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December 2017

The ‘3 Best’ episodes of 2017 for Your business and You

📅 December 29, 2017 | View in Gmail

https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

The end of the year is a perfect time to catch up on podcasts that you may have missed. You may also want to re-listen to them, as I am sure you have evolved and will hear something totally different this time round.

So let’s look at the “Top 3” podcasts in different categories of business, and then, that one podcast that you shouldn’t miss—you will find it in the P.S.

There are two ways to consume the podcasts: either audio or transcript Every podcast is on iTunes or Stitcher (for Android). And every podcast also has a complete transcript on our website.

Let’s get to the podcasts.

Moving Forward In Business (Look for the episode numbers in iTunes and Stitcher)

#139: How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ |

#161: One-Buttock Passion-How a Simple Redefinition Can Help You Move Forward) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/one-buttock-passion/ |

#105: Why Doug Hitchcock’s Unusual Goal-Setting Will Help You Out Of Chaos iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/goal-setting-successfully/ |

Starting Up (Look for the episode numbers in iTunes and Stitcher)

#147: How To Make the Leap from a Job into Entrepreneurship iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/job-to-enrepreneur/ |

#153: The Five Competing Forces of Business iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/five-forces-business/ |

#160: Why You Should Stop Looking for Your Passion (And Let it Find You Instead) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/ |

Marketing (Look for the episode numbers in iTunes and Stitcher)

#141: How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/create-uniqueness/ |

#152: How To Write Enthusiastically (And Why It’s Important To Do So) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/write-enthusiastically/ |

#133: Outlining Your Book: 3 Crucial Steps iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/outlining-book-steps/ |

https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

Enjoy, Sean P.S. And the one podcast you shouldn’t miss: Three Incredibly Silly Business Myths (And Why They’re Driving Us Crazy) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/three-business-myths/ |

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Announcement: How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images

📅 December 26, 2017 | View in Gmail

How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

Have you ever wondered the reason for taking a photo?

Yes, it’s meant to record a memory, but one photographer explained it to me in this way.

• “If it’s a food photo, it’s supposed to make you hungry.” • “If it’s a photo of a place, it’s supposed to make you want to feel like packing your bags right away”. • “If it’s even a photo of an every day object, you need to stop and stare at it as you’ve never done before.” So what is it that makes the average photo amazingly evocative?

I own three cameras. One is a fancy Nikon with all the big lenses. The second is a mirrorless Fujifilm which takes amazing low light pictures. But over 95% of my pictures are taken with the iPhone and an app called Camera+.

In this book, I show you just a few steps that take your photos from “point and shoot” to pretty stunning.

The goal is simple.

You’ll be taking some stunning photos.

But don’t take my word for it. For just $9.99, you can find out what you need to do to make your photos come alive. As always, there’s a “smiley money back guarantee” if you’re not satisfied.

Special Offer: 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera + If you want to take some great holiday pictures—and pictures in the future, click below. 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera +

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

Regards, Sean P.S. You will need an iPhone and an app called Camera+ (It costs $2.99 in the app store).

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zOycHGysbCw=

Announcing: How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images

📅 December 23, 2017 | View in Gmail

Announcing: How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

Have you ever wondered the reason for taking a photo?

Yes, it’s meant to record a memory, but one photographer explained it to me in this way.

In this book, I show you just a few steps that take your photos from “point and shoot” to pretty stunning.

The goal is simple.

You’ll be taking some stunning photos.

Special Offer: 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera + If you want to take some great holiday pictures—and pictures in the future, click below. 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera +

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

Regards, Sean P.S. You will need an iPhone and an app called Camera+ (It costs approximately $2.99 in the app store).

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zOycHGzMrIw=

Let’s Just Get To The Bottom Of This Hill, Mr.Frodo

📅 December 19, 2017 | View in Gmail

Psychotactics

http://www.psychotactics.com/

  Let's Just Get To The Bottom Of This Hill, Mr.Frodo

https://www.psychotactics.com/art-frodo/

  (From the archives: One of the most read articles. You can read the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/art-frodo/

Imagine thirty thousand menacing obstacles in your path to success

You’re dehydrated. Hungry as hell. And wobbling like a drunk on too much Guinness. Your eyes hurt, your head throbs and your will is all but broken. You’re not even sure you want to go on.

You feel like Frodo As in the character Frodo, in the final episode of the ‘Lord of the Rings-The Return of the King.’

Terror and dismay gleam from Frodo’s big, expressive blue eyes. In the distance, he can see his goal. But it seems to him like he’ll never get there. He turns to Sam and says in a defeated tone, “Sam, it’s the Eye,” referring to the eye of Sauron - the enemy he must destroy.

And Sam turns to Frodo in a soft, encouraging voice and says, “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.”

Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.

I spoke at the World Internet Summit in Sydney, Australia, a few years ago. And I saw about two hundred and fifty Frodos in the audience.

Confused. Weary. Inundated with dozens of tactics and strategies about the Internet, their eyes stared into nothingness. Frozen stiff at the task of having to build an Internet business from scratch, almost all of them seemed to have a cross too heavy to bear.

And they didn’t exactly have Sam to egg them on

I said to them, like I say to you. “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.” Then we’ll do the next hill, and the next and the next, till we get to our destination.

You’re bound to be struggling. I struggled at Yoga class. I’m a first-class doofus. Five minutes after we start the class, I wonder when it’s all going to end. I look at the ‘human pretzels’ twisting and turning to the left and right of me, and I can’t ever see myself being so flexible. And I despair.

But I’ve got my own personal Sam. I simply say to myself: “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo”

And hurrah, yippeee yahooey, I actually made it past Yoga session No.2.

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https://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

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Free Goodies How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day)(Look for episode 139) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ |

Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

Important: You are subscribed to the Free Psychotactics Newsletter. If you un-subscribe from this letter, you won’t receive any goodies, offers, or newsletters in future. If you’re getting duplicate newsletters, email us and we’ll make sure you get just one copy. Email renuka@psychotactics.com

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Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment

📅 December 16, 2017 | View in Gmail

https://www.psychotactics.com/learning-infotainment/

What causes clients to keep coming back?

• Is it information? • Or could it be entertainment? For too long we’ve treated teaching and learning as an activity that needs endless slides, pages and work.

But what if clients get better results having fun? And what if you had a ton of fun as well?

Let’s find out how to speed up client learning with some pretty minor tweaks in your e-books, courses, presentations and webinars.

#166: How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 166on iTunes) iTunes

http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/learning-infotainment/ |

Two more short podcasts (Transcripts are available too)

#160: Why you should stop looking for your passion (and let it find you instead)(Look for episode 160 on iTunes) iTunes

http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/ |

#156: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight (Look for episode 160 on iTunes) iTunes

http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/write-report/ |

Warm regards, Sean

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

P.S. You’re probably already binge-listening to the “Three Month Vacation” podcasts. Some of our best clients come from people just like you—those who tell their friends about us. That’s why it would be really cool if you could tell a friend about the podcast. Here is a simple link:

http://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

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The Difference Between Painkillers and Vitamins

📅 December 12, 2017 | View in Gmail

Psychotactics

http://www.psychotactics.com/

  The Difference Between Painkillers and Vitamins

The Difference Between Painkillers and Vitamins

https://www.psychotactics.com/painkillers-vs-vitamins/

  (From the archives: One of the most read articles. You can read the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/painkillers-vs-vitamins/

Think about your transaction with Starbucks. You’d think we go there for a coffee, right?

But a coffee could be considered a vitamin-kind of business

You know how vitamins work, right? You are told to take your vitamins. But you can’t always see the results of all of that pill popping. And you can’t even tell if it’s all nonsense, or if it really works. So vitamins become an interesting, yet seemingly weird exercise.

Now compare that with painkillers

Painkillers aren’t a nice-to-have. And when you look around you, you see companies that are vitamin-like. And those that are pain-killers. Starbucks is a decent example. It’s not exactly healthy to drink a ton of coffee, and it’s expensive.

Two tall lattes a day could push up your calories by about 160,600 calories a year. And it’s expensive on the wallet too, heading close to about $3000 a year on coffee alone.

So how does Starbucks make this very expensive vitamin-based exercise into a painkiller?

Painkiller industries are those you can’t do without

This means that the more hooks you get into the customer, the more they’re likely to want to come back time and time again. And Starbucks, at the very core, provided the greatest hook of all: the place to sit around away from home and from the office.

While cafes like Starbucks are a plenty today, the reason they first took off was the space you couldn’t do without. The coffee was better than any other place, or at least different, but it was also the place that provided the painkiller. You were free from the chaos, if only for 15-20 minutes.

While Starbucks was a point of refuge for folks in the West, it’s seen as a point of status in the East

In China, coffee is a bit of a non-entity. For thousands of years, the Chinese have stuck to their tea leaves. Over 70% of the hot drink market is still very much centred around tea. But coffee consumption is growing at 25% per year.

The key to that growth is the young and the trendy. The cafes are where the younger folk hang out. There’s a pain with not being trendy, and so the younger generation flock to cafes.

So what we notice is that there’s a very fine line between vitamins and painkillers

The line lies in the positioning of the product or service. If positioned as a nice-to-have, the product or service may lose traction.

When positioned as a painkiller, the product soon becomes indispensable. The concept of painkiller is tied directly to frequency of consumption. The more you consume, the more you will consume in future.

This means that a coaching service like improving your golf game is a vitamin or a painkiller

And this totally depends on the way you’ve positioned your service. If it’s just about you getting out there and improving how you whack that ball over the green, then it’s fun. It will get you back every now and then.

But if positioning is different, the very same service becomes a painkiller. If the service is positioned as “never losing face in front of your buddies”, it’s now far more competitive, far more interesting to you as an individual.

And this painkiller issue doesn’t prop up when we’re trying to sell our own products or services

As business owners we definitely want to improve the sales of our products or services. So we sit down at our desks and come up with some mundane issue like “getting more customers” or “making more profits”.

And yet, this issue is quickly killed by talking to a client. That client yes a real person (called the “target profile” in The Brain Audit) is instrumental in expressing the difference between a vitamin-based product and a painkiller.

So let’s take an example

When I first started selling the Article Writing Course as a service, my sales pitch was about “writing quickly” or “writing well”. That’s a vitamin. It’s a nice to have, but it’s hard to convince a person to slog for three months to write quickly,or well for that matter.

Then I spoke to the target profile. And the headline morphed into: How to stop knocking on client’s doors, and get them to call you instead. (Learn why articles do a far superior job of attracting the clients you want, and how the right articles make you the expert in your field).

At this point it was no longer a vitamin—it was a painkiller

Most of us detest having to go into yet another meeting to get a client. We hate the marketing, the endless door knocking and it drains us of our energy. Having a client come to us seems like a dream come true.

And to have not just any ol’ client but clients that are perfect matches for you, is almost too good to be true. Now the service isn’t just skirting the issue of vitamins, it’s a must-have. Which is why even though the Article Writing Course is billed as the “Toughest Writing Course in the World”, and is priced well north of $2,500, it sells out in an hour, sometimes less.

The pain is so great, that the client feel compelled to reach out for that painkiller.

But isn’t this a bit over-the-top persuasion?

The reality is that we as humans make decisions based on intense need. We don’t form habits based on some future scenario. This is why, for instance, if a comet were hurtling toward the planet in 2200, we’d be doing nothing. But if that comet was headed here in 10 years, we’d be working our tails off trying to find a solution to deflect it back into space.

Starbucks took what was considered to be a vitamin and turned it into a painkiller

By creating a need for the space, they created a habit. A habit that’s extremely hard to break, no matter how expensive in terms of calories or dollars. And it’s why we go back time and time again.

This insight of positioning your product correctly doesn’t come from sitting at your desk writing endless headlines. It comes from meeting the client and conducting the target profile interview. Every product or service is both a vitamin and a painkiller.

Painkillers work better.

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Article Writing How To Speed Up Article Writing With Simple Outlines

http://www.psychotactics.com/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines

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One-Buttock Passion (How a Simple Redefinition Can Help You Move Forward)(Look for episode 161) iTunes

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How To Win The Resistance Game

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

“Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

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Three Month Vacation:

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Privacy and Spam Policy

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Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Announcement: How To Create Your Perfect Landing/Sales Page In Just 3 days?

📅 December 09, 2017 | View in Gmail

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/

When writing sales pages or landing pages, do you get overwhelmed even before you start?

Other people’s landing pages look so perfect, it’s hard to know where to start. So many pieces to collect and organise. It’s such a complicated, time-consuming task that it’s tiring just thinking about it.

We had a similar problem

We’d spend loads of time creating a product or workshop. But there’s no point having a wonderful offering, if clients can’t see a sales page. So we’d cobble together something and send clients to buy from our sales page.

However, this was less than ideal because we didn’t follow a system, and hence there was little or no consistency between the pages.

Which is why we had to sit down and work out a system

A system so simple that it wouldn’t take weeks, or even a week to get a sales page going. Instead, every element of the sales page needed to be up within three days (or fewer).

And somehow, within three days it had to be perfect. Could such a goal even be possible?

Announcing “Complete Your Landing/Sales Page in Three Days” Workshop

It takes so long to write a sales page that we often lose the battle with time and energy. But what if there were a way to write a sales page—an outstanding sales page—in under 3 days?

A landing page or a sales page is not supposed to be written in three days.

If you ask seasoned copywriters, they’ll tell you it takes a while to write a great sales page. And they’re right, because a sales page is complex, with many elements. Just getting started with the headline and the first few paragraphs could take days, even weeks.

But what if we’re approaching the construction of the sales page in the wrong manner?

That’s what this workshop is all about.

• No more agony over which elements you need on the sales page. • No more wrestling with what-goes-where.

Instead, you have a solution that works seamlessly every single time, and ticks all the boxes. What’s better is that the process is systematic, involving three separate stages.

Join us in Singapore for the 3-Day Landing Page Workshop: Here are the details:

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/

Warm regards Sean P.S. Come join us for a “kopi”(that’s Singaporean coffee) and go back home with wonderful memories and a lifelong skill.too.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Power of Chocolate Marketing

📅 December 05, 2017 | View in Gmail

Psychotactics

http://www.psychotactics.com/

  The Power of Chocolate Marketing

The Power of Chocolate Marketing

https://www.psychotactics.com/chocolate-marketing/

  (From the archives: One of the most read articles. You can read the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/chocolate-marketing/

Imagine you sold a course that was worth $2500 to a client.

Imagine you also sent a bar of chocolate, just as a thank you.

Six years later, what does the client remember?

Yes, you have the right answer: they remember the chocolate! Incredible as it may sound, the expense of the course is long forgotten, but the memory of the chocolate—a single bar of chocolate—lingers on.

And you know what’s even more incredible? Most of us don’t send the chocolate!

So why is the chocolate so very important?

It’s important because it was a “little thing”. In comparison to the product or service itself, it’s pretty tiny, but it still takes up an inordinate space in the mind of the client.

And at Psychotactics, we’ve been sending out chocolate for many years and for different reasons.

And at times, for no reason at all. Like in May 2015, when we sent out 197 chocolates for clients who opted in–yes, for the chocolate!

But shipping chocolates can be expensive

A quick trip to the post-office may get your eyebrows raised, especially if you ship chocolates internationally. However, you also have other options. When I was a cartoonist (these are in the days before I got into marketing), I’d send a monthly calendar to my clients.

Sure it’s easier to send a yearly calendar, but month after month they got that tiny “little thing”. And it was something to look forward to, and a lot more economical than sending huge slabs of chocolate.

We also send out postcards to clients. Simple, yet elegant postcards that clients find it hard to throw away.

But why is all of this chocolate, calendars and postcards so important?

You’ve heard the saying, “It’s the thought that counts”. Well, that’s exactly the point. In today’s world, when clients order something, they get that something and nothing else.

When you send a little extra, and preferably something that’s not related to the product or service, you’re bringing a sense of wonderment that’s hard to beat.

It’s important to be personalised, however

There are services online that will send out cards, chocolates and all sorts of goodies. If you can personalise the message, it’s sensible to use these services, but it’s smarter to send out small goodies from your own office or home.

For instance, we live in New Zealand. When we send out a chunky slab of chocolate, you know it’s going to be a Whittaker’s chocolate. If we send a postcard it’s going to have a New Zealand stamp on the envelope.

These are tiny elements, but they bring a ton of personality to the gift.

Your clients may be local, but you still want to create a bit of personality

Something that’s sold in a tiny boutique store right next to your home will be far more thoughtful than something that’s available in a mall.

Your own handwriting on a postcard, beats any printing service, no matter how amazing the service. Even your handwriting on the envelope makes a huge difference to the recipient, so yes, do try writing.

In the world of marketing you’re told how to write sales letters, how to write great headlines, etc.

And while all of those skills count, we know for a fact that what really counts is the connection. “Little things” can make a bigger and longer-lasting impression on the client.

So much so that when they’re faced with trying to remember which product or service they bought from you, their memories often fail.

All they can remember is the chocolate! Send chocolate!

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  "What do your customers think? What would make them buy?"

In the Brain Audit - Sean teaches 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you. The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.”

The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon.

Find out—How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling.

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

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Announcing: How to create a perfect landing/sales page in just 3 days?

📅 December 02, 2017 | View in Gmail

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/

When writing sales pages or landing pages, do you get overwhelmed even before you start?

We had a similar problem

However, this was less than ideal because we didn’t follow a system, and hence there was little or no consistency between the pages.

Which is why we had to sit down and work out a system

A system so simple that it wouldn’t take weeks, or even a week to get a sales page going. Instead, every element of the sales page needed to be up within three days (or fewer).

And somehow, within three days it had to be perfect. Could such a goal even be possible?

Announcing “Complete Your Landing/Sales Page in Three Days” Workshop

It takes so long to write a sales page that we often lose the battle with time and energy. But what if there were a way to write a sales page—an outstanding sales page—in under 3 days?

A landing page or a sales page is not supposed to be written in three days.

But what if we’re approaching the construction of the sales page in the wrong manner?

That’s what this workshop is all about.

• No more agony over which elements you need on the sales page. • No more wrestling with what-goes-where.

Instead, you have a solution that works seamlessly every single time, and ticks all the boxes. What’s better is that the process is systematic, involving three separate stages.

Join us in Singapore for the 3-Day Landing Page Workshop: Here are the details:

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/

Warm regards Sean P.S. Come join us for a “kopi”(that’s Singaporean coffee) and go back home with wonderful memories and a lifelong skill.too.

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November 2017

Why You Need An Offline Event to Boost Your Chances of Success

📅 November 28, 2017 | View in Gmail

Psychotactics

https://www.psychotactics.com/offline-events-success/

  Why You Need An Offline Event to Boost Your Chances of Success

https://www.psychotactics.com/offline-events-success/

  (You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/offline-events-success/

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

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

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

Before I could answer, she revealed her statistics. The income we earned from offline events was barely 2% of our income. This tiny percentage wasn’t terribly surprising to both of us, because we knew that conducting international events was an expensive exercise.

Even so, I was a bit ambivalent at the thought of putting in so much work and getting a return of just 2%.

That’s when Renuka revealed her ace

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

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

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

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

Clients that meet us in person, tend to sign up for the online courses, and then just for good measure come back and attend an in-person event as well. It makes perfect sense to you, when you think of it in terms of dating, doesn’t it?

A relationship can be formed online, but to make sure you’re not picking the wrong person, you and I, we both have to do the offline thing: we have to meet.

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

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

In every case, the results are similar.

Clients that get to know us don’t bother to go to the sales page with a fine tooth comb. When we offer a product, workshop or course, they sign up instantly.

They have met us offline, they get to know us well, and they trust us. When you see and meet someone one the flesh, you can often make a pretty accurate assessment of whether to go ahead or not.

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

But what if you’re just starting out?

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

Is it still worth it?

Without a doubt, it’s one of the best ways to get started, no matter what you’re planning to do for a living.

In most cases, a workshop will get you to interact with clients, you’ll find out what interests them, and you’ll get instant feedback. Plus, if you do your budgeting well, you’re likely to make more than just 2%.

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

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

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

Let’s look at three things we should consider planning an event—offline • 1) Where to get your clients • 2) What’s the first step to finding an offline audience? • 3) How to get people to sign up.

Where to get your clients

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

Not every Sunday, of course, but around the months of late May and most of June was when my father needed my brother and me to pitch in, in the family business. Since my father ran a secretarial college, admissions would start in July, which meant that we had to stand outside churches and hand out a leaflet.

After reading those flyers, many young women would then sign up for the year-long batch that started in July.

But why churches?

As it turned out, most secretaries at the time were almost exclusively Catholic.

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

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

If you’ve been brought up on the goodness of the internet, you might think the best idea in the world is to sit behind a computer, write a blog and the clients will come rushing in. In several cases that method of creating content is valid, but it could take a lot of time, money and energy to get that kind of business model off the ground.

Which is why you may as well take a deep breath and go offline. Scary as it may seem, it’s time to do an in-person event instead.

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

The answer is not apparent and for good reason.

Let’s say you wanted to start a cooking class. Let’s say you’re no champ at making Michelin starred meals, but you’re no slouch at cooking either.

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

Instead, go looking for a problem that needs solving.

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

It enabled them to get more independent and earn a reasonable income. When looking for your audience, you too need to look at the problem you’re solving and not focus on just the solution.

The problem you’re likely to address is: unsure of how to make meals that kids love? The answer is “how to make meals that kids will eat in minutes”.

And where would you find kids?

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

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

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

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

But what if you looked long and hard and not a single podcast group shows up?

Well, let’s go past the technology problem and see what problem a microphone can solve. It helps a business owner record podcasts, or just have better-sounding screen recordings or screen videos for their business. The business owner can simply plug in the microphone, and they’re well on their way to recording without needing to get muddled up with digital interfaces.

What’s the first step to finding an offline audience?

Every product or service is going to solve a problem

Sometimes you can find clients in an obvious place.

For example, we were able to find clients at our networking group. However, we also went on to meet with a group of coaches who held their weekly meetings not far from where we lived. We found dentists who needed marketing advice.

I know this sounds bizarre, but we also wrote and got paid for articles in an alpaca magazine. We didn’t get to do a workshop or in-person event with the alpaca folks, but the example is designed to show you how to look beyond the obvious.

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

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

Kelly writes a book that helps them work out the issues that plague supply teachers, and her business has started to take off.

Where did she find her audience?

Not offline, but online in teaching groups and Facebook groups. In her case, the Internet has come to the rescue and enabled her to sell her book. Yes, it’s not an offline audience, to begin with, but over time every audience whether you find them online or offline can be engaged within a real setting, in a real place, and drinking real coffee.

How do you find an offline audience?

Sit down with a couple of friends or someone who knows your business well and write a list of the problems your company solves.

Once you have the problem, or problems worked out, you can find out the audience that needs your solution. If you’re still struggling a bit, try going to a site like MeetUp.com.

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

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

How to get people to sign up to your event

You know the phrase that says, “Think Big”?

Well, the way to get people to sign up, is to get rid of the idea of thinking big. And I stumbled upon this “think small” idea quite by mistake. When we started out, I’d always compare myself with more prominent marketers, and somehow extrapolate their numbers to my own.

If they had 5000 people at their event, I automatically assumed that 150 people at my to-be-event were entirely feasible. Then I ran into a friend of mine, Kushla Martin, excitedly told me about an event she was attending and that she’d paid $75 for the event.

Two things struck me at once

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

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

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

You merely announce the event, the venue and put a price on it. Remember that clients aren’t coming to your event just to support you, though a few friends might just do that.

They’re there to learn something so that they can use it in their own lives and business.

So ask yourself: what will the clients get as a result of attending your event?

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

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

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

Should you consider having free events?

You could, but it’s hard to get people to show up to free events. Remember those series of sessions we did back when we first started?

Those were paid sessions, and you could safely say that between 80-90% showed up month after month. Several years later, we decided to give back to the community and host free monthly sessions of one hour each.

For over a year, participants turned up, and the room was always packed with 40 people, but it was never the same people. When an event is free, it’s easier to stay at home if it’s a windy, rainy day.

We found the same with our meetups worldwide. When we’d announce a free meet up in a city, people would turn up, but not in force.

The moment we started charging a modest fee of $30 or so, everyone turned up.

Free events are harder to market and even harder to sell.

It’s better to restrict your free goodies to something online or also something you can give away at the event itself. By and large, you’d do well to avoid free events.

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

If you’re meeting with a group of people, for example, a group of volleyball coaches, you can get them to sign up and often pay through a mobile device.

Finally, don’t forget to print a few leaflets that talk about the results you’re going to get the clients.

• If you just want them to meet and have a great time, make that the focus of your leaflet and marketing. • If you want it to be deadly serious, that’s fine too. I’ve been to watercolour classes, photography sessions, dancing lessons and even bought a couple of houses as a result of offline events.

P.S. Go ahead and plan your offline event.

  Product Offers: Links you should visit

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Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

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How to Use Procrastination to Your Advantage

📅 November 25, 2017 | View in Gmail

https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/

Procrastination is bad, right?

Well, not quite.

If you break up a project, you’re likely to find most projects have five distinct sections. To get to the end of the project, you’re going to need a form of managed procrastination. • But how do you go about this form of procrastination? • And why is it seemingly better to keep you focused? Let’s find out in this episode, shall we? #165: How to Use Procrastination to Your Advantage Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 165 on iTunes) iTunes

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Two more short podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#155: Why selling your secrets to competition is a sound business strategy Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 155 on iTunes) iTunes

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#154: Passion Projects: How They Can Completely Change Your Business Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 154 on iTunes) iTunes

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Two Ways To Write A Stunning Report Quickly

📅 November 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

Two Ways To Write A Stunning Report Quickly

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JrgjbMsqbdEtt1&b=1B_i3YEWgNiVtKHTj1NLJw

“Bring a plate”.

Sometimes, when you go to a party in New Zealand, you’re told “bring a plate”.

For anyone born in Kiwi land, such an expression isn’t very odd. But you have no idea how many immigrants think it’s a crockery problem. They somehow think the host must have just a few plates, and bringing a plate along will help ease the dinnerware issue.

“Bring a plate” just means bring some food along, because we’re having a potluck party

And if there’s anything I detest when it comes to food, it’s a potluck party. Barbecue chicken mingles with wontons, and chickpeas with some tomato-ketchup concoction. For me, it’s a culinary nightmare. The textures, colours, and especially the tastes are a complete mishmash.

But really, no one cares about me

They’re having too much fun with their chickpeas and tomato-concoction. And sometimes being a little stuck up at a party, is similar to being stuck up when creating a report. It’s easy to believe that a report has to go from C to A, or has to work with a single topic. In reality, reports just do fine, potluck style.

Let’s look at the—Diverse, Disconnected Topic Report

We tried this in the membership site at 5000bc

One of the perks of 5000bc is something called the Vanishing Reports. At first, I was an absolute stickler about the reports. They all had to have a sequence. They all had to somehow take you from one point to another. Then, I realised that’s hardly the way I read anything.

At this very moment, I’m reading about the “butterfly effect”, “the moons of Jupiter,” “creativity” and “confidence”. That sounds very mishy-mashy, doesn’t it? Which is why we trialled reports that had a combination of “pricing, conversion, starting up, and a whole bunch of topics that seemingly didn’t sit side by side with each other.

And it worked!

Sometimes the report will have super-duper-ultra focus. Like Report No. 59: The Magical Time-Saving Powers of Evernote. Or Report No.6: Three Core Steps To A Viral Campaign. But Report No.60: How To Keep Learning and Growing for Success, or Report No.45: Good Business Habits, can have a bit of bacon and baguettes jostling with the wontons.

This revelation shouldn’t have surprised me because that’s how I read, and how a lot of people tend to read. • A newspaper, for instance, is a bit of a mishmash, isn’t it? • A magazine, that’s definitely all over the place. • Blogs, podcasts, videos: they all seem to follow a slightly random pattern without us so much blinking an eye.

What does this mean for you, however?

It means that you may not have ten articles on a single topic. You may run a yoga site, and some articles might be about stretching, some may be about shavasana, some may be about what the client needs to do on a full moon night. They’re seemingly disconnected, but it still makes for a splendid report, doesn’t it? And better still, you don’t even need ten articles.

Just three-four, okay five articles.

That’s just fine because every article will probably span 2-3 pages and if you slip in the introduction and a bit of an epilogue, you’re looking at a decent fifteen to seventeen pages of content.

And despite the mishmash, you can create a strong feeling of cohesion within the report

There are two elements that create a connection.

a) The first point of focus is the title If you’re going to put together a bunch of unconnected pieces of content, the title must somehow tie the content neatly together. Interestingly, you can veer down the non-specific route when creating a title.

E.g. How to create “hidden magic” in your business. Or “Good Business Habits”. As I veer my chair to my left to look at the titles of some books, I see a title like “The Non-designers Design Book” by Robin Williams. Or “Design it Yourself” by Chuck Green. Or “Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins.

All of these books may, on the face of it, look incredibly focused, but one look within the pages and they’re a disparate bunch of articles that have a workable title and one other element that is probably more important. In most of the books—and this applies to reports as well—there’s a bridge between the chapters.

b) This second element—‘the bridge between the chapters’ isn’t utterly crucial, but it’s nice to have It’s the kind of thing you should be doing: creating a bridge.

As you come to the end of your piece in the report, build up the anticipation for the second piece. As the second piece winds to a close, it’s time to shine the spotlight on the third, and so on. A simple set of lines at the end of the content create enough of glue to bind seemingly random topics together.

We’re not talking about mixing auto-repair and gardening in a report on business, but you get the point, don’t you?

That isn’t to say I like potluck parties. I guess I never will. Yet, as we’ve seen, it works just fine with reports.

Are we done, yet?

Not quite. There’s still one more kind of report. Which as you might have guessed is the most obvious one of all. It’s the report that consists of a single topic. It seems pretty self-explanatory, doesn’t it? Still, let’s take a look at why that kind of report is much-loved and how to go about creating it in a way that is pretty magical.

One Topic, Many Angles Report

When creating reports, a single mould; a single topic can be tweaked in dozens, possibly thousands of ways as well

Which is why a report on a single topic can be so very powerful. The information that seems to emanate from one source suddenly creates a wealth of sub-topics that become very attractive to the reader.

What is being suggested here, is that you can you have a single topic and have dozens of sub-topics. Each sub-topic represents an article and several such articles become a fascinating report. To get the one-topic report going, all you have to do is first start with the topic and add a few sub-topics.

Let’s take a topic like headlines, for starters. What kind of sub-topics could we generate?

• Testimonial Headlines: How To Get Your Clients To Write Your Headlines • Bottom-Up Headlines: How To Use Headlines As Email Signatures • Keywords And headlines • How To Avoid Potluck Headlines • Why Unclear Topics Lead to Unfocused Headlines • How To Use The Attraction Factor of Knew and New (When Writing Headlines) • How to Write Intensely Powerful Headlines Without Using Keywords The topic, in this case, headlines, is pretty mundane. Even so, if you leave your computer, and your Internet connection behind and head to the cafe, you’re likely to be able to come up with several sub-topics for any given topic.

You may not end up writing great headlines right at the start, but you’ll have a bunch of topics nonetheless.

Any topic quickly cascades into sub-topics

And sub-topics in turn become a bit of an avalanche as you dig just below the surface. What’s extremely exciting when you sit down to write a report, is that it can be extremely powerful with just three-four articles.

However, it’s still an excellent idea to go into caffeine-land and brainstorm the topics and sub-topics needed. You may use the bare minimum needed for a report, but you can use the others to create more single focus reports in the future.

All of this brainstorming has a wonderful series of side effects

When you sit down to brainstorm the topics and sub-topics, you realise that you know quite a lot and can write about several topics in detail. However, this very same brainstorming session may be a cause for intimidation as you may find out that you do not know everything.

To this day, a decent chunk of what I do is something that I’ve learned along the way. If I find any gaps, well that’s what learning is all about isn’t it? I learn and then I teach and that is the lesson you can use for your report as well.

This learn and teach method is slower, no doubt

However, we are all beginners at some point in time and having information to share is not going to be at our fingertips. In such a scenario, it’s a better idea to simply use the “learn and teach” method. It’s more tedious, but I can assure you that almost everyone has to go through an almost identical method when they run into new material.

Not knowing enough about a topic is pretty normal, but what’s also normal is that a lot of people intimidate themselves and give up.

If you’re made of sterner stuff, you’ll quickly realise that you can put together a report just by learning about the topic, trying it out yourself and then tying it all together in a nice little PDF, or even a video or audio report.

Having a single topic is a great way to focus, if you’re creating new material

If you’ve already created content in the past, it’s easier to find as well. For instance, if I needed to write about topics like pricing, planning, productivity, etc, it would be quite an easy task to go digging through the archives and finding three-four articles on just one topic.

And there you have it You might have to slog a bit if you aren’t familiar with the topic or sub-topics, but it’s not an earth-shattering task.

If you’ve been creating content for a while, it’s really a matter of collation, some tea or coffee-drinking and you’ve got yourself a report that’s pretty single-minded. Just a section—just 3 or 4 little articles will do the job just fine, don’t you agree?

And that brings us to the end of “how to create a report”. Let’s review what we’ve just learned.

Summary How do we cook up a quick report? • Diverse, Disconnected Topic Report • One Topic, Many Angles Report Diverse, Disconnected Topic Report The diverse, disconnected report seeks no end-point clarity. If anything, it’s a bit of a potluck party. You put in various pieces of content that seemingly don’t have any sequence or relation to each other, but come under the broad umbrella of a topic.

For instance, the podcast series at Psychotactics is called the “Three Month Vacation”. One episode of the podcast can be about pricing, the second about productivity and the third about software.

Even though they’re quite diverse topics, they’re still bound under the topic of “marketing and business”. The concept of potluck that you hear on the podcast can just as easily be a sure-fire method of creating reports.

One Topic, Many Angles Report Or let’s call it topics and sub-topics. Or even sub-sub-topics. A bit of a brainstorm session, and time away from the office can do wonders. Even if you’re no pro at the topics or sub-topics, you can quickly spot where you’re weak. You can then learn and master the topics, and pass on the knowledge in your own style, tone and language to someone else.

Announcing: How do you create a perfect landing page—and have it ready before you leave the workshop—in just 3 days? Come experience these amazing locations in Spring 2018. Singapore: 11-13 April 2018 Brussels: 18-20 April 2018 (Fully booked) Here are the details: Landing Pages

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Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JrgjbMsqbdEtt1&b=nySrLmwT1h6KzuLeGebkQA

Black Belt Presentation Series How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

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Online Membership Website How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

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Free Goodies How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst of Chaos)(Look for episode 135) iTunes

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How To Transform A Miserable Day Into A Happy One, In Under 30 Minutes

📅 November 18, 2017 | View in Gmail

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=o91rZmiczPaRyA1xNucPqw

Some days you just feel fed up of your work.

You know you shouldn’t. You love what you do, but you can’t shake the feeling. You almost have to drag yourself to work and you don’t know how to turn the day around.

That day can quickly turn into a second day.

Before you know it, the week is a puddle of frustration. But there’s a way out of this mess and it’s incredibly simple.

You can turn your day around in 30 minutes. Let’s find out how. Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 164 in iTunes) iTunes

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=o91rZmiczPaRyA1xNucPqw | Android

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=zdnK94rxBeI5yEaiehhSaw | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

Two more short podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#165: How Managed Procrastination Works to Your Advantage Procrastination is bad, right? Well, not quite. If you break up a project, you’re likely to find most projects have five distinct sections. To get to the end of the project, you’re going to need a form of managed procrastination.

But how do you go about this form of procrastination?

Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 165 in iTunes) iTunes

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=o91rZmiczPaRyA1xNucPqw | Android

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=zdnK94rxBeI5yEaiehhSaw | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

#163: How to Get Clients To Return To An Offline Event

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

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

Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 163 in iTunes) iTunes

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=o91rZmiczPaRyA1xNucPqw | Android

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JJYEZIERbdEtt1&b=zdnK94rxBeI5yEaiehhSaw | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

Enjoy, Sean D’Souza P.S. I would love to hear from you. Send me an email

sean@psychotactics.com with your suggestions and ideas.

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How To Use Triggers To Get The Bare Minimum Going

📅 November 14, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Use Triggers To Get The Bare Minimum Going

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/avoid-overwhelm/#trigger

In many Western countries, Christmas brings carols, chaos, and carrots.

Carrots for Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet, Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. And Rudolph, of course. They also leave a plate of milk and cookies for Santa.

That tradition seemed to have originated in the 1930s when the US was deep in the Great Depression. Parents tried to teach their kids that it was important to give to others. And also to show gratitude for the gifts they’d received.

But what sets off the milk, cookies and carrots? Why, Christmas Eve, of course. It’s the trigger that requires no alarm or reminder.

And that’s because alarms and reminders don’t work very well anyway

You know how it works, right? You put a reminder on your phone, but as the reminder pops up, you swipe it away. If it’s e-mail, you’re likely to jump right into reading it, possibly even answering it, but any reminder to do a task gets a look of disdain.

The way around this system is to have no alarm at all. Instead, you do something when something else happens.

So for instance, I paint right after breakfast

No matter what time I have breakfast, I will sit down for about 5-10 minutes and sketch or paint. Renuka on the other hand sketches every time she drops her mother off for Tai Chi.

When we go for a walk, we talk until we hit the first traffic lights. Then, it’s time to put on the headphones and listen to audio books or podcasts. The same applies on the walk back from the cafe. We walk to a certain point, hit the dentist’s clinic, and it’s back to headphone time again.

This system of triggers is important because we rarely keep to a fixed plan

No one ever has breakfast at the very same minute, and hence if your breakfast is early or late, it’s easy for you to ignore the alarm. When an activity like breakfast is itself the trigger, then you know what comes shortly after.

We do take our vacations

Every 12 weeks we’re off for a month, and that means the triggers go out of whack. But since I’m not working on vacation, nothing else matters. I can ignore the painting after breakfast, choosing to do it at noon helped by a bottle of Cabernet, instead. Or not do it at all.

However, once I get back, and the triggers go off, it’s back to normal.

It’s important to point out that you should not start with many items on your to-do list

Right now I have about 4-5 long term projects going. I know the website won’t last forever. And in a month or two, I should be able to get the hang of how to use ePub. My painting, however, has been on since 2010 and that will go on for a long, long time.

Some long terms projects come and go while others need to be done every day.

To make things a habit, you need to choose just two or three things to do in a day

Five minutes each and you’ve only spent fifteen minutes of activity. And even the busiest person has fifteen spare minutes in a day. Over time, some things become so much part of your second nature that you don’t even think of them as part of your to-do list.

Take brushing your teeth, for example. When was the last time you needed an alarm or trigger for that activity? I now wake up to the sound of the meditation chant. It’s part of what happens every day, and so that’s not even part of the list anymore.

However, when you’re starting out, just set up one trigger and the bare minimum time you can spend on that task.

And get going.

But there’s one last caveat. The bare minimums are not for urgent or important tasks. They need to be used only for long-term projects.

And let’s find out why that’s the case.

Why Use The Bare Minimum Only For Long Term Projects

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, don’t we?

They both set off on race, and the tortoise is slow, taking step by step. As the story goes, the hare falls asleep, and the tortoise wins the race. The story may sound remarkably like a bare minimum tale, and in a way it is.

But it’s important to note there’s a big point of difference as well. A race is not a long term project. It’s reasonably finite, in the sense that there’s an end point and in many cases, a deadline.

We tend to drop things that have no deadline

There’s really no point in learning Spanish, or painting or doing many of the things that you and I do. We do it for our own happiness. You may, therefore, join a dance class or a cartooning course and then find you’ve given up somewhere along the way.

The photographs you planned to put in that photo book—that didn’t get done either. We smartly prioritise what’s important to us. Things that are revenue-driven, client-driven or have fixed deadlines can’t wait, and so they get done. Things that are often essential to the soul, that gets tossed into the corner.

It’s sad, isn’t it? We feel that sadness.

We feel the pain of taking a course that feeds our soul and then finding we’ve either abandoned the course or having finished it, don’t get the joy of continuation. It’s the same with books we haven’t read or documentaries we would love to watch. However, sometimes even the work-related projects, like my beleaguered website, end up in that same to-do pile.

Doing just the bare minimum keeps the project going.

At all times, however, the bare minimum should be reserved for the long-term project.

No one needs to tell you how wrong things can get if you do the bare minimum on something that’s governed by a deadline. But if the project isn’t something that has a line in the sand and probably goes on forever, it’s best to simply plod along step by step.

It’s the journey of a thousand miles.

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies Audio and Text: Rapid Talent (How To Get There and What Holds Us Back)

https://www.psychotactics.com/rapid-talent/ Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends: https://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation: https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

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How To Write A Report Overnight: The C to A Method

📅 November 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Write A Report Overnight

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/write-report/#writereport1

Rice. Curry. Meat. Fish. Papad. Pickle. Vegetables.

Many, if not most of the meals we’d have when I was growing up, consisted of a what you’d easily call a well-rounded meal. But as a teenager, I couldn’t wait for dinner. I was ravenous by the time I got back from school at 4 pm. I’d head to the pantry, and pick out my favourite noodles: Maggi Masala.

Boil the water, toss in the noodles and the tastemaker and “two minutes” later, I’d be well on my ate to satisfaction-land.

When creating information, it’s easy to get lost in a “rice, curry, pickle, papad land”.

However, complexity is the last thing you need, because it slows you down. What you need is something that’s quick, yet effective. Something you can put together for your website, or as goodies to attract clients.

Let’s look at the—The C to A Method of writing a report quickly

How do you make a delicious rice dish in under five minutes? Step 1: Take a cup of cooked rice. Step 2: In a frying pan, pop a teaspoon of mustard seeds and some dry red chillies in oil. Step 3: Pour the oil, mustard seeds and red chillies over the rice and add 1 ½ cup of natural yoghurt.

Notice where we started?

We didn’t start with the cooked rice. Our goal was to make a delicious rice dish in under five minutes. And then we worked our way backwards, didn’t we? We didn’t go from A to B to C. Instead we started with the goal in mind, then rewound the steps and it wasn’t very difficult to get a very tasty result.

When writing a report, it’s easy to feel like you have to cover a lot of information

When I started writing marketing articles back in the year 2000, I had no idea what to write about. I’d read a book about positioning, and then borrow some of the ideas and write my own version of positioning. I’d talk to someone about how they needed to brand their product or service and then rush home to work my way through an article.

These were early days. I was struggling just to get 500 words on a page. I wasn’t exactly worried about which articles got more attention than others. Even so, it was hard to ignore how some articles got far greater views than others.

One such article was about how to write headlines in three steps.

Another winner seemed to be how to tell if your business card was too busy. Again, three steps.

At which point we had this bizarre idea to turn one of the articles into a report. We did nothing more than put the very same information into a PDF. We added some graphics, made the report look all pretty and then put it on the website as an incentive to sign up to the newsletters.

If you’ve ever subscribed to the Psychotactics newsletter, you’re likely to have seen and read this report. The reason why it works is because it’s short, but more importantly it starts with Point C.

It shows you how to build a headline in a few minutes, that’s what it does.

With the goal firmly in mind, it walks you through Step A, Step B and then in a matter of 8-10 pages you’re at Step C. It’s not unlike the method used to make the yoghurt rice, is it?

You’re not creating a complex document. All you’re really doing is getting a client to get to a specific point, no matter how small the point.

We might believe a report needs to be more detailed, certainly more complex to be taken seriously

Instead what you’ll quickly realise is that clients want the quick wins. And if the quick win is small, so much the better. If I were to give you a recipe of a biryani (another rice dish), with 30 ingredients, you’re not likely to make that dish, are you?

Yet, a 5-minute shot at yoghurt rice couldn’t go so terribly wrong, could it? In the worst possible scenario you’d waste five minutes, wouldn’t you? Having a simple report that starts at C and works its way backwards in about three steps is what makes it easy to create a ton of reports—if you want to do so—that is.

But why create a ton of reports?

Let’s say your site covers different topics, or has different products or services. Let’s say you get to the Psychotactics site and land on a page about resistance. Would you be more likely to sign up for a report on resistance or on a topic like consumption?

And if you were to land on a page about consumption, would you want more information on consumption or suddenly be fascinated with the topic of resistance?

Having multiple pages with reports embedded in them helps a client land on a page, read an article, and then find a report that’s closely matching up with the article itself.

Best of all, that report doesn’t promise a tonne of information, but instead has three tiny steps to get the client to a result.

If you’re wondering if you have to create a report for every page, no you don’t. We have topics such as websites, article writing, consumption, uniqueness, etc. And if you have five-seven broad topics, you can create five-seven quick reports on each individual topic.

But back to the headline report

That report itself has been responsible for getting tens of thousands of clients over the years. When I put up a figure, I say it’s been downloaded over 55,000 times, but that’s being overly conservative. That headline report has been downloaded at least over 100,000 times and possibly a lot more.

What’s important is that the report didn’t take time to put together. And when you look back, it didn’t even have much of a strategy.

If you’re teaching Photoshop, show your clients how to get from A-C in three steps.

If you’re selling blue-tac, show your clients how to use it in three-steps. Almost any product or service can be quickly reduced to a specific subset, and then you can show the client how to get to that result quickly and consistently.

Try the yoghurt rice. It takes five minutes. It takes three steps.

It would make a good report, that’s for sure. A one page report, but the moment you tried it, you’d be hooked. You’d want more, wouldn’t you? And that’s the magic of a C-A report. It’s quick to put together and the client loves it.

Summary The report that goes from C-A starts at the very end—and yes, three steps are usually enough of a journey for the client. Start with C and work your way back to A because it ensure a result.

Anything that you can achieve in three quick steps is a good enough target. Ideally it needs to pertain to something you’re selling.

For example: If you’re in the business of gardening then your report would consist of three steps to get something done quickly and effectively in the garden.

You don’t want to name the report: “3 steps to a better blah-blah-blah”. It’s better to give it a curious title, instead. E.g. The title of the headline report on the Psychotactics site is “Why Headlines Fail” and then it goes on to give three steps within the report, anyway.

The C-A report is powerful because it has an end point.

Coming Soon! How do you create a perfect landing page—and have it ready before you leave the workshop—in just 3 days? Come experience these amazing locations in Spring 2018. Singapore: 12-14 April 2018 Brussels: 18-20 April 2018

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

Black Belt Presentation Series How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

http://psychotactics.com/products/black-belt-presentations

Online Membership Website How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

http://psychotactics.com/products/membership-site-strategy

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies Audio and Text: Rapid Talent (How To Get There and What Holds Us Back)

https://www.psychotactics.com/rapid-talent/ Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

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Announcing Goodies: How to find your business uniqueness

📅 November 04, 2017 | View in Gmail

This is a reminder in case you missed the last email.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to stand out from the competition in a way that customers choose you over everyone else?

And what if you were to raise your prices, and they still kept coming?

That’s what uniqueness can do to your product or service.

• How do you do that? • How do you create a uniqueness that’s so dramatic and powerful, that clients pick you in a flash?

Presenting: Uniqueness Goodies (Yup, FREE Goodies!) Everyone tells you that uniqueness is important, but no one tells you how to work through the uniqueness minefield.

Until now, that is. You will get access to articles, audio and video.

Even if you don’t like video, I would recommend you watch the videos. They are just 15 minutes. Your understanding of uniqueness will change dramatically after you watch these detailed videos and reading the articles.

Here is the sequence of what to expect in the coming weeks: Goodie 1: Why we get our uniqueness wrong Goodie 2: How to get to your uniqueness Goodie 3: The importance of the mundane and the uninteresting Goodie 4: Biggest mistakes and how to avoid them Goodie 5: The difference between uniqueness and the other red bags Goodie 6: Do You Need To Carve Out a Uniqueness For ‘Every’ Product or Service?

How to get the goodies? Have a look at this page for all the details: Uniqueness Free Goodies

https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/

Regards Sean D’Souza

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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October 2017

How To Avoid Overwhelm (And Systematically Complete Projects)

📅 October 31, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Avoid Overwhelm (And Systematically Complete Projects)

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/avoid-overwhelm/

I remember lying in bed on a Sunday morning and realising I was a hypocrite.

My niece Marsha says she loves reading, which is why we bought her the entire Harry Potter, the Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles. She stuttered through the Harry Potter series but made her way to the last book. And then she stalled on the first book in the Percy Jackson series.

When I ask her if she’s been reading, she always nods happily, but she’s barely progressed further than 10-15 pages in the last month or two.

It bugs me, because I know that reading isn’t just about reading. It’s about spelling, structure, storytelling and imagination. As you’d expect, I’d nudge Marsha at every chance I got, encouraging her to read, but she still gives me a happy smile and makes little or no progress.

Until that Sunday morning, I didn’t think the lesson of the nudge applied to me.

I’m one of those crazy people. I go for a walk, and sometimes I’ll listen to music, or Renuka and I will talk all the way. Even so, I’ll get at least between an hour to two hours of audio every week.

I’ll read before I go to bed, and sometimes on weekends. I’ll even spend Friday morning planning and then get an hour’s worth of reading. I’ll even watch a TED Talk while making breakfast every day. Marsha’s situation doesn’t apply to me, so why did I feel like a hypocrite?

It just so happened that I was browsing through my Kindle collection that Sunday morning

As I scrolled through the books, I realised I hadn’t read at least 30% of what I’d bought. That among those I’d read, there were several that were half-abandoned. A good chunk was complete, but how’s that different from Marsha?

How’s that different from all of us? We start out with good intentions.

We buy stuff; we save stuff onto our computers or devices for future reading and then suddenly it seems to be too overwhelming. We’re reading through one book when you get a recommendation to read five others.

You’re leafing through one article, and a stack of one thousand seem to be trying to be trying to get through the front door.

I don’t like the feeling of being a hypocrite, so I devised a system.

And since I like naming systems, I called it “TBM”: The Bare Minimum.

TBM—The Bare Minimum. The idea gelled in my brain on a Sunday morning.

It’s not about achieving any big goals. Instead, it’s about chipping away small wins. It’s important because we all seem to fall by the wayside when it comes to long term goals. The more personal the goal, the more likely it is to fall into the cracks. Reading a book that you dearly want to read, goes into the must-do-in-future list. And the future comes and goes, and the book is unread.

So what are we and Marsha to do? The world isn’t getting less complicated. How do we roll this bare minimum plan out and keep at it?

What is the bare minimum? And why it’s not a mind trick to do even more

Almost every one of us has seen a progress bar on our computer, haven’t we? It’s that little bar that goes from left to right, telling us that a program is opening, or a file is being saved.

What many of us might not know, is that the progress bar doesn’t quite give us the real situation because let’s face it, we’re impatient. To counter this impatience, then-student, Brad A. Myers decided that progress bars made computer users less anxious, more efficient and could possibly help them relax at work.

He then got his fellow students, 48 of them, to take a test with and without the progress bars.

86% said they liked the bars. They loved knowing that progress was being made. They were told that the progress bar wasn’t an accurate representation of what was happening within the computer, but they didn’t care. They still preferred the progress bar, to not having anything at all.

Let’s rewind that last line, shall we?

Still preferred the progress bar, to not having anything at all. That’s what it says, doesn’t it? And when we look at the tasks we have before us, we see nothing at all. We haven’t started on the job, because we know there’s a lot involved.

Just the thought of the steps needing to get to the end point seems to overwhelm us immediately.

And we’re not talking about learning a complicated program or writing a book. We’re referring to something as simple as reading a book. We look at the book, knowing full well we’d like to read it, but absolutely nothing happens. And one book piles up on another, until we have books and e-books that we’d like to read, but can’t get started. Or if we get started, a distraction comes along, and we chase down that butterfly-like-distraction right away.

When I first started out in marketing, I didn’t have many butterflies to chase

Back in the year 2000, almost all marketing was done offline. You’d get a big package in the mail. Pages, lots of pages, talking about some program that would help you become more successful. But that’s all the post box held—one big set of pages. There was nothing else to see.

You didn’t see any butterflies and didn’t have to invest in any Butterly net.

Today, you and I have a sea of stuff that we can download in minutes, and buy in seconds

And that’s only part of the problem. Learning, yes, that’s really important, but then so are the other things in your life. They’re all piling up, and you can’t seem to figure out how to beat that overwhelm.

So why not borrow a concept from the credit card companies?

Let’s say you have to pay $5000 on your credit card. Logically speaking, you should be getting Mastercard or Visa to deduct the amount directly from your account. But the credit card companies seem like Santa Claus, don’t they? They say: Don’t worry, just pay $125 on your credit card, and we’re good.

You and I know there’s not a lot of good in paying off the minimum amount, but hey, sometimes we do. And then the insidious debt creeps up.

It may be insidious for paying off credit card bills, but it’s perfect for getting things done

Going back to that book that you haven’t read, you don’t have to do anything but the bare minimum. Let’s say the bare minimum is one paragraph. C’mon, you say. One paragraph is a cop out. You’re not going to get very far with one paragraph, are you?

Well, there’s this story about John Grisham, the famous author. “If I had 30 minutes to an hour, I would sneak up to the old law library, hide behind the law books and write A Time to Kill”, he said in a USA Today interview with Dennis Moore.

It took him three whole years of 30-minute segments, but a thousand days later he was done. If Grisham weren’t famous and hadn’t sold 250 million books, this story might have never been told, but now we know that his entire career was built on 30-minute increments.

And yet, for many of us, 30 minutes seems like a lot

My friend, Campbell Such and I had a mini-tussle over meditation.

I happily boast that you need at least 30 minutes of meditation to get any momentum. For the first 20 minutes or so, it seems like you’re swatting flies in the vast Australian outback.

But as you get to the 30-minute mark, things start to happen. Campbell disagrees. He spends 5-10 minutes every morning, meditating. “That’s all I can manage,” he says.

And he’s right. I disagreed with him at the point we had the discussion. I thought that 10 minutes was barely a warm up and that if a person couldn’t do at least 30 minutes, it’s better to avoid it altogether.

Which is the flaw with a lot of productivity plans, when you think about it

They seem to suggest you fool your brain. That if you want to go for a walk, you should put on your shoes and then you’ll end up going for a 30-minute walk. And the concept of the bare minimum is entirely the opposite. It’s pure sloth behaviour. It’s not asking you to fool your brain at all.

It’s saying: do the bare minimum, just like those credit card companies ask of you.

Do nothing but the bare minimum. No mind tricks, no additional time, no extra effort. Just the smallest possible thing you can take on, and that’s all you should do.

The bare minimum may not seem like much, but we all need to push psychological boulders

When faced with the task of taking a walk for 30 minutes, writing a book, or doing any long term project, it seems like we’re never getting anything done.

But think of your progress like the progress bar. You might get just 2% of the task done, and the progress bar in your brain feels like it’s 100%.

You follow up the next day, and whammo—another 100% is done.

It may make no logical sense, but this isn’t about addition or logic. It’s about the satisfaction not just of getting something done, but 100% of that something. It’s tiny, that something, but you don’t care.

The goal isn’t to take the second step. It’s to take the step you need and stop right there. No fancy motivation or momentum—just one step.

My niece Marsha doesn’t need to go through the Percy Jackson series • She needs to go through a paragraph or two. That’s it. • Campbell Such doesn’t need 30 minutes of meditation. If 5 minutes is all he has, that’s all that he needs to do.

The bare minimum, that’s all we need, and it’s amazing how much slow progress we make.

Summary: The bare minimum is about taking just one step.

And then you’re done for the day. When you have to take just one step, there’s no overwhelm. Yes, the list of things that you need to do can and will pile up. But you’re just taking one step.

The rest of the world can drive themselves crazy. Like Marsha, you read two paragraphs at a time. You achieve a lot with a single step per day.

TBM. The Bare Minimum. Now do it.

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“What do your customers think? What would make them buy?” In the Brain Audit - Sean teaches you 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you. The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.

Ankesh Kothari - Biztactics Read more about The Brain Audit

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies

Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

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One-Buttock Passion (How a Simple Redefinition Can Help You Move Forward)

📅 October 28, 2017 | View in Gmail

A definition shouldn’t be a barrier to your progress, should it?

Yet, the moment you hear people talking about passion, you’re stuck. And that’s because their definition is all wrong. • How do you redefine the term “passion”? • And what does one-buttock have to do with passion? Let’s find out. Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 161 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/one-buttock-passion/ |

Two more binge-worthy podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#139: How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day)

How do you maintain a high productivity level when switching tasks? How do you get the brain and body to handle the transition? And how do you manage the transitions with a minimum amount of fuss?

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 139 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ |

#159: Mental Barriers That Slow You Down (And Derail Your Progress) How many books do you read in a year? Most people boast about how they read hundreds of books a year. That’s what I used to do as well. Until I found that I wasn’t really absorbing any information. So is speed reading a bad idea? Well, not entirely, but you need to know when to use it and why.

Find out how speed works for you and more importantly, when it fails. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 159 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

Oh and before I go If you enjoyed the podcast, please share it using the social media buttons or click here to tell your friends.

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

Regards Sean

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Two ways to stay ahead of your competition (even if you sell them all your secrets)

📅 October 24, 2017 | View in Gmail

Two ways to stay ahead of your competition (even if you sell them all your secrets)

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/selling-strategies-competition/#sellcompetition

Let’s say you started walking down the road, six months ago

Somewhere along the way you learned a lot about the road, the pit stops, the method of walking, rehydration methods, etc. Now you’re teaching your competition who’s coming down that same road. If both of you were to keep walking, you’d still be many “months” ahead of the competition.

Even though they’ve bought all the videos, read all your books and followed your plan in extreme detail, they’re still going to be many months behind, even with you giving away all the tips that will help them move faster ahead.

However, if you’re still feeling a bit paranoid about the competition, there are two factors that will keep you ahead.

The first factor is that time marches on.

Let’s say you’ve figured out how to make social media ads get a great return on investment. By the time you teach your competition everything you know, time is ticking away. Things change all the time. What worked for Facebook yesterday, may be different today.

The same would apply for any business. Every so-called “success case study” is only a record of the past, and whatever you teach is likely to have changed anywhere from a tiny fraction to quite a lot. Even if you’re teaching in an area that’s not changing everyday—let’s say watercolours, for instance—there’s still some change in tools or equipment.

Something in your technique, material or sequence will change all the time, often without your knowledge. And the competition can’t keep up.

The second point is one of mistakes

We all have been lost at some point or the other—even with a GPS. Why is this so? A map is a map is a map, right? We’re not supposed to get lost when we’re given precise instructions. However, human error, and often, human creativity comes into play. Even when it seems you’re following the map with a great deal of precision, there’s always some possibility that it will be interpreted in an incorrect manner. Your competition is going to have to work out those mistakes and fix them.

It’s easy to believe that selling information to competition is risky

What if the competition takes your ideas and uses it as their own? The reality is different. No matter how generous and detailed you are with your ideas and systems, you will always be ahead of the competition. When we did the Protégé sessions back in 2006-2008, most of the “customers” were really our competition.

For most of our courses we get clients to fill in a form before, or right after they join. In this questionnaire, many of them revealed the primary reason why they wanted to be part of the course. As you’ve already guessed, they didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. They wanted to use the system that we already had in place.

If you stay stagnant, the competition will catch up

They’ll show up, they may overtake you and you’re likely to be left in their dust. Yet we know that few of us intend to remain stagnant. As we learn and implement, invent and re-invent, we move ahead always maintaining enough of a lead. Plus, a lot of what we do depends on our strategy.

Staying ahead is a weird concept, because we’re not running parallel races with our competition. In reality we’re chapping and changing our strategies all the time and any comparison with the competition is odd, at best.

You can’t really compare one restaurant with another. You can’t throw one author in the same bull ring as another. Comparison itself is a super-weird activity to contemplate. Anyway, if the competition really wanted to copy your work, there are ways and means of doing so.

Instead, selling your work to competition is a much saner idea

It earns you revenue, builds up your authority and no matter how much you give away or sell, there’s still an astounding amount of information that remains to be explained. If anything, selling the system is a far superior way to grow a business, as it draws in both customers and competition on a much bigger scale.

But here’s one of the biggest reasons why you need to sell to your competition: it is called “expanding the market”.

Most of us think of competition as a bad thing, but it’s quite the opposite. It makes the market more viable.

Let’s find out how.

Why selling your information makes the market more viable

In 2014, Tesla Motors did something very revolutionary. They gave away the patents to their electric car.

What are we to make of news like that? Is Tesla just being generous?

Or does it have an ulterior motive? We know electric cars are a tiny fragment of the market. Despite being superior in almost every way to the petrol-driven car, they’re still to make big inroads. But as an article on Forbes Magazine pointed out, Tesla’s real competition is not another company.

Instead it’s the archaic petrol engines that are being manufactured in the millions around the globe, every single day. By giving away the patents, the competition doesn’t have to figure things out. More importantly, they don’t have to get into yet another patent lawsuit that would slow them down.

Even when the other car manufacturers start to work on Tesla’s patents, Tesla should be well down the road.

James Part is the co-founder and CEO of Fitbit, a wireless fitness tracker.

When Fitbit entered the market, they had bigger, gruntier competitors like Nike and Jawbone with the potential to crush an upstart like Fitbit. But here’s what Park says. “You need some critical mass to legitimize what you’re doing.” And Ben Yoskowitz, an angel investor told Inc. Magazine: “If nobody is competing in your space, there’s a very good chance the market you’re going into is too small.

Any reasonably good idea has 10,000 people working on it right now. You may not even know they exist because they’re as small as you.”

But what’s all of this got to do with you? After all Fitbit didn’t give away or sell its information, did it?

We grow up in an us vs. them environment. Which means that many, if not most of us, believe that competition isn’t a good thing. We also believe that too much competition causes a saturation in the marketplace.

Both these beliefs have some truth in them, but it really depends on your point of view. When you teach competition to do something that you already know, you’re not only earning an income, but you’re doing your own bit to broaden the market.

My friend, and super-graphic designer, John McWade was literally the first one on the planet to use desktop publishing software

McWade ran into some of the earliest Mac computers back in the 80’s. He had a job as an art director of a magazine called Reno when he was given a little piece of software by Jeremy Jake. Jake was the chief engineer of a tiny Seattle startup called All This and was writing a software called PageMaker. Today we use the fancy InDesign software for desktop publishing but the heart of Adobe desktop publishing goes all the way back to PageMaker.

But who was using PageMaker?

Literally no one on the planet, except the engineers and John. Which is when John started up Before and After Magazine. And he showed people how to use PageMaker, and to create amazing graphic design. You could safely say that John McWade single handedly expanded the market and created competition.

Today there are tens of thousands of books, videos and courses on InDesign. Selling the secret of how to create great graphic design has given McWade a good life and a huge fan following. In turn, the expansion of the market has been good for almost everyone. However, this advice of expanding the market doesn’t just apply when you’re starting up. It also applies when you’re entering a reasonably mature marketplace.

Which is why no matter where you look, whether it’s books, cosmetics, shoes, consulting or training, there’s new stuff appearing on the horizon almost endlessly. Which brings us to a very crucial point.

Your competition is going to sell to your competition

If you decide to keep your secrets all to yourself, that’s your prerogative. However, your competition isn’t exactly going to keep mum. If you have some great knowledge in selling real estate, and you decide not to tell or sell, another real estate agent will write a book, do seminars and give their version, anyway.

If you’re outstanding at creating apps, so are a thousand others who will happily put their information out for sale. The market will exist with or without you, so you might as well get your skin in the game because there really is hardly any downside and a ton of benefit, instead.

Selling to your competition may at first seem like a bad idea, but it rarely is. No one is saying you need to ignore your customers. Your customers are extremely important, but so is the competition. Go out and find the competition. They’re good for business.

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“The Brain Audit turns a century of brain research and market testing into 7 vivid and clear steps that anyone can use to make their own marketing more compelling”

Howie Jacobson USA Judge for yourself: The Brain Audit

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Chaos Planning: Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

Black Belt Presentation Series: How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

http://psychotactics.com/products/black-belt-presentations

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst of Chaos)(Look for episode 135) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/ |

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

Privacy and Spam Policy

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Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Goodies: How to stand out from your competition

📅 October 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

Have you ever wondered what it might feel like to not be me-too?

What would it be like to stand out from the competition in a way that customers choose you over everyone else? And what if you were to raise your prices, and they still kept coming?

That’s what uniqueness can do to your product or service. Yet most of us seem to know what makes our product or service better than competition.

But the customer doesn’t know. So they go elsewhere. Some cheaper. Somewhere crappier. But they don’t come to you in the droves you’ve imagined.

Presenting: Uniqueness Goodies (Yup, FREE Goodies!) Everyone tells you that uniqueness is important, but no one tells you how to work through the uniqueness minefield.

Until now, that is.. You will get access to articles, audio and video.

How to get the goodies? Have a look at this page for all the details: Uniqueness Free Goodies

https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/

Regards Sean D’Souza

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zOxsbAwcDEw=

The three big forces of a small business (and how to cope with them)

📅 October 17, 2017 | View in Gmail

The three big forces of a small business (and how to cope with them)

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/five-forces-business/

In December 2015, I attended a workshop in Nashville, Tennessee.

The workshop itself was very tedious. There were endless slides, countless examples of TV commercials and no breaks. However, there were these long lunch breaks that spanned almost an hour and a half. With little else to do after lunch, I’d wander around the lobby looking at the signs posted on the walls.

The signs were quotes from prominent American politicians. One of them was attributed to US President, John F. Kennedy.

It simply said:“If not us, who. If not now, when?”

No one seems to know if John F. Kennedy said it or not. And yet, for me at that moment, the quote was relevant. I’d wanted to get certain things done. I’d wanted to write some specific books on talent; books on teaching etc. And this sign seemed to slap me in the face.

If it wasn’t for me, who would do it? If not now, when would it get done?

And yet here we are all these months later, and the battle rages on

Many other projects got done, but some remain almost permanently on the to-do list. How could I, I wondered, make things happen? It was time to take stock. I soon realised that business—at least my business—had five permanently competing forces. To achieve what I wanted, I couldn’t only focus on one and leave the others sulking in the corner.

This wasn’t a question of focus, it was a question of management

For me to feel a profound sense of achievement with every passing year, I knew I had to deal not with just one or two, but with all five forces of business. All five of these forces jostled for space, and every one of them was incredibly important.

Let’s take a look at three of them by listing them out, to begin with. • 1) Learning by doing • 2) Learning by learning • 3) Revenue generation/client retention. The first force of business: Learning by doing Stop for a moment and think of something that kills 842,000 people a year.

That’s a whopping 2,300 people per day.

You didn’t think of water, did you?

Water isn’t supposed to kill. It’s meant to give life. And yet it runs around day after day, year after year like a mutant Jack the Ripper. No one, it seems, is interested enough to stop this killer. No one, except Dean Kamen.

“We could empty half of all the beds in all the hospitals in the world by just giving people clean water”, says Kamen.

And Kamen is the one person who’s uniquely placed to take up this challenge.

In Manchester, New Hampshire, where he lives and works, he’s known for the invention of the Segway, Ibot Transporter – a six-wheeled robotic “mobility system” that can climb stairs, traverse sandy and rocky terrain, and raise its user to eye-level with a standing person. Kamen has over 440 patents to his name, but it’s clean water that got his attention.

Which is why he set about creating the “Stirling engine”.

The “Stirling Engine” is so amazing, it can generate clean, drinkable water even from water contaminated with mud, even bacteria-filled human faeces.

For most people, creating products of such grand simplicity would be an insurmountable barrier, but Kamen’s team at his firm, DEKA, soon came up with a working machine. A machine that only needed the power of a hair dryer. And if necessary, it could even work on fuel sources such as cow dung.

The product was ready; the challenge was met. It was then that Kamen ran into his first major hurdle

For fifteen years Kamen struggled to get his “Stirling Machines” mass-produced and distributed around the world. And yet all he met with was polite smiles and closed doors. The World Bank, the UN, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many other governmental agencies, and NGO’s—they all realised the problem but couldn’t help.

Too many of these organisations were not set up to help mass manufacture or distribute Kamen’s machine to the poorest parts of the world, where they are most needed.

This is our first challenge in business: We need to learn by doing

At Psychotactics I’ve conducted the Article Writing Course since 2006. It’s called the toughest writing course in the world, and for a good reason. For three months clients have to slog to get to the finish line and be able to write an article in between 60-90 minutes. For me, the workload is magnified several times over.

Every day, I have to look at 25 assignments and lots of questions relating to the assignment. The course itself generates no fewer than 600 articles, all of which have to be read and evaluated. It’s not just the toughest course for the clients; it’s also a mind-bending course for me as the trainer.

So why do it?

The course isn’t cheap at $3000 or more, but it’s not the revenue that’s the biggest driver. It’s easy enough to create one, even two products that would generate a far greater profit, without all the associated hard work. The answer is in the “doing”.

By teaching that course time after time, for the past ten years, you learn things that you couldn’t know or experience by just writing a home study course. Every course brings up brand new challenges all of which have to be tackled.

It’s the problems that create enormous spikes in learning.

The secrets of teaching and learning are revealed frustratingly slowly, as I push myself yet into another iteration of the course. Without doing, I’d have no learning, no way to overcome the barriers.

Kamen’s 15-year learning journey to deliver clean water ended in an interesting place too

While the UN or NGOs don’t head out into the tiny villages, there’s one organisation that has found penetration in the smallest pockets. No matter where you go on the planet, you can get yourself a bottle of Coca-Cola.

In exchange for a redesign of their age-old dispensing machines, Kamen teamed up with Coke to take the Stirling machines to the far edges of the planet. That’s not as if to say there weren’t more challenges in getting the device to work.

Nonetheless, all of these issues can only be overcome by doing.

• It’s the reason why you need to blog. • It’s the reason why some of us create podcasts. • It’s the reason why we keep doing stuff even when at times it’s plainly disheartening to go on. • It’s in the doing that we learn the lessons The reason why so many people fail is because you have to persist for a while before the oceans part and you can walk through to the other side.

It’s not like Dean Kamen isn’t well-connected. He’s directly in touch with prominent organisations, US presidents and well-known figures. Even so, it’s taken him a solid 15 years to find any traction. Many of us, swayed by the “double your results tomorrow” bandwagon feel like we’re losers when things don’t happen overnight.

At Psychotactics we’ve had to learn by doing

We’ve held workshops in New Zealand, Australia, US, Amsterdam and UK. Every workshop is a super-challenge. Why not sit back and just conduct an online course instead?

Why not just do the simplest thing possible?

The answer is in doing. You learn most when you push your boundaries.

All of this earth-shaking work takes energy and time. A single workshop takes a month of preparation, a month of travel and a month of re-entry time. It’s all learning by doing. You can’t make big leaps in your work, and you can’t stand out in the way you’d want to, by taking tiny steps all the time.

It’s these big steps that also cause the greatest chaos

If you were on the Article Writing Course in 2016, it would have been just a course. But if you were part of the alumni doing the course, you might have been slightly horrified. The entire course had changed. Assignments that were usually in Week 11 showed up in Week 4.

Whole systems that were used in earlier courses were just dropped and replaced by quite another system.

It’s what learning by doing is often about. When you make significant changes, there’s no way to know how something will work right away. You’re supposed to improvise, and it pushes you to the limit.

Learning by doing easily sucks up the most time in a business

Dean Kamen took on the challenge of proving that clean water could indeed reach the poorest. The only way he could achieve all of this activity was by putting himself on the sword and keeping at it.

It’s the core of what drives the business: doing stuff even when the odds are against you. It’s where you learn the most.

But that’s only one form of learning. There’s also the relatively less strenuous form of learning that can suck up a lot of time. And that’s learning by learning.

Second Force: Learning by learning

It’s the one thing that we don’t always have time for. It’s easier to keep doing what we’re doing instead of learning a new skill. Having to learn how some software program works, can suck up a lot of time. Then there are all those books that we buy that need to be read; all those podcasts that have to be heard; all those courses that have to be looked into.

This year, in particular, I dropped the ball on reading

I benchmark my learning based on where I am with my New Yorker magazine and National Geographic reading. Usually, a New Yorker won’t last more than a few days, and the same goes for National Geographic.

It means I am reading at optimum pace and learning not only through magazines but also have time to read books—a lot of books. Instead, this year, I’ve been behind on New Yorker almost all year.

I’ve still got to go through at least four months worth of National Geographic. Somehow it seems, I’ve not allocated enough time for this activity as I did in previous years. I got so tied up with the doing, with the courses, etc. that the learning dropped precipitously.

One of the core forces of business involves learning by learning

To be exceedingly smart at what you do, the learning needs to consist of reading, audio (even if you’re not a big fan), video and learning programs. All of this learning is mind boggling and can be exhausting at times.

It’s one of the most vital forces of business.

It’s what keeps you on top of things in a way that Facebook or listening to yet another debate about the political madness can never do for you. There is, of course, the downside for this type of learning.

I see people who read book after book but never do anything. They always hope to do something, plan to do it, even, but never do. They spend a lot of time in learning from books, audio and video but never doing.

To progress, you need both forms of learning to move together in progression

No matter what the barriers, you need to keep doing. Failure will come, and failure will go, and you’ll learn from it and move ahead. It’s also important to keep your focus on the learning through books, audio and video. I know I slipped in the books department. I am aware that audio has never been a problem, but audio books are not the same as reading a book.

The forces of business pull in all directions.

While we’re learning by doing and by learning, we still have to earn a living and keep clients coming back. That takes us to the third force of business: Revenue generation/client retention.

https://www.psychotactics.com/five-forces-business/#thirdforce (Click on the link to continue reading or listening)

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“Our conversion rate now is in the high 80%.”The most common and powerful tool I use to help our clients is to walk them through your Testimonies System. This story is short but very real. Thank you for continuing your work over the years.

Derek Antonievich, Australia Judge for yourself: How to get meaningful testimonials, without needing to ‘bribe anyone’ for it.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/secret-life-of-testimonials-simple-powerful-techniques-to-get-better-clients-and-sales/

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

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Why you should stop looking for your passion (and let it find you instead)

📅 October 14, 2017 | View in Gmail

Most of us are told to start up a business doing what we’re passionate about. There’s just one problem. We don’t know what we are passionate about in the first place.

How are we supposed to find something we know nothing about? Let’s explore the concept of passion and how to stop looking for it, and get it to find you, instead.

Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 160 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/ |

Two more short podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#158: How to overcome mental blocks that derail your progress

Do you have a bad memory? Well, so does the memory champion of the US Memory Championships. How’s that possible you may ask? But that’s exactly the point.

We have misconceptions about learning and memory that need to be wiped out and replaced with accurate representations of how our brain works.

Let’s look at two mental blocks that cause us to stutter, if not fail. And how to transform them from failure to success.

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 158 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

Find out how speed works for you and more importantly, when it fails. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 159 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

Enjoy, Sean D’Souza P.S. I would love to hear from you. Send me an email

sean@psychotactics.com with your suggestions and ideas.

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Why selling your secrets to competition is a sound business strategy

📅 October 10, 2017 | View in Gmail

Why selling your secrets to competition is a sound business strategy

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/selling-strategies-competition/

Approximately every month we take our nieces, Marsha and Keira for dinner, but Keira always does something very curious.

Since the girls were little, my wife Renuka and I have taken them to dinner After dinner we head to the mall, where they buy themselves an ice-cream. The first thing Keira does when she gets her ice-cream is offer me the first bite. “Not too big a bite”, she’ll always say.

But yes, I do get the first bite, before she continues to devour the rest of the ice-cream. In doing so, Keira is sharing what’s rightfully hers to keep. She doesn’t need to have a chunk of her ice-cream bitten off, no matter how small.

Like Keira, our business is our ice-cream We don’t need to share our secrets with someone else, do we? Yet, the smaller your company, the bigger the upside in sharing the secrets and knowledge you’ve gained over the years. Big companies can thrive on muscle power alone and sell solely to their customers. A smaller business, on the other hand, needs to learn to share; to teach the competition what they already know.

I know, I know, this strategy sounds really odd. However, there are very solid reasons why you should wade right into the unlikely world of “teaching your competitors”.

Let’s find out why.

Imagine you dominated 90% of your market. Would you be happy?

About 20 years ago, I heard of a lumber company that was hugely successful. So successful, in fact, that the competition was reduced to just 10% of the share of market, while this lumber-company gobbled up the rest. Ideally they should have rested on their laurels.

A 90% stake signifies a healthy bottom line and lots of champagne, but they were restless. Their restlessness arose from their unusual plight. Being a lumber-based company, they could only operate profitably in a certain geographical area.

If they tried to sell outside that area, they would run into increased transportation costs and other additional taxes, which made it unprofitable to go outside their boundaries. In short, they were “trapped” and could never expand or grow their business.

What would you do in such a situation?

Marketer, Jay Abraham, came up with a solution. He suggested the lumber company sell their secrets. As you can imagine, such a suggestion meets with instant pushback.

The lumber company was the market leader because they had a system to treat the trees.

If they overdid the treatment, the lumber would be “overcooked”. If they were too cautious, the wood would be “raw” and unfit for any use. Every year, companies lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of precious lumber, because they hadn’t perfected this system of treating the lumber just right.

And now the company was being asked to sell its secrets

You’d recoil if you were asked to do the same, wouldn’t you? Like some crazy grandmother defending her precious recipes, you’d refuse to give away your secrets.

• What if the competition learned all of the methods and put you out of business? • Why should you sell something that has taken you so much pain to acquire?

Giving away, or selling your secrets to the competition seems like the most dimwitted thing to do.

Selling to competition may seem foolish, but competition is an exceedingly powerful source of revenue and longevity.

My friend Julia used to own several bed stores. Over the years she learned how to run the stores very effectively. So effective was she that she’d make 200-300% higher profits over other stores. What’s interesting about a bed store is that the goods aren’t terribly unique. If you look at a brand like Sealy or Sleepyhead, you’re likely to find the same beds in practically every bed store.

Yes, her profits were higher than other stores, but there’s a limit to how much stock can be held in a store

Unless Julia were to lease a new space, get the franchise rights, hire new staff etc., there seemed to be no way to increase her profits with clients. However, there was a spectacular, if slightly hidden opportunity to sell the secrets to the competition.

Clients come and go. You buy a bed, and you’re not exactly rushing out to buy another one tomorrow, are you?

So clients buy the product and leave, but what does competition do?

They stick around. If Julia were to sell her secrets to the competition, they’d stick around for as long as they were getting results. The “result” might mean greater profits, more time off, less staff turnover, or less chaotic management systems.

Which is what the lumber company did as well

They realised their geographical boundary was going to inhibit their growth, so they started having seminars. At first, the seminars were modestly priced at $5000 per head. Then in barely a year or so, the very same seminars shot up to $25,000 per person.

Would you find the price of the seminar prohibitive? Lumber companies lost hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

Badly treated wood was taken as the “cost of doing business”. Once this lumber company showed them their methods, the other lumber companies were in a position to make a small fortune by not consigning the wood to waste. And it wasn’t just the lumber companies in that district, or city, or even country.

Lumber companies around the world wanted to pay for that information so that they could reduce waste to the bare minimum. The competition would stick around as long as it was finding the information profitable.

Every bookstore on the planet is an example of this concept of selling to the competition

When confronted with the fact that you may need to sell your secrets, the idea may seem unpalatable, but look at the bookstore in your city. Those videos, the books, the magazines—they’re all filled with secrets that are being given away.

Grandma kept her secrets and she’s highly revered in her own family, but Grandma’s only clients are her immediate family. The clients of the books, videos and magazines are the entire world. And you know as well as I do how the systems start chugging along once you buy a book.

You rarely buy one book and never buy another one again

When a business owner gives you their “secrets” and you get value from the information, you want to go back for more. However, as we’ve experienced in the past, we rarely restrict ourselves to just books. We buy into a lot more.

The lumber company continued to make steady profits from their sale of lumber to their customers, but it’s the competition that needed more information on a regular basis. They were not only able to give information in the form of treating lumber, but on many other topics that the competition needed to succeed as well.

However, the most important bit of all is the longevity of the competition

Customers tend to come and go. Whether you’re selling a bed, lumber or consulting, a customer will show up, take what they need and leave. And truly speaking, so will a competitor. However, in many cases the competition will come back to get even more information.

They’ll consult with you, buy your courses, attend your workshops, and want to get as much as possible from you. If you’re already ahead of the competition, they will keep coming back. No matter whether you have a brick and mortar business or something online, the principle remains exactly the same.

Customers come and go. Competition stays around a lot longer.

The lumber company was seemingly trapped

Yet, it’s that very trap that transformed their business. Instead of dealing solely with clients, they moved to competition and operated in a completely different universe.

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“The Brain Audit turns a century of brain research and market testing into 7 vivid and clear steps that anyone can use to make their own marketing more compelling”

Howie Jacobson USA Judge for yourself: The Brain Audit

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Critical Website Components How do you create compelling pages on your website? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

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https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/ |

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

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

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Last day: How to join 5000bc (without being on the waiting list)

📅 October 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

Today’s the last day to join 5000bc before we put up the waiting list yet again. After then only a limited number will be able to join every month.

If you’re a business owner, you know how lonely it can be in your world. And having a community to talk to, to work with and bounce your ideas off, is incredibly valuable.

The motto of 5000bc is: be kind, be helpful, or begone.

If you are looking for a community that simply slap each other on the back, are always promoting themselves, then 5000bc is not for you. What you’ll find in 5000bc is solid information, but more importantly, solid help. Help from me (yes, I’m around 20-30 times a day, answering questions in great detail) and other members who pitch in and help.

There’s an old African saying: If you want go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. And yes, if you go with a helpful group, you enjoy the journey.

Yes, it’s the last day to join before the waiting list goes up, so get in the community and let’s go far.

Here’s the link: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Warm regards, Sean P.S. See you in 5000bc. This offer expires on 7 October 2017 (11:59pm, Eastern USA). https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Power of Downtime (And Why Every Business Requires It)

📅 October 03, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Power of Downtime (And Why Every Business Requires It)

(You can read or listen to this short article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/tame-business/#downtime

There’s one thing that we all desperately need, and it’s called downtime.

It’s such a simple concept that it almost requires no explanation, but let’s give it a shot, shall we? Let’s examine this important force of business and why it’s incredibly crucial to your business and sanity.

In the early days of the watercolour course, I gave everyone a break for a month.

When they came back, almost every participant was painting a lot better than the month before. Did they practice during the break? Did they access other material?

Some did, but it didn’t explain how almost everyone was better—even the ones who hadn’t picked up a brush at all. The only common element between every one of the participants was a factor of downtime.

Every business requires downtime

Without downtime there’s a lot of do, do, do and not enough time for the brain to process what’s happening. Time away from work is almost as crucial as work time itself.

Which is why we plan the year differently from most people I know

Instead of listing out all the things we need to do and projects we need to complete, we first put in the blocks of downtime. Then we put in the work in between that downtime. It enables us to recharge in a way that’s not possible when at work.

Yet most of us don’t have the luxury of downtime

When we started mentoring my niece, Marsha, for instance, it was a bit like starting up a new business. There was no time to waste. To get her up to speed, I’d tutor her on the way from the classroom to the car. Then in the car, we’d talk a bit and do spellings and practice multiplication tables.

We worked through the week, and for a couple of hours on the weekend.

The school holidays were intensive for her, but also for us, and we often put in 6-8 hour days for five-six weeks on end. When you’re right at the starting point, everything is an uphill journey. However, over time, Marsha has zoomed to the top tier of the class.

Now she still works as hard as she possibly can, but she also has big chunky breaks during the day, week and in the year.

In business, it’s not unusual to have no downtime

The mortgage and bills are starting to grow in untidy piles on your desk, and those payments need to be made. But in time, almost all of us have the ability to take time off.

It almost seems like a silly thing to do, to take time off when the business has just started to pick up.

And yet, it’s what we all need to do. Downtime calms you down, relaxes you, and it helps you come back refreshed.

It’s a force of business

If anything, like the students on the watercolour course, it helps you come back stronger than ever before.

• Plan your downtime. • Start small. • Take a few days off, before embarking on longer breaks. But ignore the breaks at your peril. A tired brain is not quite as good as a rested one. And certainly not as creative.

Top-Selling Products Under $50

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/

iPhone Magic How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst of Chaos)(Look for episode 135) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/ |

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

Privacy and Spam Policy

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September 2017

Announcing: How to join 5000bc (without being on the waiting list)

📅 September 30, 2017 | View in Gmail

You’ve been around the Psychotactics site for a while. And you’ve probably even sneaked a peek at 5000bc (our membership site) and seen that there’s a waiting list.

For the next seven days we’re bringing down that wall. From Saturday 30 September to 7 October 2017, you get the chance to join (without being on the waiting list).

The last time we opened up the waiting list was six months ago. Yup, a long time ago.

But how do you know if 5000bc is the place for you? You read the testimonials. Do your due diligence and read the testimonials and you’ll see for yourself why our members join, and more importantly why they stay. And how you can be part of that select group as well.

You have to judge for yourself. So take a look at 5000bc right away. https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

We’d love to have you there if you think it’s the right place for you :)

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Make a decision today based on what you see. https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Passion Projects: How They Can Completed Change Your Business

📅 September 26, 2017 | View in Gmail

Passion Projects: How They Can Completed Change Your Business

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/tame-business/

In 2010, I got this dazzling idea to do a series of stock cartoons.

As you probably know, I’m a professional cartoonist, and my fascination for Photoshop has lasted for well over 20 years. It seemed like a very good idea to create a unique set of cartoons that clients could use for their blogs, e-books, webinars or presentations.

Then, seven years sneaked up, and now it’s 2017. The cartoons aren’t done.

Passion projects are what feed your soul

A passion project is something that you really want to complete, not necessarily because of revenue or fame. It’s just something that you have to do because no one else will do it. The longer you put it off, the more you feel something chipping away at your soul.

I’ve wanted to write a book on talent; I’ve wanted to write about real education online with “Teacher vs. Preacher”, there’s a website that I started out in 2015, and it’s been on ice ever since.

So much of what’s important to me, to you just seems to circle the airport and never really lands.

However, at least at first, passion projects don’t necessarily feed your tummy

If you were to decide to spend time embarking on a photography project on the side, or writing the novel you’ve always planned to write, there’s almost no guarantee that any of it will bring in revenue or clients.

It’s possible that you may hit pay dirt or hit a wall—at least when it comes to any sort of riches or fame. Even so, now and then it’s important to feed your soul.

Take for instance, Marcus Stout from Golden Moon Tea

Back in 2011, Stout decided to trash 4 out of 5 of his best-selling teas. As if that were not enough, his company had to re-create 75 of his tea blends? What was the reason for all of this upheaval? It was a passion project that Stout wanted had wanted to put into place for a long time.

Around 2011, he changed the way he was personally eating and found he wasn’t keen on drinking a lot of his own tea. “Most people don’t realise it,” he says, “but a lot of tea has chemicals, even if they say it’s natural.” Since he was keen on getting rid of all chemicals and every last toxin, he decided to scrap his best-selling tea.

It wasn’t easy to take on a passion project of this nature

Stout did his homework. He didn’t merely jump into changing the teas without seeing if a market existed. Even so, it was an incredibly difficult decision to make as some of the teas had been superstars all the way back from 1995.

Some of his clients ask for those teas even today, and he won’t stock them or sell them because they don’t meet his standards.

A passion project can be a small undertaking or a complete change in the way you conduct your business

No matter how we look at it, it’s a plane that’s been circling the airport, and you need to get that plane to land. At Psychotactics, this meant walking away from doing courses in the second half of 2017 and early 2018.

The Article Writing Course and other live courses (that means courses that are conducted by me online) won’t show up until mid-2018. In doing so, we walk away from well over $100k-$150k of profit.

Will the passion projects replace that income?

It’s impossible to tell. When we walked away from the Protégé Program back in 2009, we also walked away from $150k a year, with no idea how to replace that income.

Whether you’re dealing with smaller revenues or substantial revenues, the fear and the excitement are remarkably similar

However, a passion project needs to be done. It can’t be postponed forever. All those dreams of what you and I will do when we retire, can’t wait for retirement.

They might be pushed onto the back burner for a while, but at some point, we all have to do what is important to us, even if we aren’t sure it will have a payback.

Getting to New Zealand was a bit of a passion project for us

When we left India, we didn’t know what to expect in New Zealand. We’d never been to Auckland and knew next to no one. We were also leaving a very settled and decently luxurious life back in Mumbai.

The people we’d met along the way told us that it rains a lot in Auckland and it’s really quiet. That to us was our beacon of light. We love the rain and the quiet, and it became our not-so-little passion project.

Making space for “landing those planes” is necessary.

It may not happen right away, but it needs to happen because it’s good for the soul.

What we’ve found as well, is that in the long run it’s been reasonably profitable. Every time we’ve walked away from one thing to put our energy into another, we’ve found it’s helped not just our mind, but our business as well.

A business needs so many things and has so many forces pulling at you in all directions. It’s a tug of war. Get used to it. With a little work and strategy, you’ll be on the winning side.

Announcement: The Article Writing Self Study sold out in 15 hours. Find out how to get on the waiting list for 2018.

https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-write-article-strategies-to-write-powerful-articles-for-sales-pages-and-newsletters/

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Testimonial Secrets How to get meaningful testimonials, without needing to ‘bribe anyone’ for it.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/secret-life-of-testimonials-simple-powerful-techniques-to-get-better-clients-and-sales/

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies Why Selling Strategies to Competition is a Smart Idea(Look for episode 155) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/selling-strategies-competition/ |

Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

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Three Month Vacation:

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

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16 Years of Psychotactics—and a Tiny Bonus!

📅 September 23, 2017 | View in Gmail

Early days: In the Grove of Giants. At the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite.

Well, not quite 16 years. 16 years, one month and a few days.

But 16 years ago, this is approximately how it all started. I gave a presentation. I was asked for notes. I didn’t have notes. I wrote a document. Whether this was the exact document, I’m not sure.

But it’s close enough.

This document goes all the way back to 2002. • Notice how The Brain Audit—today’s version of The Brain Audit—is sandwiched between pages 16-19. Four pages, over time, expanded to 180 pages. • Notice how the 12 out of 29 pages are just “filler pages”. So the real book was only 17 pages or so.

This book doesn’t look like the humblest of beginnings, I’ll admit. It still looks pretty good, even after all of these years. But take a trip back into time and see how a single book has given us a life far beyond our imagination. And how this book has generated over $600,0000 all by itself. And then get started with your own 17 pager + 12 pages of filler material.

16 years pass pretty quickly, you know. Here is the link: The Brain Audit

https://www.psychotactics.com/bonuses/brainaudit_old.pdf

Warm regards, s- P.S. If you have a current copy of The Brain Audit, you’ll see how much has changed. But back then this is all I knew. All I could do. I hope you do all you can do today and make this story your inspiration for the years to come.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Target Profile’s Role In Pre-Selling Your Product (And How To Do It)

📅 September 19, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Target Profile’s Role In Pre-Selling Your Product (And How To Do It)

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/creating-products-clients/#PresellRole

My mother hates eggplant.

I didn’t know that. I thought she loved it, considering the number of times we were forced to eat it when we were kids. And then, when I was all grown up, I finally took a great liking to it, only to find that my mother always hated it. To me that was one of the biggest surprises of my life.

It’s the kind of surprise you’re likely to get if you don’t do a target profile interview.

When selling a book, a course, a workshop—or any kind of info-product, it’s easy to believe that our perception was right all along. We resolutely sit down and battle our way through the headline and the body copy on our landing page.

We think we know the problem well, have the right solution and we’re all ready to sell to the client.

Except it’s a bit like selling a yummy eggplant dish to my mother. It would have saved all of us a lot of grief if we did some research, wouldn’t it?

As soon as you hear the term “research” it’s easy to think of Google Adwords and Facebook

However, in most cases such drama is totally unnecessary. When creating an information product, we’ve done almost zero research. We simply create the product that we want to create and then link it to an existing problem.

For instance, if you look at the Article Writing Course, it’s about writing, but the problem is about “getting clients to call you”. Now that’s the bit of research you should be doing.

And this research involves talking to a single client, who we fondly call the “target profile”.

The target profile will tell you exactly what’s wrong with your offering, almost every single time. Which means you can tweak, but mostly have to rewrite the entire page, look at all the objections, redo the uniqueness. The target profile interview is likely to turn your world upside down, and it’s all for a good cause.

When you pre-sell the course, you’ll realise that the target profile interview is critical

You don’t necessarily need the target profile when you’re creating the contents of the book (except when you’ve already written it), but you will need the target profile at the very start of the sales, pre-sell process. Without the target profile, you’re just guessing that they love “eggplant” when in fact their favourite dish is quite something else.

Doing the interview with the target profile becomes super paramount. There’s just one tiny problem: how do you do the interview?

The interview is designed to primarily sniff out the problem of the client

Let’s say your product—your information product—is about “how to grow 1000 tomatoes in a 3 x 3 foot area”. It might seem like the problem is obvious, right? The problem is either that your crop of tomatoes has been too tiny in the past, or that you don’t have enough space to grow tomatoes.

Yet, that’s not necessarily the way the client sees things. Maybe their problem is completely different.

Maybe their problem is that their tomato crops have been constantly attacked by white flies. Which is why the main problem is going to need tweaking. If you don’t solve the “white flies problem”, you may not be able to sell your product.

Waitasecond, doesn’t this change the entire information product?

Let’s say your information product was about how to plant, grow and harvest tomatoes, wouldn’t the “white flies” be a diversion?

Didn’t we just agree that then client should not be involved in the creation of the info-product?

https://www.psychotactics.com/creating-products-clients/ We did indeed, but it’s more than likely that the “white flies” issue is just a side show that can be easily tackled in the info-product.

Yet, because the client sees it as the biggest issue, it’s hard for that client to focus on anything else. And it’s the target profile interview that reveals the fact that the client sees the main problem differently from you.

In almost every situation your perception of the problem will be different from the client

Which is why you need to make sure you choose the client with a relative degree of care. Over the years we’ve found the best target profile to be someone who’s got two qualities: • Quality 1: They’re eager to buy—because they have a genuine problem. • Quality 2: They’re able to pay.

Let’s take an example of a real example to show you how these two elements work together

I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve had the most terrible internet connection for the longest time. So bad, in fact, that it was impossible to make a Skype call as my voice would get garbled after 5 minutes.

So bad that a 100 mb file would take over 25 hours, if it got to the server in the first place.

About three days ago, we got our turn to get high speed fibre.

And how do they sell the fibre to me? They talk about Netflix and downloading stuff. But even in my darkest hours of throttled bandwidth, we were able to watch Netflix without too much drama.

What really scared me was how slowly my backups were moving up to the cloud

I’d have at least five backups off-line, but having one super-fast backup online was imperative. When offered 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or 1 Gig, which one do you think I’ve chosen? However, because the smart copywriter selling the offer didn’t bother to check, he will never know why most clients are choosing the lower speeds.

The company would continue to sell fibre connections, but be not hitting the right hot buttons, even when they have the above two conditions of a) the client need the problem solved and b)having the ability to pay.

The target profile interview itself follows a route of discovery

You follow the path of The Brain Audit. The Brain Audit has seven elements and since you already have the target profile, you have six of the elements to go through. You start with the problem, then move to the solution, and work your way through objections, testimonials, risk reversal and uniqueness.

At all times, the clients are filling in the gaps for you. You’re simply interviewing them and finding out what’s on their mind. In short, they’re telling you what you’d need to do to get them to buy the product.

The ISP can do the same with me. What’s even better is that the client will tell you all of their issues, and even if you don’t put it in the headline of your sales page, you can still cover the issues in the features and benefits and then further down in the bullet points.

Easily the most important reason for the target profile interview is the emotion in the language.

When you sit down at your computer and write, you often write words that are dry and devoid of emotion. When a client describes the problem, there’s a completely different set of emotions that are hard, if not impossible to replicate. Which is why the target profile interview becomes crucial for pre-sell and for any ongoing sales.

But why not involve the target profile from the beginning of the content creation?

You could do the interview first and use that interview as a roadmap for the contents of the product (as well as the sales page copy)?

This answer is ridiculously difficult to answer.

Here’s why. Let’s say you have a target profile. And let’s say they have a bunch of issues. Now if your goal is to simply answer those questions and thus create a book, video or audio, you’re on the right path. Many books are written around a brief that involves you simply answering the client’s questions. This isn’t to say that the info-product needs to be boring.

Take for example an info-product I’m creating on the topic of “how to create an e-book using InDesign”

Around 2013, I had already created a version of this info-product and it sold remarkably well. Since then InDesign has gotten a bit better and while the principles remain the same, I thought of upgrading the product. Which is why I started working with a client on this very topic. In effect he was asking questions and I was building the product around his problems and needs.

However, merely answering a question isn’t always the way to go

Take for instance the Website Masterclass we did way back in 2006. The live workshop and the course itself was about websites, but the angle we took was hinged around “religion”. It was about how “religions” are built and this includes religions such as Harley Davidson, or sports such as cricket or football.

The metaphor of religion was superimposed on how to build a website. And it was an extremely powerful metaphor for most, if not all the attendees. They understood the concept and the underlying principles and that the website was just a medium to express themselves.

Involving a client in the process can be both useful as well as tiresome

Instead of creating something using your own parameters and creativity, there’s a great likelihood of getting stuck to a fixed format dictated by the needs of the client. Often enough, customers are only helpful if the info-product is something they’re thinking about and need. However, if the info-product isn’t something they’re thinking about, it’s impossible to get the client to participate.

Take the issue of an info-product like the First Fifty Words, for example

When you start writing an article, you need to get off to a brilliant start. However, that’s the point where a lot of writers get horribly stuck. Let’s say you ask a client to participate in creating a product.

What are they likely to say?

They’re likely to give you the problem—which in their case is that they struggle to write the First Fifty Words. The problem is not something they can decipher, and so any input from the client is only possible once you put the information together and get them to review the course.

In my experience, both the types of info-products can exist side by side

However, to create really info-product that’s a lot different from what everyone else is creating, you’d have to think of your own method of solving a problem. I tend to avoid any target profile input at the start.

I can’t say I’m completely deaf to a target profile’s comments, but by and large I go off to create what I think is important to get to the end point. A road map with the target profile might seem to be good, but it might lead you down the path that everyone else is taking. If you want to get a little off tangent (in a good way), my advice is to avoid the target profile until much later in the process.

Knowing the client and the language of the client is critical.

It’s what helps us to talk to, and sell to clients in their own words. And they’re happy when you take the trouble to find out what’s important to them.

P.S.Coming Soon! New Ebook

Sorry, There Is No Magic Button (How to Start and Take Control of Your Business)

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Testimonial Secrets How to get meaningful testimonials, without needing to ‘bribe anyone’ for it.

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/secret-life-of-testimonials-simple-powerful-techniques-to-get-better-clients-and-sales/

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness(Look for episode 141) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read and Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/create-uniqueness/ |

Report: How To Win The Resistance Game

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

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends:

http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend

Three Month Vacation:

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

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Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Why selling strategies to competition is a smart idea

📅 September 15, 2017 | View in Gmail

Competition? That’s the enemy isn’t it?

Why would you sell or worse, give the competition your ideas? It doesn’t seem to make sense at all and yet it’s a very solid business strategy—and especially for small business.

Here are three solid reasons why competition can change your life for the better. Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 155 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/selling-strategies-competition/ |

Two more short podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#154: How do you get to downtime? Take time off? Doesn’t everyone want that? So how are you supposed to achieve that force of business? How do you get to downtime? And what about the passion projects you’ve been putting off for so long?

In this episode we start on a journey that’s been put aside for much too long. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 151 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/find-bsuiness-coaches/ |

#147: How to make the leap from a job into entrepreneurship You don’t know if it’s the right time to jump into being an entrepreneur.

What about the mortgage, the family and the bills? And how do you deal with the fear? How do you stay steadfast to your vision? And what about focus? These questions spin in your head over and over again.

This episode helps you understand how to keep true to your vision, stay focus in a distracted world and when to take the leap. Listen to or read this interesting episode here. (Look for episode 147 in iTunes) iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Read or Listen

https://www.psychotactics.com/job-to-enrepreneur/ |

Enjoy, Sean D’Souza P.S. I would love to hear from you. Send me an email

sean@psychotactics.com with your suggestions and ideas.

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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How To Write Enthusiastically (And Why It’s Important To Do So)

📅 September 12, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Write Enthusiastically (And Why It’s Important To Do So)

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

https://www.psychotactics.com/write-enthusiastically/

What is the definition of sales?

There’s are probably a lot of definitions, but back in the year 2003 or so, Canadian-born American motivational public speaker and author, Brian Tracy came to New Zealand. I loved Brian’s work and got to know him personally.

One of the things I really liked was his definition of sales. “Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another”. A transfer of enthusiasm.

Wow! I always thought of sales as something grimy

Something you were forced to do to get your product or service in front of a client. With this definition, Brian changed the way I looked at sales. What he couldn’t have known is that he didn’t just change my perception of sales, but of communication itself. If selling could be enhanced through enthusiasm, then so could writing. Instead of just putting words on paper, an article could come alive with enthusiasm.

There’s just one problem, isn’t there?

How do you write enthusiastically? Are there stages or steps to follow?

Not surprisingly, the stages aren’t something you’re unfamiliar with. The steps to enthusiastic writing are seemingly so obvious that it’s easy to miss them. Writing can get really grimy without the power of enthusiasm. It’s time to find out what makes your words sing, isn’t it?

Let’s take a look at the three steps you’re going to need to put that zing in your words. 1: You need an outline. And the outline needs to be fresh. 2: You need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. 3: You need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy.

1: How to write enthusiastically: The “fresh” outline The week my mother in law came to stay with us, I had to throw out all my spices.

Most people think that cooking is the act of getting ingredients together in a pot or vessel. But we also know that ingredients matter. The fresher the ingredients, the tastier the food. What we seem to forget are the spices.

Like many others, I bought bottles of spices and they sat in the pantry for weeks, even months on end. My mother in law was appalled at the lack of freshness. She got me to bin the entire lot and start with a fresh lot.

An outline is a lot like stale spices

Whether you’re outlining a big project, like a book, or a relatively smaller project, like an article, you’re still dealing with the factor of freshness. If the outline is a week old, it’s already getting relatively stale. If it’s older, you’re likely to be struggling to find out what you outlined in the first instance.

The reason I outline is because it saves me time

I’m not exactly the kind of person that loves to outline. The reason why I do so is because I know it gives me structure and it saves me an enormous amount of time.

Even so, there’s the curse called “excessive outlining”.

In my desire to create a truckload of content, I’ll head to the cafe and outline five or ten articles. If I get down to writing those articles within a week or two, maybe even three, I’d be fine. But as you can tell, it’s practically impossible to write so many articles in such a short time span.

Which means that the outline starts to get stale

I get newer ideas along the way, and add to the mountain of outlines and the longer I wait, the more the earlier outlines seem to fade into oblivion. I will look at the outlines; I know they’re important, but they’re not fresh anymore.

Like those spices in my kitchen cabinet, I can throw them in the dish, but they won’t enhance the dish at all. Which is why you need to get an idea, outline it, and then get started with your writing.

If you need to re-outline the material along the way, that’s perfectly fine, but the outline must be relatively fresh at all times. The longer you wait, the more you have to battle with what you were really thinking about. And battle takes up a lot of energy, which means that you’re less likely to write with any sort of enthusiasm.

Consider that outlines don’t vary too much

An outline for an article will tend to have a pretty straightforward construction. That article outline isn’t going to change a lot six months or even six years from now, is it?

You can still write a great article or create a chapter in a book about it. It makes no sense to say that six years from now you will shy away from writing the article. But this is where the weirdness kicks in.

Intellectually you know you can write the article, but when it comes down to writing it, the fact that you wrote the outline a while ago will prevent you from getting too far ahead. You’ll somehow want to write another article—any article—and avoid the one that’s stale.

When you’re going through so much avoidance it’s hard to be enthusiastic

• Fresh outlines are like fresh spices. • You shouldn’t wait too long. • You need to outline and write as quickly as possible.

I will outline on one day and by the next day or two, I’m writing

But why not write on the day itself? You could, of course, but more often than not it’s better to keep a bit of space between the outline and the material you’re about to write.

Why?

Because the outline allows your brain to let the thoughts percolate.

A day later your article is likely to be far superior because you’ve been thinking about the contents as the hours tick by. An outline, a fresh outline, is crucial to get that enthusiasm in your writing, but it’s not enough.

The second most important factor is feeling strongly about the issue right now.

2: Feeling Strongly About The Issue Right Now My friend Cher taught me an important lesson on the day of my father in law’s funeral.

When someone close to you dies, most people are uncomfortable around you. They know you’re grieving and they feel your pain. It’s at this point that almost everyone makes the same statement.

They say something like: “If you need anything, please let me know”. Cher did something entirely different. She baked a whole bunch of muffins, brought them over, stayed for a short while and then left.

I feel strongly about that issue right now

I feel that so many people tend to use words, not actions. That if we were all like Cher, we wouldn’t be asking “what can we do?” Instead, we’d be doing something for our friends, our relatives or even that stranger that we may never meet again.

When you feel strongly about an issue, you need to write about it as quickly as you can.

Right at the top of my agenda is to write an article about how we need to:

• 1) Not ask what we should do, but do something instead. • 2) Not wait to tell someone how they changed our lives, but be specific about how they did it. • 3) Avoid grumbles and demonstrate persistence, instead We feel strongly about issues all the time

We may have just run into a problem and the issue is top of mind. Or we may have been the recipient of a great wave of generosity. But you don’t always need to be prodded by happy and sad moments.

You could have just heard a podcast and that could have ignited a fire within you. Or in the case of this article, a client may ask you a question that you feel needs to be answered in detail.

There are lots of things that rev up the engines of your brain and the more strongly you feel about these issues right now, the more likely you are to write with a greater amount of enthusiasm.

Yet, doesn’t this “feeling” lead directly to the outlining process?

Yes it does. The feeling comes right before the outline. Once you feel the surge, you then get down to outline. However, in many cases, a surge may break the rule of outlining.

Take for instance, when you see something on Facebook or in a forum. There’s a discussion going and you need to get an important point across. In such a scenario, outlining may slow down the process and the moment of passion passes.

Instead you need to capture the enthusiasm while it’s still fresh. What you tend to write in that moment may be remarkably more lucid than anything that’s outlined and planned.

Writing while the “iron is hot” is not an excuse to avoid the outlining process

Outlining is smart because it saves time. Writing an answer quickly is just a way of getting your thoughts out quickly and keeping that fire alive. It’s a shoddy excuse if you just want to avoid outlining.

Yet it does feed the flames of your outline. I tend to write quickly, if needed, but then I will create an outline and fit the information into that outline. Later, probably the day after, I will write the article or the chapter in the book.

Enthusiasm doesn’t come easily

Yet it does strike from time to time and if you don’t go through the process of writing down your thoughts and fashioning them, your writing won’t necessarily be dull.

A lot of writing is done by sitting down and just working your way through a project. Yet, that sparkle that comes from frustration, desperation or inspiration comes and goes in quick bursts. Learning to capture those shiny bits in your article is what a great writer does.

All of this outlining and striking when the iron is hot is about structure. It’s about discipline. Yet, enthusiasm often shows up when you least expect it. It’s at this point that we need to learn to trust the diversion. Let’s find out how deviating from the script is a good idea to create a high level of enthusiasm.

3: You need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy.

It’s not unlike the “I have a dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

In the book, “Messy”, author, Tim Harford talks about how Martin Luther King Jr valued preparation. By the age of five he was learning Bible passages by heart. By fourteen his dedication to detailed research, outlining and re-outlining was paying off as he won a prize in a public speaking contest.

This attention to sticking to a script paid off time and time again when he started preaching, then later as he snapped up an oratory prize in college, and finally helped him get his job as a minister.

Every sermon started out on yellow lined paper as an idea on Tuesday, would be researched and re-drafted many times during the week, before he delivered it on Sunday. He lavished well over 15 hours a week learning every sermon by heart, just so that he never had to refer to his notes.

Yet the one speech that was the most memorable of all wasn’t rehearsed

It was an improvisation. Even though he went through his prepared text for most of the speech, as he came to the end, he started to improvise.

At that moment, Mahalia Jackson shouted: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” And then he was off, giving one of the most memorable speeches, that seemed to take a life of its own.

In the world of scriptwriting it’s known that scripts take a life of their own

Often writers are astounded to find that the character in the script dictating the series of events. This concept of the character taking over sounds really odd, until you speak to writers who express how the words on the page seem to come alive in a way that is hard to imagine.

To create enthusiasm in your writing, you need to follow trust the diversion

The outline is crucial, there’s not a shred of doubt about that fact. The outline lets you stay within the parameters, but an outline can also be the launching pad for enthusiasm of a monumental scale. Suddenly the words are flowing out of you in a way you can’t imagine.

The result is something you’re not anticipating, and yet it’s extremely pleasing when you get to the finish point. Make no mistake: the results are random when you’re first starting out. Martin Luther King Jr. was no average speaker.

Writers, singers, jazz players, sports people—they’re not rank amateurs. They’ve got a bit of practice under their belt and it’s only at that point that the improvisation kicks in.

Which isn’t to say you should wait until you’re a great writer, just to improvise

No one is a great writer. Everyone is still learning their craft and the best way to get started down this path of improvisation is to simply go down the road when you hear “improv” calling you. The enthusiasm you feel for the subject matter will present itself in a way that you don’t or can’t expect.

Even in the very early stages, you should break free and let the text take over.

Unburdened by typos and grammatical errors. Unfettered by whether what you’re writing makes sense or not. Writing in a way that a cartoonist doodles, without a care in the world.

It’s odd, this advice—even contrary.

And yet we know it to be true. To get enthusiasm you have to doodle, do some fair work, then go back to doodling again. It’s what makes for great work, and brings immense power to your words.

Announcements Launching 25 October, 2017: E-Book: Sorry, There Is No Magic Button (How to Start and Take Control of Your Business)

Brisbane Meet-Up—1 November 2017: More details here.

https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/psychotactics-three-hour-meet/

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products

Critical Website Components How do you create compelling pages on your website? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

https://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/

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https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/

Black Belt Presentation Series How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

http://psychotactics.com/products/black-belt-presentations

Online Membership Website How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

http://psychotactics.com/products/membership-site-strategy

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Last day for Special Offer: Website Components-How to Create Compelling Pages on Your Website + Special Bonus

📅 September 09, 2017 | View in Gmail

Just a quick reminder in case you missed the earlier email.

When you buy Website Components-How To Create Compelling Pages On Your Website from the 2nd September to 9th September 2017 you’ll also get a Special Bonus - ‘How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses’ (worth $45) absolutely free.

Do you often wonder if your home page, about us page or client acquisition page is working at less than its full potential? These three pages are critical to any website, and yet we often put the content together on these pages hurriedly.

Well, “hurriedly” is the wrong word to use. Instead we spend hours trying to get just the right content; just the right look. And then, after hours, maybe days of frustration, we put together something that seems right.

But is it really compelling? Can it be more compelling? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

Introducing: The Website Component Series Find out for yourself how you can spruce up the home page, about us page and the sign up page. We deconstruct existing pages and then in true Psychotactics-fashion reconstruct them step-by-step.

And the Special Bonus: How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses

In this 40 page booklet you will learn: • The Psychology of Bonuses • How to Find your Bonuses • How to Create a One-Of-A-Kind Bonus • How to Avoid the Bonus Trap • Why Unbundling Makes a Big Difference to How your Product is Perceived. • And more…

Judge for yourself at:

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Warm regards, Sean P.S. This product is very critical if you’re just sitting down to write your pages, but it’s even more critical if you have these pages up, and you’ll like to improve them to help you convert more traffic. Judge for yourself at

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

P.P.S. This special offer is only valid until 9th September 2017 (US Eastern). Have a look and make a decision based on what you read.

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How To Double Your Sales With Versions and Satellite Products

📅 September 05, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Double Your Sales With Versions and Satellite Products

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well)

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=Id_5NFqg5dEtt1&b=nKTZEtRDgSSIfJDhAHBGGg .

Most people have never heard of the Knoll brothers, but they’ve certainly heard of the program the brothers invented.

That program was Photoshop

Developed initially in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll, it wasn’t the sophisticated program like the modern version. Back then it wasn’t called Photoshop, but was named “Image-Pro”. It was only when the Knoll brothers decided to sell the program in 1988 that they changed the name to Photoshop.

As the story goes, no one was really interested in the program, except for Adobe. Adobe saw the potential and purchased all the wholesale rights, and by 1990 the first version of Photoshop was released. Today, Photoshop has gone through thousands of changes and 27 versions.

Every time a version appeared on the market, two sets of customers bought the product: new clients and existing ones. And in that version history is a lesson for almost all of our information products.

Photoshop is no doubt, built by its programmers, but who comes up with endless suggestions for the improvement of the program? A large portion comes from the users themselves.

And who buys the newer version of Photoshop?

Once again, it’s the existing users of the program. Today, Adobe has a subscription model in place, where all upgrades are automatic, but for at least 20+ years, the newer versions of the product were purchased by existing users.

A similar concept can be used to sell your own info-products

It’s not common in the information products world to think of books, videos or courses as they do in the software world. Most information product creators write a book or create a course and it stays in its original format. Yet your target profile is always looking for an improvement.

At Psychotactics, we create newer versions of info-products too.

The Article Writing Course is now in Version 2.0. So is the First Fifty Words course and The Brain Audit has seen many versions since we first released it in back in 2002.

Bear in mind that not all courses or info-products need constant revision.

But instead of simply dashing madly into yet another information product, you might want to take a look at how versions will help sell info-products to an existing, as well as new audience.

Listening to the target profile can also help you create more in-depth versions of your products

Take the Article Writing Course for instance. It’s an extremely comprehensive course and clients love it—they really do. At first the course existed as a standalone, but the target profile—or clients, in this case—kept asking for in-depth sub-courses.

For instance, writing headlines is already covered in the Article Writing Course, but now we also have a separate eight-week headline course. The opening of the article, or the First Fifty Words as we call it, is also part of the Article Writing Course, but it’s also a separate 8-week intensive course.

What you’re learning from the above example is that even when you have what seems to be a complete info-product, clients are more than happy to buy in-depth versions of the components of the products.

To make this clearer, let’s break up the Article Writing Course into components • Headlines • First Fifty Words • Connectors • And so on.

When you look at the list above, every component could possibly become a separate and more detailed information product or course.

Some might be shorter, or take up fewer pages in a book, but they all have the propensity to break off from the mother ship called the “Article Writing Course” and become satellites of their own.

And clients tend to want more of the same good stuff you’re putting out.

If you go deeper into the satellite info-products, clients are more than happy to buy into your offering. We know this to be true because of what we see at Psychotactics. A client will do the headlines course and then do the Article Writing Course and possibly the First Fifty Words course.

Or they may start with the Article Writing Course and then move to the headlines course. The satellite courses don’t cannibalise the main course. And this concept applies to any sort of info-products whether audio, video or text.

And you know this to be true because of the music industry

At some point, we’ve all bought music in some shape or form. Some of us may have had the pleasure of buying cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs and then signed up to Spotify, Pandora or Apple Music. The fact that we already have access to all the music we need doesn’t stop us from listening to it on the radio or YouTube, for that matter.

If the musician rolls into town, we’re reasonably likely to pony up anywhere between $100-$500 for concert tickets. In short, all versions and satellite versions work and the client—your target profile—wants you to create updated or at least deeper content on the very same topic.

The target profile is a great boon for a business

If you have a target audience, you can’t really do much. If you have some persona stuff, again you’re just stabbing at some made up stuff.

However, the moment you have a real client in front of you, you are able to learn so much more, because a real client speaks, complains, gives feedback and yes, buys your info-products.

So let’s summarise what we’ve learned:

The Knoll brothers: John and Thomas Knoll. We learned they invented Photoshop.

But besides that very important point, we also learned:

The target profile plays a significant role in in a version or satellite product creation

Users usually want a sort of upgrade. They’ll ask you to fix this and that in your info-product. Most info-product creators nod glibly and do nothing. They simply don’t bother to create a newer version of the info-product.

Not all products need an upgrade

An upgrade can be as much, if not more work than the existing product. Even so, you’re able to sell an upgraded product to existing as well as newer clients.

The other aspect is the creation of satellite info-products

Just because you have a complete and detailed info-product, doesn’t mean your target profile won’t hanker after even greater detail. This is when you create a satellite info-product.

In short, the user is asking you to create info-products that help them understand your information differently or in an intermediate format. Paying attention to the target profile makes for loyal clients and substantial profits from an existing clientele

Instead of scrambling all over the place to get new clients all the time, you can use this concept of satellites and versions to run an extremely profitable business.

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“What do your customers think? What would make them buy?” In the Brain Audit - Sean teaches you 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you.

The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.

Ankesh Kothari - Biztactics Read more about The Brain Audit

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=Id_5NFqg5dEtt1&b=i0tEZIjCaTjpIX9Q6AHzkg

Top-Selling Products Under $50

Critical Website Components How do you create compelling pages on your website? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

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Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested?

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=Id_5NFqg5dEtt1&b=SXWbFPibTIofXTF1Puj1KQ

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers

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Black Belt Presentation Series How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

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Online Membership Website How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

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Special Offer: How to Create Compelling Pages on Your Website + Special Bonus (Valued at $45)

📅 September 02, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hi Seree

When you buy Website Components-How To Create Compelling Pages On Your Website from the 2nd September to 9th September 2017, you’ll also get a Special Bonus - ‘How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses’ (worth $45) absolutely free.

But is it really compelling? Can it be more compelling? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

And the Special Bonus: How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses In this 40 page booklet you will learn:

• The Psychology of Bonuses • How to Find your Bonuses • How to Create a One-Of-A-Kind Bonus • How to Avoid the Bonus Trap • Why Unbundling Makes a Big Difference to How your Product is Perceived. • And more… Judge for yourself at:

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

P.P.S. This special offer is only valid until 9th September 2017. Have a look and make a decision based on what you read.

https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

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August 2017

Creating Information Products: When to Leave The Clients Out

📅 August 29, 2017 | View in Gmail

Creating Information Products: When to Leave The Clients Out

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J_p7JAx25dEtt1&b=Ki3dJDDZXKZaTDMI5W.bFw

Did you ever wonder why evergreen trees don’t shed their leaves even in freezing winter?

The moment autumn rolls along, most trees in temperate and boreal zones shed their leaves. Every tree has chemical light receptors—phytochrome and cryptochrome.

These light receptors can sense a loss of light. Which is precisely when deciduous and broadleaf trees shed their leaves. However, the evergreen trees hang on to their leaves even in the dead of winter, because their foliage is coated with a wax. This wax helps fob off the cold. Plus their cells bear an anti-freeze sort of chemical that enable it to avoid it having to drop its leaves.

When creating an information product, we have to mimic trees

Sometimes it’s best to drop the client out of the creation of the product, because they’re likely to get in the way. At other times we have to make sure we hold onto them like the evergreen tree does with all its leaves.

But when do you get the client involved? And when do you drop them?

In today’s newsletter let’s look at—When to leave the client out.

How to create an information product and why you need to leave the target profile out of it

What’s the worst way to cook a great dinner?

Let’s assume you ask the guests to drum up a list of their favourite meals. Were you to go down this path of asking guests for their recommendations, you’d quickly get swamped with a mishmash of dishes.

Dal makhani, fried chicken, broccoli, couscous—just about any dish would show up on the request list. And that’s no way to cook a dinner, Instead a better way is to have an overall view of what the clients need—and then completely avoid asking them for any advice while you’re prepping dinner.

A similar process plays itself out when you’re creating an info-product

Many years ago when I sat down to write an info-product on membership sites. My idea was simple: I pre-sold the book on membership sites. I then asked clients to give me the topics they wanted me to cover.

As you’d expect, I got a list of questions that seemed to go on forever. While at first it seems like topics given by clients are a goldmine, the requests turned out to be incredibly debilitating. As you’d expect, I was unsure where to start or how to go ahead.

When creating information products, leave your client out of the planning stage completely.

The goal of the information product—a great information product—is to get a client from Point A to Point B and to enjoy the ride in the process. Think of yourself as a GPS. The GPS has access to a tonne of information, but do you see that information on screen?

Instead, what the GPS does is show you only what’s valid for your journey. And should there be delays along a route, that very same GPS may take you down a longer route, but eventually get you to the destination as quickly as possible.

Take for instance the series called ‘Black Belt Presentations’

The goal of the book series isn’t just to create presentations. Instead it helps you create presentations that the entire audience can recall, and repeat, long after you’ve finished speaking.

When creating this series, I had to think of the three elements that would help get the client to achieve this level of simplicity and elegance. Yet, if I were to ask clients what they wanted to see in a series on presentations, I’d have got a massive list. So I did what you should now do. You should play GPS. What three steps can the client take to get to the desired end point?

Three steps? What if you have seventeen?

Well, cut it down to three. With the ‘Black Belt Presentations’ series, the focus was on slide design, structure of the presentation itself and finally crowd control. With just three big steps, you should be able to take the client from one point to another. And just for good measure, let’s take another example.

Let’s say you’re writing about how to take good photographs.

Surely there are a dozen things you can cover, but you focus on just three. Maybe it’s not even three broad topics, but subtopics instead. So instead of exposure, ISO and aperture, maybe you could focus on just three aspects of aperture, instead.

At this point in your product creation, you should have little or no input from your client

All the outlines, the drafts and more drafts should be done all by your lonesome self. It’s only when you get to the next stage and write down all of the information in a book that the client should take a look.

It’s akin to cooking a dish and then giving someone to taste it. If you’re creating a video or audio, however, this method of recording might be a waste of time and energy, which is why the movies use storyboards. At the storyboard stage, clients can see how it’s all playing out because it’s a more polished, finished version of your idea.

I tend to have written material ready first, long before I create any audio or video

With written material, it’s easier to move things around a bit, should you need to do so. At this stage, I’ll tend to get a lot of suggestions and feedback by clients. Even so, it’s important to restrict the feedback to just 2-3 clients. If you notice, I didn’t say “editors”, and said “clients” instead.

The reason why you should choose “clients” is because they’ve paid or are likely to pay for the product. They are invested in what your final output will look like and they’ll be quick to tell you what’s confusing. At this stage, if they make suggestions or additions, it’s not terribly hard to implement their recommendations as well.

Finally, I’d go to the editor

The editor brings the ultimate level of finesse to an info-product. That editor is likely to look through the grammar, remove inconsistencies and get your product up to a very high standard.

So if we were to go back to the analogy of the dinner, you’re the chef, the clients are the tasters (and recommenders) and the editor is person who makes sure the plating is just right. When you have all of these three elements in place, what you truly have is a great dinner—or in your case, a great information product.

Bon Appétit!

Announcing: Waiting List Open The article writing limited-edition, self-study course (it’s designed to bring skill—not more information). Find out—How to Stop knocking on client’s doors, and get them to call you instead.

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J_p7JAx25dEtt1&b=xuQM4fys_fq4jtln2BDoUQ

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“What do your customers think? What would make them buy?” In the Brain Audit - Sean teaches you 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you.

The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.

Ankesh Kothari - Biztactics Read more about The Brain Audit

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J_p7JAx25dEtt1&b=asIXwG8TzGIcOScVY_7fiA

Top-Selling Products

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.

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Black Belt Presentation Series How to completely control the room-without turning anyone off?

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J_p7JAx25dEtt1&b=rB7ShOgeu8DuHLZ7lgih3Q

Online Membership Website How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

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About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Write 4000 Word Articles Without Getting Exhausted(Look for episode 150) iTunes

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Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)”

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How To Write 4000 Word Articles Without Getting Exhausted

📅 August 26, 2017 | View in Gmail

The biggest problem with article writing is the exhaustion factor

It’s write, delete, write, delete and the endless cycle goes on.

So how do you go about writing an article? Is it really a writing gene?

Well, it can’t be a gene because I struggled like everyone else. I’d take two working days to write an article, back in 2000. Today I can complete an 800-word article in about 45 minutes.

So what’s changed?

In this series you get to see how I went from getting really frustrated, to writing 800 word articles and then 4000 word articles. • What’s the secret to such an enormous output? • How do you write articles without getting exhausted? Can you really? Find out more here: How I Write 4000 Word Articles Without Getting Exhausted Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 150 in iTunes) iTunes

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Two more short podcasts for the weekend (Transcripts are available too)

#153: The Five Competing Forces of Business - Part 1 No one thinks running a small business is easy. But even so, there are forces that pull you in all directions. These five forces almost seem to tear at us as we go through our daily work.

It’s not just a question of coping with the forces. We have to somehow make them part of our lives. Let’s find out how. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 153 in iTunes) iTunes

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J5FN_Nj7rdEtt1&b=ChSneYUD9qc5jcXQO6OzIQ | Android

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J5FN_Nj7rdEtt1&b=KjnpSretvwEM9CywNXuePQ | Read or Listen

renuka@psychotactics.com |

#151: Unusual Methods to Find Outstanding Coaches We’ve all done courses that have been a waste of time, money and energy. Yet, finding a great coach isn’t easy, is it? There doesn’t seem to be any way to know in advance how good (or bad) a coach will be.

Or is there?

There are a few benchmarks that make the difference between average and special coaches. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 151 in iTunes) iTunes

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Enjoy, Sean D’Souza P.S. I would love to hear from you. Send me an email

sean@psychotactics.com with your suggestions and ideas.

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Unusual Methods to Find Outstanding Coaches

📅 August 22, 2017 | View in Gmail

Unusual Methods to Find Outstanding Coaches

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JZriJp_hPdEtt1&b=xk1L4REUXDELJgl0MlqSpw

I wanted 200 gm of coffee. The Russian behind the counter was only willing to sell me 50 gm.

My idea of a great coffee, was instant coffee, Nescafé to be precise. At which point I was introduced to New Zealand’s amazing coffee culture. To improve my coffee taste buds, I first moved to a slightly fancier brand; a Dutch barista-style coffee called Moccona.

It consisted of coffee granules in a reasonably sized jar. However, that wasn’t enough. My journey to becoming a coffee-snob involved buying a pack of pre-roasted coffee called Gravity. Shortly after, I ran into the Russian.

The Russian ran a boutique roasting company not far from my house

When I needed coffee, I’d go over and order about 200 gm (about 7 ounces). Until the day he decided not to sell me that quantity. He was only willing to sell me 50 grams (about 2 ounces). “You live close by,” he said. “What’s the point of buying coffee and letting it oxidise for the whole week? When you’re out of coffee, you come back and take the next 50 gm.”

A good coach is like my Russian coffee “dealer”.

Good coaches know that you can’t consume massive amounts at one go, and so they slow you down so that you get a far deeper, richer experience. Over the years, I’ve had the luxury of having good coaches. Coaches that take speed up your progress. And there are also the bad coaches, who in their own way, teach you what good coaching is all about.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how you pick a good coach that moves you forward on the journey from a “Nescafé” to a delicious “brew of excellent coffee”.

We’ll cover three factors that will help you spot good coaches: • Factor 1: Look for the “End Point” in the testimonials • Factor 2: Focus on the next play • Factor 3: Rollercoaster design

Factor 1: Look for the “End Point” in the testimonials

If the sky is filled with cirrus clouds, what will the next 24 hours bring?

Cirrus clouds are those feather-like clouds you see high up in the sky. In fact they’re so high up at 20,000 feet that they’re composed exclusively of ice-crystals. But here’s an interesting fact: if you see a sky filled with cirrus clouds, you’ll get rain and cooler, if not cold weather within the following 24 hours.

What’s fascinating about this fact is that almost all of us have seen those fairy-like cirrus clouds, because they can cover up to 30% of the Earth’s atmosphere at a time. Even so, we’ve missed the obvious—that rain and cold soon follows.

Missing the obvious is something we tend to do a lot when trying to find the right coach—or even the right course to attend—online or offline. And that obvious fact is in the most obvious place of all, in the testimonials.

Almost every coach or coaching system will have testimonials, and it’s through scanning the testimonials that you’re likely to find a lot of incredibly valuable information. [Content continues with extensive discussion of coaching factors…]

Announcement: Why most planning fails (the critical importance of chaos in planning)

📅 August 19, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hi Seree

So year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve.

Then suddenly it’s August 2017, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. And hey, this phenomenon isn’t new. It’s not like you’re not trying to achieve stuff, but something always seems to derail your goals.

And what’s worse is that you’ve read all the books on planning as well.

But they haven’t helped either. There’s a reason why they haven’t helped. It’s because those books were written by highly organised people. What you need is for someone disorganised to write a book. A book based on chaos. And how chaos is critical to starting out your plan.

Aha…here’s a 35 Page Report: The Chaos Planning System

That will help you move ahead. So have a look at this product and judge the value for yourself.

https://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Warm regards, Sean P.S. You also get the book—Pronto Learning: Insiders Tips To Speed Up Your Learning

https://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

“Since putting Chaos Planning into place my stress levels have gone way down. It’s a beautiful thing!”

“Taking the time to legitimately mark off 3-4 hours for chaos each working day has made all the difference. In the past, just like you described, I stacked up my days with back-to-back everything — totally unrealistic.

I would recommend this product—It was an easy read and an easy implementation, and since putting it into place my stress levels have gone way down. It’s a beautiful thing!”

Dan Wagner, USA

Judge for yourself

https://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Does Every Product or Service Need Its Own Uniqueness?

📅 August 15, 2017 | View in Gmail

Does Every Product or Service Need Its Own Uniqueness?

(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well).

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=JsmKSC0MWdEtt1&b=jXQ53KRh.e3.R8MoZ7re.A

When you look at any family on the planet, what you’re actually seeing is an example of products and services

Let’s take the eldest child. And let’s suggest his uniqueness is that he’s calm. Let’s paint the second child as having a wild nature. The third may well have an inquisitive nature. If the family were to extend almost endlessly, every child in that family would have a different character, attribute or what we’d call uniqueness.

Therefore something similar applies to your family of products and services too.

Yes, your company may have a unique character, but it’s equally important for every product or service to have a uniqueness as well.

Let’s take an example.

Let’s examine The Brain Audit, for instance.

Did The Brain Audit always have a uniqueness?

No, it didn’t. When we started, we had no uniqueness at all. Luckily we got over 800 testimonials, and that became the uniqueness. Now admittedly, once you have 800 testimonials, your product should stand out quite a bit, shouldn’t it? And yes, the product will stand out, provided the format doesn’t change in any way.

But The Brain Audit went from Version 1.0 to 2.0—and then to Version 3.2

And this is where the problem lies. If a customer has bought Version 1.0, why bother buying Version 2.0? Or for that matter Version 3.2.? And what if we were to bring out Version 4.0?

It’s where uniqueness comes waltzing right through the door. Many, if not most of our clients have bought several versions of The Brain Audit. And the reason is simple: They can see why version differs from the next. And this difference is simply a factor of uniqueness.

When you define the uniqueness, you automatically get clients interested. And not just existing customers, but new ones as well.

It’s more than likely that the new clients haven’t run into The Brain Audit

So for them the uniqueness is pitched against other books of a similar nature. Why should they spend their hard-earned money on this product vs. some other marketing-based product?

And that’s not all…

Let’s say we did put out a version of The Brain Audit on Amazon.com. And that price is just $9.99. And the product on the Psychotactics website is $119. What causes the client to buy the $119 version?

Once again we have the uniqueness come into play. If a client gets a lot more on our website vs. what’s available on Amazon. Then there’s a point of difference.

When a thick, luscious layer of uniqueness is applied, price and reluctance retreat quickly

But you can’t just depend on the client to figure all of this out. So you have to clearly define the uniqueness. You have to be able to tell the difference between an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4s.

The Brain Audit Version 2.0 and The Brain Audit Version 3.2. The Amazon offering and the website offering. Because in reality, every product or every offering needs to really stand out from the “hoi-polloi” even if the “hoi-polloi” is just a different version of your very own product or service.

In short, every product and service needs a uniqueness

Just like a family member, every product or service is different. And even if you have the very same product, but in different formats or versions, you’re still going to have to differentiate it so that clients know why they should buy one product over the other.

Next Step: Read more—When you have settled on your uniqueness, how can you test it?

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Announcing: Why most planning fails (and why chaos is your buddy)

📅 August 12, 2017 | View in Gmail

Most of us detest chaos

But there’s not a day when chaos doesn’t show up and hang around for a good part of the day.

We can ignore chaos, but it won’t go away.

But what if we planned around it?

What if we actually took chaos into consideration so that when it shows up—if it shows up—we’re more than prepared and not flustered at all.

As we head into the new year, it’s easy to get stuck into planning. What we really need is chaos planning. Because chaos will show up.

Here’s where you can find how we worked with chaos (and how you can too)

https://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Warm regards, Sean

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness

📅 August 08, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online)

https://www.psychotactics.com/create-uniqueness/

A patch of grass, is a patch of grass, is a patch of grass, right?

Take for instance the patch of grass near the volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania Every year around February, the wildebeest calves are born, all at the same time. If you look at where the calves seem to graze, it’s on one patch of grass—while completely ignoring the rest of the think.

This particular grass, which stretches for miles, has nine times the phosphorus and five times the calcium as the next patch. The enriched grass nourishes the young calves and gets them healthy for the great migration that is to follow. In other words, you could easily call this grass unique, right?

In business we rarely have this luxury of inbuilt uniqueness

Instead we have to go out and find our uniqueness, or create one. And this is where we seem to run into a lot of trouble. When we look at our products or services, they seem remarkably similar to what the competition is offering.

We too could do with a bit of phosphorus and calcium in our offerings, we believe. Contrary to what we think, we all have an incredibly powerful ability to distinguish ourselves from any competitors.

Yet, the moment we decide to work on our uniqueness, we paint ourselves into a corner

We don’t know if we’re supposed to find a uniqueness or create one. The pressure builds until we convince ourselves that the exercise of uniqueness is much too tedious, and it’s better to use our energy in other areas of marketing and sales.

Even as we’re veering away from uniqueness, we realise that we pick products and services precisely for their uniqueness. Running away from the issue isn’t going to help us move ahead. We have to turn and face it head on.

Let’s find out how you do it.

How do you go about finding uniqueness for your business/product/service?

Back in 2003, we started a little membership site called 5000bc.

It wasn’t meant to be a membership site, but so many clients wanted to discuss business issues that it made sense to have a site. At first, it had almost no content, and I spent a good few weeks putting in a dozen articles or so.

It was the early 2000’s, remember? I was able to get in touch with almost anyone on e-mail and get their permission to use their content. So I contacted billionaire, Mark Cuban, best-selling author and speaker, Wayne Dyer and other such personalities. And so, 5000bc began on its journey.

But 5000bc had no clearly-defined uniqueness

When you’re starting out a business, it’s hard just to figure out what you’re doing. You’re trying so hard to find yourself that finding the uniqueness for a product or service seems implausible, if not impossible.

Nonetheless, over the years, as 5000bc grew, we went through the process of interior design. We’d add something here, something there and soon it became quite distinct in itself. Even so, we couldn’t figure out what was unique.

This is the part where you turn to the outside world

We sent out a bunch of e-mails to clients and time, and time again they’d come up with the same response. They’d say something like this—and this is an actual quote: My favourite part about 5000bc is the character of the community. From knowing that you will personally answer my questions to knowing I can post my own answers without getting ridiculed is really nice.

I’m just getting started, but once my business is rolling, I will certainly pay it back to the community. I’ve never seen anyone put anyone else down in the Cave.

But then they might add something like this

I also like the depth of content. Before I came to 5000bc, I was very confused about the direction I want to go in for starting my business. Ever since joining 5000bc, and reading the content I’ve been getting a lot of clarity and confidence. I’m no longer running in circles, but moving towards my goals. I really appreciated the members sharing tips and comments on my post about “getting rid of negative thoughts”.

I also like that people hold you accountable to what you have entered in Taking Action Forum.

See the problem yet?

In that answer, there are several points, and seemingly none of them co-relate with each other. Let’s go over them in bullet form:

The character of the community (you can ask questions without getting ridiculed.
The depth of the content that gives me confidence and clarity.
Being held accountable.

But if a single e-mail gets three points, we already have three tangents, don’t we?

If we were to poll everyone the list would be pretty exhaustive. We’d get a list that’s akin to this:

Kind, helpful community
Restricted membership
The philosophy ensures helpfulness
Vanishing reports on various topics that may not be found elsewhere.
The critique lounge
The common language of The Brain Audit.
The that me, Sean, is always around sometimes 15-20 times a day.
That a question asked by clients may end up with a series of articles written especially for that client.

The list goes on and on and the longer the list, the bigger the uniqueness headache

Which is when you randomly pick one element from the list.

In the case of 5000bc, enough clients mentioned that they sign up for a membership site and the owners of the site are never around. They just dump information but aren’t around to clarify any queries and any such clarification has to be done at an additional price. We took that information—the fact that I’m around and answer the questions—as the uniqueness.

If that seemed like a logical uniqueness, it’s not

The Vanishing Reports, for one, are extremely well-regarded. Clients consistently like the Vanishing Reports because they consider them to be yummy bites of knowledge, focused on a single topic.

As a result, they don’t overwhelm you, and as a member, you get it free of cost, until they disappear. Or you could take the fact that the philosophy of the community ensures that there’s no trolling, no pitching of their own business, and introverts—especially introverts—feel very safe when asking questions.

Any of the elements in the list above could easily become the unique factor of 5000bc.

And yet, the way to go about choosing a uniqueness is to only pick one—any one.

And once you’ve picked you to need to elaborate why that uniqueness is so vital. It’s the elaboration that makes it unique, not necessarily the element itself. Without the elaboration, nothing is unique, or rather everything is unique.

I call this concept the “Attenborough Effect.”

The “Attenborough Effect.” A forest contains thousands of species of plants, animals and insects. To try and cover them all is plainly a waste of time. Which is why naturalist and TV presenter, David Attenborough, does something dramatic. In one particular video, he falls to the floor and focuses on a single plant: the Venus Fly Trap.

The act of dropping to the forest floor is a moment of pure drama, but that’s not what you should be getting your attention. Instead, notice that he’s ignored all the rest of the plants, animals and insects.

All of them, but the Venus Fly Trap.

This is what I call the Attenborough Effect and it’s also the lesson as to how you need to choose your own uniqueness

Your current business may do many things well, but trying to cover your own “forest floor” is a waste of time. Clients can’t pay attention to many points at the same time. Even two points are far too many as you noticed when we used the 5000bc example.

You couldn’t have “helpful community” and “Vanishing Reports” at the same time. A choice has to be made and while it may appear to you like the choice was very precise, it only seems that way because of the way in which it is presented. Walking around in the forest, the Venus Fly Trap may never get your attention, but by focusing the camera on one—to the exclusion of everything else—is how uniqueness is created.

However, all of this assumes that you already have a business, a product or service

And that’s a dangerous assumption to make for a specific reason. All of us, without exception, will have new products or services in future. And as we’ll learn in the second section of this piece, every one of the products or services will need their own uniqueness.

So how are we to create a uniqueness when we don’t have the luxury of hindsight?

The way forward is to create your uniqueness. The question that arises is “how do you do that?” How do you pick your uniqueness?

The answer lies in a concept we’ve covered many times before called a “superpower”

Let’s say you’re conducting a workshop to learn how to acquire “X-Ray vision”. When the clients walk into the room, what are they expecting to learn? And when they leave? The obvious answer is “X-Ray vision”, isn’t it? Let’s assume 5000bc didn’t have Vanishing Reports. Wait, we’re not assuming, are we, because 5000bc didn’t have Vanishing Reports.

When we started out, we looked at other websites and there was no concept like Vanishing Reports. So we just invented it. However, let’s say everyone suddenly decides to create Vanishing Reports. What are you going to do in such a situation?

You add a little bit of extra description to your offering.

• Maybe your vanishing reports are “just 10 pages long.” • Maybe they’re 50 pages, in-depth reports. • Maybe they’re full of cartoons which are fun to read. • Maybe the report is not just a report but a stage by stage how-to document.

You see what’s happening here?

You’re deciding in advance what superpower you want to bestow upon your client. You are deciding you want to give them X-Ray vision, or vanishing reports, or specially organised groups. You can simply decide what you want to focus on and then go right ahead and invent your uniqueness. Every feature you see in a new phone model, new software, new product or service is merely an invention.

When sitting down to create your product or service, you will need to do some brainstorming

What features and benefits will it have? And the moment you make the list, you have a choice. Simply pick something that’s interesting and elaborate upon it. If you’ve noticed, that’s the second time, or possibly the third that the term “elaborate” has been brought up.

For now, either pick something like David Attenborough, or invent something you’d like to see in your product or service. And that will get the ball rolling. That is your first step on the road to creating uniqueness for your products and services.

Next week: We will look at—Do different products/services need their own uniquenesses?

Products you will like: Have a look

Top-Selling Products Under $50

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Why Landing Your ‘Planes’ Will Lead To Greater Profits

📅 August 01, 2017 | View in Gmail

Why Landing Your ‘Planes’ Will Lead To Greater Profits

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online.) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/greater-profits/ ]

You’ve seen how planes circle the airport, right?

Well, eventually all those planes have to land, that much we’re sure about.

However, let’s look at your project list and see what’s on it.

That’s the exercise I went through a few weeks ago and I realised that some of my “planes” weren’t landing at all.

There was this cartoon project from 2010 which wasn’t completed.
The book series on “Teacher vs Preacher”, not done.
The books on “The Talent Equation”, not done.
Our website which started two years ago, not done.

Don’t get me wrong

While about 22 items were on the not-done list, a lot of things did get done. The Article Writing Course was completely rewritten with new notes, audio and assignments and came out in Version 2.0. The First Fifty Words course also went through a complete revamp and is in Version 2.0.

A lot of projects got done, there’s absolutely no doubt about it. However, there was still the issue of those “planes” circling the airport. They were not getting done now, or from the looks of it, ever.

That’s when I knew that productivity itself wasn’t helping

Which is why it’s not enough to just have breaks that last minutes or even days. That’s why you need to carve aside an entire chunk of time to get the things you want to achieve.

When we moved to New Zealand back in the year 2000, it was a big move and an important one. We needed to create space to make the move because it involved so many elements.

If you asked me back then if three months were needed to move countries, I’d say that we needed that much time at the bare minimum. This meant stopping work, stopping any kind of income (well, my income stopped but Renuka was still working for a month more, because she showed up a month later).

What this seems to suggest is that we understand the enormity of working on what’s important in our lives. We easily figure out how much time we need to create great work. And yet, we soon become hopeless at doing what’s important to our lives.

When you have too many “planes” above your head, it’s time to make space

We had the Article Writing Course and the Headlines course scheduled for late 2017. That’s been postponed to mid-2018. And early 2018 doesn’t have any new projects either. We’ve decided to land the planes and that includes writing the books and yes, finishing that website that mocks me every time I look at it.

But won’t creating space become a setback?

The move to New Zealand was a setback when you look at it from the point of view of income. Yet, in time it proved to be one of the most important moves we ever made. In the past, we’ve dropped entire courses, like the year-long Protégé course. That could be seen by most as a setback because it meant a big drop in income.

The reality is that it provided space to think and implement what was important, instead of just ploughing on madly. When you leave too many “planes circling” it also takes a ton of your energy, because you and I, we’re both aware of the circling planes.

Will “landing the planes” lead to greater profit? At Psychotactics, we’ve found that there is a loss at first in terms of revenue. The Article Writing Course and the Headlines course itself generates over $100,000. Even if you’re doing very well in life, it’s not an easy sum to walk away from.

Will landing the planes cover that profit? The answer is no one knows for sure. What we do know is that in all the areas where we have landed the planes in the past, we’ve made space in the air. We’ve had more time for ourselves, which is the most important gift of all, but to date that dip in monetary profit was soon replaced by something even more profitable.

What I’m really saying here, is that when you look at the balance sheet, you may not make more money, but you’re not likely to make any less either. The area where you will profit excessively is in energy and excitement as you land those planes.

And when you are energised, productivity and achievement seem to follow almost like puppies.

Announcing: Waiting List Open How to Stop knocking on client’s doors, and get them to call you instead. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-write-article-strategies-to-write-powerful-articles-for-sales-pages-and-newsletters/ ]

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

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Report: How To Win The Resistance Game [ https://www.psychotactics.com/free/resistance-game/ ] Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)” [ https://www.psychotactics.com/free/headlines-fail/ ]

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July 2017

Announcement: The End of Writer’s Block (The Easy Way)

📅 July 29, 2017 | View in Gmail

Way back in the year 2002, I had what you’d call “bad days” Actually they were worse than bad. They were foul days. These foul days were my “article writing days”.

I’d start off cheerily enough I’d be inspired to write an article and would begin. And then something would happen—I’m not sure what. But it would bog me down. It would frustrate me, make me mad. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I’d write draft after draft of the article. And two days later, after much agony, I’d get an article done—if it did get done.

Many of my articles just went into an article graveyard. Most were half done. Or almost finished. But never quite done. And then one day I realised what I was doing wrong. And the moment that realisation hit me, my output just exploded.

It wasn’t even a magic trick It was something I’d known about for the longest time, but was resisting like crazy. But that was a turning point and I’ve never looked back.

Writer’s Block is no longer a reality In fact the opposite is true. So many articles, so little time.

So how do you get over your “Writer’s Block” forever? Find out for yourself https://www.psychotactics.com/article-outlining

Warm regards Sean P.S. This is what Felicia Gopaul from California has to say: ----------------------------------------------------------------------“I couldn’t stand the thought of outlining when I first heard it.”

“I’d been writing just fine for years without an outline. I had spoken without an outline. I had developed presentations without an outline. What could Sean possibly tell me that I didn’t already know about outlining.

Earlier this week, when I was struggling with yet another presentation, I reread the book and realized that I needed to re-outline the presentation. Doing so, I recognized that some “bloat” had crept into my presentation and I was able to cut it and finish the presentation.

I’ve become an outlining fiend.

By outlining first, I know where I am going with my projects which means that I am able to finish them much more quickly than before.

I find, I have far fewer projects that don’t get completed because with outlining, I know where the projects start and end so it’s much easier to connect the dots. And finally, I have greater confidence that my project will get the positive response I want when I outline them first.

Other benefits: I was able to outline a book I’ve been wanting to write in half an hour. I was also able to put together a 10 week course and the various sub-topics in about an hour. Both projects were ideas that I’ve been thinking about for several years. Even better,

I was able to start and complete significant parts of both projects already. And even though I can’t work on these projects everyday, with the outline I can easily pick up to where I left off.”

Felicia Gopaul California, USA Judge for yourself: https://www.psychotactics.com/article-outlining

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Be Productive And Not Burn Out

📅 July 25, 2017 | View in Gmail

How High and Low Tasks Apply To Projects

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/productive-not-burn/ ])

Do you see marathon runners doing laps after they run past the finish line?

A marathon, often run in trying conditions is the perfect example of how you and I should feel after completing a project. We should feel exhausted, yet many of us believe we’re likely to do laps shortly after our epic run.

Take for instance the First Fifty Words course that ended in April. It was high intensity, because Psychotactics courses are based on skill. That means every assignment, or every amendment you make to your assignment is looked at and corrected. Which is why just 25 clients generate in excess of 10,000 posts in 8 weeks.

So what was my plan right after the course ended?

I was readying myself for the very next project, that’s what. At any given point in time, I am at least behind by 20-200 projects.

Why? Because I dream up all these things I have to do, and I’m eager to start and complete them. However, that stack of work doesn’t ever reduce, which is why I assumed I’d be back to work after a short break.

We took our break. We left home, went away for a few days over the weekend and then it happened.

By Tuesday morning I was like jello

I was listless, couldn’t get anything done and frankly would have been happy to just sleep for half the day and watch Netflix for the other half. Crazy as that Netflix/sleeping agenda sounds, it’s what we all need to do to achieve a lot.

Just like a day where you have high-intensity and lower-intensity jobs, you need something similar with projects.

A day is like a 100 metre sprint. Yes, you can do laps if you like after you breach the ribbon, and the project is, as you’d expect, a marathon.

Designing gaps is crucial for recovery and in turn recovery is important for achievement

In some countries, achievement is viewed as go, go, go. People who stop and relax are considered to be the tortoises.

And yet we know how the tortoise and the hare story turned out, right? All of this comes down to a fair bit of planning and energy management. Which means that in every day, every week and every month, the most important task is not doing the task, but carving aside time for planning.

When we plan, we usually need to work around days and projects

A project that’s short, like writing an article, can be managed in a day or a couple of days. When I write an article or write the script for the podcast, it can take me between 2-3 days in bursts.

The first section to this very article was written a few days ago, then followed by the second section. It doesn’t physically take me 3 days to write an article. The actual time taken is about 45 minutes for about 800-100 words.

However, if it’s a longer articles or podcast, the way I approach the writing is to treat it as high-intensity. The outline is low-intensity, then every section of the article is high-intensity and the editing is low-intensity.

All of these have to be done with breaks in between. Running a course, preparing for a workshop or writing a book is super high-intensity and requires a marathon-like planning.

The planning becomes the crux of the issue

Productivity is far higher when you’re working to a plan, because it allows you to be creative. When everything has a draft, you can improvise as you go instead of having to make it up on the spot.

Take for instance the earliest podcasts I recorded. I had an outline but no script. Yes, it may sound very much like a live speech, because that’s what it was. But when I was done with the recording I would be wiped out for hours. Worse still, I couldn’t ever use the transcript, because the podcast was more like a series of thoughts than a coherent structure of information.

Writing the script in advance takes a lot of planning, but the text can be edited, grammar-checked and then the super-high intensity of recording the podcast isn’t so tedious after all.

We’ve kind of stumbled onto an important point, haven’t we?

Any project or daily activity can be classified into low or high-intensity. What causes a task to be super-high-intensity is the lack of any break, or at least a sufficient break. After slogging it out for about 8 weeks on the course, surely I should have known better than to just go right back to work on Tuesday.

But as my niece Keira would say, “Silly Seanny”. And Silly Seanny went to work, didn’t do a lot of anything and didn’t quite get back to 100% until the following week. So breaks really matter during and after small or large projects. What also matters is the planning factor.

The preparation is the part that we like to avoid because it seems like such a waste of time (time we don’t have to spare in the first instance). So we sidestep the planning, the outlining and we take what is already high-intensity and make it super-high intensity.

Not surprisingly, we crash and burn.

Having ideas for dozens of projects is pretty normal for most entrepreneurs

To focus on one thing is nice in theory, but it’s easy to bounce off into another project and a third. Part of being in business enables you to jump back and forth, so the advice of focus is nice, but hard to adhere to, all the time.

You’re constantly context-switching because it’s often fun to do so. However, to avoid being Silly Seanny, I have to do what will allow me to achieve my goals as well as prevent any burnout. And so do you.

But what if we have too much work? What then? How do we know when to stop? Find the answer in next week’s newsletter.

Product Offers: Have a look

“Sean’s approach to marketing is real, authentic and in a fun way.”

Being in the service industry, I didn’t think that I could apply marketing concepts without loosing the soul of my work. The Brain Audit material has helped me to change this limiting perception. It has opened me to ideas and concepts that can actually support me to grow my business in a way that I can have both (and make myself and my clients happier).”

Susie Verde New York, USA P.S. Find out—How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/ ]The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 900 testimonials.

Other marketing products: https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/

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Announcing! The End of Writer’s Block (The Easy Way)

📅 July 22, 2017 | View in Gmail

Way back in the year 2002, I had what you’d call “bad days” Actually they were worse than bad. They were foul days. These foul days were my “article writing days”.

It wasn’t even a magic trick It was something I’d known about for the longest time, but was resisting like crazy. But that was a turning point and I’ve never looked back.

Writer’s Block is no longer a reality In fact the opposite is true. So many articles, so little time.

So how do you get over your “Writer’s Block” forever? Find out for yourself https://www.psychotactics.com/article-outlining

Warm regards Sean P.S. This is what Helen Dillon from Scotland has to say: “The one big thing for me was the idea that outlining (an extra step) can actually save you time in the long run…”

Because it helps to keep you focused on what it is you are trying to get across—and not go meandering off on some other (perhaps equally useful, but tangential) topic.

Also I can now see why articles that I’ve written have worked and haven’t worked, before I couldn’t really put my finger on it.

The thing I really like about Sean’s work is that he doesn’t just tell you what to do, but goes into specifics about how to do it, in a systematic way.

That’s rare, in my experience of on-line courses.

Helen Dillon Scotland Judge for yourself: https://www.psychotactics.com/article-outlining

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day)

📅 July 18, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day)

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ ])

I was asked in e-mail: I am curious to know, since you do so many tasks in a day, how do you deal with context switching? I can do a task for 60 minutes, but doing something different immediately, requires some time for the brain and the body to handle the transition. How do you manage these transitions?

The approximate formula is: High Intensity > BREAK > Low Intensity

Notice how it goes? High, BREAK, Low. Then BREAK > High > BREAK > Low.

When you first see the switching formula, it seems like it’s just a transition from high to low. But as you can tell from the emphasis above, the break is pretty critical. If you just go from high to low or even low to high, the brain doesn’t get time to recover. And recovery is what’s important when you want to keep your attention and focus.

Without recovery you get a factor of tiredness, that may also spiral downwards to exhaustion

But with recovery, your brain and body get a chance to relax and come back to take on the next battle. It’s at this point that the high to low bit also matters. Taking on high-intensity tasks one after the other just wears you out and having the high to low allows your brain to make a decent transition—and relax even more after you’ve had the break.

But how long are the breaks?

The breaks depend on the time of day. During the day, while at work the breaks are short. However, at around lunch time, it might be about 30 minutes or more. At tea time I will take another 30 minutes. It seems like a lot of down-time, but that’s the reason why you can achieve more.

A simple alarm or timer that does a countdown enables you to take that break.

But there are days when I’ll ignore that timer (as we all do) and that’s the day when I get more tired. Instead, at the point of the timer going off, I can give my brain and body a break. I lie on the floor (yes, on the floor) and have two books to rest my head in a semi-supine position.

It sounds totally bizarre that taking time off gets you to achieve more, but that’s precisely the crux of higher productivity

The more you work, the longer stretches you work for, the less productive you’re likely to be. And of course, the more tired you’ll get. If you’re younger, you may brush this off, because you seem to have boundless energy, but in tests, young tennis players were matched against each other, and the top players were always the ones who recovered better. The recovery period forms the core—if that were not obvious by now already.

And it helps in switching tasks as well.

My day starts with high intensity. I will either be writing a book, or be answering questions on a course, or in 5000bc. A lot of these activities involve not just reading, but analysis and giving precise direction.

It’s mentally draining and after 90 minutes or so (with rest periods in between), I’ll go for a walk. That’s a longer break. When I get back, I will make breakfast and watch some comedy on YouTube (while cooking up some yummy dosas).

Then it’s time to paint for a while.

That’s all high intensity to break, and now it’s time to get back to low intensity, which would involve something like e-mail or something that doesn’t require a tonne of resources. The day moves on from there to writing scripts for the podcast and answering 5000bc posts, before it’s time for lunch and another break.

The day is filled with breaks, high and low-intensity tasks, which enable me to write, draw, and do many other tasks like recording podcasts or doing interviews, etc.

To be productive pay attention to the formula and do the semi-supine. If you don’t have a great floor, get a yoga mat and relax on the ground. The more you fight your brain and body the harder it is to switch. It also doesn’t allow you to reach your highest productivity level.

And that, in a nutshell, is how to go about your day.

Product Offers: Have a look

“Sean’s approach to marketing is real, authentic and in a fun way.”

It made it more real to me and boosted me with enthusiasm to start applying the principles of the material to my work.

Other marketing products: https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/

About this eZine and your subscription

Useful Resource http to https: Google has been marking sites without https as non secure. Find out what to do here. [ http://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ] Free Goodies Good to Great: How To Take Your Small Business To Greatness (Look for episode 123) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ]| Read and Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/good-to-great/ ] |

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The “Top 3” Podcasts for 2017

📅 July 15, 2017 | View in Gmail

Mid-year is a good time to catch up on podcasts that you may have missed. So let’s look at the “Top 3” podcasts, and then, that one podcast that you shouldn’t miss.

There are two ways to consume the podcasts: either audio or transcript Every podcast is on iTunes or Stitcher (for Android). And every podcast also has a complete transcript on our website.

Let’s get to the podcasts.

#134: When Things Went Wrong at Psychotactics (And What We Learned From Our Mistakes) In a small business, strategy and tactics often go wrong. Yet all you hear about is success, success and how someone made it big. This episode is about some bad judgment calls and also about plain pomposity. It’s taught us to be better marketers and better people.

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 134 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/ ] |

#132: Landing Pages: Why We Fail to Attract the Right Clients Why do some landing pages work while others fail? The core of a landing page lies in picking a target profile. Yet, it’s incredibly easy to mix up a target profile with a target audience. And worse still, the concept of persona comes into play.

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 132 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/create-uniqueness/ ] |

#138: Validating Your Idea: How To Beat Analysis-Paralysis Even if you have the best business idea in the world, analysis-paralysis can stop you in your tracks. You feel frozen, not sure what to do. So you research. Then you do some more research and educate yourself even more. But that doesn’t get you very far, does it? Find out and beat the analysis-paralysis once and for all.

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 138 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/validating-business-idea/ ] |

And finally, the one episode that you shouldn’t miss because it is one of the most popular

#127: How To Get Smart (And Stay Smart) Many of us believe that smartness comes from learning the skills in our own field And yet, that’s only partially true. We can never be as smart as we want to be, if we only have tunnel vision. So how do we move beyond? And how do we find the time to do all of this learning.

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 127 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/get-smart/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Your review, rating (and subscription) are most appreciated. Would you be kind enough to leave a review? They help the rating of the show and I read every single review. Anything you’d like to see or listen to, anything you don’t like, just write to me. I actually implement the feedback.

Review on iTunes [ http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes ] | My feedback [ sean@psychotactics.com ] | My podcast suggestion [ sean@psychotactics.com ]

P.P.S. Not sure how to leave an iTunes review? Have a look here: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/itunes-review/

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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What We Learned From Our Mistakes

📅 July 11, 2017 | View in Gmail

What We Learned From Our Mistakes

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online [ https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/ ].)

I remember one of the early events in my speaking career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I got a minus two.

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

Some of the results were our fault, and some of them were just experiences we had along the way. In every instance, we learned a lesson, and it helped us move ahead in our business.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Let’s look at some minus two experiences. Like the time back in 2003, where I was a speaker at an Internet conference, and everyone was selling their products, but me.

Why did things go so wrong?

Story—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003

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

It was what you’d call a pitch-fest.

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

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

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

It was pretty early in my career, but I was pretty confident of my speaking skill by then I’d done a bit of selling from the podium as well, and I thought I’d be going home with several thousands of dollars in sales. This dream of mine seemed more feasible when I compared myself to the person who did his presentation just before mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was a -2 experience

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

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

But one mystery remained.

Remember the speaker who went before me?

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

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

The key was the nature of the bonus

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

Aha!

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

If you’ve decided to buy a fancy new computer, you already are in the frame of mind to buy it. But what if someone offered you a bonus? Like a nice box of chocolates if you bought the computer from them?

The box of chocolates costs just $15; the computer $3000. What are you focused on? What if I told you that you could get the computer without the chocolate box? That’s the power of the bonus. That’s the lesson I learned from this -2 experience.

I lost on the monetary front.

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

And the power of the bonus worked!

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

The bonus—that’s what matters more than anything else.

And it doesn’t even have to be many bonuses. Just one compelling bonus is what makes the client decide they want your product or service right away.

Click here to read the next story Next Story—A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea [ https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/#story ]

Product Offers: Have a look

Critical Website Components How do you create compelling pages on your website? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality? [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/ ] [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/ ]

The Brain Audit How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/ ]

Testimonial Secrets How to get meaningful testimonials, without needing to ‘bribe anyone’ for it. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/secret-life-of-testimonials-simple-powerful-techniques-to-get-better-clients-and-sales/ ]

About this eZine and your subscription

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Useful Resource

http to https: Google has been marking sites without https as non secure. Find out what to do here. [ http://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ]

[ http://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ] Important: You are subscribed to the Free Psychotactics Newsletter. If you un-subscribe from this letter, you won’t receive any goodies, offers, or newsletters in future. If you’re getting duplicate newsletters, email us and we’ll make sure you get just one copy. Email renuka@psychotactics.com

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Announcement: How To Speed Up Your Sales With Client Attractors

📅 July 08, 2017 | View in Gmail

You already know that 80% of a sales letter depends on your headline

And therefore it’s not uncommon to see writers spend many hours testing and re-testing their headline.

But what happens once your customer goes past the headline into the rest of the copy? Which are the elements that cause customers to feel an urge to buy your product or service?

The remaining 20% is what causes customers to buy…

In order to take customers to the next stage, you have to have a rock-solid system to help structure your sales page.
You have to know and understand the elements so that customers respond to your offer.

So isn’t it time to find out what the remaining 20% is all about? And how you can quickly learn and implement that 20% to improve results.

Find out more details at this page and judge for yourself! https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors

Warm regards, Sean P.S. The bonus on this product is really worth having. It will give you an insight into sales pages like never before. It shows you how to keep the customer engaged with the first part of your salesletter—before they get to your bullets, features and benefits. Check out the bonus :) https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors

P.P.S. Here is what Ankur Shah has to say about the ebook:

“After reading a few copywriting books, I wondered what else you could possibly teach about writing copy that focuses on benefits and features.”

It turns out, you were able to not only teach me new things but in a way that made intuitive sense.

I truly appreciated how you broke down the process of writing both benefits and bullets into a formulaic process. It truly takes someone with exceptional skill and knowledge to simplify and teach in a way that enables you to immediately grasp core concepts.

The biggest benefit was the formula to create truly attention grabbing bullets. I tried it and it worked. I never understood the importance of bullets. Without your help, it would have taken me a long time to realize both the importance of bullets and how to write them.

I would highly recommend this product to anyone wanting to improve their copywriting skills. I also appreciate how the report also syncs with the Brain Audit. All your products work together cohesively unlike some of the material published by other “gurus”.

Ankur Shah Judge for yourself: https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zGxMLMxMHMw=

How To Structure Your Information Product Giveaway

📅 July 04, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Structure Your Information Product Giveaway

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/#structure ])

Have you walked into a store where some of the goods are locked up and not accessible to customers? Many years ago, we used to do workshops in Campbell, California—primarily it’s because that’s where Renuka’s sister used to live. And while we were in the U.S. it was always a good idea to do some shopping.

On one of the shopping trips, I wanted to buy a rainproof jacket. Not just any old jacket, but something that would keep me super dry on days when it was super-wet. The logical choice for this outdoor gear was REI, the outdoor gear store. And guess where my prized rain jacket was to be found?

Yes, you probably guessed correctly

It was in a glass case, which happened to be locked. The brand I was looking for, Arcteryx, had a high price tag and there it was, sitting where it could be seen, but not touched. And that’s approximately how you need to treat your own big value giveaways. It needs to have a barrier between you and the client, wherever possible and there’s a good reason why.

The reason? It’s easier to sell something expensive than to give it away free of charge

Think about it for a second. Let’s say someone drove up to your house, knocked on your door and gave you the keys to a brand new car. What’s your reaction? You should be jumping for joy, but this person who just gave you the car is a stranger.

There’s absolutely no reason to trust his generosity. Instead of dancing around the room, you’re trying to shut the door in his face, aren’t you? Without setting up the barrier and anticipation, even a big give-away will fall flat on its face.

At Psychotactics we go through a routine as though we’re selling a high-value product Yes, the product is still free, but that doesn’t mean you don’t put up the barriers. When we give away a high-value product, we make the client go through a series of actions. This might involve going on a waiting list, then spreading out the sequence of e-mails so that the product is delivered in stages.

And for some giveaways, we’ve even got members to pitch in and help out with the work. In short, you shouldn’t just dole out your high-value product and should take all the care and effort to treat it like a high-end product.

It means a lot of work on your part. Lists to set up, e-mails to write—yup, no one said this would be easy. But when you go through the trouble of running a campaign for a “free” product, the client is in a better position to perceive the value.

What you also need to know is that low-value products can have the same intensity of drama Just because it’s not a high-end info-product, doesn’t mean you can’t roll it out to the sound of drums and bugles.

Let’s say I were writing a small report on “how to write perfect headlines every time”, there are two options.

You could get the report right away, without any fuss,
You could sign up in anticipation for the information when it is finally released.

Which isn’t to say that all small value giveaways need to have pomp. Some of them can just be given away, just as you’d do with a YouTube video or an article.

Even so, most of the items on our site have barriers

To get to a specific type of audio or video or report, you have to sign up. This, in turn, enables us to send more goodies to the client or to inform them about related products or services. If you can’t get in touch with a client or can’t remind them to buy something, there’s a likelihood your info-products will sell, but having those contact details and the permission enables you to keep in touch on a fairly constant basis.

Finally, it’s the strength of your info-product that really matters

Many clients will use different e-mail addresses and may not see the follow-up e-mails you send. Which is why your info-product itself, whether big or small, has to deliver the goods.

It’s not always sales, sales and more sales that matter. In many, if not most cases, generosity matters to an even greater extent.

Be generous, and kind, and you’ll find that clients are very responsive as well.

Oh and be selective in your giving

We give away products from time to time, not all the time. Once or twice a year, or even longer is a good strategy for a large product.

For smaller products, it’s going to depend on the type of info-product. I’ll give away a report at the end of a podcast or maybe something embedded in the middle of an article or right at the end of the article.

In short, even when we’re giving away something, we’re making sure clients invest in reading, watching or listening before finding the treasure.

Giving is a good feeling.

Do it with passion, but also with structure and you’ll get rewards. Best of all, it will lower risk and increase info-product sales. It’s a really warm and fuzzy way to run a business, isn’t it?

In case you missed last weeks article, click here to access it—How Giveaways Increase Sales of InfoProducts. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/ ]

Product Offers: Have a look

Top-Selling Products Under $50

The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon. Find out—How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/ ]

Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/ ]

About this eZine and your subscription

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NEW! Audio and Text: It’s time you got a real break—every year—without any drop in income. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes ]

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Privacy and Spam Policy

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Announcing! How To Speed Up Your Sales With Client Attractors

📅 July 01, 2017 | View in Gmail

You already know that 80% of a sales letter depends on your headline

And therefore it’s not uncommon to see writers spend many hours testing and re-testing their headline.

But what happens once your customer goes past the headline into the rest of the copy? Which are the elements that cause customers to feel an urge to buy your product or service?

The remaining 20% is what causes customers to buy…

In order to take customers to the next stage, you have to have a rock-solid system to help structure your sales page.
You have to know and understand the elements so that customers respond to your offer.

So isn’t it time to find out what the remaining 20% is all about? And how you can quickly learn and implement that 20% to improve results.

Find out more details at this page and judge for yourself!

https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors

Warm regards, Sean P.S. The bonus on this product is really worth having. It will really give you an insight into sales pages like never before. Check out the bonus :) https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zGxMDOyczGw=

June 2017

How Giveaways Increase Sales of Information Products

📅 June 27, 2017 | View in Gmail

How Giveaways Increase Sales of Information Products

(Yes, you can read or listen to the article online [ https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/ ].)

In South Africa, there’s a flower that only one insect can access.

Orphium flowers don’t contain nectar. Instead, they provide bees with pollen. Yet, not every insect can access the pollen. If you look closely at an orphium flower, you’ll find the stamens are twisted and this, in turn, prevents the pollen from being stolen by visiting insects. Only one insect has access to the pollen in the Orphium flower. That insect is the female carpenter bee.

When she approaches the Orphium flower, her flapping wings make a particular buzzing sound. Yet that sound won’t make a difference to the flower. The stamens remain locked. At which point the bee changes the beat of her wings creating what we’d call the C note. That simple act gets the flower to seemingly unlock and shower the bee with pollen.

In our business, we often seem to be like the other insects.

We don’t appear to be able to hit that C note and unlock greater products sales. Yet just like the wing beat of the carpenter bee, you can achieve a consistent level of success.

What’s that note that you have to hit? And how often?

Let’s look how giveaways work:

Small value giveaway
Big value giveaway
Why Small Value Giveaways or Products Work

If you were a rooster, would you be able to crow at any time?

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? After all, it seems like roosters cock-a-doodle-doo at any given time. In the journal, Scientific Reports, a study showed that roosters crow in order of seniority. First, the top ranking rooster initiates the crowing, followed by subordinates, all in descending order of social rank.

In fact, when the top ranking rooster is removed from the group, the second-ranking rooster initiates the crowing. At all times the social rank has to be adhered to maintain the hierarchy.

Fortunately, such a hierarchy doesn’t have to maintained when trying to increase product sales. You can start off with a small value giveaway.

So what’s a small or low-value giveaway?

When you get to the website at Psychotactics.com, you’re likely to have run into a giveaway called the “Headline Report”. It’s why headlines fail, and how to avoid that failure. To date, over 55,000 copies of that report have been downloaded.

That report isn’t a top-ranking, highly complex document. Back in the early 2000s, when we first launched a pre-Psychotactics site, I wrote an article about headlines, which turned out to be very popular.

And by this point you’re probably thinking, “Ah, it’s a report, there’s nothing new about a report.”

You’d be right if you thought that way because the report itself doesn’t do much. However, if you take a report that gets a client from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, then that report becomes pretty magical.

Which is what the Headline Report does. In under 10 minutes and in about as many pages, it takes you from not being very confident with headlines to getting a pretty good understanding of the working and the implementation of the headline.

All over the Psychotactics website there are tiny reports of this nature

They’re all small value giveaways, but they do one thing and do it well. They get you from A to B in a big hurry. The hurry part is important because people are swamped with information. If you’re able to create change quickly, they’re more likely to decide to take the next step and implement what you’ve shown them.

Once they implement, they’re hooked. I remember a client who came to our workshop, spent $3000 for himself and his wife, purely based on the strength of the report.

But it’s not just reports that matter; videos or audio can do the same task

Last week I listened to a podcast about a book by Tim Harford. To date, I’ve read one book and am in the process of going through the other. The podcast isn’t high value, is it?

It’s free, but the same concept of the podcast can be used on your site. The short video, the short audio, the tiny report, even a string of slides that explain a concept. Your starting point should usually be an appetiser, not a full meal.

At Psychotactics we have appetisers all around the place

It might be an excerpt of a book or some reports that are extremely useful. They all serve to get clients to show up, then sign up on a consistent basis. In fact, our goal—and pay close attention—is to have a report that’s suited to every type of article. It’s a pretty extensive exercise but think about it.

If you’re reading an article on resistance, what would you prefer a report on?

Resistance, or overcoming resistance, right? The same concept would apply to any page of your website. Which means that if you bundle up even a few of your best Point A to Point B articles, you should be able to have a few reports ready in a few weeks, at best a few months.

The low-value giveaways don’t need to be restricted to just the giveaway on your front page

They can be all sorts of little audios, videos, or any information that is of value to the client. And they cut through the hierarchy. We all believe that clients need to read our book or attend a workshop. No, they don’t. They just need a tiny bit of stuff that they can consume.

So why is this consumption bit so very important?

When a client can finish and implement something, they usually come back for more. Which is why it then pays to have not just free, but also low-value products. When you look at Psychotactics, you’ll notice that we sell The Brain Audit for $9.99.

There are also other products that have a lower value and are priced at $29 or $39. They’re not exactly cheap, but when compared with some of the $3000 products they do come across as lower value. In fact, if you look closer, we even have a button that says, “products under $50”.

Clients want to test the waters without too much of a risk. When they find value—and by value I mean they can implement everything smoothly and elegantly—they come back for more.

Nonetheless, free or lower value products are not the only way to go. Which is why you need to have something of high value to give away. Give away? Yes, give away. Let’s look at how the high-value products work as well.

Let’s look at how the high-value products work as well. Big Value Giveaway

Did you know that the modern seat belt was invented by an aviation engineer who worked on ejector seats?

In 1959, it’s not like cars didn’t have seat belts—they did. But the seat belts were two-point waist restraints, which in car crashes, harmed rather than helped the driver and passengers.

Which is when Volvo engineer, Nils Bohlin stepped up to the plate and invented the three-point seat belt—the kind we use today. It was such a remarkable safety feature that Volvo would have made a big pile of money on patents alone.

Instead, Volvo gave it away.

We often believe that we should sell high-value products

However, you may find, as we did, that giving away high-value products can be an incredibly powerful way to build trust and get repeat clients.

On the Psychotactics website is a product called The Brain Alchemy Masterclass which is priced around $2300. The product shows you the core of how to start and build your business, and it’s easy enough to get to the sales page and buy the product. Yet, from time to time we give away the product to the entire list.

Another product is the Website Masterclass

This product digs deep into not just websites, but the psychology of what creates “religions” to work. In doing so, it takes you on the magic carpet through the major world religions, Harley Davidson, Football and other such “religions”.

You realise why some marketers never have to put crazy countdown clocks or dump pop-ups on their website. That without any fuss or hoopla you can create a business where clients buy because their trust in you is infinite. Would you hold onto such a product? And yet, a few years ago, we gave it away to those who were members of 5000bc—and no, there was no catch involved.

Giving away a big product seems to be a foolhardy exercise

Why give something away when you can sell it? We’ve found that giving away a chunk of what we have has been beneficial for our business. At Psychotactics, we have over 20 products, and when we give away big chunks, we’ve found it builds an enormous amount of goodwill, which, believe it or not, turns to greater sales.

Bear in mind that while this article is clearly suggesting that you should use this giveaway as a strategy, our goal was not originally to garner a greater profit. Our goal was to give back since we’d already received so much. And this goal was stated way back in 2004, when the company was just over a year old.

Even so, you’d be happy to know that giving away stuff you can sell, does lead to a substantial growth in profits.

In The Brain Alchemy Masterclass, we cover the early version of The Brain Audit Yet, the moment clients go through the course, they end up buying the new version of The Brain Audit. And they also buy The Brain Audit workshop. They then join 5000bc, our membership site and end up on online courses.

Consider that a Psychotactics course is quite expensive compared with most marketing courses out there. And if you’re doing an online, live, guided course, you are promised skill, but no money back guarantee. So what causes clients to sign up in a tearing hurry? Why do the courses fill up in less than an hour? One of the big reasons is the big giveaway.

But what if you don’t have any big products?

No one starts off their business with big products, and yet in time you’ll be likely to do a series of videos, or possibly a workshop that you record. Maybe you’ll do a bunch of seminars on a particular topic. It’s likely you don’t have that product in place right now, and even when you get to it, you might not be that keen to give it away.

We had waited at least six years before we gave away our product and another three before we gave away the next. You have to be comfortable with giving away a big chunk of product.

Nonetheless, bear in mind that the marketplace gets noisier and crazier by the minute and your best bet is to get clients to trust your work earlier than later. The sooner you can give away a big product, the better. It might even be a good idea to create a big product just to give it away.

If you giveaway big products, will clients ever want to pay?

I have an e-mail software that I use to keep my inbox down to zero. It’s called Spark (and it’s for the Mac). I’ve used a lot of software to maintain my inbox because unlike most people; I don’t outsource e-mails. And right now Spark does an excellent job.

There’s just one problem. All the e-mail software I’ve had before has not been free. It hasn’t been expensive, but they’ve charged me between $20-$40 overall. This one is a pure giveaway. That makes me really nervous because you can’t run a business without charging for it. I’m hoping they can take some money off me as soon as possible.

It may sound bizarre to you, but not all clients are not over eager to get free stuff all the time

There are those who will take endlessly, but there are enough clients who want to pay. If you create good info-products, you will always have clients who’ll pay good money to get whatever you put out.

Take the case of all the free information you see around you on a daily basis. You’ll see entire videos on YouTube, or run into books that are priced at a tiny fee, or even free. A book, by the way, is a big info-product. The book or video then directs you to higher priced info-products or consulting.

Which brings up the next question: Should you structure the giveaway? If so, how? And how often should you give something away? We will tackle this issue next week. Look out for the newsletter.

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

“What do your customers think? What would make them buy?” In the Brain Audit - Sean teaches 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you. The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.”

Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested? [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/ ]

iPhone Magic How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/ ]http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

Useful Resource: Look at your website URL now! Does it start with ‘http’ instead of ‘https’? Google has been marking sites without HTTPS as non secure. Find out what to do here [ http://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ].http://psychotactics.com/products/membership-site-strategy

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Systematically Outline Your Book (So You Can Get It Off The Ground) (Look for episode 133) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ]| Read and Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/outlining-book-steps/ ] |

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends: https://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend/ Three Month Vacation: https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/http to https: Google has been marking sites without https as non secure. Find out what to do here. [ http://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ]http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

Privacy and Spam Policy

I don’t rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You’ll not get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.

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Reminder: Free from Psychotactics: The $2500 Brain Alchemy Marketing Strategy Workshop

📅 June 24, 2017 | View in Gmail

I am resending this email just in case you missed it last week.

If someone stood on the corner and gave you $25, wouldn’t you be suspicious?But what if they gave you $250? Or $1000? Would you raise your eyebrows? Even avoid that person?

It depends on the person, right? Well that person happens to be me. And I’m not giving away $50 or even $1000, but instead a home study version of a workshop worth a chunky $2500.

Is there a catch? Is there an upsell? Is there some cross sell? Is there some ulterior motive?

The answer is categorically no. No up sell. No cross sell. No sneaky tricks.

And yes, there’s a perfectly good reason why we’re giving away the workshop. And you can read it and judge for yourself at:

And the link https://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-alchemy-goodies/

Warm regards from Kiwi country…

Sean P.S. It’s free. But only for the next seven weeks.

P.P. S. If you already have The Brain Alchemy MasterClass and prefer NOT TO receive follow up emails, go to this link and enter your details. https://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-alchemy-opt-out/

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How To Beat Analysis-Paralysis (When Validating Your Business Idea)

📅 June 20, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Beat Analysis-Paralysis (When Validating Your Business Idea)

(Read or listen to this article online) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/validating-business-idea/ ]

How do we deal with analysis paralysis?

How do we get over that major hurdle?
What trigger played a significant role in human evolution?

If we go back three million years ago to our early ancestors, Australopithecus, we find them to be more like a chimpanzee.

Its brain volume is a bare 400cc. If we were to fast forward to 1.8 million years ago, suddenly there’s an abundance of hominine species, including Homo erectus. And the brain size is double of Australopithecus. If we move further to 800,000 years ago, we get Home heidelbergensis and another remarkable growth in brain size from 800cc to 1200cc.

And finally, 200,000 years ago, we find a skull called Omo 2, and it has a brain size of approximately 1500cc, which is remarkably close to the brain size we have today.

But what caused those changes in brain sizes?

Each one of those brain sizes occurred when the Earth was at its most elliptical and the climate was horribly harsh and changing. Rivers dried up; food was scarce, temperatures rose and fell in rapid succession. Human evolution is considered to have a direct line to volatile do-or-die situations.

Good times, on the other hand, don’t seem to lend themselves to rapid change

Think about your situation on a daily basis. As long as you have enough food in the pantry, it seems perfectly reasonable to lounge on the sofa. The moment you’re out of food, there’s no analysis-paralysis.

In fact, even dwindling supplies causes you to act with increasing focus and rapidity. While there are many reasons why we get into a rut of analysis-paralysis, the biggest reason for the rut is the glut or excess.

So what does this excess look like in real life?

Let’s say you walked into an ice-cream parlour and you have to choose between two flavours: mango and strawberry. How long did you take to make that decision? If we wanted to add confusion, we simply have to add excess.

Let’s add 18 flavours to that list. Now you have twenty flavours to choose from, and you go, at least partially, into analysis-paralysis. You want the coffee flavour and the mango at the same time. You can’t decide whether they are suitable, and so back and forth you go.

In reality, you’re going through a series of rejections

To get to your unique flavour, you have to, theoretically, reject 19 flavours to pick one. A similar set of phenomena plays itself out when you’re trying to achieve a goal. You’ve been told it’s important to learn about Facebook advertising, that e-mail is important, storytelling is critical and so on. It’s normal to jump from one thing to the other like flavours of ice-cream.

What you really need is a lack of choice

People who get things done are not hampered because they create situations where they can’t do everything. They are forced to do just a few things, with usually one thing as the big focus.

And if you want to get out of paralysis-analysis, here are three elements you need to consider.

a) Drafts
b) Information
c) Deadline

a) Let’s start with drafts

Michael Lewis is a relatively unknown name as authors go, but his projects are well known because they’re quickly transformed into Hollywood blockbusters.

“Moneyball”, “The Big Short” and the “Blind Side” are reasonably well known. When interviewed about the struggle involved in writing, Michael gets slightly philosophical. “The writing isn’t a problem,” he says. “Instead, it’s the drafts that require work”. Lewis talks about the multiple numbers of drafts he has to make to get a project going.

And in layman’s terms, that’s simply an outline.

Yes, the very same outline most people hated to do when in school, and still avoid doing whether it involves writing an article, creating a product or giving a presentation. It’s one of the biggest hurdles that get in our way time and time again.

An outline has stages of clarification. When we first begin the draft, we are grasping at straws. With every following outline, the brain has a chance to get a greater level of clarity. Three, four, six, eight—it doesn’t matter how many drafts you create, as long as you create drafts.

Drafts seem like such an odd idea when you’re dealing with analysis-paralysis

When we think of it as a grocery list, it’s easier to understand the concept. Show up at the supermarket randomly, and you either end up buying stuff you don’t need or end up totally confused about what you have to buy. But a little prep work goes a long way.

When you consider a grocery list, it’s a reasonably uncomplex set of items. An article, a project, a book—they’re so much more complicated and we merrily walk into these projects without going through a bunch of drafts.

J.K. Rowling had zillions of drafts for Harry Potter. Michael Lewis pretty much works his way forward through drafts.

Pixar, Disney—every animation company will create storyboard after storyboard. The reason why professionals work their way through drafts is for one simple reason. When you start a project, your brain has random sets of ideas.

Without the drafts, it’s easy to get stuck, and no one; not you or me likes being in that situation. So we move along to something else easier to cope with. And the failure looms large, resulting in almost certain analysis-paralysis.

But drafts are only one of the elements we have to deal with when working on a project. The second super-duper favourite has got to be the lack of information. Let’s look at information, shall we?

b) How information plays a role in analysis-paralysis

Back in 2009, I re-wrote Version 3 of the book, The Brain Audit.

It should have been an easy task, shouldn’t it? After all, I’d been through hundreds of examples of clients using The Brain Audit. I’d also spent years refining the concepts over and over again as I implemented them in my own business.

But even as I’m describing the trouble of writing Version 3, you get a feeling of déjà vu, don’t you? And it’s because most of us have experienced this struggle of having to explain the same thing in a different way. We know too much. We have the curse of knowledge, and it’s slowing us down considerably.

Knowing too much means you feel the need to stuff everything into your information

Let’s take The Brain Audit itself as an example. The book is pretty comprehensive all by itself. However, if you look at the chapters (and there are about seven main chapters), every one of those chapters can be a book all by itself. How do we know this to be true?

Let’s take the chapter on uniqueness. We’ve conducted a three-day workshop on uniqueness alone with separate audio and notes. If we were to choose the topic of testimonials, we have 100+ pages on testimonials in a product called “The Secret Life of Testimonials”. Any of those chapters in The Brain Audit could be expanded into 100-150 pages each. In reality, The Brain Audit could easily be a 1000 page book.

As a writer there’s too much information floating in your head

If you were to take any topic, be it photography or karate or any topic you’re familiar with, you’d find a consistent problem to nail down what you’re going to cover. I remember taking on an esoteric topic like feedback, and that generated well over ten chapters.

The more info-product you have in your head, the more you’re going to get derailed. Which is why it’s a good practice to write down all your ideas, and then just choose three of them. Which three? It doesn’t matter. Any three will do. Any three will connect. All of the three are valuable to clients, but more importantly for you, as the creator.

Most software is bloated; most books are loaded with information we can’t use. If we just had three topics to focus on, we could get going as creators, and the client would be happy.

A vague topic like feedback can be a monster in itself. But really, can we pick any three?

Try it yourself, and you’ll see you can match any three together. And just in case you think I wrote this up right now, I didn’t. I made this mind map back in early 2016, and because I didn’t pick three, I’ve still not started. The irony is not lost on me.

However, what if you’re just starting out?

Back around 2008, a client of mine wrote his first book. In it, he put everything he knew, which wasn’t a lot. He was exhausted by the time he finished the book, but he was also scared. He felt he’d given his all and there was nothing left in him.

When I wrote The Brain Audit back in 2002, I felt the same way. I couldn’t manage more than 16-20 pages (and that included fillers and cartoons). Today, you can see I have the problem in reverse. If I were to write The Brain Audit like it should be written, I’d struggle to keep it to fewer than 1000 pages.

All of us believe that we either have too much in our heads or too little

But there’s also a third factor that comes into play. Take, for instance, the series on pricing called “Dartboard Pricing”. It shows you why people pick your product over others, how to construct the pricing model and get 15% more, as well as the sequential pricing structure.

In short, it’s a very solid (and entertaining) series that pretty much guarantees you’ll get higher prices than whatever you’re charging today. When I sat down to write the book, I wasn’t sure it needed to be written. If you head to a search engine and type in the terms “Psychotactics” and “pricing”, you’ll get enough content to fill up at least a day of reading and listening.

What else could I write, I wondered Information stops us in our tracks on multiple fronts. We know too much, seemingly know too little, or we’ve given away so much that we feel another book or course won’t make a difference. Incredibly it does make a massive difference. I could sell the Dartboard Pricing series as it is, and do a webinar series and clients would sign up. If I did a workshop in your city, you’re likely to attend.

How do we know this to be true?

Because when I was presenting The Brain Audit workshop in Washington DC for the first time, many years ago, I was going through the same fear-ridden routine. Most of the attendees in the room had not only read The Brain Audit, but many of them had read Version 1, Version 2 and Version 3.

What else could I bring to the table? There’s always a new angle, new examples, new insight that you as a creator don’t even realise you’re putting forth. Even if you’ve published a lot of the information before, the audience receives it from quite another angle.

To get going, you must start with drafts Write down all the ideas in draft after draft. Even so, that draft must have a deadline by which you start writing. When you write, put everything down into three categories. What can you fit in those three categories?

You’ll see how we’ve done this on the Dartboard Pricing page and also the ‘Black Belt Presentations’ page. Those topics, like any topic, are vast and the only way I know of getting them down to size is to pick three topics and write about them.

If I need to write more, I can just write three more later. Or you can expand the topics all by themselves as we have done with The Brain Audit, where topics like uniqueness or testimonial now have their own books or courses.

Easily the biggest thing that stops us in our tracks is that the information already exists. Either we have put the information out there, or someone else has, and no one really needs our product or service. As alluring as this fact may appear to us, it’s patently false. There are many ways to present the very same product or service and clients want to find out all the possible ways.

But even if we were to conquer our fear of drafts and information, we still have one great hurdle to conquer. A barrier called “deadlines”.

c) Why External Deadlines Reduce Paralysis-Analysis

Imagine gong to the supermarket with a list.

Yet it’s not a typical list. That list has about 150-200 items which you’ll need to purchase. Notice the fact that you’re not doing anything overly dramatic. All you’re doing is picking the item from the shelf and putting it in your shopping cart. Even so, as you get deeper into the list, there’s this overpowering urge to quit the task and do something else.

A decent sized project usually has about 150-200 embedded tasks We start off most projects with a fair bit of gusto, pretty much like picking items off the shelf. Then for no particular reason, we seem to lose momentum, and we get distracted. The more distraction we run into, the more we seek to do some more research. We somehow feel if we do our homework, things will get better. And they rarely do.

The only consistent way to get things done is to adopt the mindset of a programmer Any programmer on a project knows there’s a date to ship the software. Will the software have bugs? Almost certainly it will have a fair number of bugs. A programmer has little choice. They’ve promised the software will be ready on a particular date and so it launches more or less on time.

But this deadline isn’t restricted to programmers alone You get to your destination, because planes, trains and buses are mostly based on a non-negotiable deadline. The Olympics don’t start one week later than planned. And even those 200 things you had to get off the shelves needed to be put there by someone who was following an external plan.

If you make internal plans, paralysis analysis is the default setting

When I first started out writing articles for Psychotactics, I hated writing with a passion. It would take me two days and would involve an enormous time and energy. However, I’d promised that I’d deliver the article on a twice-monthly basis and so I had to finish the job. I’d battle through the process, hating every fifth word with a passion, but the job would get done.

Almost all of us start off a project with a lot of excitement and then struggle to get to the finish line

When we have nothing to lose, we fill our days with something else. The only way anything can done is to have this external deadline in place. Most of the time it involves a cash transaction.

When you sell a course, you have to show up and conduct the course. When you promise to deliver software you’d better be shipping on the day itself or clients will be on your tail. Is all of this a source of constant pressure? Sure it is, but then great work is usually not done with a lot of leisure in hand.

Summary: The advice being given to you isn’t particularly new.

You already know that a project is going to have 200 sub-tasks. You have to work out the tasks and go at them with gusto. You also know that if you keep the project to yourself, nothing is going to happen.

Very few people have the ability to finish anything if there isn’t a fixed deadline, often with a penalty if the job doesn’t get done. And whatever you’re shipping is going to have bugs. You can fix those bugs later.

Those that do endless research and wait for the right moment, almost always fail.

Instead you need to set a deadline, get your product or service into the market and fix the glitches later.

The great works of genius in science, maths, language, arts of business weren’t fully formed. They were mostly half-baked and got better as they went along. You may decide to start later, when things are perfect.

It’s a decision that almost never has a good ending!

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Free from Psychotactics: The $2500 Brain Alchemy Marketing Strategy Workshop

📅 June 17, 2017 | View in Gmail

If someone stood on the corner and gave you $25, wouldn’t you be suspicious?But what if they gave you $250? Or $1000? Would you raise your eyebrows? Even avoid that person?

It depends on the person, right? Well that person happens to be me. And I’m not giving away $50 or even $1000, but instead a home study version of a workshop worth a chunky $2500.

Is there a catch? Is there an upsell? Is there some cross sell? Is there some ulterior motive?

The answer is categorically no. No up sell. No cross sell. No sneaky tricks.

And yes, there’s a perfectly good reason why we’re giving away the workshop. And you can read it and judge for yourself at:

And the link https://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-alchemy-goodies/

Warm regards from Kiwi country…

Sean P.S. It’s free. But only for the next seven weeks.

P.P. S. If you already have The Brain Alchemy MasterClass and prefer NOT TO receive follow up emails, go to this link and enter your details. https://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-alchemy-opt-out/

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How To Validate Your Business Idea (And Overcome Self-Doubt)

📅 June 13, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Validate Your Business Idea (And Overcome Self-Doubt)

(Read or listen to this article online) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/validate-idea/ ]

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

That is precisely what happened to a vet from Belfast, Ireland. This vet, named John Boyd Dunlop, watched with a bit of angst as his son, Johnnie, as he bounced madly while riding on a bike on a cobblestone street.

The solid rubber tyres were clearly not suitable and he set about inventing the first commercially viable pneumatic tyres.

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

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

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

How do you validate your business idea?

Let’s look at one important point when you’re about to embark on a “pudding sort of idea”—How to distinguish between your own voice of fear, and voice of reason.

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

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

At first, it’s delicious. It’s likely to be crusty on the outside, soft on the inside. But keep it on your kitchen bench for a few days, and it starts to get hard. In a week, it’s likely to get rock-hard and possibly get mouldy.

The question to ask yourself at this point is: Did you buy bad bread?

And the answer is self-evident

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

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

However, this is where things start to go horribly wrong; only we feel like it’s going just right. The way things unfold is through testing, research and working out if the market needs our product.

Once we’ve gone around the research block many times, we then wonder if we have anything new to bring to the table. And as we’re doing all of this evaluation, the market marches on. The more we research, the more we get stuck in your own trap to the point where the only thing we can do, is to scout for yet another idea.

Fear takes over, and we don’t know what to do next.

But why are we fearful in the first place?

We’re fearful because we can’t see the big picture. When you look at most business owners, they don’t look confused and composed. They seem to have all these projects going; they appear to be attending events, speaking, turning out courses and books. In short, they seem to have everything well under control.

You, on the other hand, aren’t able to see so far into the distance, let alone figure out a way to get there. And this lack of the ability to see way into that future, plus the ongoing intimidation from seemingly successful people, puts you in a position of great angst.

The big picture is usually the biggest problem

Entrepreneurs who succeed rarely see the big picture. They’re not entirely clueless, either. They know where they want to go, but it’s still, at best, a hazy view of the future. What they tend to look at closely is what’s in front of them.

To understand the analogy, think of yourself in a car.

Let’s say you have to drive from Auckland to Wellington, a route of almost 8 hours of hard driving. Do you know what Wellington looks like at this moment? It would hardly hassle you because you’re focused on the road right in front of you. Your only piece of research is a sort of GPS system that will more or less ensure you don’t get lost along the way.

But wait, you already have your GPS system

You did the research; you read the books, you know how to move forward, so why are you still stuck? If we were to go back to the road analogy, you wouldn’t be stuck. And that’s because you’re not figuring out whether you’ll have a puncture 24 km from now.

You’re not worried that there’s other competition; other cars on the road. What you’re entirely focused on is the road right in front of you. If you get tired or confused, you stop for a break. If you get hungry, a meal does the trick. All along the way, you’re just looking at what’s in front of you.

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

A project somehow needs to have all your ducks lined up in a row, or you simply drive around in circles.

But what if there were a way to break up a project into smaller bits? When we think of a business or project let’s drop the big, seven-silly-figure plan, shall we?

Let’s just focus on two core elements:

The first point is where we’re going to get our clients.
The second is where we’re going to get them to spend their time.

So where do we get our clients?

If you just build a website, no one will come. Despite being online and having a rock-solid reputation, almost no one comes to our website out of the blue. Instead, they come from somewhere else.

When we first started our business, that somewhere else was a portal called “Marketingprofs.com”. We’d publish an article at the portal and clients would head to our website after reading the article. When we’d go to a local, tiny event, and speak for about 30 minutes, prospects would turn into clients and buy an e-book, and then a small percentage would sign up for consulting.

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

Successful entrepreneurs are like successful comedians

You only get to see the final one or two-hour show, but you never get to see all the small parts along the way. Comedians painstakingly put forward their jokes, only to see many fall flat.

Some make the cut, and they go into the final show. Entrepreneurs do something similar. They make a move here, a move there and they keep going forward. By the time you see that fancy course appearing on Facebook or on their websites, they’ve made dozens, possibly hundreds of little moves to get to that point.

And then, if they’re good, as in really good, they keep working on their plans and refining it to the sharpest possible degree.

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

When you consider the entire journey, the possibility of a breakdown, deteriorating weather, and crazy drivers, suddenly it seems like a pretty good idea to put some tea on the boil and stay home.

But with every experience you have of staying home, you create a whole new layer of fear. After a while, it seems totally impossible to go ahead with any plan and research and further learning seems to be the only consolation prize.

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

I know how to create an ePub file. How do I know this? Because I’ve been through many hours of practice. When ePub first came out many years ago, I was keen to learn it, and so I followed the tutorial and made an ePub file.

But it was a dummy file because I didn’t want it to be anything a client would hold. When InDesign started to dig deeper into ePub, I went through tutorial after tutorial, in version after version of ePub and InDesign. To this day, I haven’t created a single Psychotactics document in ePub.

You can see the problem, can’t you?

I’m trying to create this perfect book, this perfect product. Instead of simply planning out a simple ePub, I’m looking at the big picture, and it’s stifling me. All the information and all the research isn’t helping at all.

The ePub project is many years old, and it’s like a loaf of bread that’s been sitting there the whole time. You can barely believe your eyes when you read this information, can you? You’d think, what’s the problem with a measly epub file?

Why can’t you just give it a shot? Who cares if it turns out right or wrong?

Same question is headed your way

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

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

Next week we will look at: How To Beat Analysis-Paralysis (When Validating Your Business Idea)

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About this eZine and your subscription

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How To Quickly Create Your Business and Products Uniqueness

📅 June 11, 2017 | View in Gmail

How do you position your products and services?

Finding your uniqueness is incredibly difficult, yet some companies do it consistently well. How do you learn from their ability to position their products and services?

Also, do you really need a uniqueness for every business product and service? The answer is “yes” and this episode will reveal why that’s the case.

In this episode we look at:

How do you go about finding uniqueness for your business/product/service?
The “Attenborough Effect.”
Do different products/services need their own uniquenesses?

#141: How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 141 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/create-uniqueness/ ] |

Once you finish, don’t forget to binge-listen to these two irresistible podcasts. (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#142: How to Effectively Test Your Uniqueness When you create or find your uniqueness, do you need to test it? Incredible as it seems there’s little point in doing any testing at all. In this episode you’ll find out why testing is practically impossible and how instead of wasting time on research, you should follow three steps to make sure your uniqueness occupies a permanent part of your client’s brain. Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 142 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/effectively-test-uniqueness/ ] |

#138: Validating Your Business Idea: How To Beat Analysis-Paralysis Even if you have the best business idea in the world, analysis-paralysis can stop you in your tracks. You feel frozen, not sure what to do. Find out and beat the analysis-paralysis once and for all.

Warm regards, SeanP.S. What would it be like to stand out from the competition in a way that customers choose you over everyone else? Here are six free goodies on Uniqueness. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/ ]

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Why Success Is Hindered By The Lack of the Tolerance Effect

📅 June 06, 2017 | View in Gmail

Why Success Is Hindered By The Lack of the Tolerance Effect

(You can read or listen to it online. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/lack-tolerance-effect/ ])

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

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

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

So what did I tell her?

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

Keira didn’t need much convincing

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

The bigger the business, the bigger the poo

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

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

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

Part 1: The Tolerance for Success and Failure

In August 2015, a musical made its debut on Broadway It wasn’t just any old musical. A few months earlier in February of that year, the off-Broadway engagement was totally sold out. And in 2016 itself, it received 16 Tony nominations and won 11.

That musical goes by the name of Hamilton; a hip-hop musical is about the life of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution. And the musical’s producer, Jeffrey Seller is passionate about the need for tolerance. “People don’t have the tolerance”, says Seller who’s seen more than his share of failures. “The tolerance for anxiety, fear, bewilderment and pain.

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

You’re likely to have heard about William Shakespeare’s work in plays such as Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. But it’s normal when you fail to recognise names of plays such as Timon of Athens or All’s Well That Ends Well.

Those two in particular rank among the worst of his plays and have been considered to be completely underbaked. But that’s not unusual, is it? A writer does bad work and then produces better work as time goes on.

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

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

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

“You can’t cherry pick”

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

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

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

Picasso didn’t cherry pick

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

It’s called elephant poo.

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

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

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

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

Part 2: The Tolerance to Learn

I know, you’re probably laughing at me because this system sounds so ridiculous And it may or may not be ridiculous. It’s hard to measure what you can remember, but after years of trying to speed things up, I realised one important fact. I need to slow down. I need to have a higher tolerance for learning.

So what is a higher tolerance for learning?

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

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

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

My memory is like a sieve, sometimes

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

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

Don’t get me wrong; I crave books

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why go so far?

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

The tolerance for learning has to be high. Speed is not the answer.

Speed reading is more like a TV dinner—a quick, yet deeply unsatisfying experience. Slow down and absorb the information and that’s what leads you to a greater level of understanding and success.

Tolerance to failure is critical.

Tolerance to learning is also extremely vital.

But we still have one factor of tolerance that’s needed: the tolerance for the long haul.

Part 3: The tolerance for the long haul

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

Google in April 2017, was worth $560 billion. But back in 1997, Google was still a dream in CEO, Larry Page’s brain. While at Stanford University, he created a search engine called BackRub. He tried to sell that search engine to another search engine company called Excite. But Excite’s primary investor made a counter offer of $750,000.

And Larry Page thought BackRub was worth a lot more. The short story is that today, 20 years later, Google is the most valuable company in the world.

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

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

The pitch was predictable

The story was about how he struggled to make any income at all. And the rags to riches story went nothing to several hundred million dollars. And before we know it, this person is hobnobbing with big shots including Sir Richard Branson. So why am I giving you the run down of this webinar?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because the webinar talks about hard work as the enemy. How we all work hard and how it never changes our life. And how this person’s seemingly magic system will change everything. What he continues to suggest is that you can get the elephant—without the poo.

And that’s the reality we know is untrue

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

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

The answer is encapsulated in a single word: drudgery. Let’s say you are nuts about coffee. You know the beans, you’re over obsessed over the roasting process, and you dream of opening a cafe for coffee-snobs.

For the first fifty or hundred days, you’re probably running on the aroma of the coffee alone, but then one day you feel like sleeping in. Now imagine your client showing up to the cafe only to find closed doors.

Every business has days of drudgery

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

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

Our membership site at 5000bc started in 2003

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

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

William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Hamilton’s producer, Jeffrey Seller, Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo da Vinci—they all realised that they’re in the long game. That if you think you’re just going to get into a business and the business will run itself, well, that’s like buying into a webinar and paying a small fortune to get a magic pill.

A magic pill that for the most part, is unlikely to work because it too will involve work.

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

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

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

Announcing: Information Products Self Study Course: Waiting List Open You know as well as I do, that an information product isn’t just about putting information together? Learn the most efficient system to create information products that keep customers coming back for more. https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/

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Announcing: The DaVinci Cartooning Course 2017: Bookings Open

📅 June 03, 2017 | View in Gmail

“I can’t draw a straight line!”

These aren’t just the words I hear from clients. They’re the words I heard from my wife, Renuka.

You see, Renuka never considered herself to be an artist. After all, no one in her family was known for their art, let alone drawing cartoons. It seemed logical that talent should run in the family, and it was natural for her to feel that cartooning wasn’t really for her.

You should see her now. You really should see her now. Her work is amazing (and you can see it in the 5000bc newsletters and on Facebook).

But is Renuka an exception? The answer lies in the cartooning course itself. I started up this course in 2010, to prove a simple point. I believed that skills are learned, not inborn. And it’s one thing to make a statement. What really matters is proof—beyond any doubt.

And since 2010, we’ve trained dozens of clients to draw

Not just draw doodles, but to draw cartoons of such a high calibre that in 6 months they’re being considered to be a “professional”.
They’ve gone on to drawing cartoons for their blogs and articles.
They’ve published their own business books (with cartoons) and some of them have even gone on to teach cartooning.

“I can’t draw a straight line!” It’s a phrase we use and it slows us down. It hampers our growth. It nails us to the floor. If you’ve ever considered that you’d like to draw—and draw cartoons, this is your chance to escape from that line.

So what is the qualification needed? You don’t need to know drawing at all. In fact, if you are pretty hopeless at any kind of drawing, in barely six months the results are astounding.

And yes, it’s that time of the year again. We have opened the registrations for the DaVinci 2017 Course. But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/ (The early bird offer ends on 6 June 2017)

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Since 2010, over 175 students have done this course and becomes cartoonists in their own right. It’s your time now.

Get your pencils ready. It’s time to draw! (The early bird offer ends on 6 June 2017) https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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May 2017

How Structured Giveaways Increase Sales of InfoProducts

📅 May 30, 2017 | View in Gmail

Information product sales don’t always increase with promotions alone.

Often they increase by giving away content that you could easily sell.

But shouldn’t you stick to giving away tiny reports?
What if you were told to give away a big product instead? Would that reap any rewards?

Join me and find out:

The impact of a small value giveaway
If you giveaway big products, will clients ever want to pay?
How to structure the giveaway and how often

#140: How Structured Giveaways Increase Sales of InfoProducts Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 140 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/ ] |

Once you finish, don’t forget to binge-listen to these two irresistible podcasts. (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#139: How To Achieve A Lot (Even As You Switch Tasks All Day) How do you get the brain and body to handle the transition? And how do you manage the transitions with a minimum amount of fuss?

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 139 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can you do me a tiny favour? Can you tell one friend about the podcast?

Just click on the e-mail link below and send a message. Email Friend 1

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Announcements: How To Liven Up Your Website + Information Products + Sean in Sweden

📅 May 27, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hello from a lovely wintery day in Auckland. Just stopping by to let you know what is happening at Psychotactics in the coming months.

The DaVinci Cartooning Course: Waiting List Open Wouldn’t you like to draw cartoons to liven up your website, blog or presentations? Wouldn’t it be great if you could draw your own cartoons instead of having to depend on someone else—or worse, buy some ill-fitting clip art?

But can anyone draw? You’ve been told (and told yourself) time and time again, that you couldn’t draw a straight line. But did you know that cartoonists don’t draw straight lines? They draw circles, squares and triangles and they get amazing results.

We’ve gone much too far believing in the concept of inborn talent Since 2010, we’ve had over 175 clients who’ve suspended that the idea of “inborn talent” and trusted the Psychotactics system. And they’ve changed the way they look at themselves.

Would you like to get out of your comfort zone and get into the fun zone?
Would you like a challenge that enables you to release that creativity you’re not sure about? If you’ve ever wanted to illustrate your own books, ebooks, or even your blog, this is the opportunity.

As they say, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Judge for yourself at: https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci

Information Products Self Study Course: Waiting List Open

You know as well as I do, that an information product isn’t just about putting information together?

Information itself is super-boring.

It’s just a bunch of stuff stacked up together. Sure you can put in some nice layouts and great font. But the information—that’s just bits and bobs put together. And bits and bobs don’t make for an utterly memorable info-product, do they? Every great product depends on a system.

Learn the most efficient system to create information products that keep customers coming back for more. https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/

Meet Sean in Sweden: 8 Seats Left Get away from the humdrum of your office and have a pleasant morning with Sean and Renuka over snacks and refreshments in a casual setting. Read more: https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/psychotactics-three-hour-meet/ [ http://https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/psychotactics-three-hour-meet/ ]

Warm regards, Sean P.S.If you have any questions, do email me [ sean@psychotactics.com ]. I answer all questions.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst Of Chaos)

📅 May 23, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst Of Chaos)

(This is a long article. You can read or listen to it online. Click on the cartoon. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/ ])

Performance psychologist Jim Loehr was on a particularly difficult mission.

He wanted to understand what kept the world’s top competitors head and shoulders above their competition. He watched hundreds of hours watching live games and followed up by poring through taped matches.

Despite the rigour he put into this research, he ran right into a brick wall. He noticed that during points, high calibre players appeared to be remarkably similar to each other. There seemed to be little or no difference in the way they went about their game.

Then Loehr looked closer and began to look at what players did in between points.

That’s when he had his Eureka moment.

The best players, it seems, had consciously or subconsciously built up a routine. As they headed back, they had a type of walk; they held their heads and shoulders in a certain way.

And most importantly, their breathing seemed to slow down. These players were playing their shot and then, amazingly, going through a recovery method while getting ready for the next shot.

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

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

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

The players have given it their all as the match has progressed, but as the game reaches the third hour, who’s going to be less fatigued? Who’s going to get more angry and frustrated? Who’s going to push his heart rate even higher resulting in muscular tension and drop in concentration?

The one who has been recovering in between points is clearly far ahead because he’s got far more energy.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what we’ll cover: 1- Work-Rest Ratios 2- What Depletes Energy 3- A Backup Battery

Work-Rest Ratios

1972 was a scary year for Southwest Airlines.

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

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

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

Southwest had little or no option.

They were either going to keep the planes in the air, or they’d go out of business. Years later, author, Kevin Frieberg, author of the book, “Nuts!”, was quoted as saying, “Aeroplanes only make money in the air”.

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

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

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

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

It’s so blindingly obvious that even reading this information seems bizarre Yet, look around you, and you find that almost no one but the kids are bouncing around like crazy. Well, those kids aren’t watching TV until late at night, are they? They aren’t scrolling through their devices endlessly either.

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

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

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

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

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

You’re compromising your performance. As you clock in more hours, you take more time to do the very same task, and there’s a greater chance of errors. What’s weird about sleep is that the more rested you are, the better you sleep. Think about the times when you’re agitated, and it’s clear that the sleep was just as disturbed.

So without going round and round, we need to understand a simple philosophy —Get the work-rest ratio consistent, most of the time

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

But work-rest ratios are not enough.

There’s something more, something even deeper. And that is to explore what depletes energy in the first place. Let’s take a hard look at energy depletion.

The Energy Depletion View

Energy depletion isn’t something that’s immediately apparent

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

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

Here’s how I used to write an article back in the year 2001

I’d start with the idea, do little or no outlining. Then I’d write, but what I was doing was editing. I’d go a line forward and two lines back.

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

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

Writing an article—this article for instance—involves a similar method of using stages. I’ve got a bunch of Post-It stickers on the wall that all have topics that I want to write about. When I’m ready to take on the topic, I go to the cafe or park bench and outline the article.

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

Completing tasks is only one form of energy depletion

People and situations also play an incredibly important role in depleting energy. Take for instance a workshop we had in California back in 2006. One of the clients was terribly demanding, and we were still new in the business.

We bent over backwards to make this customer happy, and I guess she was, but we were so drained at the end of the day. It’s a good thing they have giant Margaritas in California because I needed more than one to feel like a human again.

The same applies to situations

We go for a walk and sometimes a car will pull out of the driveway, leaving just a little gap behind for us to traverse back onto the footpath. I’ll go behind the car, and then glare back at the driver.

See what’s happening? It’s all a depletion of energy.

That small incident can rattle me for the next 10-20 minutes. Put in a few of these seemingly small events in a day, and it’s not hard to see why we can be super-drained by the end of the day.

Being constantly distracted is also an energy depletion factor

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

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

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

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

So how do you cope when you know you’re bound to run into energy-depletion zones every single day? What you need is a reserve battery pack and here’s how you get one. 3) The Backup Battery Imagine writing a complete article and finding it’s vanished into thin air.

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

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

For 30 minutes every morning I meditate, simply because of the returns I get from meditation. At first, meditation was just something to try out. However, when you go through a day from 4 am and you’re still energised at 9 pm, eyebrows need to be raised.

Meditation is my backup battery. I don’t know how it works, all I know is it just does. If you could stop your day for 30 minutes and get several hours of renewed energy later in the day, would you do it?

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

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

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

Feel like screaming at the traffic? Angry at some new law the council has passed? Clients driving you crazy? Suddenly you’re able to see all these people, events and situations as a bystander.

It almost feels like it’s not something that affects you, but is happening to someone else, instead. Instead of grumbling, getting mad and clearly draining your energy, you have a feeling of going with the flow.

Remember that article I lost? I did my best to search for it, but instead of getting upset, I went about it in a calm and composed manner. Even though my problem wasn’t solved, I simply went about some other activity.

Then, today, while searching for something else, I found my article (about the same time as I was about to re-write it from the ground up). If all of this sounds like gobbledegook, then believe me, I thought it was too.

However, I believe in results too And if the supposed-gobbledegook is going to help recharge my batteries and more importantly, keep me from draining them, then that’s exactly what I need. Hence the meditation every day for 30 minutes.

And if you’re wondering where you’re going to get 30 minutes from, remember the concept of the electric car (because it’s remarkably similar to your phone). When you charge a device for 30 minutes, it lasts longer, but even a short 10-15 minute charge is still a charge.

But charge it for zero minutes and you get zero.

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

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

Summary

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

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

Yet McEnroe was gone from the tennis scene by the age of 34. Connors, on the other hand, was still around at the highest level, even at the age of 40. It’s not hard to see what’s happening, is it?

Energy starts to escape at the very moment you rant and rave. It might seem like you’re disrupting your opponent, but by McEnroe’s admission, he did better when his temper was in control. From an energy perspective, we need to look at three core elements.

Work-Rest Ratios Without the rest, we simply drain our batteries until our system can’t handle it any more The more we work, the more we have to rest. When you rest, you come back fresher and more eager to do far better work.

At Psychotactics, we take breaks whenever we possibly can. Through the day, on weekends, and then after 12 weeks of work, a month off. You may not be able to take a chunky three months off at this stage but rest and work beckon you. If you want to do better work, you have to have more rest. It’s that simple.

The second—and more important point—is monitoring what depletes our energy Losing our cool takes up a huge tonne of energy right through the day. Things invariably go wrong; chaos is almost hovering around us all the time. In the face of constant and overbearing trouble, how do we avoid depletion of energy?

There’s also a depletion that comes from the lack of stages. Without stages, we take on too much, and we’re invariably tired as we move through the sequence. A little spacing out of stages, whether you’re writing a book, an article or just cooking dinner, is what’s needed to keep your energy at high levels.

Finally, we need a backup battery, and that battery is meditation If you have 12 minutes, that’s 12 minutes of backup in place. If you have 30 minutes, so much the better. But maybe 12 minutes will counter 12 minutes of chaos—and the net effect is that you’re not losing energy.

You’re stable, calm and happy. Life takes you on a diversion, and instead of getting mad and upset, you go along like a child, glad to be part of the adventure. We live in a world hostile to rest. We trust coffee more than meditation as a pick me up. We lose energy all the time and aren’t sure how to get it back.

Well, now you know.

Two Big Announcements

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One Special Announcement: How To Liven Up Your Website, Blog or Presentation With Cartoons

📅 May 20, 2017 | View in Gmail

Just one short announcements today.

The Da Vinci Cartooning Online Course: Opening 3 June 2017

Wouldn’t you like to draw cartoons to liven up your website, blog or presentations? Wouldn’t it be great if you could draw your own cartoons instead of having to depend on someone else—or worse, buy some ill-fitting clip art?

Is it just an inborn talent? Or can anyone draw? The interesting fact is that anyone can draw and draw well. And you don’t have to believe me.

The proof, they say, is in the pudding. And this pudding (the Da Vinci Course) has been proven to be amazing to turn anyone, yes anyone, into a solid cartoonist. And you can see amazing results in just six months.

If you’ve ever wanted to illustrate your own books, ebooks, or even your blog, this is the opportunity. We’ve had over 175+ people on this course. People who believed they couldn’t draw.

But don’t take my word for it. You can read their own stories at the link below. https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/

Warm regards, Sean P.S. DaVinci Course—Registrations open 3 June at 4 pm Eastern US. You can get on the waiting list to get first preference. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/ ]

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How To Slow Down (Without Losing Momentum)

📅 May 16, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Slow Down (Without Losing Momentum)

(You can read or listen to it online. Click on the cartoon [ https://www.psychotactics.com/losing-momentum/ ])

This is an elaboration/review of the book— ‘The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere’ by Pico Iyer.

4 am is the most difficult part of my day.

And it’s not for the reason you might be thinking. It’s not difficult because it’s so early in the morning. For me it’s quite the opposite. For close to 20 years I’ve been rising at 4 am, sometimes a bit earlier, without the need of an alarm. The sound and feel of 4 am is embedded in my system and I instinctively know when to wake up.

Which is where the problem begins.

Within seconds of waking up, I’m completely awake

I feel as though my brain is a train leaving the station, and I, as the train driver need to keep up. Five minutes later, I’ve walked out of the door, across to the office next door and I’m already at work. At this time of the day, and without the need of any coffee or tea, I can start to write a book, work on a presentation or take on the endless flow of e-mail.

So how do I slow down?

That was the question I asked myself when we slid into our December break in 2016. We’re all so alert, so full of this persistent need to work, to learn, to keep going at high speed. How do we slow down without losing momentum? And if we were to slow down, where would we get the time to slow down?

This last question seems to cut right to the core.

That we have no time to do what’s most important to us. Which is why I started first listening to, then reading a book I’d bought almost two years ago. Yes, the irony wasn’t lost on me. It took two years to get to the book, but as December rolled along I listened to it once, then a second time, before getting a physical copy from the library.

The name of the book? The Art of Stillness: Adventures In Going Nowhere. A book by writer, traveller, Pico Iyer. And let me tell you my short journey about going nowhere in a hurry.

We’ll look at three elements of the book, and it’s a very tiny book, spanning just 74 pages. When listening to it on audio, I think I was done with listening to it in a few hours. Even so, less is more. That’s the agenda of the book and the lesson I learned.

Here are the three things we’ll cover:

The Passage To Nowhere
The Charting of Stillness
The Internet Sabbath

Part 1: The Passage To Nowhere

Sitting still is a way of falling in love with the word and everything around it.

That’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? And within three pages of “The Passage to Nowhere”, author Pico Iyer makes you want to slow down, but not just feel like you’re getting off the motorway, but instead coming to a complete standstill. A stillness so unusual that if you close your eyes, you can hear the computer gurgle, feel the caress of the breeze, even your heartbeat seems so much louder.

Iyer, despite the Indian sounding name, was born in Oxford, England in 1957

By the time he’s twenty-nine, he’s got an office on the 25th floor in midtown Manhattan; an apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street and a job that most writers only dream about.

He covers apartheid in South Africa, the People Power Revolution in the Philippines, the chaos that enveloped India during prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. He wrote extensively for Time Magazine and took long vacations in exotic parts of the globe. The very thought of going nowhere was an incredibly alien concept.

And yet the constant excitement has a finite boundary

If you listen closely enough to life, it speaks to you in a whisper. Pico Iyer found that he couldn’t hear that whisper. He was racing about so much that he never had a chance to see where he was going, or truly enjoy what he was doing. He never had a chance to check if he was truly happy.

Writers have a funny way of going to their core

Some hit the bottle, others write endlessly. Iyer decided to retreat to Kyoto. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Kyoto, but it’s one of the most amazing cities in the world. There is a richness in the palaces and temples of Tokyo that’s hard to imagine, let alone replicate. Iyer decided to leave behind his dream life and spend a year in a small, single room on the backstreets of Kyoto. He craved a sense of stillness.

In the early part of his book he talks about how not so long ago, our greatest luxury was access to information. There was no such thing as too many books because a book was savoured. Information was a slow drug. Today it’s the freedom from information that we seek. The chance to be still is what Iyer calls the “ultimate prize”.

“I’m not a member of any church, and I don’t subscribe to any creed; I’ve never been a member of any meditation or yoga group,” say Iyer. And by the time I had hit this paragraph, it struck me that I was in a remarkably similar position; we all are, in fact.

We’re all rushing around, slightly overwhelmed at the amount of information we have to process and implement. We’re not necessarily a member of any meditation or yoga group and yet there’s this obvious desire to slow down until Pico Iyer takes it one step lower. We need to be still; go nowhere.

The chapter on “The Passage to Nowhere” clarifies the issue

It’s not about sitting at home and never going anywhere. Travelling opens up our minds, often makes us better, more interesting people. Stillness isn’t about a location. You can sit in the middle of a Mumbai street, cars honking and be perfectly at peace, though admittedly the goal isn’t about how far you travel but how alive you are.

Stillness it seems is the ultimate adventure; one I’d been on, but certainly not on a daily basis.

So as we slid into summer in this part of the world, I took my chance. In December, Auckland goes to sleep. Around the 20th of December, all the Christmas parties are done, kisses exchanged, and the city goes into hibernation. And it’s not just Auckland. The entire country goes into an enforced vacation until mid, even late January. It was my chance to go on a trip I’d never gone before.

I started to meditate

I tried sitting in a Lotus position on the floor. I can do it quite easily as I sit on the floor most days at some point or the other. But I didn’t feel comfortable sitting for long periods of time. My next try was sleeping on the floor, and despite the warmth of the season, I felt a bit chilly.

So I climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over and that was my Goldilocks moment. I soon discovered that trips require a bit of planning. I scoured iTunes for suitable meditation music until I found the one that suited me best. I wanted to see what this trip to nowhere was all about.

Stillness like anything in life requires momentum

When I first tried to clear my mind, the momentum of the day cluttered it with thoughts of an even higher frequency. I might be sitting and doing nothing, and have no perceptible thought in my head.

The moment I meditate, the thoughts, random thoughts burst through trying to shout over one another in an attempt to get my attention. But then the momentum dies down around the 30-minute mark. By the 45-minute mark, it becomes addictive, this meditation stuff.

And that’s what takes us to the second part of this review: The Charting of Stillness. In this section, he talks about his friend and songwriter, the late Leonard Cohen. He also talks about Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman who was called “the happiest man in the world.” What made this Frenchman so euphoric?

Let’s find out in the next part.

Part 2: The Charting of Stillness

When you look at Matthieu Ricard, you don’t see a molecular biologist. Because even if you and I have not a clue about what a molecular biologist looks like, Matthieu Ricard doesn’t look the part. And that’s because he’s wearing the robes of a monk, and has this endearing smile.

The University of Wisconsin was deeply interested in that smile

They attached 256 electrodes to the skulls of hundreds of volunteers and put them all through a 3 ½ hour continuous functional MRI scan. The researchers were searching for positive emotions at first. In later experiments they looked at areas of compassion, the ability to control emotional responses and interestingly, the ability to process information. The subjects were similar in most respects, except some had engaged in ongoing stillness, while others had not.

There was a marked difference between those who’d practiced the art of stillness vs those who hadn’t

Those who’d gone through stillness for about 10,000 hours had achieved a sense of happiness that was beyond any records in neurological records.

Their happiness factor was literally, quite off the charts. And Matthieu Ricard explains that happiness is a muscle. That like a muscle it can be developed. His philosophy is based on how Buddhists explain the nature of the mind. And you don’t have to be a Buddhist to understand the concepts of the blue sky.

If there are clouds, there is blue sky behind them. All you need is patience to sit still and the blue shows up again.

This blue sky analogy was interesting

Don’t get me wrong. A blue sky is, at least to me, the most boring kind of sky. I love clouds, all kinds of clouds. My niece Marsha are even members of the cloud appreciation society. So the analogy kind of bugs me, because I think all clouds, without exception, are incredibly stunning. Even so, the analogy of the blue sky is pretty solid. We lead a life based on our terms, travel places I want to go.

Even our websites aren’t built with some keywords in mind or driven by client’s demands. We do the things that most interest us instead of being governed by what competition does. Still, there are clouds. Clouds of irritation, envy. They roll in quietly going from a nice, fluffy cumulus to a menacing cumulonimbus.

Theoretically, I want them to put those 256 electrodes on my head and I want them to find happiness, compassion, no desire to react to emotional triggers and the ability to process information in an unusual way.

It was a journey I was willing to take. As I meditate under that duvet, I start off all busy in my brain and then I get on the road to stillness. There are days when I don’t quite feel like leaving the room and heading to work, it’s that addictive; that cool.

And yet there’s the obvious objection, isn’t there?

Who has time to stand still, or lie still. To me, at least 30-45 minutes was an intrusion. While on vacation it’s fine, because I truly do nothing, we’re now back to work and that’s a chunky 45 minutes out of the day. There’s so much to do. How are we supposed to tackle yet another slice of the day slipping away for yet another activity?

This takes us to the third part: The Secular Sabbath as it’s called in the book, but which I’ve changed a bit to the “internet sabbath”.

Part 3: The Internet Sabbath

What happens if you don’t check your e-mails one day? The elves come in, check your e-mails and your inbox is clear the next day, right? We know the price of not being on top of things.

Pico Iyer takes time to talk about the sabbath, but he stresses he’s not stepping foot into any religion. Instead he talks about a secular sabbath. About a day every week, when you completely free yourself of work. And incredibly, you get off checking stuff on the Internet.

All this talk of meditation and taking time off gets some people a little upset

Iyer talks about the time he was on a live radio show. The woman calling in was clearly upset. “It’s all very well for a male travel writer in Santa Barbara to talk about taking the day off,” she said. “But what about me? I’m a moth trying to start a small business, and I don’t have the luxury of meditating for two hours a day.”

Two hours is clearly an exaggeration on the caller’s part but the point is clear

We don’t have time to meditate and we don’t have time to stop checking e-mails and the internet. Yet it’s precisely the people who are most under pressure that need to give themselves a break.

Iyer suggests the poor, overburdened mother could ask her husband, her mother or a friend to look after the kids for thirty minutes a day. That would bring back a touch of freshness and delight to share with her kids and her business.

As you hear Iyer’s words, it’s still hard to accept that you can just walk away from the day

I struggled with weekends. My 4 am wake up time doesn’t respect weekends and until late 2015 I’d be at work on Saturday and Sunday. “I’m only here for a little while”, I’d say to myself, but I’d often be doing something or the other until 9 or 10 am. On the weekends I was supposedly spending 10 whole hours at work. Whether it was productive work or not is completely debatable and here’s why.

One weekend, my niece Keira came over and I was lying on the sofa. She said, “Seanny’s always tired”. That was my moment of clarity. The weekends weren’t helping me at all.

So I stopped coming to work on the weekends. We have courses on Psychotactics and their Friday assignment is my Saturday. For many years I’d say, “I need to check the assignment on the day itself.” Instead, I just told clients that if they finished their assignment by my Friday evening, I’d check it. If not, I’d be back on Monday. I expected pushback from clients. To my surprise I got none.

Many in Silicon Valley observe an Internet sabbath every week

All devices are turned off from say, Friday night to Monday. Kevin Kelly, is a spokesperson for new technologies and the founding father of Wired Magazine. Kevin takes off on month-long trips without a computer so as to get rooted in the non virtual world. “I want to remember who I am”, he says.

Even so, Kevin Kelly’s methods seem a bit far fetched. Instead you can simply turn off your Internet connection for a day. My wife, Renuka and I go for a walk every day for an hour and a half. We try and get about 10,000-15,000 steps a day.

On Sundays however, we don’t take the “workday walking route” Instead we find another route and take a physical book or a diary in which to write or draw. I try and avoid the iPad or any kind of device that will get me back on the Internet. It’s a constant challenge but it’s completely invigorating.

The simple act of putting the phone off and turning it on, 24 or even 48 hours later doesn’t increase your workload by much. However, it does dramatically improve your ability to be more calm, more resilient in life.

What’s been the result of all of this meditation and calmness?

Like Iyer, I stayed away from meditation for all these years. I convinced myself that my mind was blank enough when going for a walk or painting. And truly it was. But conscious meditation is different for me. It almost always brings a rush of thoughts; of things that need to be done.

Renuka tells me I’m sleeping better and my breathing is less shallow. Instead of reacting to events, I seem to let them pass like clouds, expecting that blue sky will show up shortly.

But easily the biggest change has been the morning train. Remember the train that starts in my brain and races out of the station at 4 am? Well, it doesn’t do that any more. I now wake up, meditate and then go to work.

I still have the same day I used to have before. But somehow it’s different.

Coming Soon—Davinci Cartooning Live Online Course: Wouldn’t you like to draw cartoons to liven up your website, blog or presentations? Click to read more… [ https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/ ]

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Tiny Saturday Request

📅 May 13, 2017 | View in Gmail

Some of our best clients come from people just like you. People who are kind and helpful and with whom we could share a coffee or tea. We would love to have a few more people join us on this Psychotactics journey.

So this Saturday I have a tiny request It would really be nice if you could tell just one friend about Psychotactics.

E-mail works best So, if you can send an e-mail to a friend, that’s probably the best way to go.

Just click on the e-mail link below and send a message. Email Friend 1

And thanks in advance. We really appreciate the referral.

Warm regards, Sean D’Souza

P.S. Thanks so much.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Last Day for Special Offer—Dartboard Pricing + Special Bonuses (worth $49)

📅 May 09, 2017 | View in Gmail

Just a reminder, in case you missed the last email.----------------------------------------------------------------------When you buy Dartboard Pricing-How To Increase Prices Without Losing Customers on the 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th May 2017, you’ll also get—‘5-Steps To Starting Up A New Project Successfully’ (worth $49) absolutely free.---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dartboard?As in darts and a dartboard?Yes, exactly!If you go to a bookstore and buy a dozen books on pricing, you will find pricing is some incredibly sophisticated system. You’ll run into fancy and complicated pricing models that rapidly put you to sleep.So is pricing simple?Sure it is. You don’t need a book to figure out pricing.A simple dart board and some prices on the board would solve your problem in a matter of minutes. The price itself is of little consequenceWhat matters is all the stuff around the price. And in this three-part pricing series, you’ll understand:The Psychology of Pricing (What Causes Us To Buy)The Method of Raising Prices (And The Mistakes To Avoid)Creating and Managing Price Expectations No boring pricing modelsNo ugh complication.Just a simple, step-by-step system that walks you through exactly what you have to do. And the Special Bonus: 5-Steps To Starting Up A New Project Successfully In this 24 page booklet you will learn Five steps that are required to start up any new project successfully.Why you shouldn’t get scared of your competition.Why brand analysis comes before everything else.Why personality is critical in your business.What is the most important thing when starting up a project?Judge for yourself at:http://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/(This special offer ends 9th May 2017—US Eastern) Regards SeanP.S. This is what Colette Nichol has to say about Dartboard Pricing: “The feature I most enjoyed about Dartboard Pricing was the table that shows you exactly how to price things so that they sell. It’s kind of genius.” “I have a very high success rate when it comes to sales but I’m interested in increasing my prices over the next two years, rather substantially.I purchased Dartboard Pricing as I was certain that it would provide useful info about how to actually go about doing that without experiencing excessive customer friction.Dartboard Pricing confirmed some practices that I was already using – showing me why it was working and how to make it work even better. It also gave me an easy to use framework for selling any course or product that I create. I feel confident now that when I create my first online course I will be able to price it in a way that communicates the value of what my clients will be receiving.Most small biz owners I know have all sorts of issues with pricing – this should take away some of those issues if not all of them.There’s basically no good reason not to buy Dartboard Pricing. It’s hands down the best $50 I’ve spent this year.”Colette NicholVancouver, Canada

Announcing: Dartboard Pricing-How To Increase Prices Without Losing Customers + Special Bonus Valued at $49

📅 May 06, 2017 | View in Gmail

When you buy Dartboard Pricing-How To Increase Prices Without Losing Customers on the 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th May 2017, you’ll also get—‘5-Steps To Starting Up A New Project Successfully’ (worth $49) absolutely free.

Dartboard? As in darts and a dartboard? Yes, exactly!

If you go to a bookstore and buy a dozen books on pricing, you will find pricing is some incredibly sophisticated system. You’ll run into fancy and complicated pricing models that rapidly put you to sleep.

So is pricing simple? Sure it is. You don’t need a book to figure out pricing.

A simple dart board and some prices on the board would solve your problem in a matter of minutes.

The price itself is of little consequence What matters is all the stuff around the price.

And in this three-part pricing series, you’ll understand

The Psychology of Pricing (What Causes Us To Buy)
The Method of Raising Prices (And The Mistakes To Avoid)
Creating and Managing Price Expectations

No boring pricing models No ugh complication. Just a simple, step-by-step system that walks you through exactly what you have to do.

And the Special Bonus: 5-Steps To Starting Up A New Project Successfully This booklet is tiny—only 24 pages. However, it very systematically takes you through the five steps that are required to start up any new project successfully. • Why you shouldn’t get scared of your competition. • Why brand analysis comes before everything else. • Why personality is critical in your business. • What is the most important thing when starting up a project?

Here’s the page. Judge for yourself. http://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Regards Sean P.S. This series does gives you the overview of how to go about pricing, and then gets to the brass tacks. You can literally copy the model (and you should) and have it up on your website, in your presentation or brochures.

Have a look and make a decision based on what you read. http://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/ [ http://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/ ](This special offer is only valid until 9th May 2017)

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Outlining Your Book: The Three Crucial Steps

📅 May 02, 2017 | View in Gmail

Outlining Your Book: The Three Crucial Steps (This is a long article. You can read or listen to it online. Click on the cartoon)Around the start of 2010, I was very upset with myself.I’d pre-sold a workshop and as I always do, the notes for the workshop are sent to the attendees a whole month in advance. Since the workshop was being held earlier in the year, I had been thinking about the notes right through my summer break in late December and early January. Uniqueness is a pretty difficult topic and I needed to find a way to ensure that everyone—without exception—got the concept of uniqueness and was able to implement it. The only problem with writing the notes, was that it seemed like the notes were going to be at least 200 pages long. 200 pages is like a security blanket for a writer In the mind of a writer, the chunky volume of notes seem to suggest you have something important to say. And yet my wife Renuka isn’t a big fan of a ton of notes. “Why can’t you write fewer pages?” she asked me as we were sitting at the cafe. “Why can’t you get the same point across, so I don’t have to read so much?” A pointed question like this is truly frustrating for me because I know it’s easier to fill a book with a ton of information. But a book, or notes in this case, need to be Spartan. They only need to have enough pages; just enough knowledge for the client to get a result. They don’t need to be padded or filled with words no one needs. And this meant I had to go back to my outline several times.When writing a book, the most difficult task isn’t the writing Distilling the ideas down to simplicity is what gets in the way. I have to force myself to leave the office, sit at the cafe for hours at a time, with no Internet connection. Monday’s draft gives way to Wednesday’s, and will be supplanted by Friday’s draft. Sometimes it can take a month of drafts to get my thoughts together.Except it was already January. The clock was ticking closer to my deadline. I had to make sure I had the book going.Which is why you, and I, we both need an outline. So how do you outline a book? What method should you use?What if you can’t write a lot and can only manage a few pages? Should you give up?Let’s explore three elements of book outlining to get us on our way:Element 1: Why you should ideally cover just three points.Element 2: Why deconstruction is important to get you goingElement 3: Understanding the purpose of the book.Element 1: Three PointsWhen you think of a topic like “presentations”, what comes to mind?Let’s make a list, shall we?- Creativity- Crafting stories- Simplicity- Delivery- Audience connection- Engagement- Displaying Data- Creating Movement- Time KeepingThose points above represent a tiny list. If you were to look through the books on Amazon.com alone, you’d find at least fifty, possibly a hundred, even two hundred and ten topics on the singular topic of presentations.It’s at this time that a novice or unthinking writer decides to do it all. He or she decides to cram as many items as possible into a single book, just to make sure nothing is missed.Take watercolours, for instance Back in 2010, I was pretty hopeless at watercolours when the painting bug struck me. How hopeless is hopeless? I painted for three months faithfully following the instructions of my teacher, Ted. After three months, the area had an auction of the artwork. My painting came up on the auction block. The auctioneer started at $30. No takers $20? Wait, auctions are supposed to go up, not down. But there was the painting at $10, and still no buyers in sight. Now that you’ll have to agree is a hopeless situation. Anyway, to avoid such a high level of embarrassment in the future, I decided to take watercolours a lot more seriously. I tramped down to the library and came back armed with at least a dozen books on the subject matter. As I opened book after book, a similar scenario unfolded. Every book seemed to feel the need to cover all the possible topics under the broad umbrella of watercolour. This is the kind of mistake you want to avoid as a writer The journey to outlining just about anything—a book, an article, even the weather report—is better served by working three elements; three main topics and then digging deep into the sub-strata of every one of those topics. Ironically, though, you have to start with the entire mess. You have to begin your journey by being reasonably crazy and listing everything.Which means you’ve got to roll out two steps.Step 1: List all the points you can think of Step 2: Choose three pointsCovering every possible scenario, even at the brainstorming stage should drive you crazy. Well, let it drive you crazy. Writing a book needs to start with a brainstorm, long before you get to the outlining stage. So let your imagination go on that rodeo as you list everything you could cover. An exhaustive list is not a bad thing. It demonstrates how much you know and how much you can cover in the future. However, once you’re done with that list, it’s time to pick the three elements that will go into your book. You have to wiggle your way into Step 2 and choose three points.The problem with Step 2 is deciding which points to choose You’d probably think it’s crazy to choose any random points, but that’s usually what I do. Take the “Black Belt Presentations” book for example. I didn’t set out to write a series of books on the structure of a presentation or webinar. I set out to write a single book. And when we look at the huge list we can muster from a single visit to Amazon; I decided to simply choose the three elements that I considered to be important.And so we had: Controlling the visual aspect (how to create stunning slides)Controlling the structure of the presentation (how to build the presentation with amazing flow) Controlling the audience (why a great presentation can be ruined if you’re not prepared for the reality of an audience).Were there more topics to cover? Sure there were. Would I cover it? Maybe in another book, a series of podcasts, articles, etc. But as a writer, creator, weather reporter, you can’t really go digging into every single cloud or that spotty bit of sunshine.You have to make a decision to drop stuff. To take a simple analogy, think of a sculptor. Or rather a dozen sculptors all with similar blocks of marble. The job of the sculptor is to remove the bits that don’t matter so that you can reveal the sculpture that does matter.Yet, when you look at the finished work of a dozen artists, you’ll notice they all end up with different types of sculpture. Given the same topic, e.g. presentations, you have to get rid of all the sub-topics you can’t possibly cover and stick with just three.Three? Not four? Or five? I’ve got “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz sitting on my desk. First written in 2004, it’s gathered a bit of dust, but when I open the Table of Contents, what holds 250-odd-pages of the book together? It’s the topics—four, not three.1: When we choose2: Why we choose3: How we suffer4: What we can do. And nestled under those four categories are what Schwartz needs to say. Even though you can clearly spot ten, wait, eleven chapters and one prologue, they’re still magnificently constrained by the limitations of four topics. When you look at The Brain Audit, you don’t quite see that in the Table of Contents, do you? The Brain Audit is split up quite clearly into seven chapters. And yet there’s an overlying structure to the book. The first three chapters are about attraction. They’re solely dedicated to getting the client’s attention. The next four chapters are all about risk. It’s what causes the client to back away, to get all hesitant, even though they seem to be so interested in your product or service. Writing a book may seem like a daunting and reasonably frustrating experience An enormous amount of frustration bellows forth from the need to cover everything in sight. Instead, if you were to cover three topics, almost any three topics, you could seamlessly stitch them together to create a fantastic outline.You still have to do a fair bit of work to get the book written, but the battle is won or lost at outline stage. Train your outline to sit, beg and play dead, and you’ve already vaporised away the first—and biggest headache of all. This takes us to the second bit where you outline the personality of your bookTo get on this fascinating trip of structuring the personality of your book, you have to dig into a whole bunch of books you love. It’s time to use the power of deconstruction to get going.Let’s deconstruct.Element 2: DeconstructionImagine you’re the emperor in a far eastern land.And your son, Kintsukuroi (pron: khintz-ku-roi) is about to go through the ceremony of investiture. The bowl is the most important symbol of this rank being given to the young prince. And yet, the king opens his cabinet to find the magnificent bowl broken into a hundred pieces. Broken hearted at the wanton destruction of this incredible piece of art, the emperor retires to his private chambers to share his sorrow with his son. The night passes quietly, but in the morning there’s a huge commotion.The cabinet of treasures has been broken into and not only have the pieces of the bowl disappeared but also the bejewelled crown for the prince, which was to be used for the investiture ceremony. What’s worse is the thief was seen running towards the prince’s quarters.Could the guards break down the door? Why was there smoke coming out of the prince’s quarters? The mystery was solved the next day when the bowl reappeared, whole again, but glistening with veins of gold where the cracks had been. And the prince appeared at his investiture ceremony later in the day. Except he had a thinner crown, depleted of much of its gold. Kintsukuroi means ‘to repair with gold’ in Japanese, and is the art of repairing pottery with gold and understanding that the piece is the more beautiful for having been broken.When creating the outline of a book you have to deliberately break, or deconstruct the work of others, so that you can engage in Kintsukuroi, and reconstruct your own book in a way that’s far superior. It’s easy to get caught up in the construction of your own words and pages. And yet, it’s pretty important to go through at least six-eight books that you love, if only to understand the underlying structure. Take for instance most of the Psychotactics books or coursesThere’s a structure to the book that you may have noticed, but not necessarily paid great attention to.It starts off with an introduction.The introduction is followed by three main topics.Every topic goes deep into the sub-topics. And as you wander though the pages of the book, you’ll run into cartoons, captions, stories, examples, fly out boxes, summaries, a food recipe—and so on. This is the underlying structure that makes the book so easy to read.It’s the powerhouse that pushes you forward, making sure you get to the last page. Compare this with a book that has no summaries, no visuals, no captions and examples that are always harping about ginormous companies like Amazon and Apple. You get the idea, don’t you? When you deconstruct a few of your favourite books, you get a wish list of what you’d like the reader to experience in your own books, don’t you?You’ve gone through the act of Kintsukuroi The books you looked at were already quite impressive by your own reckoning. That’s the reason why you chose them in the first place. But then after you’ve broken them apart, you get to reconstruct them in a way that’s more beautiful and more suited to you than ever before. And this structural break and remaking process is what helps you put your information under a structural format that you can keep and evolve over the years. When you’re outlining a book, it’s easier to put pieces of content where there’s already a category or space. It’s a lot less intimidating when you know what needs to go where in the book structure. But if I copy the structure, won’t it look similar? Did you know that my introduction and illustrations were influenced by “Don’t Make Me Think?” Of course not, and even now if you were to hold The Brain Audit and Steve Krug’s book side by side, you’re unlikely to find too much of a resemblance. The key isn’t to make an identical copy. Remember the procedure? You’re breaking first, then reattaching it together. There’s a bit of additional input going into the structure. Whether the structure comes from you or from another source, it all helps to create that Kintsukuroi moment. Construction after deconstruction. This is the kind of deconstruction you want for your book as well You could see it as a sort of template for all books you create in future. What makes it truly beautiful is that the act of breaking up the structure of other books ends up with a stunning new creation. It’s truly Kintsukuroi and helps create a powerful outline structure. We worked our way through creating just three topics, deconstructed and reconstructed the structure of our book, but finally it’s down to purpose. Why are you writing the book? Is it just to put words on paper, or is there some other reason?Element 3: PurposeUsually from December 20th to Jan 20th every year, I take a summer break.The days consist of no e-mail, endless episodes of detective series on Netflix, biographies and beer. Eventually, December gives way to January and New Zealand (and I) wake up from our month long vacation. To ease myself back into work mode, I start reading business books. And this year started out with an outstanding book called “The Content Trap” by Bharat Anand. Just leafing through the introduction takes you well past 30 pages and yet every moment of the introduction is gripping. But what is Bharat Anand’s purpose? This is the question most writers need to ask themselves before sitting down to outline their books. Is the book meant to create consulting? Are you expecting to improve your profile? Would you hope to do a speaking tour as a result of your book becoming a bestseller? Would companies hire you to solve their problems? And would it involve big business or small firms? In the case of the “Content Trap”, my perception was that the book was aimed at bigger companies The examples within the book were amazing, but there they were: Amazon, the Scandinavian newspaper publisher Schibsted, The New York Times, the sports marketing giant IMG and Harvard Business School’s own content management system. These examples leave me and most other readers in a sort of trap of our own. We have all these utterly outstanding examples, but all of them are companies that are high and mighty. Even if we were to admire the sheer depth of the learning, how would someone like you or me put this information to use?And this is where the purpose comes right in You need to be clear about why you’re writing the book. In Anand’s case, he’s got a great idea and scintillating data to back up his concept, but it falls apart at the seams because there’s no way to use it. Could it be that the book is designed to give potential clients an idea of what’s possible? Could it be that they then call the author in for extensive consulting? Many books are written with the goal of getting consulting in mind. Could this be one of them?When I outline the book, the main goal is to get a precise result Whether it’s photography, article writing or landing pages, the goal is well-defined before I start to write. And this is something you should do. It seems like such a tiny, inconsequential part of the outlining process and yet it’s crucial.What’s the end point when the book comes out? Is it to get you more consulting?Is it to get you more fame?Is it to create a permanent source of income and nothing else? Knowing the end point makes a difference to the examples you give and how you structure your book. Knowing where you’re going. It applies to everything in life, but especially when you’re outlining a book. Once you know exactly where you’re going, you can focus your energy better than ever before. Announcing: The Psychotactics Three-Hour Meet Up: Stockholm, Amsterdam and Singapore The purpose of the meet-up is to get away from the humdrum of your office and have a pleasant morning with Sean. (Singapore: 1 seats left, Amsterdam: 1 seats left and Stockholm: 9 seats left )https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/psychotactics-three-hour-meet/ Product Offers: Links you should visit Top-Selling Products Under $50Chaos PlanningForget Business Planning and Goal Setting. Find out—How ‘Irregular’ Folks Get Things Done.The Brain AuditThe Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon.Find out—How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling.Story Telling SeriesHow to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested? About this eZine and your subscription Remember to share this articleAll links must remain in the article. No textual amendments permitted. Psychotactics Ltd. All rights reserved.Free GoodiesThe Power of Enough—And Why It’s Critical To Your Sanity(Look for episode 44)iTunes | Android| Read and Listen |Report: How To Win The Resistance GameReport: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)“Other Resources and ToolsP.S.Look at your website URL now! Does it start with ‘http’ instead of ‘https’?2017 is the year of https and SSL for websites. You have to move quickly if you want to remain competitive. Not sure what to do? Read more here.Important: You are subscribed to the Free Psychotactics Newsletter. If you un-subscribe from this letter, you won’t receive any goodies, offers, or newsletters in future. If you’re getting duplicate newsletters, email us and we’ll make sure you get just one copy. Email renuka@psychotactics.com Privacy and Spam Policy I don’t rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You’ll not get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list. Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

April 2017

When Things Went Wrong at Psychotactics (And What We Learned From Our Mistakes)

📅 April 29, 2017 | View in Gmail

In a small business, strategy and tactics often go wrong. Yet all you hear about is success, success and how someone made it big.

This episode is about some bad judgment calls and also about plain pomposity. In every instance, we’ve learned more from the bad times than the good.

It’s taught us to be better marketers and better people.

Join me as we go back in time. You will hear about: Story No.1: The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003 Story No.2: A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea Story No.3: How our minus two learning has helped us.

When Things Went Wrong at Psychotactics (And What We Learned From Our Mistakes) Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 134 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/ ] |

Don’t miss these two episode? (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#133: Outlining Your Book: 3 Crucial Steps Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 133 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://www.psychotactics.com/itunes ] | Android [ https://www.psychotactics.com/stitcher ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/outlining-book-steps/ ] |

#132: Landing Pages: Why We Fail to Attract the Right Clients Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 132 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://www.psychotactics.com/itunes ] | Android [ https://www.psychotactics.com/stitcher ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-fail/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can I ask for a tiny favour? I really would love if you would tell your friends about the podcast.

Here is a simple link https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend [ https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/ ]

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Landing Pages: Why We Fail to Attract the Right Clients

📅 April 25, 2017 | View in Gmail

Landing Pages: Why We Fail to Attract the Right Clients

(This is a long article. You can read or listen to it online. Click on the cartoon [ https://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-fail/ ])

In Mexico, there’s a beach that goes by the name of Rosarito.

The rocks on that beach made advertising executive, Gary Dahl over 6 million dollars back in 1976.

Those rocks were a smooth stone that was soon better known as Pet Rock. These rocks were marketed as if they were live pets. They had their own cardboard boxes, straw and breathing holes for the “animal”. People buying the Pet Rock knew fully well what they were buying. And yet they went along with the gag. They leafed through the 32-page official training manual, which included instructions on how to care for the rock.

You could, it joked, teach the rock to “sit” and “stay” but “roll over” or “shake hands” was a little harder to explain.

What was important back then and what’s just as important right now is that people knew it was a gag; a dummy. They knew they were buying something that couldn’t really do much for them. And they went along with the joke. When it comes to marketing or selling our products and services, we often don’t realise we’re dealing with a dummy.

We think we’re doing the right thing when choosing an audience.

In the book, The Brain Audit, there’s a whole chapter on why this premise of target audience leads you off the path and into dummy land. And yet the one thing we’ve heard over and over again is the concept of target audience. It’s our Pet Rock moment. We are stuck with something that seems fun and exciting, but won’t do anything but “play dead”.

This article takes on the issue of target profile and why it’s so important. Thousands of clients have read the book, The Brain Audit, and yet I see so many of them mixing up the concept of target profile and target audience. So how do we separate the two once and forever?

In this article, we cover three parts (as always).

The blind spot with target profile (and why we keep repeating the same mistake).
We go deeper into the concept of the “dummy” as we examine person vs. persona.
Finally, we’ll take a look at some of the questions to ask in target profile interview.

Let’s start with the blind spot, shall we? Why do we keep making the same mistake over and over again?

Part 1: The blind spot with target profile

I remember when I took my first driving test in Auckland, New Zealand.

I drove a manual, what you’d probably call a stick shift back then. As part of my test, I was asked by the testing officer to go down a hill. Immediately, I put the gear into neutral and coasted downhill.

You know what happened next, don’t you?

As exhilarating as it can be to race down hill at top speed, you shouldn’t ever put a car in neutral and when heading downhill. There are a whole bunch of things that can go wrong. But that downhill drive was my blind spot. I had done it so many times before, that I didn’t see that it would not only cause a problem, but would get me a nice big F (as in Failed) against my test.

Most of us make the same mistake when we get down to working with our target profile

When asked about our target profile, we get drawn into the error of describing a target audience. And this mistake is reasonable because almost every marketing book or course talks mostly about target audience.

It suggests that we should look for a bunch of people. E.g. people who are afraid of making presentations, or teacher, or people who want to be coaches. It talks about targeting huge groups of people all at once.

While this is a great starting point, it’s only the starting point.

An audience won’t get you very far

You may not be focusing on an audience, but instead on a type of person. So instead of ‘people who are afraid of making presentations’, you think of a fictional person. And you say: “Ok, let’s call him Chris.” And then you go on to rattle off the factor of how this fictional person named Chris may end up being terrified of presentations. And you think you’re on the right track at this point.

But a testing instructor would still fail you

And this is because you’re still not paying attention to that blind spot. When we use the term, target profile, it’s not an audience, and it’s not a ‘let’s call him Chris.’ Because if you say let’s call him Chris, you’re saying the following:

Chris is a fictional person. Kinda like a real person, but not a real person.

He kinda lives in a real house. But not in a real house, but in a fictional house.
And he lives in a real city, but not really.
And his dog. Well, he used to be real.
His girlfriend. She could be Lady Gaga or Ellen DeGeneres (well, it’s fictional, so who cares?)
He eats fictional hamburgers, and he can chomp through seven hundred at one go, right after he has fifty-three shots of tequila.

You see the difference between real and fictional?

Because the Chris I used to know wasn’t fictional. He lived about 20 minutes from my place. He was a genius at computers. He didn’t drink water, only wine and milk. He was grumpy as hell and yet extremely helpful. And if I wanted to go out with Chris for lunch, I know that I’d have to deal with his grumpiness.

I’d know exactly what he’d want. And the Chris I used to know wasn’t interested in making presentations at all.

But I do know Christina

Christina isn’t a big fan of making presentations. She would rather bake two-dozen cakes and have kittens, than speak. And we’re not even talking about the hard task of ‘presentations’. We’re talking about just standing up at a networking meeting and speaking for one measly minute.

Christina knows it’s critical for her business. She knows she’s in a safe space with friends all around her, but she can’t overcome the wave of panic that starts the night before.

She prepares like crazy, but it’s the same thing over and over again.

She can’t sleep well. The drive to the event is an ordeal. She looks at all those people at the networking meeting, so cool and relaxed, and wonders if she can ever be like them. And then, when she’s done, she feels like somehow she could do a better job.

She’s happy to go back to the office, turn off the phone, recharge—and just do what she’s good at doing—instead of doing these crazy presentations. But now, she has to make a presentation. And she’s terrified…

Now that’s the emotion and drama you get with a real person. But there’s more

Fictional people can’t tell you when you’re going on —or off-target with your message.

An audience can try to get a message to you, but everything gets lost in the din. The only way you can get to a target profile is to have a real person. Just like that testing instructor in the car with me. If he were fictional, I would have passed the driving test. I’d also be likely to win $50 million in the lottery on the very same day.

But instead, I failed. I learned from my mistake; spotted my big blind spot.

And today I’m your driving instructor. Instead of coasting downhill and putting others and us in danger, let’s keep the car in gear. Let’s use the concept of the target profile as it was meant to be used, shall we? Let’s explore the questions you’re going to need when conducting a real client interview.

Which is when we run into our second problem.

More often than not, we run into a concept of persona. We are told we don’t need to focus on a real person, but we can easily base our marketing on a character. It’s almost like a fiction novel. We make up the character as we go.

Except what we end up with, is a little Frankenstein. A Frankenstein with random body parts all stitched together. That’s the difference between a person and persona. And we’re about to find out why a person—a real person matters a lot more than persona.

Persona vs. person (Why a person matters more)

When my niece Marsha was eight, she wanted a dog for her eighth birthday. Then her parents realised that someone had to walk the dog, come rain or shine. There would be many trips to the vet, they figured. And the dog would need to be trained, so there wasn’t poo all over the carpet.

Marsha got a toy dog instead. It barked and you could pull it around. And it sounded like a real dog.

But it was a dummy And that’s the problem with persona. Persona is when you assume the role of another person. You try to walk in that person’s shoes. And your shoe size is 10, but that person wears a size 13. You might assume things will be fine and you’ll somehow manage. But you don’t and you can’t. Because while we all can try to imagine what that person is going through, we can only imagine.

In short, we get dummy text, dummy words and dummy emotions from dummies. To get real text, real words and real emotions we have to go to a real person. Not real people, one person. Because a real person won’t have “dummy thoughts” or dummy words.

So what do dummy words resemble?

Dummy words looks like they were written by you and me sitting in our office, looking at a computer screen. We churn out words that are stifled and boring. Or worse, we may copy headlines like “Who else wants to…blah, blah, blah, blah” and slap it into our headline on the landing page.

That’s not how a target profile speaks

A target profile speaks from a place of real emotion. I remember sitting at a workshop early in the Psychotactics timeline, and explaining my website issues to someone. This is what I said: “I feel trapped with my website. Every little change I have to make, I have to go back to the developer. And then I have to wait, because he’s busy, or asleep or something. I feel like I’m at his mercy all the time. And it’s a crappy feeling.

I want to be able to have more control over my own website, do my own things and yes, I can understand bits and pieces that need to be added. But for the most part I want the control. I want to be like the person that can drive, instead of being driven.

Feel that raw emotion? Well, with persona-based writing you have to make all that stuff up…

For instance, let’s take the Nobis Hotel. They have a persona-based website, by their own admission. Here’s what it reads like: The personas are frequent travellers who are sick of sterile chain hotels and want something different. They make their own decisions on where to stay using the web and social media. Buyers want upscale luxury but in a modern style, not the old-world traditional style.

And how does their home page reveal those problems? Nobis Hotel is an independent, 201-room first class, luxury hotel in Stockholm, Sweden occupying a prime spot on Norrmalmstorg square, the single most central and attractive location in the downtown area. Nobis Hotel is a new centre stage of Sweden’s Royal Capital, defining our own personal sense of Stockholm hotel luxury.

It calls itself modern, elegant and extremely comfortable, but also ethically sound, warm and moderate. It says it provides their guests with true value for their money in a stylish and pleasant setting designed by award-winning architects.

Does that sound like a real person speaking?

A person talks in plain language. He or she has real emotions and real frustrations. And it makes it super-easy for you to take their exact words and put it down on your sales page or home page, or any page for that matter.

It’s the emotion and the wording that attracts your audience

Yes, audience. Because even though you start out with one person, that one person’s voice attracts others just like her. So if your target profile is Rita, all the ‘Ritas’ of the world are attracted to that message. And so you get a consistent audience. An audience that identifies with that one big problem. And wants to solve that one big problem. So instead of trying to juggle with different personality types and multiple problems, you solve a single problem.

And it’s all being handed to you on a platter. No thinking, no research, no fiddling with key words—and it still works for you.

My niece Marsha is much older now, but even as a child she clearly knew the difference between a real dog and a dummy one. When you’re dealing with target profile, you have to deal with someone real. Otherwise, you just have a dummy.

Questions to ask in a target profile interview

The worst problem with a target profile interview is really not knowing where to start. And logically, we believe there must be some way to have a set of questions. And so we create a bunch of questions. But in reality, those questions don’t always work. The target profile interview doesn’t always follow a path. Suddenly, you’re wondering whether it’s a good idea to have the interview at all.

It is.

Even if you botch it up, a target profile interview is an amazing experience.

But how do you create the questions?

Well you don’t. What you’re looking to do is get a bunch of components together instead. I know, I know. It sounds technical.

But here’s what you’re seeking to get:

The list of problems. Yup, all the problems that the customer faces when dealing with a product or service like yours.
Their biggest problem.
Why is it their main problem?
What are the consequences of the problem not being solved?
Their second biggest problem.
Why is it a problem?
What are the consequences of the problem not being solved?
What are their main objections to buying a product or service—even when they think it more or less meets their needs?
What would cause them to give a testimonial?
What do they see as a significant risk factor? Are there more than one risk factors? Can they describe it?
What would make the product unique (in their eyes?)

So can you ask other questions?

Sure you can. But these set of questions enable you to get a tonne of information that can almost literally be slapped right onto your sales page, or in some cases, even your home page. Of course, there’s some re-engineering to do, but for the most part, you have all the stuff you’ve been looking for. All the bags of The Brain Audit get covered in one fell swoop.

So why bother with this interview at all?

Because in many cases, you’ll find that the client’s problems are not what you anticipated. There you are in your cubbyhole, imagining stuff, but the client often doesn’t feel that way at all. And there’s more, of course. You get to hear the client’s exact words. Their terminology. Their emotions come surging through in the conversation. And for the first time, ever you can feel the pain.

But what if you’ve already felt the pain?

Many of us start up businesses because it seemed like a good idea. But often you start up a business because you feel the pain as well. So for instance, I felt the pain of being a cartoonist that was always on call. I wanted to have my vacations—and not just vacations, but substantial vacations. And so yes, I started out trying to help myself. So yeah, I know that pain. I can go back and feel that pain.

Not really

If you’ve ever had a big injury or operation, you’ll know what I mean. The pain at the point in time is unbearable. Several weeks later, the memory of the pain is there, but not quite there.

After a few years, it’s almost impossible to recreate that pain. The target profile has no such problem. They’re in the emergency ward right now. They feel the torrent of pain and know what they’d like to see as the solution. They understand why they’re not keen to take the risk and will tell you so.

And that’s what a target profile interview does

Yes, it does sound dramatic, but a target profile can change your world and how you market to your audience.

Announcing: The Psychotactics Three-Hour Meet Up: Amsterdam and Singapore

The purpose of the meet-up is to get away from the humdrum of your office and have a pleasant morning with Sean. (Singapore 4 seats left, Amsterdam 3 seats left) https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/psychotactics-three-hour-meet/

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Top-Selling Products Under $50

The Brain Audit The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon. Find out—How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/ ] Story Telling Series How to have that zing in your articles—to catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested? [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/ ]

Other Resources Google has been marking sites without HTTPS as non secure. This means that your clients may be driven away from your site. Click here to read more about the issue. [ https://www.stresslessweb.com/the-stressfree-ssl-package-small-business-owners/ ]https://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

About this eZine and your subscription

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Announcing: 5 Minute iPhone Magic (How to Turn Boring Photos into Stunning Images )

📅 April 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

5-Minute iPhone Magic

Have you ever wondered the reason for taking a photo?

Yes, it’s meant to record a memory, but one photographer explained it to me in this way.

“If it’s a food photo, it’s supposed to make you hungry.”
“If it’s a photo of a place, it’s supposed to make you want to feel like packing your bags right away”.
“If it’s even a photo of an every day object, you need to stop and stare at it as you’ve never done before.”

So what is it that makes the average photo amazingly evocative?

In this book, I show you just a few steps that take your photos from “point and shoot” to pretty stunning.

The goal is simple.

You’ll be taking some stunning photos.

But don’t take my word for it. For just $9.99, you can find out what you need to do to make your photos come alive.

Introductory Offer: 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera + If you want to take some great holiday pictures—and pictures in the future, click below.

5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera + https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/

Regards, Sean P.S. You will need an iPhone and an app called Camera+ (It costs $2.99 in the app store).

Here are a few testimonials

Instead of using all the options, Sean gives a clear path for using the most important functionalities to make your photos look great.

He lets you take simple steps and within a few minutes you’re able to do it yourself.

If Camera+ looks intimidating and therefore you don’t use it, then ‘iPhone Photo Magic’ is the place to start. From the moment I read the PDF I put all my photos through the steps and consecutively use some other features of Camera+ too.

Thanks Sean for having me actually use the app and enjoy making and improving my photos.

Pauline le Rutte, Netherlands ———————— “Sean’s iPhone photography book is remarkable as much for what it leaves out as what it includes.”

“Sean’s genius is his ability to introduce a skill without inducing overwhelm in his students. So 30 seconds into the first video, I was empowered to take better iPhone photos. Not with a hundred apps, filters, tricks, techniques, or heightened powers of observation, but with one $4 app and three simple clicks.

The other videos are the same; one concept, clearly demonstrated, in under 3 minutes. And again, I was able to whip out my phone and go DO photography.

Howard Jacobson, USA

————————

As a result of buying the product—Clearly it’s made my social media photos better.

It helped me as one of the sources in a small book I’m writing about using video and image well on social media channels.

What I like is that it doesn’t pretend to be dictionary of how to take great photos and edit them. Instead it comes across as an expert point of view of how to get to great quality photos and a short space of time, in a really simple way.

Simon Lamey UK ————————

I thought it was weird for a book on taking photos to come from Psychotactics. But the price was almost nothing so I went for it.

And I’m glad I did. It was beautifully packaged.

I was given a small amount of actionable information. Which let me understand better. I now see photography in a different light and it has made the photos I take better.

I’m no professional photographer, but I’m less amateurish. When there are thousands of amateur photos online, one that is less amateurish makes a big difference.

Chris R. Carson Canada

————————

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Real Secret To Becoming Smart (And Staying Smart)

📅 April 18, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Real Secret To Becoming Smart (And Staying Smart)

Last month I got an invitation from a group asking me to dinner. The dinner it seems was a group of startups. They wanted to spend the evening with Renuka and I and have a conversation about how to get started and to keep that momentum going. What they wanted most of all was the promise of the “Three Month Vacation.”

The three elements we’ll cover are:

Learning all you can in your own field
Learning all you can in an area where you have no expertise
Working with limits

Part 1: Learning all you can in your own field - I wasn’t always a copywriter. I didn’t always write sales pages or articles. While I was in university, I decided to earn some money by selling my cartoons to newspapers. A newspaper called the “Indian Post” had just started up in Mumbai, and I was encouraged to meet the features editor, Reena Kamath. Reena, or “Chips” as she was called, was this incredibly kind and educated person. I was, in my own head a cartoonist, but not a very confident one. What Chips did was to give me enough confidence to push my art a lot more. She encouraged me to learn how to cartoon even better, so much so that I soon published my work in other magazines and newspapers. By the time I was headed to graduation day, I had two daily comic strips in two big newspapers. All of this confidence didn’t mean a thing when I joined an advertising agency. “Yes, you’re really good at cartoons,” said the creative director at the Leo Burnett agency, “but you realise that advertising and cartooning are completely different, right?” Once again I was back in newbie land. I didn’t know enough to get going in the world of copywriting. Fortunately for me, I was given the honorary title of junior copywriter, a small stipend and left alone to do pretty much anything I wanted. Which is when I found the agency library. The concept of learning everything is, as you know, impossible. Yet, what choice do we have? Everything seems to rush along madly and just to keep on top of things is quite a task.

The Power of the Diversion

📅 April 11, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Power of the Diversion

In February 2016, I took a rather interesting vow. I vowed to stop grumbling. Now let’s get one thing straight: we all grumble. Some do more than others, but I’m one of those people who are easily disappointed, and so I’m relatively more prone to grumbling. Why I decided to stop grumbling, I’m not sure, but I know it led me down an interesting path. Instead of spending all my time trying to figure out what was wrong with the situation, it often led me to analyse why I was in that situation in the first place. In July 2016, we decided to go to Goa, India. India, as amazing as it is in terms of beauty, food and culture is not quite a vacation for me. My parents live in Goa, which by itself used to calm and peaceful, but now seems like any other part of India, noisy and chaotic. What makes the visit slightly worse is the location of my parent’s house. My parents live in a tiny two-bedroom cottage, but it’s located at a junction. When got to Goa and the cottage was amazing. It had a superb lounge area, superb art on the wall, decent food nearby, two large bedrooms and was perfect in every way but one: the sound of traffic. Yet, this location proved to the starting point of a completely different type of vacation.

How To Systematically Outline Your Book (So You Can Get It Off The Ground)

📅 April 08, 2017 | View in Gmail

When you sit down to write a book you and I can waste a lot of time, if we don’t take time to outline. But what are the elements involved in outlining? And how can we make sure we don’t make any silly mistakes? If you’re about to write a book or plan to be an author sometime later, this information is for you. But even if you’ve already published books, you’ll be amazed at how this information speeds up your process and gets better results. Join me and find out if you’ve gone through the act of Kintsukuroi with your book? #133: How To Systematically Outline Your Book (So You Can Get It Off The Ground) Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 133 in iTunes)

Last Day: How to join 5000bc (Without being on The Waiting List)

📅 April 04, 2017 | View in Gmail

Today’s the last day to join 5000bc before we put up the waiting list yet again. After then only a limited number will be able to join every month. If you’re a business owner, you know how lonely it can be in your world. And having a community to talk to, to work with and bounce your ideas off, is incredibly valuable. The motto of 5000bc is: be kind, be helpful, or begone. If you are looking for a community that simply slap each other on the back, are always promoting themselves, then 5000bc is not for you. What you’ll find in 5000bc is solid information, but more importantly, solid help. Help from me (yes, I’m around 20-30 times a day, answering questions in great detail) and other members who pitch in and help. There’s an old African saying: If you want go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. And yes, if you go with a helpful group, you enjoy the journey. Yes, it’s the last day to join before the waiting list goes up, so get in the community and let’s go far. Here’s the link: https://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc-3/

Announcing: How To Join 5000bc (Without being on The Waiting List)

📅 April 01, 2017 | View in Gmail

You’ve been around the Psychotactics site for a while. And you’ve probably even sneaked a peek at 5000bc (our membership site) and seen that there’s a waiting list. And for three days we’re bringing down that wall. And from Saturday 1 April to Tuesday 4 April 2017, you get the chance to join (without being on the waiting list). The last time we opened up the waiting list was six months ago. Yup, a long time ago. But how do you know if 5000bc is the place for you? You read the testimonials. Do your due diligence and read the testimonials and you’ll see for yourself why our members join—and more importantly why they stay. And how you can be part of that select group as well. You have to judge for yourself. So take a look at 5000bc right away. https://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc-3/ We’d love to have you there if you think it’s the right place for you :) Warm regards, s- P.S. Make a decision today based on what you see.

March 2017

How To Speed Up Learning with Deconstruction

📅 March 28, 2017 | View in Gmail

How to deconstruct complex topics (and accelerate your learning). What can a single video on YouTube contain? If you were to look at just six minutes of a NASA video, it might put you off ocean currents forever. In exactly six minutes, the contents of the video contain some of the following: Atmospheric circulation, Wave formation, Thermohaline circulation, Upwelling and nutrient distribution, Dead zones. That’s only the partial list of what’s included in the video, and it hits you with rapid succession. If you’re confused, you ought to be, because the video is approximately how we approach most topics. A topic, any topic, is incredibly complex. However, the complexity can be quickly deconstructed. To understand deconstruction we need to look at three elements: Where to start your journey, How to find patterns when there’s no one to help you, How to stack the layers as you go forward. Where to start your journey of deconstruction? We have no such specifics when we’re dealing with a vast and complex topic. Should we start with wave formation or thermohaline circulation? Upwelling, dead zones or nutrient distribution? Or should we wander right into sea surface height, instead? It’s clear that we need to start somewhere and the best way to get started is to pick subject matter at random. Random? Surely that doesn’t seem to be a systematic way to go about deconstruction. Let’s pick dead zones from our list above, shall we? It’s a pretty random pick considering how much material the six-minute video covers. However, as we dig into the topic, one thing becomes very clear. It’s easier to dig deeper into dead zones and see how they occur. Deconstruction becomes clearer when we move into areas we’re more familiar with.

Announcing: How To Avoid Attracting Painful Clients Every Time (The Power of the Six Critical Questions)

📅 March 25, 2017 | View in Gmail

Nothing bugs you more than a painful client. A client who hassles you at every step of the way. A client who won’t pay on time. A client who takes up so much of your energy that you get drained. I used to have clients like that. And then at some point I stopped getting bad clients. Every single one of our clients were helpful, kind and extremely co-operative. Work became a joy instead of a painful exercise. And after a lot of digging, I found out the reason for the change. If you’ve ever struggled to get consistently good clients (or detailed testimonials for that matter) then you’ll find that this knowledge is more than just common sense. It’s a bit of strategy you can’t do without. When I first considered purchasing “The Secret Life Of Testimonials,” I was very hesitant. I had already read “The Brain Audit” and wasn’t entirely convinced that there was much more that I could learn in the $45.95 book.

How to Create Stunning Names for your Information Products and Courses

📅 March 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Create Stunning Names For Your Information Products and Courses. My friend, Karen, was about to have her first child. As you’d expect, she was a bit apprehensive but also quite joyful. One of the reasons why she was so excited was the whole process of giving a name to her soon-to-be child. She had half a dozen books on “naming the child”. While we were visiting, we had a little conversation about the naming process and she went into a lengthy explanation about how she intended to name the child. Of course, I expected her son to have an interesting name. Several months later when I ran into Karen online, I asked her the name of her son. “Jack”, she said. “Jack?” I responded almost incredulously. “You went through all of those books, and all you could find was, Jack?” Your “firstborn” might need a slightly different process. Especially if your firstborn is a book – and you are called upon to name the book. This is where we go slightly mad.

How To Get Smart (And Stay Smart)

📅 March 18, 2017 | View in Gmail

Many of us believe that smartness comes from learning the skills in our own field. And yet, that’s only partially true. We can never be as smart as we want to be, if we only have tunnel vision.

So how do we move beyond?
And how do we find the time to do all of this learning?

Amazingly it all comes from limits. So, what are those limits? Join Sean and learn the two ways to get smart—and one tool to make sure you get there efficiently.

#127: How To Get Smart (And Stay Smart) Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 127 in iTunes)

iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/get-smart/ ] |

Have you listened to these two episode? (Yes, there are transcripts too)

119: How To Get Stunning Names For Your Information Products and Courses

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 119 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/names-information-products/ ] |

115: How To Fight Envy (And Stay Motivated Instead)

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 115 in iTunes)

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can I ask for a tiny favour? I really would love if you would tell your friends about the podcast.

Here is a simple link https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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Rapid Talent (How To Get There and What Holds Us Back)

📅 March 14, 2017 | View in Gmail

Rapid Talent (How To Get There and What Holds Us Back)

(To read or listen to this article online click on the cartoon) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/rapid-talent/ ]

7 miles per second.

That’s what it takes for a spacecraft to break out of Earth’s orbit. Breaking free of the gravity of Earth and heading into space is called “Escape Velocity” and is easily one of the biggest challenges of space travel.

The spacecraft needs an enormous amount of fuel to break free of Earth’s gravity. And yet, that very fuel adds to the weight of the rocket. The more fuel you have, the more thrust you achieve, but the fuel also adds to the weight of the rocket.

It’s almost a maddening Catch 22 situation that scientists have been trying to solve for ages.

And it also drives us crazy when we look around us and see people who are clearly more talented than us

We had this problem in school. Some kids were brilliant at writing and others that excelled in maths.

As we grew up, we noticed people who sang better, danced better, are better artists, speakers, pick up languages faster than we could ever imagine.

And then we brush it off

We believe we were born with certain skills and it’s best to use them to our fullest capacity. The gravity of our situation holds us back.

That’s not the way scientists look at gravity. For them, gravity is a challenge. Achieving “escape velocity” is simply a matter of breaking through what holds us back. It’s always about how to go at 7 miles per second in the most efficient manner possible.

What you’re about to read is my battle with talent.

You may already know of some of my skills. Writing, drawing, teaching, painting, cooking—that’s what you might have seen. You may not know that I’m also an excellent babysitter, dance exceedingly well, learn programs at very high speed and know more than six languages.

And the reason I’m stating all of this isn’t to impress you. In fact, it’s the reason why I started studying the science of acquiring talent back around the year 2008. I’d be sitting at the cafe, and someone would come up to me and tell me how I was “talented” at drawing. I’d be on the dance floor, and I’d get a compliment about how well I danced.

Compliments are amazing. They were my Jamba Juice.

They spurred me on to get a lot better. But they also drove me crazy. It almost seemed like people were suggesting I was born with the skill. And so I started on an uphill climb. To prove that innate talent may not exist.

In reality, I don’t care whether it exists at all. But it wasn’t easy to say it out aloud because the very concept of acquiring talent seems improbable. “Not everyone can be Michael Phelps,” they tell me. Not everyone can be Albert Einstein.

The funny thing is I love pushback

I love it that people kept putting objections in my way because somehow I had to prove beyond any doubt that talent could be acquired. What made the challenge even more interesting was the concept of 10,000 hours. I was determined to prove that you have didn’t need anything remotely close to 10,000 hours to acquire a very high level of skill.

But you don’t have to believe me—well, not right away.

All I’m asking you to do is listen to three definitions of talent. And then I’ll have made that little dent in your universe. Or at least that’s the theory. So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of talent and see why mere definitions can make you see the world the way I see it.

It might even make you a better dancer. Are you ready? Let’s go, then.

Definition No.1: A reduction of errors.

No matter where you look, you find people who have talents in one area or another—except one.

Not one person has innate talent when it comes to riding a bicycle.

Definition No.1: A reduction of errors. When you see parents trying to teach kids to ride, they run wildly behind the kid, shouting out instructions that fall on deaf ears. After all the kid is trying desperately to pedal, steer and not go kaboom into the tree. So no one teaches you to ride a bike, and no one (at least no one I know) was born with the ability to ride a bicycle.

Assuming you can ride a bicycle, that leaves us with only one conclusion

Bike riding has x. no of errors you can make. Errors that involve steering, pedalling, balancing, etc. And slowly but surely, you started eliminating those errors one by one. The more errors you reduced, the less crashed into trees. Eventually, as you ironed out most of the mistakes, you were able to sail away down the road, chattering with your friends.

Talent is a reduction of errors

When you begin to learn a new skill, you make an enormous number of errors. Like a student driver who’s learning to drive a stick-shift, you lurch back and forth, trying to master the skill. Since your brain has no reference point of the errors, it’s unable to cope, and you continue to find the learning extremely tedious. If you were to ask someone how to learn to drive a car or a bicycle for that matter, they tend to answer in a single word: practice.

Yet, practice is not the answer

Even deliberate practice is not the answer. Instead, what’s needed is an understanding of errors. When the brain consciously or sub-consciously knows what errors it’s making, it prompts us to take corrective action.

Take for example the act of dealing with a hot pan. There’s only one kind of error that’s possible with a hot pan. And yet a two-year-old child may not realise that glaring error and head right for the pan. But once we’re aware of the mistake, we take scrupulous care to avoid hot pans. We also avoid stepping in dog poo, potholes, and closed doors.

The trick to learning, or talent, isn’t just in practice or deliberate practice. Instead, it’s about understanding the errors. Once you understand the errors, you are closer to fixing them. Once you’ve reduced or eliminated the errors, you effectively are talented.

An excellent example of error fixing is the website building software called Dreamweaver

If you were to open up Dreamweaver today, you’d find the option of viewing a website in two different modes. You could see the website in HTML on the left-hand pane, while simultaneously seeing the graphical view of your site on the right. Even if you were completely oblivious about HTML code, all you’d need to do is open up a perfectly good looking website in Dreamweaver.

Then head into the HTML pane, and make a single change. You’d immediately see the change reflected on the right-hand side. Immediately your brain would go into “hot pan” mode, recognising the error. You may run into hot pans in the future, but at least you know better because you’ve learned from your mistake.

Many of us believe that talent is either inborn or acquired by practice

Instead, it’s acquired by a reduction of errors. Everything you do today had a huge error rate at one point in your life. Addition, subtraction, spelling and grammar were all riddled with errors. Some people you may know make mistakes such as spelling. They spell “you’re” as “your” or “pique” as “peak.”

When you see these mistakes, you experiencing a situation where the person has not learned to spot and correct the error. You can’t fix a mistake unless you know you’re making one in the first place.

Take for instance my niece, Marsha

When Marsha was just three years old she came to visit us in New Zealand for the first time. At the time, her speech was a bit garbled, like most three-year-olds. Even so, one of the letters that foxed her was the letter “r.”

Wherever “r” was prominent, she’d substitute it with a “y.” So “road” became “yoad,” and “room” became “yoom.” And of course, we only ever “yolled in the gyass” (that’s “rolled in the grass”). If you tried to point out that she was pronouncing “r” as “y,” she would look at you with puzzlement. In her brain “r” sounded like “y.”

Then one day I decided to speak exactly like her.

I didn’t say “road,” I said “yoad.” I didn’t say “grass,” I said “gyass.”

Marsha didn’t say anything, or if she did, she probably said it in her garbled method. But within two days, she was pronouncing the “r” perfectly. Her brain, it seems, was able to detect the error when the word was said incorrectly. And within days, and without any training, she was able to fix the problem.

This isn’t to say that all learning is made through trial and error

The brain is a pattern-recognition system and will learn efficiently enough by just copying patterns. It’s why we learn to speak a language, then adopt the accent of a parent and then change our accents depending on where we go to school.

A good chunk of learning is purely pattern recognition. What holds us back from learning a skill like dancing, cooking or drawing, isn’t pattern recognition, but knowing what we’re doing wrong.

There’s a video online called “Austin’s Butterfly.”

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

Then something quite unusual happens.

The teacher takes over and asks the kids to give feedback

One by one they pipe up with their critiques, so that Austin can take a crack at the second draft. They point to the angles, the wings, making the wings of the butterfly more pointy. They go on, and on, and the illustration improves with every draft.

Six drafts later, the butterfly looks like something you’d find in a science book. The finished butterfly is so stunning that anyone—you, me, anyone—would be proud to call the illustration our own.

What’s at work is simply a reduction of errors

This article isn’t about becoming Michael Phelps or Muhammad Ali. We’re all tempted to diverge into why we’re not winning gold medals by the dozen at the Olympics. And yet, even at that level of super-heroes, there’s only one gold medal winner.

Why is this so?

In the Olympic pool, Phelps is often only one-hundredth of a second faster than his rival. That’s hardly an advantage. The only difference is that Phelps is committing fewer errors. And just for the record, Phelps too was beaten by a much shorter, stockier swimmer from Singapore. On that particular day, in that particular race in the Rio Olympic Games, Joseph Schooling made fewer errors.

Talent is merely a reduction of errors. When you reduce the errors, you get talented.

But that’s only the first definition.

But what of those who seem innately talented?

They do things that we could never hope to do. In the next section, we look at the second definition of talent. Where talent is just pattern-recognition at high speed.

Click here to continue reading or listening: Part 2: Rapid Talent (How To Get There and What Holds Us Back) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/three-definitions-talent/ ]

Product Offers: Links you should visit

The Brain Audit The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon.

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Top-Selling Products Under $50

Critical Website Components How to design pages that help customers find their way around and do what you want them to do. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/ ]

Sales Pages How To Write Benefits and Bullets That Speed Up Sales [ http://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors ]

Article Writing How To Speed Up Article Writing With Simple Outlines [ http://www.psychotactics.com/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines ]

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Presenting: How to Put That Zing-Kapow in Your Articles (With StoryTelling)

📅 March 11, 2017 | View in Gmail

Storytelling seems to be the rage these days.And yet, it’s not new at all. It’s been around for thousands of years.What’s more, it’s not even alien to us.Even as a three-year old, you can tell when a story is really cool and when it’s just plain boring.The problem arises when we have to take this storytelling skills to our articles. The moment we have to write an article, we freeze up. The article gets riddled with facts and figures. Or sequences. Or whatever. But we know instinctively that the power of the story is missing.But it’s not just the story that’s important.It’s a story well-told.A well-told story is like a well-told joke. It has zing. And kapow!So what are the elements of a well-told story? Why have they been playing hide and seek with us for so long?Find out right here in this three-part series on Storytelling!You’ll love it. It’s full of cartoons, precise advice—and yes, the zing! That’s what you’ll learn: how to create the zing.So have a look right away. https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-tellingRegards,SeanP.S. Here is what Kyle Newell has to say:“The obstacles that would have prevented me from buying–The Story Telling Mini Series was having enough other story telling products and books already.”I like the simplicity and quick implementation. Just yesterday, I was able to take them out, pull a few ideas and start writing! The specific feature I liked most about–The Story Telling Mini Series is how quick they were to get through. Thats not a bad thing, its a great thing. So many time products are just too much information and therefore are never consumed and never implemented.Three other benefits? Gave me a variety of options, gave great examples and helped me to build my knowledge of story telling.I would recommend this product for sure! It is very easy to understand and implement and most people have no idea that stories are the most powerful way to communicate.Kyle Newell , USAJudge for yourself: StoryTelling Mini Series Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

3 Brilliant Ways to Get Ideas When Writing Articles

📅 March 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

3 Brilliant Ways to Get Ideas When Writing Articles. It might seem that it’s impossible to get ideas for your articles. And it is. You go completely blank. Of course, there’s a reason for all this blankness. And just as you can go blank, you have more ideas than you know what to do with. Can this really be possible? Can you really have tons of ideas? Yes, you can. Provided you use all, or at least one of these systems. The moment you see a ray of sun, you know it’s something magical. That single ray has bounced back and forth within the Sun for 100,000 years before speeding to Earth in 8.3 minutes. But even as you look, there’s another ray, and another. In fact, we get so much energy from the sun, that in one day, it provides more energy than the world’s population could consume in 27 years. If only we could tap into some of that endless energy when coming up with ideas for an article. Instead we sit there, transfixed at the screen. We think. We trash around in our seats. We drink copious amounts of coffee. Three things actually—three brilliant sources of sunshine: Reading/Listening, Brainstorming, Client Questions

February 2017

3 Ways To Write Headlines Under Pressure

📅 February 28, 2017 | View in Gmail

3 Ways To Write Headlines Under Pressure. Every year, 20 billion bottles of wine are produced. And 80% of those bottles are closed with a single substance. A substance called cork. The cork, as you’d suspect, comes from bark of the cork tree. The bark has to be harvested, and then you get the cork for those 16 billion bottles. But there’s no hurrying the process of cork production. A tree must be at least 25 years old before the bark can be harvested. After that, it can be stripped of its bark every nine years. Even so, the first stripping is totally unsuitable for wine and used only for industrial purposes. The second stripping still lacks the quality needed. It may take well over 40 years before the cork is considered good enough to put into a wine bottle. As you can see, a cork tree can’t be rushed. Good headlines too need a little time. But in today’s world, we need headlines for our newsletters, podcast titles, webinars, and workshops. What we’ll cover in this article is the concept of headlines in a hurry. We’ll learn three ways to write great headlines and to write them under pressure. Method 1: Headlines with AND. Method 2: Headlines with EVEN. Method 3: Headlines with WITHOUT.

How to Write a Sales Page Using The Bottom-Up

📅 February 25, 2017 | View in Gmail

Writing a sales page can be a real drag You start, stop, start and stop. But is it possible that you’re writing a sales page in an inefficient way?

What if you started writing the landing page from the bottom up? What if that bottom up method got you to create a quicker and far superior sales page for your product or service?

Find out a simple, tested method that works time after time using the bottom up technique of writing sales pages.

#126: How To Write A Sales Page Using The Bottom-Up Method Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 126 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/writing-sales-pages/ ] |

Once you finish, don’t forget to binge-listen to these two irresistible podcasts. (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#127: How To Get Smart (And Stay Smart) Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 127 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ renuka@psychotactics.com ] |

#125: Should You Give Up? Or Should You Persist? Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 124 in iTunes) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/why-persevere-fails/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can you do me a tiny favour? I really would love if you would tell your friends about the podcast.

Here is a simple link https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

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How To Fire Up Your Audience (The Amazing Power of the Challenge)

📅 February 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Fire Up Your Audience (The Amazing Power of the Challenge)

(From the archives: One of the most read and listened to articles of 2016. Click on the cartoon to view it online.) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/presentation-challenge/ ]

When you’re sitting in a magic show, you don’t doodle. You don’t take out your pen, a sheet of paper and draw weird, funny squiggles.

And that’s because a magician creates action.

And most of the action is centred around a challenge. And while a presentation is no magic show, there’s a way to take your audience from doodle-zone to challenge-zone in a matter of minutes.

So what is the challenge-zone?” The challenge is something almost magical. Something that the audience would find hard to believe. Like for instance, a magician would make an elephant appear in the room. But the audience is skeptical—yet anticipating some action. This is the challenge-zone. In a world that’s full of noise, the challenge immediately ramps up attention.

Let’s slip into an early example

When I do the presentation for The Brain Audit, I will often start off telling the audience, that at about the 17 minute mark, I will get everyone in the room to think of the same question. To a skeptical audience, that seems impossible. How could any presenter know what every audience member is thinking, let alone making you think of the very same question?

But the question is based on a trigger

And if you’ve read The Brain Audit (which you should, if you haven’t) you learn how to create the trigger. It’s composed of the problem, solution and target profile. And when you string these three together, you get a single question, “What do you mean by that?”. Once the trigger is sprung, curiosity takes over, and you have the “What do you mean by that?” question at the top of your mind.

And that’s just one example—so let’s take another

When I do a presentation on “Pricing”, the challenge question is similar. I tell everyone that by the time I show them the price-grid, everyone will want to pay 15% more—instead of 15% less.

And I’ll create this desire for the more expensive option, without changing the core product. This means that if the core product is a workshop on ballroom dancing, the core product will stay the same. And yet, almost everyone in the room will choose the more expensive option.

You see the elephant in the room, don’t you?

There’s no elephant, but you as a magician are creating the challenge. And the audience loves the fact that there’s a challenge coming up. What they love even more is that you’re promising to “mess with the minds” of the entire audience.

They think the guy next to them may be susceptible, but they’re not going to fall for some silly trick. And this is what gives the challenge more power. The more skeptical they are, the more you’re able to convert them from skeptics to fanatical fans.

There’s just one itty-bitty problem: How do you construct the challenge?

The challenge must contain a method to get from A to B. It can’t be just a concept. It must be something they can try for themselves. So for instance, there’s this company called ioSafe.

They make hard drives. And the beauty of their hard drive is that they can be dunked in water, blasted with a torch, or crushed under a road roller—and still survive. You can see how the challenge works, can’t you? The challenge would be for people to try and destroy the drive.

But sure, that’s a product and quite a unique product…

What about if you’re selling a service or even a concept? The core of any product/service or training should be that you’re able to bring results. Yet, instead of picking many points of your service or product, you pick just one. For instance, we teach a course in Photoshop colouring (for cartoonists). And the way the demonstration goes is like this—we get rid of Photoshop—and the computer.

And imagine we’re at the cafe, instead

And the audience is asked to pick a letter for the “brush” tool in Photoshop. Of course, you chose B. And then to choose any number (on the keyboard) that represents 60% opacity. You may fumble, but you’ll settle on 6. And then you ask them to choose between the left or right square bracket, to increase the size of the brush.

And they choose the right one—they always do. Whammo! You’ve shown them how to use the three core tool to colour, without so much as going next to a computer.

But it’s not enough to create a challenge

You have to make sure there’s a space between issuing the challenge and showing them the “elephant in the room”. Usually a good way to do this is to issue the challenge right at the start of the presentation.

And give them an approximate time when you’ll solve the mystery. e.g. In 17 minutes, or at the end of the first section. This keeps them focused not only on what you’re saying, but on edge, anticipating the moment when you solve the mystery.

But won’t the gap distract them?

Yes, there’s a gap between issuing the challenge and solving it, but the audience doesn’t get distracted at all.

Why? Because you’ve been clear. You’ve told them the time at which the problem will be solved. Now they’re ready to focus on anything else that you have to say, expecting fully well that you will keep your promise at the right time.

And even if you’re an expert, you don’t want the audience to take over

Notice how the magician doesn’t ask your opinion when he does the magic trick? Well, the same applies to you. In every audience, there are likely to be hecklers. Or super-skeptics.

You could put twenty elephants in the room and they’d still find fault with your method. If you ask the audience to raise their hand, or do something that involves audience participation, you’re more than likely to run into the heckler.

That’s when you’ve lost control

Now your carefully executed challenge is the mercy of the heckler and his agenda. It’s better to meet the challenge, pause for a few seconds and let the awe seep through the crowd. Then, move along. The ones in the audience who’ve felt the change will come along with you, and the hecklers won’t—but at least they won’t get a chance to drive you off tangent.

Every product or service has a bit of magic

Every product or service can demonstrate that magic, but you can’t fiddle with all the features. You have to pick one feature—the one that creates magic. And every product or service has to have this amazing “something” or it’s just another me-too offering. Finding that magic is what causes the audience to gasp in amazement and come along for the rest of the ride.

So let’s summarise, shall we?

Look for ONE element in your product or service. What is that one?
Introduce the challenge right at the start of your presentation.
Then DO NOT solve the problem. Let it linger.
The lingering should have a fixed point. e.g. 17 minute-mark or end of first section etc.
At that point, not earlier, you should reveal the solution.
Do not get the audience to participate. You’re opening yourself up to hecklers.
Losing control is one thing. A heckler can make you lose status. And that’s death on stage.

Once you’ve got the audience gobsmacked, linger for a few minutes. Let the moment sink in, then move along.

When you read this piece, it may seem almost impossible to figure out what to do next. Does your product or service really have a magic trick. Yes it does. And you will find it only if you stick to ONE feature or benefit.

That one trick is a pure attention-getter!

It pulls the audience along with you, and sure stops the doodling!

Product Offers: Links you should visit

“Do you want to raise your prices, get better clients, have more fun and remain authentic?”

“Pricing is an inexact science and Sean demonstrates how tightly value is related to price. In these books you will learn how to master the three gorillas of pricing.” —Jeffrey Eisenberg, USA

Find out for yourself: Click here to read more. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/ ]

Chaos Planning: Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/chaos-planning-forget-business-planning-and-goal-setting-start-with-chaos-planning/ ]

Sales Pages: How To Write Benefits and Bullets That Speed Up Sales [ http://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors ]

Article Writing: How To Speed Up Article Writing With Simple Outlines [ http://www.psychotactics.com/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines ]http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/

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Last day for Special Offer: Website Components-How to Create Compelling Pages on Your Website + Special Bonus

📅 February 18, 2017 | View in Gmail

Just a quick reminder in case you missed the earlier email.

When you buy Website Components-How To Create Compelling Pages On Your Website from the 11th Feb. to 18 Feb. 2017, you’ll also get a Special Bonus - ‘How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses’ (worth $45) absolutely free.

But is it really compelling? Can it be more compelling? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

And the Special Bonus: How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses

In this 40 page booklet you will learn:

The Psychology of Bonuses
How to Find your Bonuses
How to Create a One-Of-A-Kind Bonus
How to Avoid the Bonus Trap
Why Unbundling Makes a Big Difference to How your Product is Perceived.
And more…

Judge for yourself at: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

P.P.S. This special offer is only valid until 18th February 2017 (US Eastern). Have a look and make a decision based on what you read. https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

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How The Concept of “Isolation” Creates Increased Sales

📅 February 14, 2017 | View in Gmail

How The Concept of “Isolation” Creates Increased Sales

(From the archives: One of the most read articles of 2016. To read this article online click on the cartoon) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/isolation-increases-sales/ ]

I remember flying to Pittsburgh in the year 2004

It was a 7am presentation in front of about 40 people who I didn’t know. And who didn’t know me, either. And by the time the presentation was done at 7:45am, I asked the crowd a simple question.

“How many of you would like to buy this product?”

And over 50% of the hands in the room went up. Which, by the way, wasn’t the most interesting part. The most interesting part was that I hadn’t told them much about the product, or the price, or the delivery. So why were so many of those in the room willing to buy the product?

The answer lies in a discussion I had early in my career with an amazing salesman

I was new to sales and marketing back in the early 2000s. And I ran into this multi-millionaire called Brian Tracy. And his advice on sales was the best definition of sales I’ve ever heard. He said: Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another. Oh darn, so that’s what was happening-enthusiasm was being transferred!

Indeed, I’d made a good presentation. Yes, the content was very interesting and useful. But it’s the enthusiasm that caused people to brush aside the rest of the details and make a decision to buy the product.

But it’s one thing to say “be enthusiastic” and quite another to do it. So how do you create enthusiasm?

The answer lies in a concept called “isolation”. It doesn’t matter if you are selling offline or online, you can’t be enthusiastic if you’re bogged down with seven hundred features and benefits.

So instead you isolate just one. Just like Steve Jobs did when he presented the MacBook Air. Instead of simply rattling off every feature, the drama was centred on just one thing: the fact that the MacBook Air was so thin, it could fit in an envelope.

The BBC presenter, David Attenborough, creates this same moment of enthusiasm

There he is, standing in the middle of the forest, surrounded by thousands of trees, bushes, insects chattering endlessly and what does he do? He drops to his knees and he shows you a flower.

And then his eyes light up as he goes into detail about that flower, while ignoring everything else around him. What he’s doing is zapping that enthusiasm right into you, but he does so by creating isolation first-and then getting his message across.

Enthusiasm doesn’t mean you have to be loud or boisterous

The best sales people aren’t those who get in your face. Enthusiasm means you feel very strongly about that one feature of the product. So much so, that you’re willing to drive home that point in detail. And if you’re exciting enough, the audience feels this surge of excitement. Yes, your product has a ton of features, but they want that one feature, and they’re willing to raise their hands for it.

This method of sales can be done both online and offline

Offline, you drive home the point in person by demonstrating or showing a particular feature. Similarly, online you pick that one feature and drive it home using more pictures, more explanations, thus isolating the importance.

Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another

To feel that enthusiasm you need to isolate one feature of the product that’s extremely exciting to you. You then transfer this enthusiasm to your audience.

And then, like the Pittsburgh audience, watch as their eyes light up and their hands go up.

Yup, just like that.

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DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers. Don’t discount your products or services out of existence, read Dartboard Pricing! [ https://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/ ]

The Brain Audit How to market in a way that is respectful to your customers, yet powerfully compelling. [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/the-brain-audit-32-marketing-strategy-and-structure/ ]

About this eZine and your subscription

Report: How To Win The Resistance Game [ https://www.psychotactics.com/free/resistance-game/ ] Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)” [ http://psychotactics.com/ ]

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Special Offer: How to Create Compelling Pages on Your Website + Special Bonus (Valued at $45)

📅 February 11, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hi Seree

When you buy Website Components-How To Create Compelling Pages On Your Website from the 11th Feb. to 18 Feb. 2017, you’ll also get a Special Bonus - ‘How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses’ (worth $45) absolutely free.

But is it really compelling? Can it be more compelling? What’s really missing? And is there a simple way to fix it—while retaining your own voice, your own personality?

And the Special Bonus: How To Maximise The Power Of Bonuses In this 40 page booklet you will learn:

The Psychology of Bonuses
How to Find your Bonuses
How to Create a One-Of-A-Kind Bonus
How to Avoid the Bonus Trap
Why Unbundling Makes a Big Difference to How your Product is Perceived.
And more…

Judge for yourself at: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

P.P.S. This special offer is only valid until 18 February 2017. Have a look and make a decision based on what you read. https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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Two Typos in a Single Headline? Bah!

📅 February 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

Did you notice the typo in the newsletter headline today?

Ugh. There were two typos in a single headline in a single newsletter. It went like this: How to “encourages” prospects to become “client”.

Bah! Hope you enjoyed the rest of the article.

Warm regards from an overly summery-summer, Sean P.S. Do you have any topics you’d like me to cover for the podcast?

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Magic Moment: How to Encourages Prospects to Become Client

📅 February 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Magic Moment: How to Encourages Prospects to Become Client (From the archives: One of the most read and listened to articles of 2016. Click on the cartoon to view it online.)The first time I converted prospects to clients, I had no clue what I was doing.I decided to give a one-hour speech and managed to get about 20 people into the room. At the end of the hour, my goal was to sign up at least a few of those people to come to more such speeches. And yet, I had no clue how to make that transition happen. How could I get a group of folks to just sign up to something in the future, without putting enormous pressure?Quite by accident I stumbled on the concept of the “magic moment”The “magic moment” is a moment of empowerment. It’s a moment where the magician not only performs an awesome trick, but then goes on to show you how you can do the trick with incredible accuracy.And you’ve stepped through awe, right into a moment of being empowered. Once you’re empowered, you know for sure you can replicate the trick over and over again, thus creating the same level of awe. And you’re hooked.At this point in time, it’s easier to convert a prospect into a clientOn the Psychotactics site, we do this in the Headline report. When you first get to the site, you’re encouraged to sign up. And in exchange you get the headline report—on why headlines fail (and how to avoid that failure).And within about 10 minutes of reading the report, you know one thing for sure: you can do magic with headlines. You can replicate or create great headlines, solely based on three simple steps.You know how to take the steps, and how to check if you’re making a mistake. You’ve gone from just a prospect to possible client in a matter of minutes.Of course this doesn’t apply to headlines aloneRemember that presentation I was making? Well, the “magic moment” was when I got the entire audience to respond in the same way. There’s a point in the presentation where I show how a “trigger” works.That when you apply this trigger to your elevator speech or tagline, you create intense curiosity and people always ask, “how do you do that?” or “what do you mean by that?” The trigger then gives you the chance to talk more about your product or service.So yes, this trigger is explained in detail in the book called The Brain Audit (yes, it’s for sale on the Psychotactics website). And essentially what you’re doing is putting a problem, solution and target profile together.It works like this…Let’s say someone asks you: What do you do? You simply give your solution, don’t you? So let’s say you mow lawns for a living, you’d say, “I mow lawns”. But if you were to string a problem (lawns that need a facelift), solution (you do the facelift) and target profile (well, let’s assume you do Bill’s lawns), you get a great trigger statement. And it looks like this: wrinkle-free home lawns.If someone said: What do you do?You say: wrinkle-free home lawns. They say: What do you mean by that?Tah, dah!So you can see how the “magic moment” works can’t you? Just like the three methods in the “headline report”, you’re also keen to know how the “trigger” works and how you can get to the next step.And if all you do is show the magic, then you’re not really empowering anyone at all. All you’re doing is demonstrating that you can do the magic trick. Of course, this alone is enough to get the audience to want to buy, sign up or do whatever you wish them to do. But I think it’s nicer to empower the audience as well.Empowering creates encouragement instead of the pushPeople like to feel like it was their own idea, instead of being pushed into making a decision. And oui, you can make the deal sweeter. If you’re selling something that day, you may want to give a special price or a special bonus that enables the clients to take up your offer.In fact, that’s just what I did when I first started out. I’d make the speech, empower the audience and then ask them to buy my book or to sign up for future speeches. Incredibly, we had a conversion rate of 30-50%—and get this, I was still very much a newbie back then.Whether you choose a live event, a white paper, report, audio or video, it hardly mattersWhat matters when you’re encouraging the prospect to move to client, is to show them an amazing trick—that “magic moment”.Then you spend time deconstructing the trick in great detail. When you do both steps, they’re empowered. Now they want to know more and will pretty much follow you anywhere.Well, 30-50% will, anyway It’s easier to convert a prospect into a client. Get the free headline report—on why headlines fail (and how to avoid that failure). And within about 10 minutes of reading the report, you know one thing for sure: you can do magic with headlines. You can replicate or create great headlines, solely based on three simple steps. Top-Selling Products Under $50 Chaos Planning: How To Thrive and Succeed In The Midst Of ChaosClient Attractors: How To Increase Your Web Conversion RateThe Brain AuditThe Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over 800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon. Find out: Why Client Buy And Why Then Don’t About this eZine and your subscription Remember to share this articleAll links must remain in the article. No textual amendments permitted. Psychotactics Ltd. All rights reserved.Free GoodiesRead or Listen: How To Acquire Talent in Fewer Than 10000 Hours (In iTunes look for episode 75)iTunes | Android | Read or Listen |Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)“Other Resources and ToolsTell your friends: http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friendThree Month Vacation: http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/Important: You are subscribed to the Free Psychotactics Newsletter. If you un-subscribe from this letter, you won’t receive any goodies, offers, or newsletters in future. If you’re getting duplicate newsletters, email us and we’ll make sure you get just one copy. Email renuka@psychotactics.com Privacy and Spam Policy I don’t rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You’ll not get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list. Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

Why Persevere Even When Failure is Certain (And when Not To)

📅 February 04, 2017 | View in Gmail

Should You Give Up? Or Should You Persist?

When you get to your office and want to print some material, what do you do?

You’re likely to turn on your computer, hit the print button and then voilà, out come a crisp, laser-printed copy of whatever was on your computer screen.

Back in 1969, an optical engineer called Gary Starkweather thought the same way.

“One morning I woke up and I thought, why don’t we just print something out directly?” Starkweather said. “But when I flew that past my boss he thought it was the most brain-dead idea he had ever heard. He basically told me to find something else to do.

And I guess, in my naïveté, I kept thinking, He’s just not right—there’s something about this I really like. It got to be a frustrating situation. He and I came to loggerheads over the thing, about late 1969, early 1970. I was running my experiments in the back room behind a black curtain. I played with them when I could.

He threatened to lay off my people if I didn’t stop. I was having to make a decision: do I abandon this, or do I try and go up the ladder with it?”

A Starkweather kind of decision is the kind of decision we have to make, when facing our lives, but also our business

How do we know whether we should persist or give up?
Will we meet with success or failure? And is failure one of the goals?
Should we really accept failure as a benchmark that we’re moving ahead?

Join me as we take a hard-nosed look at three areas of perseverance.

#125:[Re-release] Why Persevere Even When Failure is Certain (And When Not To) Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 125 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/why-persevere-fails/ ] |

Once you finish, don’t forget to binge-listen to the two other popular podcasts. (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#123: [Re-Release] Good to Great - How To Take Your Small Business To Greatness

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 123 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/good-to-great/ ] |

#124: [Re-Release]The Resistance Game Part 1 - Can Resistance be Beaten

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 124 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/resistance-detests-groups/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can you do me a tiny favour? I really would love if you would tell your friends about the podcast.

Here is a simple link http://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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January 2017

Last day for special offer: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t)

📅 January 31, 2017 | View in Gmail

http://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/

Hi Seree

Marketing provides thousands of ways to get and keep customer’s

attention…

But you don’t want thousands of ways. You just want a simple system

that’s effective. A system that has been tested for over 14 years and

got results. And most importantly a system that you don’t have to

pull up a 675 page manual to even work out.

Announcing: The Brain Audit Kit + Special Goodies worth $158 (Valid

until 31st January 2017—12 pm US Eastern)

The Brain Audit is the book that gives you a system

The Brain Audit is a step-by-step system that enables you to

understand what’s going on in the brain of your customer. It’s a system

that is based on a deep understanding of how our mind works, and why

we do what do.

When you buy the Premium Brain Audit Kit before 31st January 2017 (12 pm US Eastern)

you’ll also get “How To Identify The Right Target Audience For Your Business”.

Special Goodie: How To Identify The Right Target Profile For Your Business

This book will give you an instant understanding on

-HowYou Can Get Target Audience Wrong

-How Target Profile Works

-Persona Vs Person and more

Take advantage of this special offer of The Brain Audit Kit right

away. This offer expires on 31st January 2017 (12 pm US Eastern)

http://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/

Regards,

Sean

P.S. Make sure you don’t miss this offer. And make a decision,

based on what you read.

http://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/

P.P.S. The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over

800 testimonials on the Psychotactics website and over 100 testimonials on Amazon.

It’s proof that The Brain Audit works, and works very well indeed.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zCwcDKzMzGw=

Announcing: The Brain Audit Kit + Special Goodies worth $158 (valid until 31 January 2017)

📅 January 29, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hi Seree You’ve seen it before You’re about to get a customer to sign on the dotted line. And then they suddenly back away. What causes them to back away? What causes a sure sale to fall apart? When a sale falls apart, it’s extremely frustrating! And what’s frustrating is the fact that you don’t know at which point the sale fell apart. What you do know is that your product or service is really good for your customer. And that you’ve done everything to get them interested and ready to buy. Announcing: The Brain Audit Kit + Special Goodies worth $158 (Valid until 31 January 2017 Marketing provides thousands of ways to get and keep your customer’s attention But you don’t want thousands of ways. You just want a simple system that’s effective. A system that has been tested right across the planet, from big markets to absolutely atom-sized markets. A system that has been tested for over 13 years and got results. And across media from Web sites, to presentations, to one-on-one selling and sales through brochures/booklets etc. And most importantly a system that you don’t have to pull up a 675-page manual to even work out. The Brain Audit is the book that gives you a system The Brain Audit is a step-by-step system that enables you to understand what’s going on in the brain of your customer. It’s a system that is based on a deep understanding of how our mind works, and why we do what do. • How the brain responds to specific psychological triggers. • How to speed up the sales process, without the need to be pushy. • How do you stop your brand from being a commodity? When you buy the Premium Brain Audit Kit from the 28-31 Jan. 2017, you’ll also get the bonus goodie ‘How To Identify The Right Target Audience For Your Business’. Special Goodie: How To Identify The Right Target Profile For Your Business This book will give you an instant understanding on - How You Can Get Target Audience Wrong - How Target Profile Works - Persona Vs Person and more Take advantage of this special offer of The Brain Audit Kit right away. This offer expires on 31 January 2017 http://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/ Regards, Sean ---------------------------- P.S.Make sure you don’t miss this offer. And make a decision, based on what you read. http://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/ Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

Why your Tagline should be a Superpower: The Spiderman Effect

📅 January 24, 2017 | View in Gmail

Why your Tagline should be a Superpower

(From the archives: One of the most read articles of 2016. To read this article online click on the cartoon)

Puny Parker.

You’ve probably not run into that nickname before. And yet, you’re more than likely to know of Spidey—better known as Spiderman.

But how did “Puny Parker” get his strength and agility?

Yup it was a spider—a radioactive spider that bit him—and transferred that power in a matter of seconds.

Taglines are like spiders

When they bite, they either transfer super powers to clients—or they don’t. And most taglines are not just ordinary, most are plainly confusing.

The reason for boring taglines is easy to explain. We try so hard to get a message across, that we forget our core role in life. And that role—it’s to bestow superpowers on your clients.

So what does a superpower look like?

Announcing: Why Most Planning Fails: (And Why Chaos Is Your Buddy)

📅 January 21, 2017 | View in Gmail

Most of us detest chaos But there’s not a day when chaos doesn’t show up and hang around for a good part of the day.

We can ignore chaos, but it won’t go away.

But what if we planned around it? What if we actually took chaos into consideration so that when it shows up—if it shows up—we’re more than prepared and not flustered at all.

As we head into the new year, it’s easy to get stuck into planning. What we really need is chaos planning. Because chaos will show up.

Here’s where you can find how we worked with chaos (and how you can too)

http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Warm regards, Sean

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How To Escalate Your Path To Greatness

📅 January 17, 2017 | View in Gmail

How To Escalate Your Path To Greatness

(From the archives: One of the most read articles of 2016. To read this article online click on the cartoon) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/path-to-greatness/ ]

When Jim Collins wrote “Good To Great”, he did talk a fair bit about the Hedgehog Principle. But what he stresses more on, is quite another concept called “Preserving the Core and Stimulating Progress”.

Why does this concept matter so much? And how do you combine the Hedgehog Principle with this concept? And where does the big, hairy, audacious goal fit in with everything? This article shows you how to tie all the elements together in a neat little bundle.

Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress

Recently a client called Rosa wrote to us with a request.

“I would have preferred to read the series on Dartboard Pricing in ePub,” she said. She made it clear it was a request, not a demand. Which brings up a whole new set of problems for us at Psychotactics. Most business books are designed with text in mind and may contain a few graphics. Our books aren’t designed that way at all.

They have dozens of cartoons and under every cartoon is a caption. In The Brain Audit alone there are almost 100 cartoons and corresponding captions. In a PDF, this layout is easy-peasy. Create the book in InDesign and export it as a PDF and it maintains its design integrity. Try to do the same thing for an ePub and it’s like stepping in poo.

It’s a tedious, frustrating process to get all the graphics to align the way they should The easier way is to just make a quick excuse, apologies and move on. After all, it isn’t like 90% of our audience is asking for an ePub. It’s just a stray request, isn’t it? It’s simple to ignore the request and get on with the important task of doing whatever it is we do. But that’s where the problem lies, doesn’t it?

We’ve ignored the concept of progress. Almost all of us today read on a tablet or our phones. I know I do, my wife does, even my mother in law who ranted and raved about computers—she now loves her iPad. And PDFs work on tablet devices and phones, but they’re super clunky.

Sadly that’s not the only problem

Jim Collins talks about two elements: preserving the core and stimulating progress. And he goes to great lengths to stress the AND in between both of them. So all of us have to stand back and ask ourselves:

What’s our core?

The core of Psychotactics has been the factor of “consumption”.

Any one can create attraction and conversion. It’s super-hard to get clients to consume what they’ve bought from you. Books, courses, workshops—we spend hours, days and weeks trying to figure out how to achieve a skill.

The cartoons, the captions in the book—they’re not just a design concept. They’re placed there as memory hooks; as a method of summary. They need to be exactly where they are in the books and courses. We could remove them and easily create an ePub like most ePubs, but that would fit in with our core. Collins says it has to be an AND. We have to preserve the core AND stimulate progress.

This principle is clearly frustrating and pulls in opposite directions.

When you’re starting out, you don’t have any legacy issues in place. You create a business the way you want to shape it. And the core and the progress moves along nicely.

It’s when you “grow up” that you have to worry about how all the past has to fit in with the future. The longer you’ve been in business, the greater the past, and the more the past has to merge with an ever changing future.

Take Nokia for instance

You can almost hear the sound of the Nokia ring, can’t you? In the early 2000s, all of us would have at one point in time run into, or owned a Nokia. Nokia was no slouch in realm of being super-progresssive.

They were into paper, then electricity and bounced from there to rubber, galoshes and finally were the most dominant phone manufacturer on the planet. In the early 1990’s they had a clear and accurate vision of the future.

They saw the coming of the cell phone, dumped all their businesses and stuck with the cell phone. And then, just for good measure, they invented the first smart phone. That amazing device you take photos with, use to find your way around and yes, make phone calls—Nokia was on the ball way back in 1996. They even built a prototype of an Internet-enabled phone at the end of the 90’s.

And then they got stuck in a loop They failed to see the link between their core—which was to make really simple phones—and the future. The future was software. The core of their legacy was hardware. They spent millions of dollars turning out failure after failure.

They believed so much in their hardware that they just couldn’t figure out the software issues. And down they went, ring and all, finally selling their company to Microsoft.

To go from good to great we have to ask ourselves

What’s the core of our business.
What do we stand for?

What will we never change, never compromise on—and yet how will we step into the future when it presents itself to us. Most of us rarely have a problem with core values. Once we’ve spent enough time in our business, we know what we stand for, but what we fail to prepare ourselves for is the oncoming storm. We keep doing things the way we’ve always done.

The worst three words we repeat over and over, when faced with change is: I know that, I know that, I know that.

I thought I knew a lot about podcasts

After all I’d rode the early wave of podcasts when Apple first introduced them. And then in 2008/09 we decided to pull the plug on the podcast. When clients—and one client in particular—kept asking me to create a podcast, I’d ignore the comment. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were a thing of the past. I wasn’t ready to listen and the years ticked away while we busied ourselves with the core of what we’d always done.

Today, the “Three Month Vacation” podcast is one of the biggest joys in my day

I love writing, I love presentations, but it’s the podcast that connects me to a medium I love. And in turn the podcast connects us to our clients in ways that not possible on paper, or through books. The podcast is the closest we come to an offline workshop.

But I wasn’t interested in the “future”. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were the distant past. And today we know those thoughts, that strategy was wrong. We see the enormous number of clients who find the podcast, then sign up to the newsletter.

At our offline workshops over 50% of the audience listens religiously to the podcast. The podcast fit in so nicely with our core. And was the medium of the future.

Even so, it’s not possible to chase every rainbow

Technology moves ahead at a blinding pace. You can’t play with every new phenomenon. Which is why we have to go back to the Hedgehog principle. What can you be the best in the world in? What are you deeply passionate about? What drives your economic engine? In the subset of podcasting, we achieve all three.

And this is what you’ll have to do as well.

Find your core AND stimulate progress, with your eye always on the passion.

The passion is what drives your business today and will continue to do so in the future. If you don’t wake up crazy with happiness, then you’re not headed towards greatness. It’s the reason I moved on from cartooning back in the early 2000s. I wasn’t waking up happy as a lark—and so I had to find something else.

Which, interestingly, takes us to next element: The hairy, audacious goal—oh, it’s big too. That makes it the BHAG (pronounced: bee-hag).

The BHAG

Until the moment Greig Bebner set to work on his kitchen table with a glue gun and some kite material, the basic design of the modern umbrella hadn’t changed since 1928. They come in all sorts of colours, shapes and fancy gizmos, but the core elements of the umbrella are the same—and they don’t work. The moment a gust of wind comes along, you hear cursing, then more cursing and finally the umbrella being thrown on the pavement.

So Greg set about on a big, hairy, audacious goal—a BHAG.

He wanted an umbrella that would stand up to the crazy wind and rain on One Tree Hill.

Now if you’ve ever visited Auckland, New Zealand, you’re likely to have your hair tossed around wildly on a windy One Tree Hill day. It’s certainly no place to open an umbrella. Then to push that BHAG even further, he tested the Blunt at Force 12 (117 km/h) which is the maximum setting of the test wind tunnel. The umbrella stood up to the punishment with ease.

But why did the umbrella work so flawlessly?

It starts with the BHAG. It’s almost a Star Trek kind of goal—to go where no man gone before. It’s not a namby-pamby set of goals. It’s one overarching factor that scares the heebie-jeebies out of you as a business owner.

A windy day on One Tree Hill in the middle of a storm. That’s a good testing ground for an umbrella.

Sometimes this goal is restricted to your product, sometimes it’s a lot bigger.

Like Akio Morita, the co-founder and former chairman of Sony Corporation. He was working on a revolutionary product called the Walkman. Until the Walkman was introduced on July 1, 1979. Until the Walkman showed up, portable music players were non-existent. Even though the Walkman stuttered with disappointing sales in the first month, it went on to sell over 400 million units.

But Morita’s goal wasn’t just to sell a ton of Walkmans

His goal was a lot loftier. Before Sony introduced a ton of extremely sophisticated equipment, Japan was considered to be a backward country. It was associated with paper parasols and shoddy imitations. Akio Morita wanted to turn that perception around so that “Made in Japan” commanded respect and was associated with high quality.

And he succeeded, with Sony at the forefront of his BHAG. In 2014, A Harris poll showed Sony was the No. 1 brand name among American consumers, ahead of American companies like General Electric and Coca-Cola.

At Psychotactics, we have a BHAG too

The goal is to get rid of information for information sake and replace it with skill, instead. We’re drowning in information, and yet every book, every course brings even more information to the table.

But is that what we really want? Or do we want the skill instead. We want to write articles, create sales pages, be able to sell at higher prices. We want to learn to cook, draw, paint or acquire skills that make us look, feel and be smarter. A BHAG has to be hairy, audacious, and bigger than anyone thinks possible.

Starbucks had a BHAG too

It was to open up a new Starbucks cafe every single day of the year. But soon enough, Starbucks was running into trouble. Can you see why? It’s big, hairy and audacious to open up a Starbucks every single day, but does it inspire any passion? Does it feel like you’re somehow changing the world you live in, let alone the world around you?

The BHAG wasn’t to make Sony the star, but instead to make Japan and Japanese products top-notch once again.

Every business should have a BHAG.

Something that sits there in the corner challenging you to become better—not necessarily bigger—than you are. To create a Ferris Wheel or an Eiffel Tower. To create artworks of enduring magnificence as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt did. And the way to create that BHAG is to scare yourself. To know that everyone says there are things you’re not supposed to achieve. That these things are impossible.

And yet, you do it, because it’s the most inspiring thing to do! Combined with the Hedgehog principle, preserving the core and stimulating progress, you have a system in place that can take your business from good to great. And even as you embark on this journey, you know that you will forever be on the road to making things better, not necessarily bigger, but always better.

Better—it’s a great place to be!

Product Offers: Links you should visit

Before I bought the book I thought there would be too many ideas I’d heard before.

I’ve been a heavy follower of Chip & Dan Heath, authors of “Made to Stick”, and their philosophies on storytelling that “sticks”. I found that there was a lot to learn beyond what I’d absorbed from “Made to Stick” and its formulas.

The feature I liked best—The realization that the best stories are about something you are 80% familiar with, you can anticipate, and then WHAM – the new 20% hits you.

Debbie Newhouse USA Find out more here: Story Telling Mini Series [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/ ]

Top-Selling Products Under $50

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/ ]

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies The Biggest Myths of Pricing iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ] | Read or Listen [ http://www.psychotactics.com/myth-pricing-overcome/ ] |

Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)” [ http://psychotactics.com/ ]

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends: http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend Three Month Vacation: http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

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Announcement: Why Most Planning Fails (The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning)

📅 January 14, 2017 | View in Gmail

Hi Seree

So year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve.

Then suddenly it’s mid-January 2017, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. And hey, this phenomenon isn’t new. It’s not like you’re not trying to achieve stuff, but something always seems to derail your goals.

And what’s worse is that you’ve read all the books on planning as well.

Aha…here’s a 35 Page Report: The Chaos Planning System

That will help you move ahead. So have a look at this product and judge the value for yourself. http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Warm regards, Sean P.S. You also get the book—Pronto Learning: Insiders Tips To Speed Up Your Learning http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

“Since putting Chaos Planning into place my stress levels have gone way down. It’s a beautiful thing!”

I would recommend this product—It was an easy read and an easy implementation, and since putting it into place my stress levels have gone way down. It’s a beautiful thing!”

Dan Wagner, USA

Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/chaos-planning

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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The Core Difference Between Winners and Losers

📅 January 10, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Core Difference Between Winners and Losers

(From the archives: One of the most read articles of 2016. To read this article online click on the cartoon) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/winners-losers-difference/ ]

There are two kinds of people on the planet.

Those who make excuses. And those who don’t.

The ones who make excuses don’t start that way

No one is ‘born talented’ at making excuses. But over the years they learn to get out of things. They learn how to blame the weather, their parents, their teachers, the system, the chewing gum—yeah, pretty much anything that can deflect the blame. And give them the excuse they need.

And then there are those who don’t

Or rather won’t.

We all have our difficulties and some days we feel like making excuses. And we start mumbling, but stop before the mumble pushes itself into a rumble. And we get the job done.

Amazingly all of us have similar capabilities. Similar capabilities to get stuff done Or completely screw up our lives with excuses.

When you wake up in the morning you get to choose which route to take. As one wise person said: The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that smart people hate doing the same things that unsuccessful people hate doing—but successful people do it any way.

As you go on this journey, you get the chance to back out

To make excuses.

To blame the chewing gum.

Or not.

You have the choice.

You decide. ——————————— Where do we draw inspiration from? When we try to beat resistance, we tend to look at what we haven’t done and what needs doing. Yet sometimes resistance can be pushed over with a simple concept of inspiration. Find out—Why Inspiration Can Be The Key To Winning The Resistance Game. [ https://www.psychotactics.com/key-resistance-game/ ]

DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers [ http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/ ] http://psychotactics.com/products/membership-site-strategy

About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies The Resistance Game: Can Resistance be Beaten? (Look for episode 87) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ]| Read and Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/resistance-detests-groups/ ] | Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)” [ http://psychotactics.com/ ]

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends: http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend Three Month Vacation: http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

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Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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How Gentle Productivity Gets Astounding Results

📅 January 07, 2017 | View in Gmail

How Gentle Productivity Gets Astounding Results

Whenever you run into tips on productivity it’s always this earth shaking advice You’re advised to make these monumental changes to improve your business or life.

In reality all you need are tiny little tweaks Important tweaks, but tiny ones. And some of these tweaks are slightly irreverent. Which is what makes these productivity tips even more interesting.

It’s time to examine the three points of gentle productivity (It is available both in audio and transcript)

Part 1: How to let a timer dictate your output Part 2: What has garbage clearance to do with sleep Part 3: Why you need to focus on the road, not the destination.

#122 [Re-Release] How Gentle Productivity Gets Astounding Results Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 122 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/gentle-productivity/ ] |

Once you finish, don’t forget to binge-listen to these two irresistible podcasts. (Yes, there are transcripts too)

#121 [Re-Release] Risk - How To Overcome The Hesitation Factor Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 121 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/elements-of-risk/ ] |

120 [Re-Release] Teacher vs Preacher - Why Learning a New Skill is So Difficult

Listen to or read this episode here. (Look for episode 120 in iTunes) iTunes [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=Wlx.GF0uCLJhVZrW9s7hHw ] | Android [ http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KMgUH&m=3hda1DMgEMUTVt1&b=G4LAhh0OMAIfO5bkS.jhxg ] | Read or Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/why-clients-struggle/ ] |

Warm regards, Sean P.S. Can you do me a tiny favour? I really would love if you would tell your friends about the podcast.

Some of our best clients come from people just like you—those who tell their friends about us. That’s why it would be really cool if you could tell a friend about—The Three Month Vacation Podcast. Here is a simple link http://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/ And if you have any problems, please email me-sean@psychotactics.com

PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND

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The Science of Undervaluing Yourself (And How to Overcome It)

📅 January 03, 2017 | View in Gmail

The Science of Undervaluing Yourself (And How to Overcome It)

(From the archives: One of the most read articles of 2016. To read this article online click on the cartoon) [ https://www.psychotactics.com/science-of-undervaluing/ ]

Do we charge less?

Do we value ourselves less than we should? Do you think that sometime in the future, there will be this perfect product at the perfect price, and the perfect client will come along?

I used to have a client who had exacttttttly the same problem

And I can categorically tell you that everyone without exception has the same problem. Some have it almost perpetually. Some less so. But everyone has it. When we started out I’d do consulting.

I’d spend hours with someone, even give a money back guarantee (some one actually took their money back after 8 hours of consulting). And even our products/courses were terribly under-priced.

I actually had a client say to me: You should charge more!

And I was terrified of increasing the prices

Who would pay that much? And yet, I went from $1,500 to $3000, $3000 to $6000. $6000 to $10,000. And there were still takers. Our consulting went from $75 to $550 or thereabouts (per hour). Still takers. You may say: People know you, Sean. You already have a reputation.

But you’d be beating around the bush. I could still be charging —or rather undercharging.

Remember that client I was talking about before—the one who undervalues himself? He’s well known now, after a rather torrid start for about 10-12 years. Even today he’s increased his income and prices only marginally. He gets clients that can’t pay. He still discounts. He still keeps his fees as low as possible. He believes that clients can’t pay. And he’s right.

I know this because of one of my earliest clients. She was huffing and puffing to pay my 10-part, low fee. Then one day she missed a consulting class. Why? Because she had to buy a car: Only $30,000.

I’ve had clients who’ve not had $250 to spend, then gone on vacation and blown up $2500

I’ve had clients who’ve signed up for some sort of pie in the sky for $12,000. I know that kind of person. I was that kind of person. When I was starting up in marketing, I blew up $12-14k on a single workshop when that constituted about a fourth of my annual income.

So what am I saying here?

It’s all in your ear

There’s someone sitting on your shoulder and screaming in your ear. They’re screaming stupid things. And you should not be listening.

But what if that screamer was right? What if indeed you couldn’t raise your prices?

Well that’s an easy answer

Start up something that doesn’t exist. In 2006, we started up the Protégé. It didn’t exist. We put a price of $6500 on it. Wrote a sales letter. And waited. Well no we didn’t wait. We tried to sell the heck out of it, and yet it wasn’t something we were depending on.

You see it was a fictional kind of thing. In our minds it could work. Or not. If it didn’t, we’d get a whole bunch of copy writing practice and we’d get at least some folks who’d be keen to join something else in future (think of it as an advertisement for the future).

We surprised ourselves

The Protégé program was oversubscribed in 2006, 2007, 2008. We didn’t do any in 2009/10/11. But think about it. It started off as a dream that could fail. That if it failed it wouldn’t matter. And yet it succeeded. So well in fact that I had to stop it, just that I had to step back just so I could do other stuff.

The point is we’re all good at stuff

We just don’t have the confidence. Give us someone who’s willing to listen and we’re good at stuff.

But we’re scared of pricing. We’re terrified of being turned down. Of failing. So scared that we won’t even dare to entertain the idea, let alone start up. But there’s a way around it.

Start up a fictional project/product/service

One which you don’t care if it fails or succeeds. Put a price on it. A price that you think is at least 50%-100% more than you currently think it’s worth. And if it succeeds, you’ll prove it to yourself. If it fails, it doesn’t mean it’s failed. It just means it’s failed “this year”. Or this “quarter”.

Again, how do I know this?

In 2011, the Article Writing Course sold out in 24 hours. Two batches. Plus a ton of home study courses. Consider that the Article Writing Course is priced well over $2000 and you see the problem. Why would anyone pay $2000 to learn to write articles? That was the question swirling in my mind back in the year 2006.

We were so reticent about the course that we didn’t offer it to the public until 2007 or thereabouts. In 2007, I put it out there just as a lark. And we were still reticent. It was the cheapest of our courses. And guess what? Fast forward to this year and it’s got a five month waiting list. Next year it may have a seven month waiting list—at a higher price.

So where’s the problem?

The problem is in your brain. My brain. Our brains. We undervalue ourselves.

And we keep at it. And believe me, now matter how big your reputation grows. No matter how much money you make, you’ll still be undervaluing yourself.

And in case you’re wondering, this isn’t about just charging insane sums of money

I’m now comfortable doing that, we know we have great products and services. For instance we know that our courses are the toughest in the world.

There’s simply no trainer that structures a course like ours, because our courses are based on consumption—not conversion. This means that when you sign up, you’re there to succeed, not to fail.

And it’s not boot camp, but heck it’s tough. And it’s not just tough for you, it’s bloody tough for me as well. I’m there in the trenches with you. As an example the Article Writing Course, in less than a week, the group of 35 people generates over 2000 posts. I write almost 550 of those posts. Think about it. Does any trainer do that? 550 posts a week? That’s madness.

No it’s not

It’s what you would do for your clients. It’s what you could do for them. But you can’t work for peanuts.

Those peanuts have to come out of your brain and need to be fed to that monkey who’s been sitting on your shoulder—and shouting at you.

Your prices, your lack of value—it’s all in your brain You’re believing that monkey.

It’s time to step out. And change your prices.

If not change your prices, create a fictional product/service. Something you’re sure no one will buy. And put in fictional prices that are reasonably higher than you have right now.

And be shocked when someone does buy

Even if one person buys. Even if you get one question asking you for more details, you know you’ve hit pay dirt. The lack of value is in your brain. Tell that monkey to be quiet.

It’s time to revalue yourself. And revalue your future. Because if you don’t do it, no one will.

Is there a way to structure your prices? Find out: How to Increasing Prices using the Power of the Yes-Yes System [ https://www.psychotactics.com/general/cb/ ]. (Special Free Bonus)

Product Offers: Links you should visit

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About this eZine and your subscription

Free Goodies How To Thrive and Succeed In The Midst Of Chaos (Look for episode 107) iTunes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 ] | Android [ http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr ]| Read and Listen [ https://www.psychotactics.com/succeed-chaos/ ] | Report: “Why Headlines Fail (And how to create headlines that work)” [ http://psychotactics.com/ ]

Other Resources and Tools Tell your friends: http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend Three Month Vacation: http://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/

Privacy and Spam Policy

I don’t rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You’ll not get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.

Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND

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