher and hopefully soon on SoundCloud and finally, if you don't have any of the above, then you can get the RSS feed, so go to Psychotactics.com/podcast and you can find the RSS feed there.

 

Oh and before I go, be sure to leave a review for us because it's really important. It really helps me look at the review, look at E-comments and I feel much happier and you want to keep me happy, don't you? If you have any feedback, you also want to write to me at Sean@psychotactics.com. Anything you'd like to see or listen to anything you don't like, just write to me at Sean@psychotactics.com. I actually implement the feedback. We've come to almost twelve minutes of this podcast, so that's enough so I'll say bye for now. Bye bye.

 

This episode has been brought to you by the Three Month Vacation which is at Psychotactics.com.

 

Vacations are like a project. There's a before-vacation and an after-vacation period that needs to be carefully managed. After years of taking vacations?and that too thrice a year, we have to do a lot of planning. So how do we make sure everything works when we're away? How do we make sure we don't get tempted by e-mail and work while on vacation? And how do you manage a smooth re-entry back to work? These super-duper secrets are yours for the taking in this super-duper episode.

Contact Me:
On Twitter: seandsouza
On e-mail at: sean@psychotactics.com
http://www.psychotactics.com (For all notifications and super-duper newsletters).

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: How to handle the recurring elements of a business—newsletters, podcasts and membership sites
Part 2: Finishing of projects
Part 3: How to handle coming back to work.
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

How To Increase Your Pricing— Dartboard Pricing
Why Headlines Fail—The Report
Psychotactics Newsletter—Weekly slightly crazy, mostly zany marketing newsletter

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The  Transcript

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This is 3-month vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza

Right after Renuka and I got married, we decided that we’re going to go to many places and we did go for a honeymoon because that’s what I was told, you don’t go for your honeymoon, and every time you have a fight, that’s the one thing that comes up. Anyway, we went for a honeymoon and then a year passed and we didn’t go anywhere, and the second year passed, then we did a trip to Australia simply because there was some kind of discount on Qantas, but then the years ticked away and then we moved to New Zealand and we realized that 4 and 5 years had passed and we weren’t going anywhere. That was a real problem because inherently, the reason why I quit my job in India in the first place was because I couldn’t go on vacation whenever I wanted to.

Even when I got to New Zealand, it was a problem because every time I went on holiday, I’d be very hassled about someone else taking my work, that I was not getting paid, and so holidays or vacations became a very important part of our life. What lots of people don’t realize is that a vacation is also a project and you have to plan if you want to make it successful. One of the things that you have to plan is what you do before you leave and what you do when you get back. This episode is dedicated to the vacation.

In this episode, I’m going to cover recurring elements like the newsletter and the podcast and the membership site, and then from there, we’ll go to the next thing, which is how we get closure before we leave, and then how we hit the ground running when we get back. Those are the three things that we’ll cover today.  Let’s start with the first one, which is how we handle recurring responsibilities.

Part 1: Handling Recurring Responsibilities of a Business—Newsletters, Podcast and Membership Sites

At Psychotactics, we are mainly into consulting, training and product, which is really a complete business by itself. Consulting would mean speaking with clients one on one and I definitely don’t speak with clients while I’m away. I don’t make any exceptions to this rule. When I’m on holiday, I’m on holiday.

The second element is one of leverage, which are products, and again, we don’t work when we’re on holiday. We might take a trip that is specifically designed to do some work but while we’re on vacation, there is little work. That just leaves us with the other recurring elements like newspapers and podcasts and membership sites. The newsletter goes out every week twice a week and the Tuesday newsletter, that is about an article about marketing, about business. The Saturday newsletter, that’s the sales biz newsletter. It’s our products, our services, courses. That has to be queued well in advance.

Let’s start out with the Tuesday newsletter, which is the article-based newsletter.

Let’s say we’re going to be away for 4 or 5 weeks. Now what we have to do is we have to make sure that we don’t just cover for 5 weeks but that we cover 8 weeks. The reason for this is very simple. Before you go on any trip, chaos invariably knocks at your door, so what you’ve got to do is make sure that your newsletters are being worked out before you leave, while you’re away and then when you come back, because when we get back, it’s not like I’m keen to sit own and write articles. In fact, when I’m away, I lose all momentum and then when I get back, I’m not really in the mood to write any articles.

What I have to do is in the 12 weeks that we’re back, I have to make sure that somehow, I double the number of articles in some of the weeks.
Even so, I may not finish the requisite number of articles that I require while we’re away. What we do is we run some of the articles from the archives, and they do this on TV shows as well. When the presenter is away, they just pull out old stuff and they run it again, and clients don’t mind. They don’t mind reading the same stuff again and that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to have a mixture of old articles and new articles.

If I can manage to get all that quota completed before we go, well the clients are going to get just new articles, but if I can’t, then we have the old articles as well. With the podcast, we don’t have such a big bank. We’re only up to episode 42 now, but let’s say we go up to episode 200 or maybe 100. At that point in time, it would make sense to recycle some of the older podcasts and this makes sense because articles and newsletters and reports and podcasts, they are not stuff that is like today’s news and it’s still tomorrow. It can be read again the second time and the third time and we can monitor how many people are reading the articles or downloading the podcasts. You get a good feel whether your re-run is actually a good thing or a bad thing and it is usually a good thing.

We also have to prepare what’s going out on Saturday, which is the sales letter.

Sometimes, we will just send out sales letters while we’re away, but often, we will give away stuff, like now, as we’re headed to Italy, we’re giving away the Brain Alchemy Masterclass. This is a complete course of a workshop that was held in Los Angeles. Even so, everything has to be planned and everything has to be within place before we leave and then it just goes out like clockwork.

That’s the first thing. We have to make sure that all the articles and all the sales letters and any kind of promotion or giveaways all need to be in the system for before we go, while we’re away and for at least 2 or 3 weeks after we get back. This is crucial because then, you actually enjoy your vacation instead of just rushing there and rushing back and then going right back to work.

This takes us to the second part of today’s episode, which is finishing of projects.

Part 2: Finishing of Projects

We tend to do courses like article writing or copy writing or headlines. We also do books like web components or pricing and then we do things like training, which is workshops. All of these are considered to be projects and all the projects are complete before we leave, so when we look at products like the pricing book, well all of that was completed 2 weeks ago and that’s done. We finished the article writing course, that’s done. We had a Photoshop course for cartoons and that’s done. Now we’re headed to Washington, DC, where we’re doing the info products course, and that’s done. Once that is done, everything is closed and now we’re going on vacation.

A lot of people take some of their work on vacation and that’s really bad planning. That’s terrible planning. If you’re going to go on vacation and you’re going to take your work with you, that’s not really a vacation. That is just work in a different place. All those stupid ads you see where people take their computer and go to the beach, that’s just fooling yourself. If you really want to have a break and you want to rest your body and you want to rest your mind, you have to switch off. We switch off completely. Everything is closed down. We don’t deal with email. We get someone else to look at the email. We have a separate email address where if there’s an urgent issue, which there never is, but if there is an urgent issue, they can write to us. All projects are completely closed, email is closed and I don’t take any calls on my phone so that’s that.

Also while we’re away, we will meet with clients but only as friends. At first, we didn’t meet with clients at all but over the years, we’ve gotten to know people and so we will meet them in a social setting. One rule is very clear, they’re not going to bring up any work, not even the slightest bit of work. Even in Italy, we’re meeting with a friend of ours. Last time when we went to Hungary, we met with a friend of ours. We went to Portugal, we met with a friend of ours. In Washington, DC, we’ll meet with friends and these friends are also our clients but no discussion about work. That’s very clear.

This brings us to the third part. In the third part, it is about coming back.

Part 3: Coming Back

When we get back home, the last thing you want to do is work. You’re nice and relaxed if you’ve not been checking email and not been looking at any work. You don’t feel like doing anything for a week, 2 weeks, sometimes longer than that. In previous years, we have taken vacations for as long as 6 weeks and that’s probably too long because when you get back, you want to relax for another 3, 4 weeks. You’re so much in that vacation mode that you don’t snap out of it.

We found that 3 weeks away and 1 week travel is a great amount of time to be away. It’s not too much and it’s not too little. Supposing we were going to Sardinia, which we are, then we stop over at, say San Francisco. We spend a couple of days, then we fly to Sardinia. On the way back, we stop over again maybe at San Francisco, and then we come back. We break the journey as well. That takes about a week and then 3 weeks away, so 4 weeks away in all. When we get back, sometimes we hit the ground running and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we’ll take a couple of weeks but we always have a list of what we have to do and when we have to do it before we leave on vacation, so that when we come back, we’re not blank, which you usually are. You come back and you don’t know where anything is on your computer and you don’t know what you are supposed to do, so having that list while you’re in work mode is really cool because you’re completely alert at that point in time.

We keep that list and then we go away, and when we come back, everything starts to flow again until the next vacation. That brings us to today’s summary, so what did we cover today?

Summary

The first thing you have to have all your newsletters, all your podcasts, everything in advance. On this particular trip, I haven’t organized it as well as I should have, and so I’m slogging here doing a ton of podcasts this week but this is not a good situation to be in. This is not a situation I ever want to be in, so when we come back, I’m going to have to organize it a little better. The newsletters were ready but the podcasts were not ready and I’ve had to put in extra time just to make sure that the podcasts are ready. Now they are, this will last all the way to middle of June I expect.

With the membership site, www.5000bc.com, I can’t show up there everyday so what I do is I have vanishing reports. I create these reports in advance. A lot of these reports also come from the articles themselves, so sometimes I will write fresh reports and clients know that and at other times, we take articles related to one topic like pricing or headlines and then we put them together in a book and they become reports and when we’re away, those reports go week after week to the clients.

The second element is one of closure. We don’t take any work with us. We make sure that all the projects, all the workshops, all the courses, everything is done, finished, and we will not check email on vacation. There are people that say they only work 2 hours on holiday. Well that’s their choice but I don’t think you can ever tune out if you check email, if you go back to work. You’re always on alert and you really want to relax. You want to get down to a point where you’re completely relaxed, just like a child.

Finally, we have a list of all the projects that we’re going to do when we get back, because when we get back, we’re completely blank, and having that list enables us to ramp up, if not hit the ground running. What’s the one thing that you can do? The one thing that you can do is to train yourself to add a little bit more to your output, so if you get really good at article writing or you get really good at creating reports, then what’s going to happen is you’re going to put away some stuff and create a bank. When you’re too tired or you have a medical emergency or you want to go on vacation, all of that information is going to come into really good use, and you don’t get so stressed out and everything goes according to plan.

As for the concept of doing your own 3-month vacation, you might think it’s very hard but remember that when we started doing the 3-month vacation, our business was not even 2 years old. We just started at the end of August of 2002, that was Psychotactics, and by 2004, we had decided that we were going to do this. You might not be feeling that brave but you can take 2 or 3 days off and when you do that, you don’t want to check email and you don’t want to have any projects and you don’t want to have any work. That’s when you’re going to get a really good break.

The people who call themselves workaholics, they’re workaholics only because they are permanently connected to their phones, their computers and their work. Once they’re taken away from all of that, they become like kids again. People may call themselves workaholics today, but when they were kids, they didn’t think about their studies while they were away. They enjoyed themselves, and the reason for that is that complete disconnect. You can have that disconnect and you should have that disconnect and that’s the only way you can relax, but for that, you have to prepare. That’s what we do. That’s why we have fun on our vacation.

While I’m away on vacation, I’m not on Facebook and you can’t get me on Twitter and you can’t get me on email, but someone will be checking email so if you have something to say, please email me. I will get to it eventually. About the pricing book, if you’ve already boughtDartboard Pricing, I would recommend that you start reading the first chapter, just the introduction. That’s 3 or 4 pages, and then go to book 3 because book 3 has the sequential strategy. Book 3 is not a very big book but it’s a very powerful book. It shows you exactly how to build your business and how to price in a way that customers want to go to the next step and the next step and the next step. It’s a really cool model so go to book 3.

If you haven’t already bought the pricing book, that’s Dartboard Pricing, go to www.psychotactics.com.ttc, that is Trust the Chef, TTC, and you will be taken directly to that page and you can buy it. The link is at the bottom of this podcast as well if you click on the little I button, which is the information button, you can see those links but you can also go to www.psychotactics.com/43 for all the resources, the transcript and the links to this page.

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

You can also listen to or read this episode: #42: The Crazy, Amazing Trip From FREE to FEE

Is FREE worth it? Or should everything be paid for? How does a person go from free to fee? And how do you stand out in a world where so much is free? There's a simple strategy that needs to be followed and once you do, you'll find client will happily move from free to paid clients. Tah-dah?the strategy follows!

Notes

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/42
Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com
Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza
Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

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In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: The Reason Why Your Free Should Be Non-Crappy
Part 2: How Do You Go From Free to Fee?
Part 3: How Do We Get Over This Fear?
Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.
 

Useful Resources and Links

Amazing Cartoons for your ebooks, presentations, blog: Cartoon Stock Series
How To Avoid Boring Testimonials : And Get 1000-1500 Word Stories Instead
The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

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The  Transcript

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This is the Three-Month Vacation. I’m Sean D’Souza.

Often in Hollywood movies, you get this concept of the ugly duckling. You’ll see this girl who obviously looks pretty, but they make her look as if she’s got pimples and her hair is not that great. Then, somewhere in the middle of the movie, she magically turns into this beautiful swan. Ugly duckling to white swan. That’s how free-to-fee works.

When you’re giving away information free or even if you intend to give away information free, you’ll feel like an ugly duckling. You’ll feel as if you’re giving away all that hard-earned knowledge that you’ve gained. You’re not going to get much response from it or result from it, and you’re somehow hoping that there’s going to be a middle of the movie when things change and that ugly duckling scenario turns into a white swan. Yet, there is a logic and a strategy that enables you to go from free to paid products or paid services.

As always, we’ll cover three main topics, and then we’ll go to an action plan, so you can implement it. The first element we’ll cover is this concept of why free should be non-crappy. In the second topic, we’ll look at some of the tactics and strategies that you can use to go from free to fee. In the third topic, we’ll cover the fear and how to get over that fear, so that you can successfully jump from free to fee.

Let’s start off with the first one, shall we? The reason why your free should be non-crappy.

Part 1: The Reason Why Your Free Should Be Non-Crappy

Yesterday, I was on Twitter, and I was talking to a guy called “Craig”. Craig, you know who you are. He was telling me how he was binge listening to these podcasts. What is causing Craig to binge listen? Then, as I smiled my way through the morning, I got another email. It was from a guy called “Michael”. Michael said he’s been reading all the articles on our website, and he’s been reading them for hours on end. He said he’s going to come back to read some more.

That’s how it should feel. When you’re giving away information, it should feel like you’re giving away something valuable. Not something crappy. It shouldn’t be something that you found in your drawer that you’ve had since 2003, and you just didn’t get rid of. That’s what a lot of people do. When they give away things free, they give away stuff that is not so valuable, and it goes into the crappy basket. Their logic is, “Let me keep all the good stuff for my book. Let me keep all the good stuff for my consulting program. Let me keep all the good stuff for whatever it is I’m going to earn from, and let me not give away all that valuable stuff.” That’s completely contrary to what I’m saying here.

I’m saying that you should give away at least a bit of the good stuff if not a lot of the good stuff. In today’s world, there is so much information, so much free information that people don’t have any regards for free information anymore. If your stuff doesn’t hit them right between the eyes, there’s probably not going to be a second chance. How do you sort out the good stuff from the crappy stuff?

One of the ways to go about creating really good stuff is to go deeper into a topic. For instance, in podcast number 38, it was about not planning testimonials or rather how to get testimonials before you finish a project. Now, a main topic would just be “How to Get Testimonials” or “How to Get Good Testimonials”, but this topic is very niche in a way. It goes deeper into the topic of testimonials which is “How to Get Testimonials before the Project is Even Complete”. You have to sit down and work out how could this problem be solved.

Your clients might ask a question like this, and then you have to sit down and work out this puzzle like a Rubik’s Cube, or you might want to sit down with a mind map, and then go deeper into the topic. The main topic is always usually an overview topic. It’s usually crappy. This is what you see on the internet a lot. When you go deeper, things change.

For instance, with testimonials, you can write about how to get a great testimonial, but then, how to get a great testimonial, and you add something else to that, so how do you get a great testimonial before the project is over, how do you get a great testimonial using six specific questions, how do you get a great testimonial when you’re just starting out, how do you get a great testimonial when you’re new in the country.

The key is to take that main overview topic, and then add something to it that makes it very specific. Now, your brain is able to focus and go, “Well, how would I solve this problem?” When you solved this problem, it becomes interesting. It becomes non-crappy. It becomes valuable to the customer, and that’s when they go, “Wow. This is being given away?” That’s when you’ve got their attention. Now, you’ve got to move them from free to fee. How do you do that? This takes us to the second part of today’s episode, which is how do you go from free to fee?

Part 2: How Do You Go From Free to Fee?

If there’s only one word you’ll remember, remember this word, “packaging”. Packaging changes everything. We’ll talk about more about free-to-fee, but packaging changes everything. The moment you change the packaging, everything changes. Let’s say you’re listening to the radio, and you’re listening to your favorite music. That music is free, isn’t it? What do you do? You go out and buy a DVD, or you go out and you download some MP3 from iTunes or some other place.

Essentially, you’ve gone from free to fee, and the packaging has changed. The way it has been distributed has changed. Then, you will go to a concert. It’s the same song, isn’t it? You could have listened to it at home or better still, you could have listened to it on the radio, but you went to the concert. Then, at the concert, they sold you some DVDs or some kind of deal, and you bought in to that.

I’m a big fan of Sting, and I can’t even remember where I found his music or when I started listening to it because I was not into rock music at all. In fact, when I was growing up, a lot of the music on Indian radio was country music, believe it or not. Country music from the middle of the United States was streaming on radio in India. Anyway, I didn’t listen to rock music, so I didn’t know who The Police were, and I certainly didn’t know who Sting was, but at some point in time, that free music came over the radio.

I listened to it, and I liked it, and then I bought a tape. Yes, as we did back then, and then a CD, and then a DVD. Often, the same album over, and over, and over again. Then, he showed up live in Oakland for a concert, and I paid for tickets to be on row 9, so I could actually see his face rather than up there in the bleachers. If you ask me, “Would you go to another concert?” Yes. “Would you buy some more albums?” Yes. It’s moved the whole thing from free to fee, and there’s no going back.

I’m probably going to listen to another couple of free songs on the radio, but the moment I know that he’s got another album out, the chances are I’m going to buy it. The customer makes that move because they don’t have that much time to fill around with the free stuff after a while. They want to get great stuff. They want to maximize their time. They want to move ahead, and you want to create that situation where free goes to fee very quickly.

You might think, “Well, that’s Sting, and he’s a rock star, and he’s known really well,” but take for instance just Psychotactics. When I wrote the book “The Brain Audit”, it was just 16 pages. It was not supposed to be a book. It was just the notes that I had given at a seminar. Then, I went around trying to improve my speaking, and so I’d speak at different small events. Really, breakfast events, and we drive … I don’t know, two hours to just speak at this event where three people would show up, but a friend of mine told me, “Why don’t you try and sell this PDF?” and so that’s what I did.

The people that came to the event … It was just a networking event, and it was technically free because they’d already paid their membership fees at the start of the year, but it was free. They came for this speaking thing that I wasn’t being paid for, and then I put on a really good show. What happened as a result of that really good show, they decide they want to buy the book, so it goes very quickly from free to fee.

In most cases, the people that have bought The Brain Audit online have bought it afterreading free articles that were really useful to them. They read free reports that were really useful to them, and then they decided to buy The Brain Audit. Once they bought The Brain Audit, they bought in to a Brain Audit course. They bought in to other courses, and some of our courses are $3,000, $4,000, $5,000. I’m not for a second suggesting that you’re going to go from free to $5,000 overnight, but I am suggesting that if you give really great information, really sub-subtopic information, that’s when you’re going to start attracting people to you.

A yoga class can go from free to fee, but in that yoga class, you’re going to have to go into a subtopic. If you just do what every yoga class is doing, it’s not that interesting. If you start doing webinars, or podcasts, or just write articles and your topics are just at the top level, it’s not that interesting. If it’s interesting, then customers are willing to pay for a change in packaging. Let’s take this podcast for example. It’s absolutely free. Now, there are about 40 podcasts, and you can go through them, and you can find out the ones that you like and stuff like that.

In time, there will be a hundred, 200, 300 podcasts. Now, you’ve got a real problem if you’re searching for one topic. Supposing you’re searching for a topic like pricing or supposing you’re searching for a topic on how to speak better or testimonials. If I would take the 10 podcasts that were only on testimonials, you’d be willing to listen to that because it would save you a lot of time having to go through 200 podcasts, and then find the ones that work and download them. You’d be willing to pay $10 to get just 10 podcasts that are free online simply because it saves you time.

If your sub-subtopic is saving your client time and it is valuable, they’re willing to pay for it. There are two core ways in which you can move a client from free to fee. The first way is to give them something free, and then move them up the chain as it were, so people come to subscribe. Then, they buy The Brain Audit, then they go to 5,000 B.C., and then they buy other courses. That’s one way. The second way is to take the information that you already have and to change the format. If it’s an audio, make it a PDF. If it’s in PDF, make it audio.

Sometimes, it just takes a bit of sorting like I gave you the example with this podcast where all I have to do is go through 200 podcasts and just find the 10 that are really good on pricing or 10 that are really good on headlines, and that becomes valuable. That’s where the customer is going to buy. Even as we decide we want to go from free to fee, we have this fear, and this takes us to the third part, which is how do we get over this fear?

Part 3: How Do We Get Over This Fear?

A few years ago, I started a cartooning course. I didn’t actually want to start a cartooning course, but a member of 5000BC, his name is Joe, and he suggested that I start the cartooning course. I didn’t really want to because I was writing books, and marketing, and stuff. I really didn’t want to go into cartooning, but he told me, “Look, I bought all the books in cartooning. I’ve done all the courses, and I still can’t draw cartoons. I think that you can teach me to draw cartoons.”

I wasn’t that keen, and you can say that keenness just let me down. What I did was I offered the first cartooning course free. I know this sounds bizarre to all of you who have paid a thousand dollars for it, but that’s how it was. Of course, because it was free, it was slightly experimental, but it was still good. About 35 people signed up for that course, and we did the course, and they turned out to be cartoonists, and they gave us testimonials, and we put the testimonials up, and now you know how the cartooning course runs year after year at Psychotactics.

What was a free course with great information turned out to be a paid course. What was the difference? The difference was the testimonials. When you put out information, you’re not really sure if it’s great information or not. Sometimes you think, “Well, this is too basic. Everyone should know that.” As you go from topic to subtopic to sub-subtopic, you will find that the information is great. At that point in time, you can have a free course, but the most important thing is to get these outstanding testimonials. You want to listen to podcast number 38 to begin with, and also to go to Psychotactics and look for the six questions that you need to ask to get great testimonials. It’s also in The Brain Audit, by the way.

Testimonials make a difference. Great testimonials make a difference, and that’s what will, first of all, reassure you that your stuff is not basic, but really great, that is changing lives. Then, you can move from there on from free to fee. Put a price, and then you go from there, increasing the price as you go along. The cartooning course started at nothing … Well, you could pay whatever you wanted, and some people gave me an Amazon voucher, but today, it’s a thousand dollars. That one course with 35 people generates $35,000 every time it’s run. That’s how you can take something from free to fee.

Hollywood often has this ugly duckling to white swan scenario happening, and there is no ugly duckling. That woman has been good-looking and smart the whole time. Your products were good-looking and smart the whole time. They just happened to be free. Some of your products and services could continue to remain free, and the rest of them, you can sell it for a fee.

We’ve covered quite a bit, so let’s just summarize what we’ve learned so far.

Summary

We started off with the concept of free not being crappy. They call it the “ugly duckling”, but it was never the ugly duckling. It was always the white swan. To know if your product is really good, go from topic to subtopic, subtopic to sub-subtopic. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing training, or consulting, or writing a product, you want to explore those depths of the sub-subtopic, and that’s the way you get the attention and the customer.

The second thing that we covered was how you can go from free to fee by changing the packaging, and we saw how you listen to stuff on the radio, and then you buy the DVD, and then you buy the MP3. Then, you go to the concert, and then you go to another concert, and then the whole sequence starts all over again. The point is that over time, customers don’t want that much free stuff. They want to pay for stuff. They want to get from one point to the other as quickly as possible.

When customers first start, they want to test the waters, and that’s why they go for the free stuff to see that you are good in the first place. Once they have established that you’re good, they don’t really need to read much or do much in terms of free. It’s only the new customers that feel that way. After a while, they’re just buying everything in sight. They’re getting value from it, which is they’re buying everything in sight, not because you put a magic spell on them.

Packaging makes a big difference, but also organization. As I said with the podcast, if I just pull out the stuff that’s relevant to you, you’re going to listen to it. Say for instance, just 10 topics on pricing. Packaging and organization will take something from free to fee. Finally, there’s always this fear that your stuff is too basic, that it’s something that nobody wants to buy. Do a free course. Get the testimonials, and those testimonials will assure you and assure your prospects that you’re doing a great job and that it’s worth paying for.

What’s the one thing that you can do today? It’s got nothing to do with today’s podcast. It’s got everything to do with the testimonials. You want to go out there and find out, “How can I get good testimonials? How can I get great testimonials?” First, you want to listen to podcast number 38, and that’s because it deals with the topic of testimonials.

The second thing you want to do is read The Brain Audit because it shows you how the customer thinks, and it gives you those six questions that you need to ask. Now, you can get those six questions free online anyway, but you will find that The Brain Audit is a really good read to understand the entire strategy. There you go. I’m taking you from free, which is the podcast, to a paid product. You’ll find great value, and then you’ll come back again. It’s that simple.

It’s 5:21am here in Auckland, New Zealand, and I’m not going for a walk today. Now, the point of recording this podcast, we’re leaving for the United States in about 48 hours, and I’ve got podcasts to do and presentations to finish. I know it’s an excuse, but it’s a valid excuse this time. I just do not have the time to go for a walk, but when I get to Italy, when I get to the United States, I’ll more than make up for it.

This is a rare instance. Normally, it’s just part of the routine. It’s part of the routine for a simple reason. When I go for a walk, a lot of things happen. It’s not just the health and the fitness, but it’s also that I get the chance to then listen to the podcast, and then listen to an audiobook, and it fills my brain with information. This is critical. Input is everything. Facebook is nothing, and that’s where we spend a lot of our time. We should spend more time going for a walk, listening to the podcast, listening to audiobooks because once you have that input, you have stories, you have strategies, you have tactics, and you’re able to then take your knowledge to a completely different level.

When I first started out, I was on this site by Jim Collins, and I read the fact that he reads a hundred books a year. I thought, “Well, he’s an author. He’s busy. If he can read a hundred books a year, so can I.” I found that just reading books was not getting me very far because you have limited time to read in a day. I found that just by listening to stuff in the car or walking, even if 90% of it just went one ear and out of the other, it didn’t matter. People make these excuses. They talk about why they can’t remember stuff, that they need to make notes. It’s just listen.

There you go. That was my preach for today.

What’s happening in Psychotactics land? Nothing for the next month or so, but when we get back in June, I’m going to start off with the cartoon stock, and you’re going to be able to get all these cartoons that you can use in your blogs, in your presentations, stuff that you just do not get online. Look for that. You’ll have to stay on the newsletter for that because we’re going to have a limited number. I’m not saying this for scarcity sake. I just do not want the cartoons all over the internet.

The second thing is the article writing course, Version 2. If you haven’t done the live version, you want to get the home study version, and that is Version 2.0. If you’ve already bought this before, yes, I’m giving it to you free. Later in the year, we’re going to have theHeadline course, the Headline Trainer Course and The Brain Audit Trainer Course. There you go. All the events stacked up in a row, waiting to land. This has been brought to you by Psychotactics.com. Get on the newsletter. Yes, it’s free. Bye for now.

You can also listen to or read this episode:  #41: How To Save Two Zillion Hours in Research (Using Cool Techniques with Evernote)

How much time does it take to do research? Yup, those zillions of hours go down the drain and get us exhausted.

And that's because we go about doing research the "wrong way".

Most of us do our research once we sit down to write an artilce, create a webinar or podcast. A zillion hours later, the content is still not ready and the hours have flown away needlessly.

That needn't be the case at all. Almost all research needs to be done in advance and stored away. But how do you find it once it's stored away? That's where the power of "opposite" tagging", default notebook and the phone and iPad come along.

Find out how to reclaim those zillions of hours back—right now!

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Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/41

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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Time Stamps

00:00:20 Finding Money In My Jeans
00:05:31 Table of Contents

00:06:08 Part 1: How To Take Pictures
00:12:12 Part 2: Why Tagging With Opposites Matters
00:15:51 Part 3: Default Notebook

00:19:35 Summary
00:21:14Final Comments + Offers

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Transcript

This is the 3-Month Vacation and I'm Sean D'Souza. When I was a teenager, nothing was more interesting to me than finding money in my pant pockets. I'd have all these pairs of jeans and obviously I'd use some of them and then not use the others, and just mix them around. Then eventually I'd go back to the same pair of jeans, yes, dirty jeans, we know. You're a teenager, remember? Then I'd find money and I'd announce it to the world. My mother would go, "But, it's your own money."

                                    I just found it really interesting. I found it very exciting to find money that I thought I didn't have. I don't know what it might feel like to win the lottery because I'll never buy a lottery ticket, but this sure felt great. To me it felt like winning the lottery. There was of course, a problem with this method, and that was I couldn't find money when I needed it, and so it was not such an efficient method. Evernote on the other hand, is an amazing tool. If you want to find information, you can find it every single time.

                                    When I first got Evernote, I thought it was a pretty average tool. I didn't understand it. You know how you sit down and you do research every time you're writing an article or you're writing a book or you're creating a podcast or a video? That's the worst time to ever do research. Research should be done in advance. Evernote is a research tool where you collect all your information in advance and then you're able to find it easily. In fact, you don't have to remember anything because Evernote will remember it for you. In this episode we're also going to cover a concept of tagging that you've probably not considered and that will make your entire presentation, your books and other stuff, amazing.

                                    Back in 2010, I was doing a workshop on uniqueness and we were doing the workshop in California, then in Washington D.C. and then in Guildford, which is just outside London. That summer was a brutal summer for me. Remember, summer is December in New Zealand, so all of December, and a good part of January, I was really tired because I had been writing the notes for the workshop. We always send the notes month in advance for all our workshops. We send all the participants the notes a month in advance. Then once I finished the notes I had to start on the slide. When I'm working on slides, I'll put most of the information together and then I'll leave some slides blank for examples and more information that I need to add later.

                                    The time came for us to leave on our trip and off we went to the U.S. We reached Campbell, California. That was our first stop. After the first day, which went really well, I sat down in the evening and I went through my slides for the next day. At that point in time, I found a whole bunch of slides that had blanks in them, as in they had the information but there were no graphics and there were no examples and I just cannot have a presentation without a ton of examples. That really helps the participants understand the concept. It also breaks up this intensity of information.

                                    I've got no examples and it's 8:00 at night. I've been up since 4 in the morning and been running around all day at the workshop. Where am I going to find any examples at this hour? I go to my pant pockets. That's Evernote. I dig into them and there are 108 notes on uniqueness. Now, not all of them are examples, but 108 notes on one topic and I'm ecstatic. I mean, I'm exhausted but I'm ecstatic because at least I can get some of the examples, take screenshots, do what I have to do and I'm ready for the presentation the next day. This is the power of Evernote. It's the power of doing research in advance long before you need it.

                                    What are we going to cover today? The first thing that we're going to cover today is how to take pictures and why they're so critical. The second is tagging. It's not enough to just tag. You have to know how to tag in 2 different ways. The third is the factor of the default notebook and this is very powerful when you're writing a book or creating a series or doing something which is a current kind of project. Let's start off with the first one, which is how to take pictures. You think you know this, right? Well, let's find out.

                                    How do I pick up stories along the way? Well, I use my Smartphone as a weapon and then I use my iPad as a second weapon and my computer, that's the third weapon. They're all used in completely different ways, but still to capture stuff from Evernote or to Evernote. Let's first start with the Smartphone. Let's say I'm at the café, because I'm always at the café. My eyes fall on a newspaper or magazine. Now, there's an interesting story and it catches my imagination, so what I'll do is I'll take a picture of that story, a photograph. It doesn't matter whether I need the story or not. Let's say it's a story about Singapore Airlines or another story about cockroaches.

                                    I'm going to find the story interesting because it has amused me or it has some relevant information or some facts which are really interesting and so I'm going to take a picture. Then I'll just file it under "Interesting Stories." More often than not, I'll be working on a project. For example, a few months ago I was working on the Information Products course and at that point in time, my entire focus was simply on the course, the course, and nothing but the course. Any story I was reading about somehow ended up being on the course. Let's take, for example, Singapore Airlines.

                                    I found that whatever story I read on Singapore Airlines was very interesting. It was about how their air hostesses are trained for as many as 6 months before they go on a regular flight. Now I had no idea why I found that point interesting, but to be trained for 6 months before you get on the flight, that was really interesting. What I also found was that they were sent to schools, they were sent to old age homes and as I read the story, suddenly it seemed to have a lot of depth.

                                    When you're writing you're completely in a state of chaos. Everything's moving around you, this chapter's merging to that chapter, you have no clue what's happening. It's best to just put away these examples and maybe file them under "Info Products," because I was working on Info Products or "Singapore Airlines," and then forget about it. Now I used to do this in the old days when I had a PC. I had a swipe file and I would store all these things and then of course, I couldn't find anything. The beauty of Evernote is that when you take a picture, the picture has text in it.

                                    Somewhere in the text it said Singapore Airlines. Now, I've taken a photograph, but Evernote recognizes text, so if I can just remember one word or a couple of words about the story or about the incident, say I took a picture about cockroaches and there was information about the cockroaches. It just needs to have the word cockroach on the page. I've taken a photograph and Evernote will find it. That's the beauty of it. I can find whatever I want just by recalling one little fact about that entire story. My phone becomes a weapon.

                                    No matte where I go, I'm taking photographs of different stories, different incidents, and yes, I do tag them and I will get to that. The point is even if you don't tag them, but you remember one word in that entire story, you are able to pull it back whenever you want it, on demand. My iPad, I use it differently. Usually I'm reading on the iPad. I don't really surf that much on the iPad. I use it to read books on Kindle and that's the reason why I buy the books on Kindle, so I can read them.

                                    Then I highlight a certain section. Say I was reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and in that Charles talks about Michael Phelps and how he did this swim almost blinded. I thought, "This is a great story." I had no idea where I was going to use it, but I thought, "It's a great story." On the iPad, I can highlight it. They have a highlighter in the software and so I just highlighted it and I take a screenshot. If you don't know how to take a screenshot, look online, but you take a screenshot.

                                    Then, I send that photograph to Evernote. Then later on, 8 months later or 8 years later, I want to pull up a story on Michael Phelps, like I did in the podcast a few weeks ago, and it's there. I don't have to look for it. Evernote will just find it. It will find all the instances of Michael Phelps and there I've got my story. You can be completely disorganized and take picture after picture, as long as you remember the word or the term, you will be able to find it. However, you want to be a little smarter than that and that's when we start to use tagging.

                                    Did I tell you that tagging is super cool? Well, I'm about to tell you how super cool it is. My system, this patented system of tagging, it's better than anything you've ever seen. I'll tell you why. There are 2 ways to tag. Let's find out how. Tagging is just a matter of putting in terms. For instance, say you took a picture of the Himalayas. They're called the Himalayas, by the way, not Himalayas. Let's say you took a picture of the Himalayas and then you decided to tag it as "high" and "mountains," or something like that.

                                    You want to tag it the inverse way as well. You want to tag it as "low," so you use the tag "high" and also "low." Use the tag for say another picture, "fast" and "slow." You use the opposites. Why are these opposites so important? Because when you're telling a story, you don't have to go with the story itself. Supposing there's the story of Michael Phelps and how the water clouded his goggles and how he won the championship. Well that's a story about victory, but you could just as easily to one about defeat. Let's say you've got a presentation and you're going to put in a picture and you want to talk about defeat.

                                    At that point in time, you bring up this story. How's it going to be about defeat? Well, there is a second place, isn't it? Someone lost by 0.001 seconds or something like that. You can show how that person lost simply because someone else was slightly more prepared. Every story has 2 sides. It depends on how you look at it. It's about winning and losing, about high and low, about fast and slow. Everything can be tagged in several ways. In fact, that's what I do for all my cartoons.

                                    You know that I draw cartoons on a regular basis. When I draw the cartoons, I tag them, but I tag them both ways. If you're in a hurry you just tag them "high" and "low" and "fast" and "slow," but if you've got a thesaurus at hand you can put in some more keywords. Now, this is very critical because when you're looking for an example somewhere in the future 3 months from now, 6 years from now, you might type a term like "flexibility." Of course you'd be expecting all the stories that show up to be about people doing yoga, but in fact you will get a story about inflexibility.

                                    Then you can run this contrasty kind of story where a certain company was inflexible and how flexibility is important. This creates magic. This is the beauty of Evernote. When you file a story, you want to use the tagging system because sure it takes 3 more second and you're in a big hurry, but when you use the tags, which are for and against, "high" and "low," then you create magic. This magic is going to help you when you need it at 8:00 p.m. at night when you have to do slides on the next day and you can barely keep your eyes open. That's how effective Evernote is, but you have to use tagging. Two types of tagging.

                                    This takes us to the third part. The third part is called the default notebook. A lot of people don't know about this as well. Here's why the default notebook is really critical. Now, Evernote stores things in folders which they call notebooks. They're just like books and you can put your stuff with tags, but also in that folder. Let's say I'm doing something on pricing. Then I will tag it with whatever tags I want, like "fast" or "slow," or "high" or "low," but then I will also put it in a notebook. Yes, 2 more seconds that you have to take to do this.

                                    Interestingly, you might not be in this mood to put it in a notebook. However, if you're out on a mission, say you're taking pictures of pricing related stuff all along the way. Then what you can do is you can assign a default notebook and you usually do this from your computer. You want to look this up. I'm not going to give you a tutorial right now. It saves you a ton of time because you don't have to allocate the notebook every single time that you're putting in some new information.

                                    At one point in time my notebook was allocated to talent because I wanted to write a book on talent and so every single photograph I took or any note I made, just went by default into the talent notebook. If I search the talent notebook in the future, it will be easy to find it without having to put in any tags or anything of that nature. My default notebook was Talent and supposing I ran into a story about pricing or a story about microfilms or a story about just about anything, then it's just a matter of reassigning that photograph or that story to another notebook.

                                    If you are just working on a single project and then you're taking hundreds of pictures related to that project, then you don't even have to think about it. It just goes into the default notebook and that saves you an enormous amount of time. While we are mostly talking about the phone and the iPad to store most of your information, you can also use the computer. Evernote has some really good browser extensions. You just go to the Evernote site and whatever browser you're using, say you're using Safari or Firefox, it has browser extensions. When you're on a site anywhere you can click on that browser extension and then save that page to Evernote, which is very cool.

                                    Again, you want to go through some of the tagging and maybe put it in a notebook, and that makes it very effective. This is a swipe file online. The beauty of the swipe file is that unlike that money which I would find in my pant pocket every now and then, you can find this every single time. When people say, "Well, I don't have any stories, I can't remember any stories," you shouldn't be looking for stories at the time of writing an article. You shouldn't be looking for stories at the time of writing your presentation. You must not be looking for stories when you're writing your book. They're all there sitting in Evernote, waiting for you when you're ready. Then you just pick from them. That's the beauty of Evernote.

                                    What are the 3 things that we covered today? Let's summarize. The first thing that we covered was how to take pictures. You take pictures with your phone and then you just search for them. Evernote will find the text within the pictures. The second thing is the iPad and when you're reading a book, when you're reading a magazine on your iPad, you want to take a screenshot and then upload that to Evernote. Then later on you just use it. The second thing that we covered was this concept of tagging and how you should tag both ways: "high" and "low," "fast" and "slow," which then gives you contrast because it's very average to say, "This mountain is high," and then put a picture of a mountain. If you have something very low that creates a contrast. That creates drama. That's what you're looking for.

                                    Finally, it's the default notebook. The default notebook allows you to just take picture after picture after picture without having to do any tagging whatsover. It just goes into the default notebook that you've allocated. Very cool. The biggest benefit of Evernote is that it saves time for me and that all of this research that everyone is doing at the time of writing an article, or writing a book, or doing a podcast, is a complete waste of time. You never do research at that stage. You always do the research in advance. That's what Evernote is. It's your research in advance and it's there to be found on demand.

                                    It's 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning and I've been at this podcast recording. This is my second podcast recording for the day. I've been at it since about 3:30 this morning just so that I could have a bank of podcasts because we're going away on vacation. When we go away on vacation, we make sure that we have all the newsletters lined up for the entire month that we've been away and also for a month after we get back. Because once you get back, you're not exactly in the mood to get started right away. It's very easy to just drop the ball. The podcast and the newsletters and anything that needs to go is covered not only for the time that we're away, but when we get back as well.

                                    As usual, you can find all of the transcripts and any other information that you need, any resources, at www.psychotactics.com/41. This is true for any of the podcasts, so you just put the slash, number 39, number 38, and you can go there. You can find me on Twitter, at Sean D'Souza. I'm also on Facebook, Sean D'Souza and Sean@psychotactics.com. If you're a member of 5000bc, we discuss these podcasts and other information and if you're not a member, then you want to become a member of 5000bc. When I get back from Italy, I'm going to bring out the article writing course version 2.0. We've had version 1.0 for the longest time. Version 2.0 is coming out. It's really, really good.

                                    How do I know it's really, really good? Because it's being supervised by the alumni. They're a strict bunch of people and they're going to make sure that I do a good job. We're also going to have the stock cartoons that I talked about, so you have to be on the newsletter list to get that information. That's going to go pretty quickly because we're going to have a limited number. We don't want the stock cartoons to appear all over the Internet. We're also going to do the headline course and headline trainer and then the brain audit trainer. There's going to be a lot of activity from June to December, but for now I'll say bye and thanks for listening. This is Sean from the 3-Month Vacation and psychotactics.com. Bye-bye.

 

Success is good. Focus is good. Until it's bad. Incredible as it may seem, focus can cause a massive blindspot in our business. So what's the option? Surely it can't be distraction? Actually it's a mix of both that's required. Using the concept of "spinning plates", you can avoid the blind spot of success and the mindlessness of distraction.

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

Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/40

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

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

Time Stamps

00:00:20 Introduction

00:02:20 Part 1: The Rip Van Winkle Effect

00:08:17 Part 2: Chasing Everything In Sight

00:10:03 Part 3: Spinning Plates

00:13:24 Summary

00:14:00 Action Plan: The One Thing

00:14:20 How We Add Plates

00:19:26 End

----

 

Sean:            This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. Once upon a time in New York's Catskill Mountains lived a man called Rip Van Winkle. You've probably heard of this story. I heard it when I was a kid. I've kind of forgotten what the story was all about. As the story goes, one autumn day he wants to escape from his wife's nagging so he wonders up the mountain with his dog. He hears his name being called out. He sees a man with antiquated Dutch clothing. This man is carrying a keg up the mountain; he wants help. They proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of the noises. There are a group of bearded men who are playing nine pins. Rip doesn't ask how they know his name but they offer him moonshine, which is a kind of whiskey, illicit whiskey, not legal. He decides to drink and then he falls into a deep sleep.

 

                        When he wakes up, it's pretty strange. His musket is rotting; it's rusty. His beard is a foot long. His dog is nowhere in sight. He returns to the village and he finds he recognizes no one. His wife has died. His close friends have fallen in a war; they moved away. This is often what happens in business, especially if you've got a successful business. You get a blind spot. You start focusing on what works for you, and then you work at it and you work at it, and it works even better for you. The longer you work at it, and the more successful you get, the more you have a blind spot to everything else.

 

                        Now, almost instantly you're wondering where is this going. Focus is supposed to be good, right? If focus brings success, then what's the problem with having the blind spot? There is a downside, and that's what this episode is all about. It's about understanding that you can have focus and you can have success, but that you can also have a blind spot.

 

                        In this episode we're going to explore three elements. First is the concept of the Rip Van Winkle effect. The second is the opposite, which is the danger of not having that focus. The third is the solution. How do we solve this problem of focus and not focusing at the same time? Let's start off with the first, which is understanding the concept of the Rip Va Winkle effect.

 

                        If you look around you, you will find that a lot of blogs have shut off their comments. Why have they done this? This is not just little blogs, but big blogs and mega-sized blogs. They've just shut off their comments. Why is this the case? The obvious reaction is maybe they've decided that they're big enough they don't need the comments, but that's not true. Everyone likes to hear back from their customers. Nothing boosts the ego more than having 50, 70, 100, 200 comments on a single post that you made. Remember, when people comment they also send it off to Facebook and Twitter and every other place.

 

                        Why turn off that channel? Why turn off the chance for people to experience your blog at a different level? The reason is very simple: that group has moved on. When you look at the most of the blogs today, even the really big ones, they have far fewer comments. It's embarrassing, so they have to turn it off.

 

                        Same thing with Facebook. At one point in time you could effectively run a business off Facebook. Slowly but surely, that tide is changing. Suddenly you find that Facebook has all these restrictions in place. Suddenly there are too many people looking at your stuff, but not the people that you want, so the tide keeps changing.

 

                        If you made a successful out of blogging or, say, Facebook or any other medium, then it's very simple for you to focus on that medium and not pay that much attention to everything else, so suddenly someone comes around and says, "Hey, podcasting is a big thing." You look at them with skepticism because you tried podcasting four or five years ago and now this stuff, whatever you're doing right now, is still working for you, so you get into that moonshine mode. You fall fast asleep, and that becomes your blind spot.

 

                        This is true even for us at Psychotactics. We had a blog going around 2003 before blogs became popular in 2005l; we dropped it. We had podcasts going around 2008-2009 before podcasting became popular; we dropped it. We never really stepped onto YouTube or Facebook or Twitter in a big way, or even a small way. The reason why we did that is because we had a blind spot. We had courses that were filling up super fast. I mean every single course fills up in less than an hour. We've had workshops in New Zealand, in the US, Canada, Netherlands, the UK, and they all fill up almost instantly.

 

                        Of course we send out a newsletter weekly. We've done so since 2002 without missing a single week. We're able to sell products for as little as 9.99 all the way up to $400, $500. When you look at that kind of model, you say, "Well, that's good, isn't it? It's great focus," and it is. But the ecosystem is connected. When we first started out in 2002, if we wrote an article and we published it on another site we'd get 200 subscribers. Yes, for a single article. Then we had the blogs come out and we'd get about 50 to 60 subscribers per article. Recently, with all those comments of the blogs turned off, we probably get 2 or 3. We're talking about really big blogs. You would think that the really big blogs would drive traffic towards you. It's not true anymore. They've had to relook their strategy; we've had to relook our strategy. Focus is a great thing, but things can change around you and you've got to be watching for what's happening around you.

 

                        This takes us to our second part of today, which is chasing everything that is around you. The opposite of focus is distraction. Most of us are not very good at focus. We are very good at being distracted. Every time someone comes up and says, "Hey, here's a new method," they just put the word new, improved, and we're off like a bullet. It's almost like the diet syndrome: the South Beach Diet, the paleo diet, the Atkins diet, the Zone diet, every single diet. We think that the next diet is going to solve our problem, but it never does.

 

                        It's the same thing for business. If you get into doing, say, podcasting, then you have to be prepared to enjoy it. You have to be prepared to love what you're doing so that you can do it for the next five years or ten years. When we do our courses, they're very tough. They're very tough for me. They're very demanding for me. When we do our workshops I'm on my feet for three days. I never sit down. I'm always running around teaching and doing stuff. Even these podcasts, I've already told you before, they take between three to four hours to produce even though they're just 15 minutes or 20 minutes long.

 

                        If you want to make a success of anything you're going to have to be willing to be there for the long run, but as we found out, the long run can change over time. It can twist and change, and suddenly blogs are no longer fashionable and Facebook is no longer fashionable. Maybe podcasting will not work out as effectively as it does today. It might still be good. It might not be as effective.

 

                        Which is where the third part of today's podcast comes into play, and that is the concept of spinning plates. In the first section we saw the concept of focus on how that focus really helps but also creates a blind spot. Then we saw what happens when you don't have that blind spot and you're chasing everything in sight and not achieving a lot. Where's the happy medium? Where is the happy mix? It's a concept called spinning plates.

 

                        Spinning plates is just simply this: it's like someone you've seen at a fair. They put one plate on a stick and then they start to spin it. It goes faster and faster and faster and faster until it reaches a certain speed. Then the person leaves that plate and goes to the next stick, and then starts to spin that plate, and that reaches a certain speed. As the second plate is spinning, the first plate starts to lose some of its momentum and then you have to spin that and then go back to spinning the second one, and then you can put on the third plate.

 

                        This is how you're really running your business. If you don't want to have that blind spot, if you don't want to fall asleep by just focusing on a few things, then you've got to use the spinning plates method. We started out with a newsletter and we've done that week after week after week since, as I said, 2002. The second thing was we have courses on a regular basis, every year maybe. An article writing course is held once a year, headlines course is held once a year. During the year there are several courses, and that keeps the customers coming back. Once we settled all these courses and we have the agenda and the syllabus and the system in place, then we were able to add on workshops. Once the workshops were going we were able to add on podcasts.

 

                        People often wonder how do you manage to do all these things at once. Doesn't it get you really frazzled? The answer is no. To someone who's not used to spinning plates, it looks like an extremely difficult task, but to someone who's already adept as spinning different plates, it's just a routine thing, as routine as you playing parent and teacher and driver and chef and whatever you do in a day as you spin those plates. It's just a matter of getting that act together.

 

                        Once you're able to spin plates you can focus on your current activities and then add new activities as they come along. You don't stay like Rip did, stuck in one place forever and then the whole world changes around you. On the other hand, you don't start chasing every butterfly that crosses your path. The spinning plates is your answer.

 

                        Let's summarize what we've learned today. We've already summarized, haven't we? You need to focus but you also need to be distracted. To be able to get the best of both worlds you have to get that focus really strong, get that rolling, and then add the plate. Once you start spinning plates, people will wonder how you're able to manage so much, but there is no secret to it. The people that struggle the most are those that are continuously either too focused or too distracted. You want to be where the spinning plates are.

 

                        What's the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you can do today is to sit down and work out what are things that you are focusing on and what are the thing that are generating the most revenue for you and make you most satisfied. Then you look at what's changing around you. Then you add just one more plate. That's what I did last year. We were not podcasting. As I said, we were podcasting back in 2009 and then we stopped. Then I added the podcasting, and though it takes so much time, and we have courses and we have workshops and we're going to events and we're doing all that stuff, I still have time for my Three Month Vacation. I still have time to spend with my niece, who I mentor. I still have time to go to the movies. I still have time to cook. I still have time to be part of the membership site at 5000 BC, to do a painting every day. I also go for a walk for an hour and a half. I run a website at 5000 BC. Are you getting tired yet?

 

                        These are spinning plates. I'm not any different than you, but I've added the spinning plates over time, and that's what you should do, too. Make that list, and then add to that list one by one, and you will be absolutely amazed, gobsmacked at how much you will achieve in the years to come.

                        If you like the Three Month Vacation Podcast, then ask your friends to join in with you as well. Maybe make a walking group and all of you put on your headphones, go for a walk, and then you can discuss it later. I'm just kidding, but at least go for your walk and make sure that your friends know about the Three Month Vacation Podcast. It's full of stories, it's full of information, and it really helps your business.

                        If you haven't already left a review, then please do so, because I will be reading your reviews. Many of you have asked me if I'm going to consider doing a course on podcasting. Maybe email if you're interested, but we are going to be doing a course on headlines and how to create great headlines every single time, not by copying headlines but by understanding how they work. That's later in the year. We're also having a Brain Audit trainer. This is very expensive because it's going to be a year-long program. Brain Audit trainer, headline course, and headline trainer - that will be announced in June or July when we get back from Italy. I also will be working on the cartoon stock stuff that I talked about. I'll be drawing some really good cartoons, maybe about 200 of them. If you would like to use them in your books, in your covers, in your blogs, in your presentations, this is an amazing set of cartoons. You're just absolutely going to love it. They're lavish and it's nothing like what you would find on Stock Cartoon. That project is coming up as well.

                        As you can see, a lot of spinning plates, isn't it? That's how I like it. That's how I thrive. If you would like to get notification for all these events, then you have to get on the Psychotactics newsletter, because that's the only way you'll know. That's at Psychotactics.com. You can find me on Twitter at Sean D'Souza. You can also find me on Facebook at Sean D'Souza. To get the transcript and resources for this podcast, go to www.psychotactics.com/40, and you will get everything there. That's me, the ex-Rip Van Winkle, signing off for now. Bye bye.

 

 

What makes one presentation far superior than the next? What makes you want to binge-listen to some podcasts and just reject the others? What makes one book so readable while the other one is boring? It's the concept of info-tainment. Where information is used to get attention, but entertainment is used to keep that attention. Find out more in this episode.

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

Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/39

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

 

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

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Time Stamps

00:00:20 Start /
00:01:57 Table of Contents /
00:03:09 Part 1: Analogies /
00:09:45 Part 2: Case Studies /
00:10:00 Case Study: Shantiniketan /
00:13:19 Part 3: History Lessons /
00:17:14 Case Study: Shantiniketan /
00:17:14 Summary /
00:18:14 Final Notes / 

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 Sean D'Souza:            I'm Sean D'Souza. Every morning when I go for my walk I listen to podcasts and I listen to audiobooks. As you know, I also learn a language, but whenever I'm headed out towards the café, it's always podcasts or audiobooks. I started to analyze. I started to think about what is it that I really like to listen to.

 

 

                                    Now obviously you get a lot of speakers and a lot of different topics, so you can't just boil it down to one thing, but you can. The one thing that I like to listen to, and I find that a lot of people like to listen to, is something called infotainment. That's information and entertainment. People like to learn stuff, become more intelligent, but they don't want to be bored along the way. It's not just a matter of presenting the information in a good way. You literally have to provide entertainment, so how you provide entertainment. As part of my analysis I started reading a lot of articles and books. I started listening to more audiobooks, and then listened to some presentations as well, and I figured out the difference. The difference is a story well told.

                                    I like to split up stories well told into three categories. The first is the analogy, the second is the case study, and the third are history lessons. How do we use these concepts to make our information more interesting, to make our articles more interesting, and especially to make our presentations more interesting? More importantly, why would analogies, case studies, and history lesson be so important. The reason is very simple. Information is tiring. That's it. Whenever you give someone information, if they already know the information, [inaudible 00:02:06] just revising the information. If you give them new information, some new concept, so new methods, it starts to seem very nice and very interesting, but as you go past five, ten, 15 minutes, the brain is trying to work out not only what you're saying but also how to apply it, so it gets extremely tiring. That's when the brain needs a break. The brain not only needs a break but it could also do with an example. That's where analogies, case studies, and history lessons come into play.

                                    Let's start off with the first one, which is the analogy. In this episode we'll do something slightly different. I'll talk about good analogies and bad analogies, and good case studies and bad case studies, and so on. Let's start off with the good analogy. What is a good analogy? Well, let's start off with what is a bad analogy. I'm sitting there with this photographer and I've been trying to get in touch with him for quite a while, and he's been fobbing me off. Then eventually we sit at this café. It's about an hour and he's going on into this bad analogy after bad analogy after bad analogy. What is this bad analogy?

                                    He's explaining to me how photography should have strong foundations. He talks about a house that's built on sand vs. on rock. The point is, has he given me any new information? Is the analogy any different from something I know before. When he's using that analogy it's very boring. I've already heard the story of the house built on sand vs. rock. Then he goes on to even more analogies. I can't tell you what those analogies are because I was completely bored out of my skull. The whole one hour that I was there, he went into analogy after analogy, and then talked about photography in the middle.

                                    But I was fast asleep. This is what happens. Your customers are going to be fast asleep because your analogies are not interesting. What makes interesting analogies? You can get interesting analogies from day to day life. I just told you an interesting analogy. I told you about boring, but I didn't tell you about boredom in a way that you probably heard before. I told you a story about the photographer and how he was boring me to death.

                                    In The Brain Audit we talk about the seven red bags. You probably heard the story but you might as well hear it again. It's about how seven red bags are put on the flight and then the person gets off at the other end and they're waiting at the conveyor belt or the carousel to pick up their seven red bags. Then one bag comes out, and second red bag comes out, and third red bag comes out. It builds up to the fifth red bag and the sixth red bag, and then the seventh red bag doesn't show up.

                                    The difference between this analogy and that boring house on the sand analogy is the fact that you know 90% of the analogy but you don't know how 10% is going to roll out. You stood there waiting for your bags at the airport. You've done that; I've done that; everyone has done that, mostly. We can relate to that concept, but the story slightly changes. That's the beauty of the analogy. The analogy that is powerful is not an analogy that you know 100% in advance, because that is boring. The analogy is taken from a situation that we're aware of, that we are probably 90% aware of, but that has that little 10% twist. In this case, the red bags have the twist, and the fact that the seventh red bag didn't show up.

                                    When you're building your analogies, you want to build it in this kind of concept that we already know but there is a little shift in the concept, like the time I was trying to explain how I got stuck. Instead of just saying I got stuck at this conference and I couldn't get out, you shift it just a little bit. I had gone to a yoga class, and after the yoga class it was raining, pelting down. I came out and I was trying to get into my car. Actually, it was my wife's car because, well ... it's a long story.

                                    Anyway, I was trying to get into the car and trying to shove that key in, try and get it open because I didn't have an umbrella and it's raining. The door wouldn't open. I'm looking at the car. I parked it right there and it wouldn't open, and I'm going crazy. Some of the people came up from the yoga class, said, "Why don't you try to get in from the boot?" I tried that and almost twisted the key. I couldn't get in. Just as I was trying to get in, from the corner of my eye I saw another car that looked identical to the one I was trying to get in. The car, the identical one, that was my car, or rather, my wife's car.

                                    I was stuck because I was trying to get into the wrong car. That makes an interesting analogy. Personal stories make for better analogies because they have this natural flow of something happening, then something else happening, and then something else happening. You can encapsulate all of the something else in either a couple of paragraphs ... Well, you don't want to do more than a couple of paragraphs when you're writing an article, but if you're doing a podcast, it could go on for two, three minutes and people would still follow along because there is this sequence. This makes an analogy interesting, instead of the house on sand vs. the house on rock.

                                    I want you to notice something even as you're listening to this podcast or probably reading the transcript. The stories are getting you interested. Your brain is trying to wrap around how am I going to do this analogy bit. But even as you're listening, the story is helping you relax a bit and it's also giving you an example of possibly how you could attack this problem.

                                    Analogies are not the only way to go, obviously. You can also have case studies. How do you handle case studies, and what are good case studies, and what are bad case studies? The thing about case studies is they're called case studies because they have a before and after, and usually they have an in between as well, so they make for a great story rollout. In the book that I recently wrote, called Dartboard Pricing, it started out with a few case studies. One of the case studies was about this guy called Iggy Ignatius, and how he started up an Indian village in the middle of Florida and called it ShantiNiketan, which really means a peaceful place. You can see how he went about generating revenue and then how he built ShantiNiketan. Then just as he was about to sell ShantiNiketan, the real estate market just died.

                                    All the stuff that was selling on his side was more expensive than across the road, and he was destroyed. He didn't know what to do. What happens to this case study? You want to know, don't you? Well, as it turned out, he was oversubscribed. All of the people who bought his condominiums, they were excited to be there. They were willing to spend more to have less just so that they could experience the whole lifestyle of ShantiNiketan.

                                    This is a case study. The case study started out with someone with a plan, rolled out that plan, got stuck along the way, and then came out a winner. This is a beautiful case study. When you look at businesses, you look at Apple for instance ... I hate to say Apple again, but Apple did really well in 1984. Then by the year 2000 they were ready to die. Nothing was working for them. Then they rose from those ashes like a Phoenix, and today they're the most valuable company in the world.

                                    This is a case study. You don't have to take Apple, and that's why I said I don't want to bring up Apple, because everyone knows this case study. But there are thousands of case studies online, and the only factor that you have to consider is one of contrast. Supposing Apple was winning, then they were losing, then they were winning. Or they were losing, then they were winning, but then they lost. Eventually, there has to be that contrast. That makes for a great case study.

                                    Now you can go from the company was losing out and then they won, or the company was winning, then they lost. But that in between, that contrast, that little bounce, that makes a huge difference. When you want to create that example, that entertainment, you want to look for that little bounce, or at least create that little bounce. Then you have a great case study.

                                    What we've covered so far is the analogy and the case study. Let's look at history lessons. History lessons sound really boring, don't that they? It's not necessarily boring. History doesn't have to go back thousands of years, anyway. A couple of episodes ago I talked about the Stockdale paradox, about how James Stockdale was at the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam and how he was tortured. The topic was about anti-fragility, so the Stockdale paradox fit completely into anti-fragility.

                                    You don't have to stick to war games. You can go to the Olympics or you can go to carrot land. Did you know what happened in 1942 with carrots in Great Britain? Should I tell you? Of course I will. In 1942 there was a carrot surplus. There was 10,000 tons of carrots. They were no onions and no potatoes and no meat, and there were lots of shortages, but carrots? There were lots of carrots.

                                    A guy who called himself Dr. Carrot, he reinforced the belief that carrots help you to see in the dark and that the RAF fighter pilots, they also had greater night vision simply because they ate carrots. As you've realized, that story is not true. The reason why the pilots got so good with their accuracy is because of airborne radar. The British government was very keen that the Nazis don't find out about this airborne radar.

                                    What happened to the carrots? The carrot consumption increased dramatically. Even so, people drew the line at carrot flan or carrot jam or carrot fudge or [carolade 13:30]. They were a lot of carrot drinks and carrot food, and carrots were everywhere. You see how that history lesson could be so instructive, so interesting? It doesn't have to be boring.

                                    Yet, you see speaker after speaker stand up on stage and give you this boring information and more information and more stats and more information. You think, why doesn't he eat carrots? The question is where do you get all these stories and case studies and analogies from? They're all around you. As you're reading a book, as I'm reading a book, what I do is I'll take a snapshot on my iPad, or if it's out in a newspaper I'll take a photograph with the phone. Then I'll store it in Evernote. We'll cover this about Evernote and how magnificent it is in another episode, but I'll keep all this and I'll file this as stories.

                                    Then I'll probably put in a little tag as well so that I know what the story's about, but I don't have to. Then later when I'm doing my presentation, or my podcast, or writing an article, there it is. The story is waiting for me and I just have to put it in, and it becomes infotainmnent.

                                    Today you got information. You got the fact that analogies help. You got a good analogy, a bad analogy. You got case studies, good case study, bad case study. Then we went onto this whole carrot thing with a history lesson. What happened was you were entertained the whole way. That makes you more eager to listen to future podcasts or read more articles or come to the next presentation. Boredom is a terrible thing, and information can be extremely boring. It can be as if you're being forced to eat carrot fudge.

                                    On that repetitive carrot note, let's move to the summary. What did we cover today? We covered analogies, we covered case studies, and we covered stories from history. What we found was that it was important to have this little bounce. You can have a before and after, but the in-between bounce, that's really interesting. Most of all, we found that we can't always get these stories at the last minute so we've got to file them away in places like Evernote. As I said, we'll cover that in a future episode.

                                    By the way, that's your action plan as well. You're going to read several stories, case studies. You're going to talk about how something happened to you, and it's going to happen today. It's going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen the day after. Get Evernote. Start saving the stories. That's what you can do today. I do it every day; so should you.

                                    If you want to get more on storytelling, at Psychotactics we have a series on storytelling. You might want to pick that up. There is also the information products course. Now this is more expensive; it's over $1,000. But the reason you should consider it is because it shows you how to construct an information product like a presentation or a book or a booklet. It's very easy to just stack information together and not realize that there are different elements that help the reader to learn as well as get entertained. The information products, over $1,000, worth your money.

                                    Finally, the Dartboard Pricing book, you want to check that out if you want to increase your prices and not lose customers. Even Starbucks increases prices every two or three years, and they've increased their prices about 13 times in the last 20 years. When was the last time you increased your prices? Read Dartboard Pricing, and yes, increase your prices, and don't lose customers. I'm on Twitter at Sean D'Souza. I'm on Facebook at Sean D'Souza and at email at sean@psychotactics.com. If you don't want to type so much, it's sean@5000bc.com. All of the resources for this episode can be found at psychotactics.com/39. By the time this episode gets to you, I'll be in Sardinia, Italy, eating, drinking, and having a great time. No work. Bye for now.

 

We ask for testimonials and we get them, but are they any good? Or are they the usual sugary stuff that no one really reads. How do you get testimonials that are "journeys" and weigh in at 800-1000 words? Find out in this episode on "how to plan—and yes—get outstanding testimonials.

 

Oh, and I'm at sean@psychotactics.com.

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Useful Resources

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

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

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

 

 

 

This is the Three Month Vacation. I'm Sean D'Souza. It's August 13, 2008. The time? It's 9:56 AM. Olympic champion Michael Phelps is standing behind his starting block. He bounces. He bounces lightly on his toes. Then the announcer calls his name and he steps onto the block. Michael always waves his hands thrice; he's done that since he was a kid. He then steps on the block again. He gets his position, and then the gun goes off and he jumps into the pool.

                                    The moment he's in the water he realizes something is wrong. He doesn't know what is wrong but the moisture seems to fill up the goggles. By the second turn, everything's blurry. By the third lap, his goggles are full of water. But Michael is no longer in Beijing; he's back in Michigan. The pool is a familiar practice pool, not Olympic pool. There's no roar of the crowd. It's just Bob Bowman, his coach. Bob has turned off all the lights off in the Michigan pool just so Michael can learn to swim blind, just in case something like this were to happen, something's that's happening right now at the Olympic finals.

                                    Winners always plan, and this is the difference between winners and those that struggle. The ones that struggle don't seem to have a plan in place. For something as minor as a testimonial you might think well, I don't really have to do that much planning. After all, the testimonial is about the client, isn't it? You just ask them the questions or you ask for a testimonial and they give you the testimonial.

                                    That's not true. The greatest testimonial is not some sugary-coated "I like your stuff. Your stuff is so great." The really good testimonial is a journey. It's a journey of how the customer bought your product or service, the trials and tribulations they went through, and finally, how they came out at the end. It's more like a movie than just a little Twitter feed.

                                    As you'd expect, there are three steps to get there, and we will take those itty bitty steps and we'll get there, and then we'll have our action plan, just one thing you can do, as always. What are the three things that you have to do to ensure that your testimonial is really good? This doesn't matter whether you're doing a course or you're a consultant or you have a product like a book or anything other product. You have to go through these three steps. These three steps don't work in every single instance, but in most instances you'll find that it's very, very useful.

                                    What are the three steps? Step number one is to make an appointment. What is an appointment? Let's find out. The second thing is not having examples. Why do examples matter in the first place? The third, and probably the most important, is not having the requisite questions. What are the questions? What questions do we need to ask and how do we get the answers out of the client?

                                    This is what a journey is all about. It's about planning. It's about storyboarding. It's not just about showing up for your testimonial and then hoping that the client will give you a great testimonial. We'll take this journey and we'll figure out how we get this great testimonial. When you finish this journey, go back to episode number 37. At 37 you learn the specific points where you can ask for testimonials and get those testimonials long before your project is completed. Not after the project, but before the project is completed. Now we're on episode number 39, and let's find out the three steps that you have to take to make sure that you get these amazing journey-like testimonials.

                                    What's the first step that you have to take? The first step that you have to take is making the appointment. Most of us make the appointment at the wrong spot. The spot is usually after the job is done. The appointment needs to be made before the job is done. I explained to you in episode number 37 how we do this in our workshops. On day one there are people that give testimonials, on day two there are people that give testimonials, and day three there are people that give testimonials. What we're doing is we're making appointments. Renuka will go ahead of time, meet these people, make sure that they're ready at a specific point in time. They're seated somewhere. We have the equipment ready. It is an appointment.

                                    The same thing applies to your business. Even if you're a consultant, or you're selling a product, you want to make an appointment with a client. You have to be there most of the time. Even if you can't physically be there, you have to make an appointment with the client so that they know this testimonial is coming up. It's not something you just spring on them. They know exactly on this week at this time there's going to be a testimonial. We do this on our courses as well. Before the course ends, as part of the course, clients are asked for their testimonial. They're also asked for their feedback, and we get feedback before testimonials because it helps them get everything out of their system before they give a testimonial. But there is an appointment.

                                    This is the part of the planning that a lot of people miss out on. They just send an email to someone expecting that the someone, that client, is going to respond whenever you feel like it, but the client is not going to respond. They need an appointment. It's best to get a testimonial by video because obviously you can get the video and the audio and the transcript. But even an audio testimonial, get on the phone, speak to the client, record the call, and that's an appointment. If you are live at an event, you've got the video, but even if you've got a course and you've got 20 or 30 or even 100 people in your course, you can allocate a certain section of the course where they come in, they know that that's testimonial time. That's an appointment. It's fixed. Then you get your testimonial. The first thing you got to realize is I've got to make an appointment and I've got to stick to that appointment.

                                    The second part of the planning process is where a lot of stuff goes wrong. You may do everything right. You may fix the appointment, ask the right questions, but you won't get a testimonial like you expected. That's because you haven't recreated that actual moment. You know the point when Michael Phelps jumped into that pool and was kind of blind? He'd already lived that moment. It was something he could call upon on demand. He was just going back to Michigan, not swimming in that pool in Beijing. To get your clients back to Michigan, what you have to understand is that they have to have something, some form that they can see, something they can refer to so they can give you something that looks exactly the same or very similar.

                                    This is not what most of us do. Most of us just show up and ask a bunch of questions. The client needs to see great testimonials in the first instance. When we're doing a course, what we do is we get them to look at examples of two or three testimonial in advance, the testimonials that we've thought are good testimonials. We get them to read it, and they read it because they want to do a good job. They want to give you a good testimonial so they read the earlier testimonial.

                                    Now some of our existing testimonials, in fact, a lot of our existing testimonials, are between 800 hundreds to 1,500 words long. When you look at a template like that, when you look at a situation like that, what are you're going to do? The answer is very simple. You're going to try and match that as far as possible. When you don't give the client the example, they don't what to shoot for, but having read that 1,200 word testimonial, they know what to shoot for. That's why we don't get one-line answers. Because once you get one-line answers to your testimonials, say you ask ten questions and you get ten lines as answers, technically it's not a journey. It's a terrible testimonial. You can't really use it. You have to trash it the moment you get it. There's nothing there. You have to have the journey, and the journey consists of 600, 800, 1,200 words. Clients will write that out.

                                    Now, not all clients will sit down and write it out, so that's where the phone comes in or the video comes in. We speak at three words a second, so how many words do you get in a minute? Yep, that's 180 words, which means that in ten minutes you can get 1,800 words. That's a pretty big testimonial, isn't it? But the client needs to see the testimonial, and when they do, they get a good feel for it and they give you an equally good testimonial.

                                    In a live situation you think, how am I going to do this? What we do is we take a client who has already been through the testimonial process before and we get them to answer the questions. We get the rest of the audience to look at us asking the questions and look at the response that we're getting from the client. Of course they follow through. They follow exactly what the previous client has done, so we get video testimonials that are just as long - five, ten minutes long. Then you have a wealth of information and you have a journey, and you don't have this crappy testimonial that you have to throw out right away.

                                    This takes us to the third part, which is asking the right questions. When many of us ask for a testimonial we usually say something like "Can you give me a testimonial?" Then you wait and you wait, and you wait. You don't exactly get a testimonial because the other person doesn't know what to answer. In The Brain Audit we have six questions. You can find them on the internet, or email if you like. I can send you those six questions.

                                    However, in courses like the article course we have 17 questions, and that is to get a much richer experience out of the clients. Every situation is going to require a different set of questions, and you're going to have to play with those questions a little bit, not too much. You don't want to really get that creative with your questions. What you're really trying to achieve is a journey. You're trying to achieve a situation which is a before, a midway point, and then the final. What has been the result?

                                    We've put together some really cool templates, but The Brain Audit is a very good start. The six questions in The Brain Audit, you get an amazing testimonial from those questions alone. If you've done any of our courses, or if you want the questions, just email me at sean@psychotactics.com, and I will send the questions to you. That's just a thank you for listening to this podcast.

                                    Anyway, to get back, the point is very simple. You have to ask the right questions if you're going to get the right answers. Let's just summarize what we've learned so far. The three things that we covered today were first, we need to make an appointment. We can't just send something to someone and hope that something happens. We want to get the journey. We want to get the story. We want the details. We want the starting, the middle, the end. So an appointment is necessary.

                                    The second is we have to have examples. If a client doesn't see those examples, they don't know what to shoot for, they don't know what length to shoot for, but mostly they are not motivated to give you more detail. They'll give you one-line answers and then you think that was pretty useless.

                                    The third thing is not having the questions. As I said, just the six questions that you get in The Brain Audit, they're amazing. However, if you want more questions then you have to ask me for it. The only point about the additional questions is that a client has to go through a journey for a while with you, because otherwise those questions become too much. The six questions, they're pretty good for most stuff. The 16 or 17 questions that we ask, that's when a client goes through a three-day workshop with us or a three-month course with us. That's when they're ready to answer a lot more questions. It depends where you're going to ask those questions. Don't just throw all the questions at everybody.

                                    Are you still going to get bad testimonials? Are you still going to get one-liners? Of course. Some people will give you a single line. They won't give you a paragraph; they won't give you two paragraphs; they're not going to give you 800-word testimonials. These testimonials are pretty useless. A single-line testimonial; five, six, seven line testimonials: they don't really give you a sense of the journey. The other kind of testimonial that you really don't want is this rambling testimonial where someone goes on and on and on and on and editing the whole process becomes a nightmare. You need to make sure that these kind of testimonials, the very short ones and the rambling ones, they're out of the system. Unfortunately, but it's true. The client needs to understand that those two types of testimonials are completely worthless. It's a waste of their time and your time. Still, you take your chances, and 95% of the time you get great testimonials.

                                    This brings us to the end of this episode, but what's the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you can do today is to make sure that you get examples. You want to get a great testimonial in the first place. Of course you have to have the questions for this so get those six questions from The Brain Audit. Get on the phone with the client, especially someone who's a good client, and ask them the questions. Get the testimonial, and when you have that example, that's when you can pass it on to the next client and the next client. You can see what's happening here, right? It's self-replicating. A great testimonial is getting another great testimonial is getting another great testimonial. If you get a crappy one, just drop it. Don't put that in. Don't be tempted.

                                    Yes, we've come to the end of episode number 38, but remember, episode number 36 is about your three points, the points where you can get those testimonials. You want to go back to that episode and listen to it several times, and then take action. It's 5:09 PM here in Oakland and it's very hot. It's already autumn but it's pretty hot here. It's not usually the time that I record a testimonial. What am I saying? Not usually the time I record a podcast. It's usually 4:00 in the morning or some other ridiculous time when I wake up. However, this is a busy week. We're headed to the US and we're going to do the info products workshop in Washington D.C.. You probably missed that, and you should get us on the next time, but we do workshops so infrequently that the next time we announce a workshop, or an online course, you should jump for it. Because we do them infrequently.

                                    After that, we get on the flight, go to Denver. We're speaking at the Opera House at the Copyblogger Conference. Finally, we get to Sardinia, Italy, where we eat, drink, and sleep. Some of you have asked me if I check email or I do any work while on vacation. No, that's the whole point about vacations. You're supposed to do nothing, as in N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I am looking forward to that.

                                    You can find this episode on iTunes. You can find it on Stitcher. You can find it on the website at psychotactics.com/38. You can find all the other resources there as well, so go to psychotactics.com/38. iTunes is probably the best if you have an iPhone or any Apple device because it automatically downloads it for you, so you can access it and listen to it later when you're going for a walk. You're walking, right? Not taking the car everywhere, right? You want your heart to be in good condition, right? Go for a walk. Listen to the podcast. I'll speak to you soon. This is the Three Month Vacation and I'm saying bye for now. Bye bye.

 

 

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

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

 

Useful Resources

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com 

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

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

 

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

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Time Stamps

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

00:05:19 Table of Contents /

00:06:00 Part 1: External Deadlines /

00:11:34 Part 2: Internal Deadlines /

00:14:11 Part 3: Versions /

00:16:49 Summary /

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

00:18:28 Final Wrap Up / 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

          &n