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December 2018
How to Avoid Gaping Holes in Your Article Writing (and How Objections Fill Those Gaps)
📅 December 29, 2018 | View in Gmail
There is a fun cartoon here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/avoid-gaping-holes-article-writing/
Objections aren’t something we necessary think about when writing articles.
We’re so focused on the main content that we might see no need to contradict ourselves.
Yet, it’s this very contradiction that makes the article more robust and removes those chunky holes.
Let’s find out why objections are crucial in our articles.
Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 223)
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg | Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/avoid-gaping-holes-article-writing/ |
Seven most downloaded podcasts in 2018
• How to Craft Interesting Stories and Analogies (For Articles and Sales Letters): Episode 186
https://www.psychotactics.com/craft-stories/
• Why Smaller Lists Work Just As Well As Big Ones (And Often, Even Better) – Episode 189
https://www.psychotactics.com/smaller-lists-work/
• How To Create A Uniqueness That’s Difficult For Competition To Replicate: Episode 192
https://www.psychotactics.com/uniqueness-replicate/
• How to Become An Overnight Success: Episode 182
https://www.psychotactics.com/overnight-success/
• Why Clients Leave : Episode 185
https://www.psychotactics.com/why-client-leave/
• How to Work With Chaos (and Succeed): Episode #199: Audio Only
• The Overwhelm Virus: How To Get It Out of Your Daily Routine: Episode 203
https://www.psychotactics.com/overwhelm-virus/
Here is how to listen or read the podcasts:
- To listen to the podcasts.
Go to the links below and then look for the episode number.
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |
- To read the transcript of the podcast
All have to do is click on the podcast titles above and you will be taken to the page.
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https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
Warm regards
Sean
P.S. Will You Tell A Friend About The Podcast?
It would be really cool if you could tell a friend about the podcast.
Here is a simple link:
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
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Announcement Special: How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images
📅 December 25, 2018 | View in Gmail
How to focus on subject matter and how to capitalize on easy to use software. How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images 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. https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/ Regards, Sean P.S. You will need an iPhone and an app called Camera+ or Camera+ 2 (It cost less than $5 in the app store). Have are a few testimonials: “I’m in the “point and shoot” category, so anything that can make technology easier is for me. As usual, Sean’s teaching method made using this app simple which says more than a lot for someone who’s technology challenged at every turn. Many thanks for introducing me to this app and even more for teaching me how to use it, Sean!” Nancy Meadows, CA, USA “Instead of using all the options, Sean gives a clear path for using the most important functionalities to make your photos look great.” Pauline le Rutte, Netherlands “Not only am I taking better pictures, but I’ve learned how to turn a ‘just okay’ picture into a more marketable image. Plus, my portfolio of work is now being accepted by some of the most demanding and difficult stock photography sites to get work accepted into. And on some galleries, I’m hitting an 80 percent submission success rate!” Darcy Moen, Canada “I’m an Android user, so this was one of the barriers that made me pause for a little while before buying. 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.” Simon Lamey, UK “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.” Howard Jacobson, Durham, NC, USA Special Offer: 5 Minute iPhone Magic with Camera+ If you want to take some great holiday pictures—and pictures in the future, click below. https://www.psychotactics.com/products/iphone-photo-magic/
Announcing: How to Turn Average iPhone Photos into Stunning Images
📅 December 22, 2018 | View in Gmail
So what is it that makes the average photo amazingly evocative?
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.
• “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+ or Camera+ 2 (It cost less that $5 in the app store).
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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Announcing: The Coaching and Writer’s Block Series
📅 December 15, 2018 | View in Gmail
We’ll take apart not just what makes for good coaching, but the elements too.
There is fun cartoon here
https://www.psychotactics.com/profitable-niche-coach/
The toughest part of coaching isn’t necessarily coaching itself. Instead, it’s the niche, isn’t it?
• How do you go looking for the right niche? • And how do you know when you’ve found one that’s rewarding as well as profitable?
Listen, read and enjoy this series here.
(Look for episode 220)
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg | Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/profitable-niche-coach/ |
Announcing the two binge-worthy series
Coaching 3-Part Series: Podcast 220- 222 #222: Why Clients Nod But Don’t Call
#221: How Niches Can Easily Be Found in Recurring Client Problems
#220: How to Start Up with a Great Niche
How to get the entire series? Look for episodes 220- 222.
- To listen to the series:
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |
- To read the series:
https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/#guide
Writer’s Block 4-Part Series: Podcast 216- 219
#219: How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash
#218: Why Discussion and Feedback Are A Writer’s Secret Weapon
#217: Why Cross Pollination of Ideas, Media and Styles Are Crucial
#216: Why the Lack of Outlines Even Stop Professional Writers In Their Tracks
How to get the entire series? Look for episodes 216 - 219.
- To listen to the series:
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |
- To read the series:
https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/#guide
There is a cartoon here
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/will-tell-friend-podcast/
Oh and before I go
If you have enjoyed the Three Month Vacation Podcast, I would love if you could tell one friend about it.
The link is below the cartoon. :)
Warm regards
Sean
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PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND
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Last day for special offer: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t)
📅 December 11, 2018 | View in Gmail
The beauty of Brain Audit lies in its simplicity and the common sense approach it takes.
There is a cartoon here.
https://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 15 years and got results. And most
importantly a system that you don’t have to pull up a 675 page manualto even work out.
Announcing: The Brain Audit Kit + Special Goodies worth $158. Valid
until 11 December 2018, (12 midnight 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 11 December 2018 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
• 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 11 December 2018 (12 midnight US Eastern)
https://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/
Regards,
Sean
P.S. The Brain Audit has been around for many years and is unique because it has over
800+ testimonials. It’s proof that The Brain Audit works, and works very well indeed.
Here is what Raj Aiyer has to say about The Brain Audit
“I did not want the Brain Audit to join the long list of books that I had enthusiastically bought and left them unread midway because I found them later to be –blah blah blah. There’s a lot of mediocre content out there and so I was cautious about buying this.
The Brain Audit an all-encompassing framework to audit your communication.
The beauty of Brain Audit lies in its simplicity and the common sense approach it takes. The specific features I liked the most were that there were lots of examples and great cartoons which made it an easy read.
I would recommend The Brain Audit to anybody who has a business to run and wants to audit their communication or learn the building blocks of marketing.”
Here is what Jonathan Chan has to say about The Brain Audit
I LOVED the Brain Audit!
Like others who are grasping at straws trying to find my way through advertising & marketing, I thought The Brain Audit was probably just more information. I’d already read, The famous ‘Boron Letters’, Jay Abraham’s books and other advertising books.
Firstly, I was extremely surprised on how readable it was.
It was so simple to understand! Secondly, I was even more impressed since I could immediately see where I could improve my landing page (for an upcoming product launch).
It clearly taught me how to systematically think and understand why clients really buy or not buy. There was a simple checklist to go through.
I also loved the stories at the beginning.
They helped me to remember what I needed to and why. Another was the clear explanations helping me understand why I should pay attention to customers complaints and how to use them.
I’d highly recommend the Brain Audit.
In fact, if you know NOTHING about advertising or marketing and are on the fence on which program to buy, just get this! It also comes with the BEST guarantee you will ever see, period. In fact, I regret I didn’t find it earlier. I’d have save lots of wasted time and be years ahead.
Yesterday was the best time to buy The Brain Audit; Don’t waste any more precious time and buy now.
Thank you so much Sean!
Take advantage of this special offer of The Brain Audit Kit right
away. This offer expires on 11 December 2018 (12 midnight US Eastern)
https://www.psychotactics.com/special/brain-audit-offer/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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Announcing Special Offer : Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t)—valid until 11 December
📅 December 08, 2018 | View in Gmail
A system to get and keep your customer’s attention every time. 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 11 December 2018) 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 15 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 8—11 Dec. 2018, 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 11 December 2018 https://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. https://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.
How To Choose Evocative Titles for your Book (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell)
📅 December 04, 2018 | View in Gmail
It’s important to believe in your title but at times, but at times it pays to be mundane.
Psychotactics
How To Choose Evocative Titles for your Book
There is a cartoon image here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/choose-titles-for-book/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/choose-titles-for-book/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 197)
Choosing the title of a book seems to be an almost impossible task
Is there a method or science behind a title that works vs. a title that’s just “meh?” And interestingly, when does a “meh” title work just fine.
If you’ve ever struggled with a title, here’s a simple system that will work almost every single time.
Warm blueberries and ice-cream
I’m not sure if you’ve tried it, but it was one of the desserts, my wife, Renuka would serve at parties. When we owned a microwave, she’d heat up the berries a tiny bit and then place it on top of cold ice-cream.
The tartness of the berries contrasted with the intense sweetness of the vanilla ice-cream at one level. However, the warmth and cool created a second level of contrast, thus creating a dessert that most guests loved.
The opposite of contrast could be considered camouflage, couldn’t it?
And when we’re in search of a title for a book, report or any document, camouflage isn’t exactly what we have in mind.
Why not swing right to the other side and create contrast?
This is the point that got my attention in Malcolm Gladwell’s course on MasterclassCom. Deep into the course in Chapter 18, he touches on the topic of titles and suggests that titles need an emotional connotation.
He chooses American political activist, Ralph Nader’s book as an example.
Nader’s book, which was published in 1965, accused car manufacturers of negligence. The book suggested that car manufacturers were not introducing safety features such as seat bels, or bothering too much to make the car safe. The book went on to be a best seller in 1966.
The name of the book? “Unsafe at any speed”.
The magic of the book seems to pop out from the title itself.
The suggestion that car driving is dangerous 100% of the time creates a deep sense of contrast. When you take a title and contrast it with something that is not supposed to be there, it creates intensity.
Gladwell takes another example talking about a book called “The Art of Failure”, which happens to be an article by Gladwell, but also a book on video games by Jesper Juul.
No matter which planet we’re on when we run across such a title, we are beamed back to Earth immediately. We are jolted by the contrast in the title and the article—or the book—gets our attention.
Attention is cool, but it it’s not the only reason for the title
“I will not be talked out of my titles,” he says. “I’m open to criticism on every level, but not about titles”. The reason for the title is how it frames what is to follow. When you have a great title, a contrast-laden title, it frames how the audience listens or reads your material. You have a huge advantage in capturing the client’s attention.
The title of Gladwell’s podcast, “Revisionist History” is a good example. History, by its nature, cannot be revised. Granted that Gladwell already has star power and for that reason alone you might listen to the podcast, but even so, a title like “Revisionist History” gets a listener to give the podcast a first look.
Add tension to the title whenever you can
A book like Dartboard Pricing has instant voltage. Pricing is supposed to be precise. It’s supposed to have at least a feeling of the science behind it. A dartboard, at least for most of us, seems to be a game that’s slightly random. We throw darts at a board more with hope than with any skill.
Which is why the title “Dartboard Pricing” holds your attention. A similar feeling arises with “the Brain Audit”. The brain, with its 86 billion neurons feels unfettered and free. How could anyone do an audit on the brain? And this concept of tension doesn’t just apply to books.
It’s important to believe in your title but at times, but at times it pays to be mundane
The Article Writing Course is an ordinary title, and so is the title of the Sales Page Course. However, they’re descriptive, and they do the job. However, a product like ‘Black Belt Presentations’ could have been more imaginatively named, that’s for sure.
A bit of contrast or at least some tension in the title would make it so much more interesting. And this brings us to an important point.
You may come up with a title and want to defend it, but it does take a lot of practice to get to good titles. Or does it?
Let’s do the contrast bit, shall we?
Here are some examples of books that are already out there.
• Silent Spring. • Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I Used to Love) • Thinking Fast and Slow Want a couple more? • Getting Slightly Famous • Strategic Goalsetting: How to achieve at least 50% of your goals
Summary Contrast is what matters in life. Without distinction, we have mostly camouflage, boring titles and just plain ol’ cold, vanilla ice-cream.
Presenting: Info-Product Free Goodies Goodie 1: Info-Products: Six Powerful Strategies Goodie 2: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight Goodie 3: How to guide a customer along a clear purchasing path. Here are the details
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
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Product Offers: Links you should visit
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https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/
Top-Selling Products Under $50
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.
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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Binge Worthy Podcast Episode How to Research An Article (Without Killing Your Productivity) (Look for episode 213) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash
📅 December 01, 2018 | View in Gmail
Is there a way around this energy hurdle? What causes an energy loss?
There is a fun cartoon here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/energy-management-writing/
One of the biggest hurdles in writing, has nothing to do with writing at all.
It doesn’t have anything to do with time, either.
Instead, it’s an understanding of energy. Without a clear view of how energy works, we’re likely to start off strong and then find ourselves stranded.
Is there a way around this energy hurdle? What causes an energy loss?
Let’s find out in this episode.
Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 219)
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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg | Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/energy-management-writing/ |
Binge-Worthy Series on Writer’s Block
The series covers:
• 1/4: Why the Lack of Outlines Even Stops Professional Writers In Their Tracks • 2/4: Why Cross Pollination of Ideas, Media and Styles Are Crucial (And Avoids Shutdowns When Writing) • 3/4: Why Discussion and Feedback Are A Writer’s Secret Weapon (And How Professionals Use it to Their Advantage) • 4/4: How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash
How to get the entire series? Look for episodes 216 - 219.
- To listen to the series:
iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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- To read the series:
https://www.psychotactics.com/podcast/#guide
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Oh and before I go If you have enjoyed the Three Month Vacation Podcast, I would love if you could tell one friend about it. The link is below the birds. :)
Warm regards Sean
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November 2018
The Overwhelm Virus: How To Get It Out of Your Daily Routine
📅 November 27, 2018 | View in Gmail
The answer lies in the last place you’d go looking.
Psychotactics
The Overwhelm Virus
There is a cartoon image here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/overwhelm-virus/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/overwhelm-virus/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 203).
Who would be more overwhelmed?
A person who had twenty tasks to do? Or ten? Or three?
The answer isn’t what you’d expect.
The person with the fewest tasks tends to be the most overwhelmed. But does that mean the person with the most number of tasks is less stressed?
I woke up this evening, after a Sunday siesta, wondering how my life had taken me down a weird road. I wasn’t supposed to be a marketer. Or a person who wrote books, who did seminars and webinars.
I wasn’t supposed to know—or do—a lot of the things I do today. I was a cartoonist, plain and simple. And yet, there was a secret I mistakenly learned while in the field of cartoons itself. That overwhelm comes from less, not more.
What a weird thought, right?
To go back to the origin of the thought, we have to go back to Mumbai, India and two local newspapers. Then the trip forks around 2003 in Auckland, New Zealand where once again, this concept plays out.
And today, in 2018, Pinterest and Instagram play yet another role in seemingly making life more complicated. But it hasn’t. Why is this the case? Is overwhelm grossly mistaken? Are we going about it the wrong way?
I don’t know if you’ve ever been part of a 30-day challenge, but a simple challenge like that can solve your problem of overwhelm forever.
Back in Mumbai, India, I had a bigger problem than a 30-day challenge. I was a young cartoonist in Mumbai, India, who wanted to make a name for himself. I wanted to draw cartoon strips for the newspapers, just like my heroes in the cartooning world.
I’d tried to mail big cartoon syndicates like United Features and King Features, but all I ever got was a bunch of rejection letters.
Instead of trying to go to the big American names, I figured it would be easier to get the attention of the dailies in Mumbai itself. Since the newspapers were Indian, I reckoned my chances would be far better.
I was clearly wrong in my assumption
It wasn’t that Indian newspapers didn’t publish cartoons. If anything, every newspaper had over ten comic strips on a daily basis. However, what I didn’t know at the time was that those cartoon strips were being dumped at rock bottom prices.
I, on the other hand, wanted to be paid at least moderately well for my work. However, being the persistent type, I bugged two editors of two separate newspapers to accept my cartoons, even pitching two separate comic strips to them. One was called “Mumbai Meri Jaan” and the other “Sultanuts”. And like the comics syndicates, all I got was rejection.
And then all of a sudden, both the editors changed their mind
I can’t remember the exact sequence, but I do know that I suddenly had two editors giving me the green light. My plan of getting published had, it seems, gone too well. I had to draw a daily cartoon strip for two newspapers, five times a week. I’d gone from having to do zero to ten comic strips in a week.
I’ve found the experience to be a lot like the 30-day drawing or writing challenges you see online
A person isn’t doing too much drawing or writing. Then some challenge pops up online, and this very same person turns out a whopping 150,000 words that month or draws every single day.
Even the ones that don’t quite stick to the pace still put out a credible amount of work. Wait a second—don’t these people have a life? How come they suddenly have time to do a cartoon a day or write a couple of thousand words?
The answer lies in the last place you’d go looking
You might think the answer lies in ability, yet that’s not it. When people do these challenges, the ability levels are all over the place. Some have exceedingly good work, and others have yet to catch up to that quality, but whether the work is rudimentary or outstanding, they’re all there, ploughing ahead.
The ones that are on track have one ace up their sleeve, and it’s called “planning”.
When faced with having to draw ten comic strips a week, you can’t just sit down to draw. Your brain is fried with the thought of having to create such a high volume of work on a constant basis. The only way forward is to sit down and work out a plan. And that’s precisely what I had to do.
Without the plan, I would be soon floundering. To get those cartoons in day after day without skipping a deadline, the only lifesaver was a plan. Time and time again the people who are overwhelmed will almost always not have a plan. You and I will buy a book online, or get one from the library.
When are we going to read it? Sure, when we have the time, right? We are going to cook a meal: when are we going to get all the ingredients in place? Sometime after work, isn’t it? If you go back to the root of overwhelm, you will almost always find a lack of planning.
Once you get down to planning, you realise it’s a bit like being on the road
You may have a plan to get to your destination, but things have changed since you got into your car. There might be too much traffic, or an accident up ahead. Every lousy driver seems to have shown up on the road at the exact point you started on your journey.
When we get started on any project, we realise that plans evolve. To finish 30 cartoons in a month or write a ton of words, we have to tweak or even overhaul our plans.
Even so, a basic plan will have the following ingredients
• The time
• The place
• The ingredients required
Let’s face it, we’re all distracted with the volume of information at hand
Even so, if you have a plan, things tend to fall in place more than if you have “hope” as your strategy. One of the best ways to get the plan going is to tag them along to tasks you do on a repetitive basis.
For instance, I make breakfast every day. Before I turn on the gas to make a hot breakfast, I perch my iPhone on the window sill and switch on the course I’m following. For the next 10-15 minutes, I’m listening and cooking breakfast. Then, after breakfast, I’ll sit for 30 minutes to paint my watercolour diary.
Most people who get things done have similar routines
They first set a plan in place, then turn it into a routine. The people who are overwhelmed never have the plan, and hence no routine either. You can check it out for yourself. Go and meet the busiest, most productive people you know and they’ll have plans and routines.
Find someone who is overwhelmed all the time, and they’ll tell you they have plans and routines, but they often have none. They complain they have no time to plan. Well, there you go—it’s all downhill from there on. A plan needs to exist, and you have to keep tweaking that plan, or nothing happens.
Planning also stops us from going over the top
When your day is already filled with Spanish lessons, writing articles, learning software you really should master—you know that you’ve got enough on your plate. Without the plan in place, it seems you can easily cram in some more stuff.
Out comes the big dreams only to find themselves crashing not long after. Now it’s not like you’re going to be utterly chaste with your choices, even if you do plan, but you’re less likely to be taking a swipe at every possible distraction in sight.
To get off the overwhelm bandwagon, you first have to work out a plan.
Then the plan has to become a routine. But that’s just the starting point. It doesn’t help if you take ages to get something done. Another open secret that most productive people have isn’t talent. Talent, inborn talent is a well-worn myth.
Instead, productive people tend to look for another superpower. That power is called fluency. Let’s find out more, shall we?
Look at all the work you’re doing, and you can be sure you’re wasting massive amounts of time
Let’s take the simple act of trying to type out your address. If someone asked you to give your mailing address, would it take you two seconds or a few minutes? If you wanted to find a folder buried deep, deep, deep, deep, really deep into your folders, could you do it in one click or seventeen?
The difference between people who get a lot done vs those that struggle is merely the lack of fluency.
You may call it talent, but it’s fluency
No one is born to find folders buried seventeen layers down, and no one we know is born with the talent to type out their address in two seconds. All of this speed is achieved through the power of fluency. You and I have technology at your disposal, but we choose to do things as we did on day one.
We fail to learn new shortcuts because of course, we’re busy. We fail to implement new features because we have a life, you know. It’s all a lack of fluency, and it leads to a drain of energy.
Once your energy is drained, you’ve reached your state of overwhelm.
However it’s not just technology that’s at play
Skills like writing, drawing, cooking—they can all be fine-tuned so that you can get the job done at great speed. You can write a sales page in three days flat, or labour over it for a whole week or two.
You can get a high-quality article done in 90 minutes flat or sweat over it for days on end. Skills are not about being hit by a bolt of lightning or being born with the right genes. Instead, what you need is a big dose of moving that skill ahead day by day, week by week, month by month.
People who are overwhelmed take the longer route
The way to get away from that overwhelming feeling is to ask yourself: How can I do the task in x. minutes? Or x. hours? The answer isn’t as distant as you believe. In reality, most of us can reduce the no. of hours we spend on tasks quite dramatically.
The usage of technology and sheer skills we pick up along the way allow us to become exceedingly good at what we do. We use up a lot less energy and hence are fresh and ready to take on more than ever before.
Try it for yourself.
Reach for that folder deep, deep, deep, seventeen layers down. Can you do it in one second? If not, welcome to the land of overwhelm.
The third point of overwhelm is just the overuse of the word itself.
Do you find yourself saying you’re overwhelmed?
Well, look at any kid under the age of seven, and you find they don’t use that word at all. Now how can that be true? Being a kid is the most overwhelming task of all. Just trying to learn what the number “five” means is overwhelming.
Does five mean a number that comes after four? Or is it a number of a bus or a house? Is “five” a concept they need to master? We think nothing of numbers, languages and skills, but for a kid, it’s like being on an overwhelm treadmill all day long.
So what words do kids use?
They use words like “afraid” or “scared”. Not one kid you know is overwhelmed, just scared, afraid, or unsure. Now, what if you used the same language? What if you were afraid of Photoshop? What if you were scared of Wordpress?
What if you weren’t sure of how to cook a dish to perfection? Almost immediately your frame of reference changes, doesn’t it? Instead, you and I want to be super-macho and use big words like overwhelm.
What the word “overwhelm” suggests is that we’re just having a bad day
Not one of us is overwhelmed. We are just going about things the wrong way and getting an avalanche of errors. When faced with these errors, we do the most idiotic thing and try to aim for the highest possible goal, instead of conquering our immediate fear.
If you use the word overwhelm, that alone will kill you. The way out of overwhelm is not exactly easy, but it does start with a word change. Fear, scared and afraid would be a good start. Then, once you have accepted your fear, try to overcome that fear with steps—tiny steps all the time, achieving fluency.
Technology is on your side, and even seemingly difficult skills like writing and drawing are more a matter of finding the right teacher, than amusing yourself with the flawed concepts of in-born skills. Finally, nothing beats a plan.
Yes, you may think you already spend enough time with your plans. Well, it’s not enough. Like a driver on a busy road, that plan changes all the time, and you still have to keep going to your destination. If you haven’t planned well, chaos will hit you and then it’s the O word that surfaces yet again. Change your language.
And there’s one last thing. It’s called meditation.
There are times when life throws a tantrum. You’re stuck in a queue of seventy-five people at the airport. Or your computer decides to give up the ghost on the day you have to start your project. This is where meditation lets you rebalance yourself. Meditation? Oops, you’re going to have a plan for that too, aren’t you?
Epilogue
Anyone can get to where he or she wants to be and do it without feeling overwhelmed.
It’s a combination of several elements, but in the end, the ones who are the most overwhelmed, are those that fail to do the very things that can set them free.
It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?
Tiny Saturday Request
📅 November 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/about/psychological-marketing-business-tactics-tell-a-friend/
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. I 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.
Send to a friend
And thank you in advance. I really appreciate the referral.
Warm regards, Sean D’Souza
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How To Run A Perfectly Profitable And Sustainable Business With Small Groups
📅 November 20, 2018 | View in Gmail
When a group is small, and get to know each other, they tend to stay longer.
Psychotactics
How To Run A Perfectly Profitable And Sustainable Business With Small Groups
There is a sheep cartoon here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/small-lists-work/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/small-lists-work/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 190).
Our lists are small in comparison to most others in our field
Our list now hovers around 25,000 people, and probably 5000 people open their e-mail. The membership site at 5000bc has just 600 members. Our workshops allow for just 35 people at a maximum, but often we’ll have boutique workshops like the Landing page workshop, and admit only 16 participants.
When you consider the size of other lists, and especially those who’ve been around as long as we have, you’ll see there’s a marked difference. But how come we’re able to do this whole three-month vacation bit, take weekends off, etc.
It’s because of our belief in the small list, but there’s a greater driving force
We have community in the sense that’s easier to manage when you’re smaller. It wouldn’t be over the top to state that we’ve personally met close to one fourth of our members in person.
We’ve interacted with clients via e-mail several times, and on 5000bc, possibly hundreds of times. Even so, the community aspect only tends to work, if the client is willing to pitch in.
And they only tend to pitch in, if the two questions are answered reasonably well.
• Are the rest a lot like me?
• Are they completely different from me?
If the client feels socially overwhelmed, they will not participate in the community. Social overwhelm doesn’t come from abnormally large groups.
Instead, as one client told me: “I feel about 16 people is all I can manage”. Which is why you need to keep your clients to smaller groups, and for our workshops and training, we might take 35 people on the course, but split them into groups of 5-7 people.
That avoids the social overwhelm. Then, we give them structure to introduce themselves to each other and to get to know each other. They get to know the likes, the dislikes—and this reduces isolation.
The reason why a society exists is because the group members don’t feel extremely different from each other. This fosters a sense of identity with your tribe. And in doing so, it also answers the question: Are the rest a lot like me?
When a group is small, and get to know each other, they tend to stay longer
The more the connectedness, the more they’re likely to pitch in and help one another. Whether you’re in business online, or have an offline service—say a clothing firm, or a bakery—there’s always a chance to get your audience together.
Lulu Melon, the fitness clothing store, for instance, has yoga classes every weekend. Others like the lawyers I worked with, would have seminars and then cheese, and really good wine.
And if you’re sitting in a land of 64 million sheep, far away from the rest of the world, you can connect with your audience, as we have over the years.
To make this work in small groups, we use a ton of methods.
Methods we’ve used so far to keep the community together are:
A) Offline meet-ups B) Online meet-ups C) Courses online (but restricted to groups of 7 people) & Workshops D) Taking Action forum and Cave Guides E) Chocolate from New Zealand
A) Offline meetups
A meetup doesn’t need a venue. Any cafe will do, though we go to extra lengths to get a nice venue, where possible. It requires no notes, little or no planning and I can sleep well the night before. Believe it or not, a meet up achieves a similar result as a three or five-day workshop when it comes to community building.
The meet-ups are usually about three hours long where everyone (and we restrict the numbers to about 15 people) talks to the others, but then I get asked dozens of questions (and I answer them all).
That session moves to a restaurant, where people spend two or three hours more, talking and enjoying the company of other entrepreneurs just like them.
And in some cases, some have stuck around until dinner, and as you can see, it’s a pretty long day for an introvert, but a glorious day for someone like me. Nonetheless, even if you were just to have a meet-up, as Dorothy does, that alone is worth the trouble.
Dorothy who?
Dorothy Goudie, who founded Dorothy’s Fashions in 1982, decided not to renew the lease on her Neville Street women’s boutique and retired at the age of 78. Even so, when the store was going, Dorothy would have her meet ups.
It wasn’t anything fancy. She’d personally invite her clients to an afternoon of tea and snacks. And in that tiny little act, she managed to get her clients together and form a community.
One of the best ways to get clients together is to have an offline meet-up, yet your clients may not be local. In which case, an online meet up is what’s needed for sure.
B) Online meet ups
We live in New Zealand, and yet we travel the world, so it’s relatively possible to have meet-ups from time to time. However, the offline meet-ups were so well received that it made perfect sense to take the concept online. That way we could have clients from different countries and varying time zones getting to know each other.
Think of a meet up much like a webinar, especially since you’re going to be using webinar software anyway. Getting clients together to just talk to each other and interact with you, is slightly different from meeting over beer and coffee, but there’s no reason why it can’t be fun.
Some clients will not turn on their video, some will not show up on audio either, but my guess is that almost everyone will say hello, at least on chat. To straddle east and west, we’ve had two separate time zones.
This takes us to the third method of getting clients together—courses online. Most clients are delighted to meet in small groups. The bigger the group, the more they lurk. It’s well worth having several sessions, rather than one big nameless, faceless group.
C) Courses online and workshops
Courses are a great way to get clients to interact.We start off with a group of anywhere between 25-35 people, but they’re in groups of no larger than 7. Why 7? Because if a couple of people go missing for a few days, you still have a discussion going between 5 people. If you have a smaller group, say of 5 people, and two go missing, it’s just down to three.
That’s a bit too close for comfort, and hence 7 is a good number for a group. However, we’ve found that this number can then be pared down to as small as two per group. If you have a final couple of weeks, you can pair people off, and they work very well.
A similar concept can be used for on-site workshops creating bonding between the group as well as between two specific individuals.
Is it possible for someone to request a move to another group? Of course, it is, and it doesn’t happen often, but it’s easy enough to make a move, if needed. Which takes us to the Taking Action group in 5000bc.
D) Taking Action/Cave Guides and The Elves
The big reason for joining a membership site like 5000bc is to get a consistent level of progress. Or in many cases, just to be heard and have someone to hear you out. That’s what 5000bc’s Taking Action forum is all about. Once again, it can become quite isolated, except for the fact that we pair up clients.
Just having another person listening to what you’ve achieved helps you come back and get progress. And yet again, it’s a bond that forms between clients. There are also the Cave Guides and the Elves.
The Cave Guides are there for those who’ve just joined and need a helping hand around 5000bc. The elves, on the other hand, come out and volunteer when we go on vacation thrice a year. They keep watch over the place and pitch in if help is needed.
E) Chocolate from New Zealand
One of the most intimidating aspects of the Internet is the inability to connect with the owner of the site. It almost seems like you’re interrupting them at some level when you write in. The chocolate bar sent with a hand written card, all the way from New Zealand makes a huge difference and a connection.
Some people suggest we get a service to do this task. And perhaps print a card and send it off. Yes, all that advice is very efficient, but let’s focus on why we’re doing all of this in the first instance.
It’s about connection. The moment the client gets a chocolate bar, they usually write in. Clients send photos of their family and of course the chocolate bar (but often just the wrapper).
You may sit around and drool at the thought of big groups
In reality it’s just that the grass looks greener on the other side. You can run a perfectly profitable and sustainable business. You get to stay close to your family, to travel when you need to, have lots of downtime and to run a business like that’s not chasing its tail.
Best of all you don’t need a big group at all.
You grow your audience organically and systematically.
But most of all, fish at your feet first. Keep the clients you have and they’ll help you grow as they grow too.
Announcing: The Art Of Pre-Sell—How To Get Customers To Buy, Long Before They PayTrying to sell a product or service is a slightly terrifying ordeal. What if you’ve put your hopes and dreams into a product and are left with nothing to show for it?
Learn the bite-size, non-pushy method of Pre-Sell. (This product will be on sale on 28 November 2018) Free Goodies
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Presenting Pre-Sell Goodies: How To Get Customers To Buy, Long Before They Pay
📅 November 17, 2018 | View in Gmail
There is a cartoon here. :)
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/pre-sell-goodies/
In the year 2009, we tried selling our copywriting course. We gave away a ton of goodies, marketed it for weeks, and guess what? Even though we had a pretty large list and a rock-solid reputation, we sold just four seats.
Four seats? Yup, just four.
And yet when we ran the very same course in 2013, every single seat was taken in under 25 minutes.
Sounds like a fluke? • Every workshop since 2009 has sold out in record time (often in under a week). • Every course since 2009 has sold out in less than 48 hours. • Products that didn’t move at all for weeks, flew off the shelf (yup, since 2009). Obviously something happened in 2009, right? That something is called “Pre-Sell”. It’s the understanding of how to get your customers to buy, long before they pay. And no matter whether you’re selling products, services or training, the concepts still apply.
And we’ve not had to sell our soul to get results If you look around you’ll see that you’re told to do more joint ventures, do more advertising, spend a bundle on adwords, Facebook marketing etc. The louder you scream, it seems, the better the chances that you’ll get results. And we’ve gone a lot quieter. Most of the above results were achieved with a tiny group.
Makes you wonder, eh? Well, wonder no more. Because now you can learn what we figured out in the year 2009. You too can learn how to pre-sell a product/service. And you don’t need all that hype or a big audience to get results.
Presenting: Pre-Sell Special Free Goodie: How To Make Existing Products Attractive Again Read the report and see how you can take your existing products and make them stand out repeatedly using the pre-sell method. Click here to get the goodie.
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/pre-sell-goodies/
Warm regards Sean P.S. On 28 November, ‘The Art Of Pre-Sell: How To Get Customers To Buy, Long Before They Pay’ will be on sale. Find out how to get on the waiting list.
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/presell/
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Why Clients Shy Away From Giving Feedback Despite Liking Your Products and Services
📅 November 13, 2018 | View in Gmail
Is it you? Is it because of the quality of your questions? Or is it something else?
Psychotactics
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Why Clients Shy Away From Giving Feedback Despite Liking Your Products and Services
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This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=IjOQJkpALNEtt1&b=IMTqkgSl2pPBcOPJuEgFYA | iTunes
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=IjOQJkpALNEtt1&b=oDFaeJHBNqGaRzKHxWXBTg | Android
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http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=IjOQJkpALNEtt1&b=sgkC2TbxMWvwgCMhzwr67A |Look for episode 193).
Have you ever had restaurant staff ask you: How’s the food?
Yesterday we went for dinner at our now favourite Indian restaurant. We’ve been going to dinner to their place almost since the day they started and sometimes even twice a week.
With so much frequency, comes a factor of familiarity. It means we know the staff well, and they in turn know us. As always, we had our meal and the inevitable question hit us as we paid our bill.
“How was the food?”
“Frankly, it was disappointing”, I answered. And I knew I’d made a mistake the moment I responded, because there’s something weird about restaurants. They expect you to become an instant critic; they expect you to explain exactly what’s off, or what’s not right.
I’m pretty polished with my Indian food, because I cook Indian food frequently. Therefore, I could give more than a coherent response. Even so, the reaction I got from the staff member was “tepid”.
“I’ll tell the chefs”, he said.
You see the problem, don’t you? They’re going to tell the chefs. Right! But how does that change my situation? I don’t go out to dinner to eat. I go out for an experience.
I can cook just as well, if not better food, at home. What would telling the chefs do for me? How would it change my experience either right away or in the future?
When we ask for feedback, our audience are a lot like dinner guests
You’ve asked for the feedback, but they believe you’re going to do diddly squat with the information. They trust you, even like you, but they don’t think you’re going to do much.
Which is why the default response mechanism is to completely ignore your request for any sort of feedback. Plus the audience knows that you’re not asking for praise or testimonials.
That audience knows they have to say “not so kind” things to you. When has that feedback turned out well for them in the past? All you seem to get after giving feedback is this instant defensiveness from the person asking the question.
But there’s a way to make clients eager to give feedback.
Let’s look at three reasons why you may not be getting feedback.
If you look at the Psychotactics site, or the membership site at 5000bc, you’ll notice something quite interesting. There’s a bug on the site that not only asks for feedback, but also gives a reward.
In the past we’ve offered an $50 “voucher” for the best bug of the month, but in recent months we’ve taken it out as we transition to the new site. That reward will change over time, and now it’s a series of postcards (and possibly a bar of chocolate from New Zealand). However, it’s not the reward but rather what the reward suggests.
You know what it suggests, right?
It’s saying almost instantly: we’re happy to receive feedback, and we’re so happy that we’ll respond to your feedback with a reward. And that’s one level of feedback for anything that’s wrong with the site, or anything that needs our attention.
Which is why clients use the bug
In the earlier years at Psychotactics, we’d get one bug a day, sometimes two. Do the multiplication and that works out to about 700 pieces of feedback, and not all of them were tiny changes.
Some involve a decent bit of pain on our part, but it’s feedback and some of it has been extremely worth it. Sometimes we’ve had the wrong price on the site, losing us thousands of dollars.
That gap got fixed. At other times, clients haven’t liked the way something was written, or they find things that obstruct their view. However, they’re encouraged to write in and that’s exactly what they do.
At all times, we have a potential army of clients combing through the site, helping us out—at no charge, I might add.
However, it doesn’t stop there
We make a note of the bug; fix it, and then respond. Just the other day, a member of 5000bc wrote in with a series of fixes needed in one of my articles. I’d not proof read the article, but hey, that was my fault. She wrote in with at least ten fixes and said “no response required”.
However, we always respond, even when they say “no response required”. We thank them, for their feedback, we fix it and then we send the client to see the fix. You see what’s happening, right?
The client doesn’t think to themselves, “this is a waste of my time”. They don’t think, “he’s going to tell the “chef”, but how does that improve my experience?” They know that the reason we ask, is because we’ll fix and yes, reward too, wherever possible. Often just the fix is the reward, but there’s not a reason in world why you can’t do a bit more.
We constantly ask for bugs
Whether you’re in 5000bc, or doing a course, or at a Psychotactics workshop or just on the site browsing, you’re being hit with many, many reasons to write in and give your opinion.
Compare this with so many other sites and you’ll find that people have literally been hiding their e-mail addresses because they want no contact from you. And if you happen to have contact, like my friend at the Indian restaurant, we get zero-benefit and no reward and just this sad, puppy face look.
- Clients need to trust you’ll do something with their feedback
If they don’t get constant signals, there’s no way they’re going to respond. They have tried before; wait, you’ve tried before. All you and I get when give feedback is an idiotic mumble or even anger and frustration from the other side.
We’ve learned to keep our opinions to ourselves. However, you can get your clients to give you feedback and give it frequently.
You might think you’re going to be awash in complaints, but that’s hardly the case. Instead, what you do is get to fix the issues on your site, in your book, in your course and make it better. You connect with the client and they love your proactive behaviour.
What did it cost you?
Your time, a bar of chocolate and a few postcards. And a lot of signage on your site that says: Give me feedback and I’ll send you chocolate.
However, that’s only the first problem with feedback. There’s also the format and that can drive people crazy almost instantly.
Why do formats matter? Let’s find out.
- The format matters
When we struggle to get feedback, it’s usually because we’re not pedantic with our questioning.
It’s easy enough to say: how was your meal? What did you think of the software? Dd you like the course? When faced with having to compress the entire experience into a single thought, most clients just give up.
However, the moment you get a bit fussy with your questioning, you get a completely different experience.
Let’s look at an example
Let’s say we need feedback on a website. Maybe you’ve just completed your sales page for a product or service and need friends or even clients to take a look and let you know what’s wrong. Almost immediately you’ve set up a situation for overwhelm. A single sales page has dozens of elements.
The brave ones will rip through the page with their critiques, but most people will just avoid the task at hand. If on the other hand, you ask for feedback on only the headline ah, now you’re asking for something small and manageable.
Once they’re done with that first step, you can ask for the second and the third.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much feedback you’ll get if you break up the feedback into an easy steps.
And there you have it—two reasons, but there’s a third. And it’s called follow up.
- Follow up: The secret sauce when all else fails
Ever noticed how some people seem to knock on your door when they’re trying to get you to join some religion? Well, they do so here, anyway. And that level of knocking is clearly over the top. However, when it comes to getting feedback, a simple follow up, and then even a few more might be needed.
Often it’s not that people don’t want to give you feedback
It’s just that they’re not overly upset with your product or service. It’s often not enough to warrant a full blown reply, and so they wait or just put off the feedback for later. A “later” that never really shows up. Well then, it’s up to you.
Follow up and then follow up at least a few times and you’ll get your response.
If not, maybe there’s something wrong with the system of getting feedback and if you’re not getting feedback, you may as well use the opportunity to ask what’s wrong with the feedback method itself.
Too long a form, not trusting you to do stuff—other reasons may play their role and that’s why people aren’t responding. It’s a good time to clean up your act and ensure feedback in the future.
That’s how feedback works.
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Three Simple Ways To Make Sure You Get Paid On Time
📅 November 10, 2018 | View in Gmail
If you’ve been struggling with payments here are 3 methods that you can use.
There is a fun cartoon here.
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One of the most mind numbing tasks is to get a client to pay for the job you’ve completed. Clients tend to be slow with payments or just default.
But is there a way to avoid such a mess?
There’s not just one, but three separate ways to go about it.
Let’s find out how you can get paid without all the bother—and well in advance, too. Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 215) iTunes
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Binge-Worthy Episodes
How to Research An Article (Without Killing Your Productivity) Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 213) iTunes
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A Four-Part Series On Writer’s Block
Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 216) iTunes
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Oh and before I go If you have enjoyed the Three Month Vacation Podcast, I would love if you could tell one friend about it. The link is below the birds. :)
Warm regards Sean
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How to Willingly Get Clients to Buy from You in Quick Succession (Even with a Tiny List)
📅 November 06, 2018 | View in Gmail
The Psychotactics Sequence of Buying
Psychotactics
How to Willingly Get Clients to Buy from You in Quick Succession
There is a cartoon here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/smaller-lists-work/#smalllist
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/smaller-lists-work/#smalllist | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 189).
What do cicadas have to do with prime numbers?
Cicadas, periodical cicadas, are bite-sized dinner for pets, rodents, marsupials, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, arachnids — almost every creature will eat them.
Therefore the cicadas show up in large numbers. These large numbers means that millions of cicadas show up to mate at a specific given time, in a specific given year. Their numbers are so large, that their predators can’t eat them all.
But that’s because of a bit of maths, and yes, prime numbers
The cicadas need to minimise the chance of interbreeding with other cicadas. Interbreeding would likely result in offspring that didn’t have a long life cycle. The shorter life cycle would mean they couldn’t stay hidden underground for twelve or sixteen years.
They’d have to come out more frequently to breed and they’d be eaten by predators. In the fascinating series called “The Code” by Marcus du Sautoy, he talks about how in Georgia, USA, one breed of periodical cicadas show up every 13 years and the other breed, every 17 years.
If they get these calculations wrong, it’d be a disaster, but because they use prime numbers, the chances of interbreeding only occurs once in 221 years.
Luckily for us, clients don’t use prime numbers when considering the need to buy our products and services.
Instead, they show up at frequent intervals, often quickening the pace as they consume more of the content, product or service you’re selling. No one starts out having 300 cups of coffee a year, but eventually a cup leads to another cup and we simply can’t do without the welcoming aroma of coffee.
Amazon, YouTube and Netflix know this phenomenon works, so they push similar content towards you. If you’ve watched Charlize Theron on one show on YouTube, you could theoretically be listening to Charlize interviews all day.
Yet, there’s another kind of sequence that’s in play at Psychotactics
And I say, Psychotactics, but the real source of inspiration is dinner at a restaurant. When you sit down you get your dessert, then your mains, and finally the starters, right?
So you know that’s not the way it works. There’s a sequence in place and the sequence seems logical to us.
We begin with the drinks and the starters; move on to the mains and possibly salads and finally it’s dessert and a coffee or tea, maybe even an aperitif.
When you look at the Psychotactics sequence, you’ll notice the sequence as well.
You start off at the subscriber level, buy The Brain Audit, get to 5000bc, and then you do courses like the Article Writing Course. But then there’s also the climb down. You can hone your skills on a Headline course or the First Fifty Words course, which is more akin to dessert and coffee.
And this kind of sequence works really well with a tiny list
A client who wants to learn about photography rarely wants to start and stop. Your first workshop with that client might be about the basics of taking pictures in low light. Yes, not even the broad concept of photography, but this niche topic of “low light”.
Even so, that client would be willing to go deeper into those studies. Every year, dozens of courses are held in the South Island of New Zealand to capture the scintillating southern night sky. And I use the example of New Zealand for a simple reason.
It’s probably as far away as most clients can travel. Yet, those very same clients start off following an Instagram account, buy a book, possibly a course or jump on a webinar. Next thing you know they’re in the freezing cold taking mind blowing pictures of the Milky Way.
We always assume that we need large numbers for such an enterprise to succeed
In reality you don’t and possibly never will. While most conversion still sits nervously at a patchy 2%, and sometimes lower, the conversion rate of someone going through a sequence can be almost 100%.
I know that sounds pretty mind boggling to you, but there are clients that have bought almost everything we have to sell.
They go through the sequence. In the Article Writing Course purchase sequence for instance, a client will first read the articles on the Psychotactics site, then sign up for article writing goodies, buy into the Outlining book, then either get the home study of the Article Writing Course or sign up for the live course.
Those very same clients then buy into the advanced storytelling course, the headlines course and the First Fifty Words course.
If you find that mind boggling, well, yes it is
But it’s also pretty natural when you’re chomping your way through dinner, and even angling for that second aperitif right at the tail end of the meal. Your bill is high, but so is your satisfaction level.
And therein lies the reason why clients buy from you. They want a result.
While it’s all very fine to think about conversion, keywords and fancy technology, the most powerful tool of all is “consumption”.
The client buys the product, uses it and that’s consumption. • They step in not expecting much from a photography webinar, but they end up in New Zealand, having the time of their lives. •
• They start off with buying a single business card from an online printing company like Moo.com and end up buying postcards, fliers, letterheads—the whole meal from one end to the other.
And then when the meal is done, they don’t quite go away. They come back for a different meal. A client that’s done the article writing sequence doesn’t ride off into the horizon. Instead she comes back to learn more about copywriting, or how to draw, or how to cook.
But to get back to the very core of the sequence, think of it as dinner.
Dinner goes from one end to the other. That’s the core sequence you need. Not some fancy funnel with zigzags.
Clients will follow a sequence just like they follow a karate sequence of white belt, yellow belt etc. And within the sequence, you’ll have other sequences. If you do a course, for example, there will be smaller bits that run up to that course and then smaller bits that follow that course.
The restaurant analogy would be akin to having one dinner, but then you like the whisky a lot and so they have a special whisky sequence on another day.
Is all of this still possible with just a few people on your list?
A tiny list has limitations, that’s for sure. Not everyone is going to be able to fly to New Zealand for your star gazing party, even if they want to do so, and can afford to do so. Having the list grow is a solid idea, but there’s really no need for a big list either.
Most description of lists you see online are like revenue statements that tell you only what you want to know.
A revenue statement is not an accurate representation of the success of a company.
You have to know their debts and their net profit. Only then can you come to some clarity as to whether the company is doing well or not.
At Psychotactics, less than a tenth of the list even opens their e-mail. This is true for most people across industries. You can head over to an Instagram account with literally a million followers and they get 20 comments and 2000 likes. Just because you have the list, doesn’t mean you have engagement, let alone sales.
A lot of what you read online is just created to puff up their own sense of security and bigness, and in doing so, they make you feel small and worthless. They make you feel that somehow you too need that massive list.
As you can tell, what you need is a strategy
The Maori, the original native tribe of New Zealand, have a saying: Fish at your feet, first.
In many ways, taking this wisdom is what makes us smarter, more strategic business owners. A big list can be a crutch. You come to depend on getting one hundredth of one percent, and then to boost your conversion rate, you have to hire staff, buy software, dip deep into your budget for advertising. Plus it’s all hard work.
Working with current clients—fishing at your feet first—is a smart move
Figuring out a sequence—that’s a really smart move. Then working that sequence while getting clients to come back, is what we really need. And it proves one more thing as well.
If you’re able to get clients to come back once, twice, three hundred times, it means you’re doing something right.
Announcement: How to put that Zing-Kapow in your Articles (with StoryTelling)
📅 November 03, 2018 | View in Gmail
So what are the elements of a well-told story?
There is a StoryTelling Cartoon image here
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/
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.
Have a look right away.
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling
Regards, Sean
About Story Telling
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/
Here is what Christopher Cook has to say:
“The thing I liked the most about the Storytelling Mini Series was that it teaches you the tools and mechanics of storytelling and how to make stories compelling and interesting.”
“Storytelling is an art. It’s an art that is difficult to quantify, analyze, and explain. Because of these difficulties, I was reluctant to purchase the Story Telling Mini Series. Too many books and resources that I’ve purchased before fell short in turning the storytelling art into a science.
I approached the series with a “maybe it’ll have an interesting nugget of information in it” attitude.
But I read it, and found out I was dead wrong.
I found that this Story Telling Mini Series helped me to think about storytelling in completely new ways. The thing I liked the most about it was that it teaches the tools and mechanics of storytelling and how to make stories compelling and interesting. It also provides new insight each time I go over the material.
I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to improve their storytelling, increase the drama in their writing, and create more compelling and effective copy.”
Christopher Cook, USA Judge for yourself: StoryTelling Mini Series
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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October 2018
How to Use ” 3 Transition Techniques” to Keep the Reader Locked into Your Article
📅 October 30, 2018 | View in Gmail
Simple yet powerful methods to let the reader know exactly where they are in your article.
There is a funny cartoon here. Load your images. :)
https://www.psychotactics.com/keep-reader-locked-article/
Announcing: How to Put that Zing Back in Your Articles
📅 October 27, 2018 | View in Gmail
The moment we have to write an article, we freeze up. 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.Book 1: The Power of Stories—How to Turn Average Stories into Cliff-HangersBook 2: Signature Stories—How to Create Clear and Memorable Business StoriesBook 3: The Power of Drama—How To Create Counterflow (Without Making Your Reader Sick)So have a look right away. http://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-tellingRegards,Sean P.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.That’s not a bad thing, it’s 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 storytelling.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
Why Smaller Lists Work Just As Well As Big Ones (And Often, Even Better)
📅 October 23, 2018 | View in Gmail
Everything seems to boil down to conversion rates, rather than real people. Is that right?
Psychotactics
Why Smaller Lists Work Just As Well As Big Ones (And Often, Even Better)
The Three Year Story of the Psychotactics Website Relaunch
📅 October 20, 2018 | View in Gmail
Building a website is a daunting project. Why did the website take three years and month?
There is a funny cartoon here. Load your images. :)
https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-website-relaunch/
Announcing: Why Most Planning Fails: The Critical Importance Of The Chaos Planning System
📅 October 16, 2018 | View in Gmail
I realized that now I am able to accomplish a lot on my endless To Do list.
Most of us detest chaos
Announcing: Why most planning fails (the critical importance of chaos in planning)
📅 October 13, 2018 | View in Gmail
Since putting Chaos Planning into place my stress levels have gone way down.
So year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve.
Then suddenly it’s October 2018, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
How to Overcome Perfection With Speedy Revisions
📅 October 09, 2018 | View in Gmail
Many of us like the idea of perfection, toiling away at our work.
Psychotactics
How to Overcome Perfection With Speedy Revisions
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-perfection/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-perfection/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 188). You’ve probably heard of the Monkey Puzzle tree
The Monkey Puzzle tree is a conifer that grows to 40 metres (130 feet) and may live for hundreds of years. Yet, there’s a bit of a problem because the tree doesn’t reach sexual maturity until it’s 40 years old. Compare the Monkey Puzzle tree with a Campion flower and the flower looks puny at just a foot or two. But here’s where it all gets very interesting.
The Campion flower reproduces within just four months
This means that while the Monkey Puzzle tree goes through a single generation, the Campion flower goes through 120 generations. And with every generation, there’s a possibility of a genetic mutation.
That mutation that may give it some slight super power to help it survive and thrive. The speed of the lifecycle means one very crucial thing: The species can adapt to rapid changes in the environment. There’s a far greater chance of them getting better, hardier, different and possibly superior.
Perfection, on the other hand, doesn’t allow for speedy turnarounds
Many of us like the idea of perfection, toiling away at our work, in order to reach a seemingly impossible goal. And like the Monkey Puzzle tree, we put ourselves at a disadvantage that’s may seem hard to measure.
But in reality, it’s relatively easier to measure, and that’s exactly what we’ve done on our courses like the Article Writing Course; or when training our niece, Marsha.
We’ve seen speed work better when learning to cook or learning to draw cartoons. And yet this isn’t a clarion call for shoddiness.
In this article we’ll explore the importance of speed vs. perfection, while also giving a nod towards really outstanding work. But is it all about speed? Doesn’t a lack of speed play its role? All of this information is about to follow, so stay tuned, little Campion flower.
How speedy progress reduces drain on energy
Marsha, my niece, was struggling in maths in Year 4 and seemed to be almost at the bottom of the class. Four years later, she won a distinction in maths for being among the top performers in the class.
This year (five years later), teachers routinely call on her to evaluate and help with corrections of tests, plus she often gets called to the board to demonstrate how she solves a problem.
And you might have an inkling how Marsha was able to make this dramatic turnaround
Yes, there’s hard work, and there’s good mentoring. In fact, on IXL alone (which is an app for maths learning), Marsha has solved over 18,000 problems.
Staggering as that figure might seem, there are two ways to get anything done. The first way is to be slow and methodical. The second way is to beat the clock.
In a Psychotactics course, clients are trained to beat the clock
When you’re conducting a live course at a venue, it’s easy to monitor what clients are doing. However, the moment you conduct a course online, it’s impossible to tell how much time and effort is being put into a project. You don’t get to see the drafts, the cancellations and the huge volume of edits.
All you ever see is the finished work. However, on Psychotactics courses, we have a simple bunch of questions that need to be answered every single day. One of the questions is: how much time did you take to finish this project?
In order to answer the question, it’s important for the client to monitor the time. Which is why it concerned me deeply when one of the clients wrote her answer, after doing her article writing assignment.
“Three hours”.
Three hours? Three hours for an article? I’d imagined my instructions were clear enough. That you needed to get the job done as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t counting on the perfection monster.
It’s not hard to imagine the state of that client.—let’s call her Candidate No.1. Perhaps she started the assignment at 9 pm, after an incredibly hard day.
At midnight, the article is still not perfect, but she’s too tired to argue with her drooping eyelids. She hits “publish” and the article is done. On the other hand, we have Candidate No. 2 who rigidly follows instructions and stops typing the moment the clock strikes the 90 minute mark.
Whose article will be superior? The article of Candidate No. 1 or No.2?
The answer is that they’re both not very good. When you’re just starting to learn to draw, write, dance or draw cartoons, you know approximately where your ultimate goal lies.
As broadcaster, Ira Glass says: You have style. You know what the finished product looks like but there’s this gap between what you would like to see, and what you can produce right now.
Hence, both the articles are usually very early versions of a good article and nowhere close to amazing. Yet one person has taken three hours while the other has stopped diligently at 90 minutes.
Who’s going to be more tired? Who’s going to make more mistakes as the fatigue sets in? Who’s going to be struggling both at work and to complete the assignment the next day? And what about the day after next and the day that follows it?
The Campion flower comes to mind, doesn’t it?
It’s all very fine to aspire to be a Monkey Puzzle tree and soar at 100 feet or more. However, the Campion flower concept is what we all need to get there. Which is exactly what Renuka did with Marsha’s maths tuition.
Instead of considering her situation, which was pretty dire four-five years ago, she simply gave her an assignment and used a timer.
Invariably the mistakes would soar at the start, but all the mistakes were made in a precise amount of time, giving Marsha a chance a chance to recover. The brain learns a lot while doing the task, but the downtime is just as, if not more vital, in the learning and implementation process.
Whether it’s cooking a meal or completing a project, you should be a Campion flower
This goal is important, because it allows you to make a huge number of mistakes. Skill, or talent, is really a reduction of errors, so you need to make the errors and then reduce or eliminate them completely. If you take your time over a project, you can only make a fixed no. of errors.
Which is why, on a course, on in a workshop, I encourage clients to do their assignments quickly, rather than perfectly. Which means that if a client were to do their assignment early in the morning, they could get a correction, possibly many corrections within an hour or so.
By their break time they could fix their minor errors while having a cup of coffee. Then at noon, another correction later, they could fine tune their errors (after I corrected their third or fourth tweak of the assignment).
By tea time they could have gone through four or five drafts, and with every submission, they’d have fewer errors to fix. However, only the first submission would be lengthy. The submissions through the day would be shorter, and we’d be tweaking nuances which don’t take too much energy or focus.
Now compare this with ol’ Monkey Puzzle client
The client who waits all day, mulling and toiling over his work. When he finally submits it, late at night, he misses out on all those nuances, but more importantly from an evolutionary point of view, he’s barely budged at all. Ironically it’s the speed that has created more errors, more genetic modifications to the skill.
If you’re trying to be perfect, your Monkey Puzzle submission is the worst possible way to go about it.
Epilogue
Let’s face it. If you consider yourself to be a perfectionist, well, you’d have spent almost all your life being told, or telling yourself that you’re a perfectionist. You’re probably trying to shake that habit, but it’s easy to see why it’s easier to stay in your comfort zone.
Well, here’s what psychologists suggest
If you want to break out of your comfort zone, you stretch yourself ever so slightly. If you’re labouring over a single article for several hours, how about spending half the time getting to the same goal?
Your work may not be as perfect as you hoped, but it gives you a chance to get feedback and to improve your next article. If you’re struggling to do one cartoon (correctly, of course), how about drawing just two, getting feedback and drawing even more in the given time?
It’s easy for an article like this to suggest that you need to take a big leap
That massive jump may not be possible. Instead, take a smaller one—just a slight stretch goal. Set yourself the time in which you’ll complete the job, stop, and get feedback.
Then, tomorrow, do the same. If you follow this simple formula you’ll find yourself less exhausted and with more energy. However, the biggest benefit of all is you’ll become far better and far quicker at what you’re doing.
And that’s what you wanted anyway, didn’t you? You wanted perfection! So there you go!
P.S. Oh, and print a picture of the monkey puzzle tree! Stick it on a prominent place where you can see it, just in case you forget. And don’t look for the perfect picture. Any picture will do.
Announcing: How John Forde (and Sean D’Souza) Got Me to Write Articles
📅 October 06, 2018 | View in Gmail
Start. Stop. Start. Stop. The biggest frustration with writing is it drives you crazy. Before I start, let me make one thing clear.John Forde is a copywriter who lives in Paris. And a good friend with a great newsletter. And me, I’m Sean D’Souza. Which of course makes it really weird when I say I used myself for inspiration.It sounds a lot more than weird, actually. It sounds egocentric.Let me assure it’s got nothing to do with ego. And everything to do with desperation You see when I started writing articles for my website back in about 2001, I was at best a cartoonist. If you asked me to draw something, you had a bouncy volunteer right besides you.But when you asked me to write, the bounciness would sure fade away pretty rapidly. You see not only did I consider myself an average writer, but I had enough reason to be afraid of writing.And the reason I was afraid was because of girl named Clare.I remember writing an article way back in the year 1990-91 . I wanted to be a copywriter and in one of my diverse moods I decided to “make some money” writing for the newspapers as well. So I met up with this guy called CY Gopinath, who ran this writing agency. Well CY gave me an assignment, and I wrote about it.And Clare, who worked with him, edited my assignment. And when Clare was done I couldn’t recognise the darned thing at all. There was so much edited; so much added; so much removed that it seemed to me not my work at all. Today I can’t even remember the subject of the article.But I remember the memory of frustration I remember that I didn’t want to be a writer.Well who cares about writing articles anyway? I could be a cartoonist instead. I could write ad copy. Clare wouldn’t be around to edit my stuff. And who died and made Clare queen anyway? And there I was, ten years into the future, and Clare was still bothering me.In fact most months, article writing was a drudgery I wrote articles because I was forced to do so. I knew I was supposed to update my website. I knew that one of our alliances, Allen Weiss (from MarketingProfs.com) would be asking me whether I’d completed my article. Somehow I had to banish Clare from my head and take away the fear of writing.Article writing was intense drudgery I hated every bit of article writing. I hated the start, the middle, and I couldn’t be sure of the end. If I completed an article in one working day, I’d be ecstatic. Most days it would take me two days.Two whole days and I couldn’t honestly tell you if the article wouldn’t end up in this article graveyard. Thankfully it was only two days in the whole month (Yup, I’d write once a month).And then I decided to get inspiration from my own articles I started looking back at the ones I’d completed, and felt this immense sense of satisfaction. Even inspiration. And so before writing, I’d look at my previous headlines. I’d read my own articles. And feel a sense of accomplishment. That put in a little juice in my reserve tank. That propelled me off the starting point.And I coughed and sputtered, but at least I was writing a new article. It didn’t make things any better. I was still a foul person to be around on article writing days. So I had to search for inspiration. And inspiration came in the form of a guy named John Forde I loved the way John wrote. His writing was always so effortless. He seemed to be having so much fun. And he knew his topic (unlike me who mostly knew about cartooning).And so I’d read many of John’s article. At one point, after getting to know him, I even asked him for an archive of sorts. Just so I could read and be inspired.John’s writing and mine: They both nudged me on And while I got a lot better over the years, there was a moment in time when I got radically better. That moment was when I promised my members that I would write 5 articles a week. No one paid attention of course, but I had promised 5000bc members that they’d get this wealth of information week after week.And there I was trapped—in a way. I had to write those articles. If you thought writing one is hard, five must be pure agony.Actually I found quite the opposite The moment I started writing five-six articles a week, something changed rapidly. Not all at once, of course, but in a few months I found that I could literally sit down at my computer and turn out five articles in the course of the day.Fast forward to the year 2008, and I could write five articles in about 3 hours or fewer. In March 2010, I surprised myself.I wrote 350 pages of content in four weeks Three whole books: One on “Chaos Planning”, one on “The Secret Life of Testimonials”, and one on “Blackbelt Presentations”. And this is while tending to forum posts on 5000bc and answering email and creating new websites, blogs, and doing at least two dozen projects at the same time. And in 2018, I’m writing several series on coaching, a series on how to write articles as well the entire course on “Sales Pages”.And when you see all of this from the outside, it’s easy to think: This Sean is a genius. Or a mad man.I don’t see the same Sean as you do I see the Sean who struggled with Clare’s edit (she was only doing her job well). I see the plod, the drudgery of writing articles for MarketingProfs in the early days (I wrote almost 50 articles for them). I see the fear in my eyes when I promised to write five articles a week in a moment of madness.And I know that anyone can do it. Anyone .I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your education. I don’t care if you can even read—or write.The best part is that you don’t need to slave for almost ten years like I did. Or if you go back in time to Clare, twenty years. You can do it in three-six months. It’s still going to be a slog, but you can do it.And then there are going to be times when you’re super frustrated And the only inspiration you have is yourself. Or someone like John Forde. And if you persist, something magical will happen. You’ll get enormously better at writing.And you’ll be an inspiration to others.Imagine that! Do you want to learn how to spot drama? Learn how to spot structure? And understand how to use the power of the next step?Presenting: Five Free Article Writing GoodiesGoodie No. 1: A mini-booklet that helps you quickly improve your article-writing.Goodie No. 2: How to create drama in your article.Goodie No. 3: How de-chunking creates powerful focus when writing articles.Goodie No. 4: When structuring, does the length of the article matter?Goodie No. 5: Why do article-writers avoid a super-fast method of writing?Click here for the goodies: How to create expertise through article writing Warm regards,SeanP.S. The biggest frustration with article writing is the sheer amount of time wasted. You struggle to write quickly. Yet writing is a “language” like everything else. Learn the structure and you can learn to write without the frustration and faster than every before. Click here to read about: The Article Writing Self Study Course
Why Good Habits Fail (And Bad Habits Thrive)
📅 October 02, 2018 | View in Gmail
Deconstructing Why Bad Habits Succeed (And Good Habits Fail)
Psychotactics
Why Good Habits Fail (And Bad Habits Thrive)
https://www.psychotactics.com/good-habits-fail/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links:Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/good-habits-fail/ | 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 | Look for episode 187).
You’ve probably heard of Batman
Now how does Batman get summoned by the police commissioner? Apparently Batman was being summoned by a pager. Every time there was a crime in Gotham City that pager would go off in Batman’s pouch and he would have to respond to a crime.
Now you compare this with the bat signal.
The bat signal is a distress signal that appears in various interpretations of the Batman myth.
No one knows for sure how that pager got thrown away and this elaborate bat signal came into play, but one thing we know for sure: that pager was no match for the elaborate bat signal that came up after one of Batman’s encounters with The Joker.
Batman said that he was no longer happy to get this pager and skulk around in the shadows. He wanted this elaborate bat signal that would be projected on the building, that would be projected in the sky.
That was his trigger.
Most of us don’t have such an elaborate trigger every time we want to achieve something
Let’s say we want to go for a walk every day or maybe we want to wake up every morning and do yoga. Maybe we want to learn how to draw or write or do something and learn a scale or a language. We seem to fall by the wayside simply because we don’t have the trigger.
Is it just the trigger?
In the Power of the Habit by Charles Duhigg he specifically talks about three elements that need to be in place. In this article we’re going to cover those three elements, and then we’re going to add the fourth missing element that makes the big difference.
Part 1: The Cue
Let’s go back to 1900
In 1900 one of the biggest problems that America had was that most people didn’t brush their teeth. Not a few people but most people. Now imagine you are someone who manufactures toothpaste and you want to get an entire country, probably the entire world, to use toothpaste. What do you do?
If you’re lucky you have someone like Claude Hopkins around. Who was Claude Hopkins? Claude Hopkins was one of the first advertising geniuses of our time. He wrote the book Scientific Advertising.
If you haven’t read that book, you should read it. As the story goes, Mr. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with an amazing new creation. It was a minty, frothy toothpaste named Pepsodent. He somehow had to convince everyone that they needed Pepsodent.
He has to create this habit from nothing at all.
He has to create a cue. He had to create a trigger. What was that cue or trigger?
In the book The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg goes on to talk about how this trigger came about.
It seems that Claude Hopkins signed on to run the ads on Pepsodent but he had to go through a pile of dental textbooks. In his autobiography he wrote about how it was terrible, dry reading.
In the middle of one of the books he found a reference to something. That something was mucin plaques on teeth, which Claude Hopkins then called the film. When you wake up every morning you have this kind of film on your teeth.
Most of us don’t notice it. Well, we didn’t notice it back in 1900. Now this film is a naturally occurring phenomenon and you don’t really have to worry too much about it, but Claude used it as the trigger, as the bat signal.
He started running ads all over the place. He said just run your tongue across your teeth and you will feel a film. That’s what makes your teeth look off-colour. That’s what invites decay. Then he pushed that button further. He said millions are using this new method of teeth cleaning. Why would any woman have dingy film on her teeth?
Pepsodent removes the film. In that one action with that poster and that ad campaign, Claude Hopkins changed the habit by sending out that signal that when you wake up every day you’re going to have that film on your teeth. You’re going to run your tongue over it and you’re going to feel that.
That became the trigger.
This is the starting point for any habit
We have an alarm clock that tells us we have to wake up and start our yoga, or in my case I have Tuesdays, which is when I record my podcast. I know that by Tuesday morning I’ve got to finish my podcast out by 6 am in the morning.
It’s not enough to have the cue because we all sleep through the alarm. We all let Tuesdays slip into Wednesdays. Before you know it it’s Friday and then you’re all stressed out.
To solve that problem you have to have the second element, which is the routine. Let’s look at routine.
Part 2: The Routine
When I started out as a cartoonist many years ago I used to do two sets of comic strips
I was in my 20s so I didn’t have time to think about my actions. I just said yes when the newspaper editor said, “Would you like to put your comic strips in five days a week?” Then when you sit down and think about it, do you really want to do a comic strip every single day?
Wouldn’t it be better to just do it once every week or once every 15 days?
Instead, what I found surprised me a great deal. I found that it was easier to do one or even two comic strips in this case and to do it every single day rather than to do one every 15 days.
You know this to be true because it’s much easier to go for a walk on a regular basis or do something on a regular basis than to do it once every 15 days.
The routine helps you move along at a far greater speed.
We see this with our daily brushing as well, which what Pepsodent started all those years ago. We brush our teeth once a day, many of us brush it twice a day, so the routine sits in.
This takes us to the third part, which is the reward.
Part 3: The Reward
If you started out that yoga routine every morning and then you suddenly find yourself not continuing, there is a reason for it.
It’s not because of the cue or the routine. It’s because of the reward. What you have to do to get a habit in place is you have to have the reward in place.
All bad habits are created by rewards
You start eating a muffin today at lunch time and then tomorrow at lunch time and the day after at lunch time. Suddenly you know the reward before the cue or the routine. Afternoon doesn’t have to show up. In the morning you’re thinking about that muffin.
For good habits you need so much more energy
You have to have the reward in place. When we go for a walk every day the reward is coffee, but not just any coffee. Because if the coffee wasn’t so good and in between we started running to these cafes that were not so good, your reward falls apart and then everything else falls apart with it.
That becomes the reward. That becomes the reason why we wake up when it’s raining, when it’s windy, when you have good weather or bad weather. We’re on the road and we get that reward.
This is what you have to set in place whether you’re writing a book or learning a language or doing just about anything.
Whether you are setting a benchmark for yourself or for your clients. You have to start off with the reward, then work out the cue, then the routine.
Then we have a habit in place.
What we’ve covered so far is the cue, the routine, and the reward, which can be benchmarked. But we found out that there is something else that matters. That is the group.
Without a group it’s far easier to fall off the bandwagon
Two people, that’s just you and someone else, that’s the smallest group possible. You have to have the group if you want to set a habit in place, especially because we’re so hopeless at creating and sustaining these habits all on our own.
The reason the group is so important is because you get to know other people, so it becomes a social environment but with just five or six other people, not with 500 people where you can get lost and no one can notice if you’ve dropped off.
Once you show up, you become a responsible member of that group and you start pushing the group forward, the group starts pushing you forward. Now you have a habit.
Again, like the coffee, if the group doesn’t know each other or if they are anonymous, it doesn’t work because you have no connection to the group. As soon as you are responsibility, then you know that the other person is waiting for you to go for the walk.
It sounds crazy
—That’s the power of the group. —That’s what creates that habit. —That’s what sustains the cue, the routine, and the reward.
September 2018
”Pit Stop” Testimonials: How To Get Testimonials (Even When Your Product Or Service Isn’t Quite Ready)
📅 September 29, 2018 | View in Gmail
How do you get testimonials when you have a brand new product
https://www.psychotactics.com/pit-stop-testimonials/
When it comes to testimonials for our product or service, we assume clients have to get to the end.
How to Craft Interesting Stories and Analogies (For Articles and Sales Letters)
📅 September 25, 2018 | View in Gmail
Tired analogies are for lazy writers. The best marketers know the power of the story.
Psychotactics
How to Craft Interesting Stories and Analogies (For Articles and Sales Letters)
https://www.psychotactics.com/craft-stories/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links:Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/craft-stories/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 186). I remember how I always groaned when my father started to tell his story of “how he drew a kingfisher”, when he was just a boy in school.
I loved the story, but I’d heard it so many times, that the thought of escape always crossed my mind when he’d start up that story.
The reader experiences a similar “groan moment” the minute you start up on an analogy that they’ve heard before.
Analogies like how you learn to ride a bicycle, drive a car—these are tired analogies
These analogies are boring for the reader, no matter if you use it in a sales letter or in your article.
So how you decide when to ditch the analogy?
Or better still, how do you improve it so it’s not so “tired” after all?
Let’s take an example
In the book, The Brain Audit, there’s an analogy of standing near the airport carousel waiting for your bags to be unloaded from the flight.
So what’s interesting about that situation? Well, for one it’s not something that you hear about a lot. It doesn’t have that ring of “when you learned to ride a bicycle”. And so, by merely changing the example, your analogy becomes slightly more interesting.
But what if we wanted to make it even more interesting?
This is where the power of the personal story comes in. Imagine yourself waiting for the bag. What happens? What happens next? What ups and downs do you go through just waiting for those silly ol’ bags? In The Brain Audit, the bags aren’t just bags—they’re “red” bags.
And there aren’t just “red” bags, but there are “seven red bags”. And the story rolls out where one of the bags goes missing. As you can tell, this isn’t just some tired analogy, but something that’s slightly riveting. You want to know what happens next. You want to know how all of this then reconnects to the story.
So the key to writing better analogies is to write a personal story first
Put yourself at the airport. What did you do? What happened next? And next? And yes, I know I said this already in the last paragraph, but can we have some ups and downs as well as you’re relating the analogy?
In fact, the moment you dip into a personal story, even a tired story of riding a bicycle comes to life. The best way to sidestep a boring analogy is to use a personal story.
In fact, let’s look at another example of a personal story—riding a bike.
Only an idiot would learn to cycle like me.
Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. Not me. I decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time I fell—and I fell a lot—the mud would graze me badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you’re tempting gravity all the time.
Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with me.
But what if you don’t want to tell personal stories?
Well, turn the personal story into a “YOU” analogy instead. Tell the personal story but without using “I”.
So the story would work like this:
Why would anyone be insane enough to find the most difficult cycling course?
Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. But imagine you decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time you fell—and you do fall a lot—the mud would graze you badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you’re tempting gravity all the time.
Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with you.
Notice how the analogy isn’t tired, isn’t personal and still seems like an amazing analogy?
If you’re ever reaching for a tired analogy, the first recourse would be to simply find something that’s unusual—like the “seven red bags” story. However, an even better strategy is to write a personal story because personal stories have this inbuilt oomph factor.
Should you feel shy about revealing the personal story to your audience, all you have to do is simply tweak it a bit. Put in the “you” into the story and you have a great analogy.
Analogies can be used not just in articles, but also in books, presentations and sales letters
Some of the best writers and marketers know the power of the story and analogy. And they use it very effectively to drive home several points throughout their marketing or editorial material. And they mix it up a lot with analogies and stories, while the amateurs simply write yucky, boring stuff.
Tired analogies are for lazy writers.
Be not sloppy. Be not boring.
Put in the power of story in your analogy and let the “groan” go away, today!
Announcing! How to become an Expert in your Industry
📅 September 22, 2018 | View in Gmail
Article Writing Goodies: How to create expertise through article writing.
Imagine you had a fairy godmother
Announcing! The End of Writer’s Block (The Easy Way)
📅 September 18, 2018 | View in Gmail
Writer’s Block is no longer a reality. In fact the opposite is true.
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines/
Way back in the year 2002, I had what you’d call “bad days”
Announcing: The End of Writer’s Block (The Easy Way)
📅 September 15, 2018 | View in Gmail
Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’? Have you heard about “talker’s block”?
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines/
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
Why Clients Leave
📅 September 11, 2018 | View in Gmail
Clients don’t leave because they need time to focus or they’re not getting enough content.
Psychotactics
Why Clients Leave
https://www.psychotactics.com/why-client-leave/
(This email contains the complete article. However, you can also read or listen to it at these links: Read
https://www.psychotactics.com/why-client-leave/ | 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 | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zPiPlgMovxSCdD0bDotMX?si=myv9vdplTAWI-VPueXExeg |Look for episode 185)
It has always bothered me why clients leave
And when that thought crossed my mind, I was sitting in the cafe—the very cafe I’d been avoiding for well over a year or more. So now I had two thoughts: why do clients leave? And why did I return to the cafe? In case you’re wondering, the answer is not “coffee”. And if wasn’t the coffee, then it had to be something else, right?
But let’s leave the cafe for a second and go online—say to a membership site, instead
Let’s say you belong to a membership site and the membership fee comes up for renewal. Why do you stay? Or why do you leave? The obvious answer is: it’s the product or the service, right? And yet when we look at membership sites all over the place, there’s really no shortage of content.
No matter how grotty the site, there’s usually way more content than you can browse, let alone consume. Videos, audio, articles, reports—they all swarm around you with increasing intensity. If the content were really the problem, you have no problem, do you?
So let’s take another angle
There’s too much content, and you really can’t absorb it all. You’ve had your fill, and you now need to buckle down and focus on your business. Even if you have received advice and answers to your questions; even if your business has indeed gone ahead, you still need some breathing space to implement all of that information.
We say it, but we don’t mean it, do we? None of us has time.
We didn’t have time yesterday, or last week, last year, or even in the last decade. Time marches on to the sound of a jiggling rumba beat, and there’s no way we can stop that time parade. So it can’t be the focus or the time off, because the moment we’ve left the site, that information will cease to exist, but some other stuff will replace it.
And that’s when I finished the foam of the coffee, and I got my “bfoto”
Yup, that’s short for “blinding flash of the obvious”. People, clients—they don’t leave because they need time to focus; or because they’re not getting enough content. Most of the time they don’t even leave because they need the money.
Unless the relationship with the site or the coach is just crappy, it makes more sense to get good advice and pay the fee. If it’s not the money, or the content, or the time, what is it?
It is the “people”
To get back to the cafe story above, we were regulars at the cafe about two years ago. We knew all the staff.
Then the manager, Justine, left and took some of the staff with her. Suddenly the place wasn’t so appealing, even though nothing much had changed. Two years slipped by, and we avoided the place. One day early this year, the current manager invited us in.
She assured us we’d get great service and the coffee we were used to. And suddenly we’re home again. We got to know the current staff, they know us, and it’s like nothing’s changed.
The bfoto—or blinding flash of the obvious is just “people”
When asked why we buy products or services, we often give a logical reason. We reel out the features or the benefits, but in reality, it’s the people. It’s the reason you and I have a preference for a particular petrol station, when all petrol stations have the same product, at approximately the same price.
It’s the reason why we don’t care for rotating hairdressers or barbers, choosing as far as possible to go to the same one every single time.
I know it’s evident that people matter, but how does this play out when you consider the field of marketing?
And what are you supposed to do if clients are starting to leave even when you’re doing your best? The plot thickens. Stay tuned.
We noticed something very odd in the courses we conduct online
The online courses, like the Article Writing Course, is remarkably difficult, and rightly so. You’re trying to compress a skill that usually takes years, into just 12 weeks. This intensity means you’re going to have several sleepless nights, have to do assignments, interact with the group.
Wait, interact with the group?
Isn’t learning about the teacher and the student? What’s this group nonsense about? And if you look at the data, the data speaketh plainly. It says: those that interact with the group do two things consistently.
• The first being they finish the course and show a far higher skill level than those who don’t interact with their group. • The second point is that clients, having done one course, then show up for a second course; then a third; buy many products and services; come to offline events, and so on.
The ones that don’t interact with the group, and merely do their assignments don’t exactly fall off the face of the Earth, but they’re—and I hesitate to say this—less skilled and more likely to leave, or find it harder to go on (for some reason or the other).
Africans knew this a long time ago
In Africa there’s a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. However, when you look at the saying, or the course, or the cafe, what you see repeatedly is the interaction with people.
We are really like a herd of elephants that want to travel together, as far as possible and not some lonely leopard sitting by itself on a tree in the middle of the Himalayan foothills. We want to be together, or at least to know each other.
The blinding flash merely is that if you don’t get people to become part of the group, they will get less of a benefit, pick up fewer skills and finally find they need to leave.
We’ve found this phenomenon to play out repeatedly in our business
If clients come to a workshop, they meet. And at Psychotactics we don’t have this thousand person, 150 session seminar. We have boutique workshops, which means you don’t take notes; but instead, you work on your project and the projects of the group (yes, here comes the group again).
And in doing so, we find that clients come back repeatedly not just for the workshops, but also for other products and services. They’ve connected with Renuka and me, that’s for sure, but they’ve also connected with each other.
Meet ups had the same effect. The more people met, the more they knew each other and the more they then interacted in 5000bc. The interesting bit is that they didn’t just interact with others they’d met, but with the rest of the members in 5000bc.
And as you’d expect, a phenomenally large number of those we’ve met in person are still members of 5000bc. Some have been members for ten years, some have been around for 15, while others are newer.
If you’re looking for a magic trick, it’s right in front of your eyes: it’s the people.
But what has all of this got to do with your business?
It’s the “bfoto”: the blinding flash of the obvious. We all want stuff, don’t we? We want to be rich and famous, but most of all, we want to feel wanted. All those phrases of “no one is an island” or “love me or hate me, but don’t ignore me” comes into play.
And this feeling of being wanted goes right to the very root of our happiness.
We are so focused on adding content, playing with technology and dancing with keywords that we forget to work on the most basic (and most wanted) human emotions of connectedness.
Advertising and great sales letters are important to get the client to become part of your clientele or community, but it’s what you do next that makes all the difference.
Keeping clients is—at least to my mind—the most important part of a function of how you go about connecting them, getting them talk to each other and help each other.
And voilà we are still going to have some people that leave, but by and large people want to stay. This “bfoto” is something almost all of us have experienced if we’ve been in a job somewhere. And it applies just as profoundly in your business.
Why The “End In Mind” Principle Can Severely Impede Our Learning and Progress
📅 September 08, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/end-in-mind/
There’s something incredibly fascinating about the way chefs work.
A chef doesn’t tend to cook for one person In a single night, that chef might need to go whip up anywhere between 50-200 meals. And we’re not even necessarily talking about chefs you see in fancy kitchens.
You can walk into any food court or even roadside food stall, and it’s the same story. There’s flavour, taste and texture, despite both volume and variety of the food.
It got me thinking What makes the chef so very proficient at what she or he does? The answer, strange as it seems, is they don’t tend to worry about how the dish will turn out.
Instead, they seem to obsess about the preparation—the prep work—instead.
We’re all told we should start with the end in mind, but we still get lost along the way. • Why do we go off track? • Could there be some barriers that show up a lot before the end?
Let’s find out how we can stop focusing so much on the end and work on the barriers that blocks our progress. Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 207) 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
https://www.psychotactics.com/end-in-mind/ |
Two popular podcasts that you may have missed
#204: Why “Elegance” not “Information” Creates an Addictive Business Model Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 204) 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
https://www.psychotactics.com/elegance-addictive-business-model/ |
#200: Why Giving is Rushed (And How to Make Gifting More Deliberate)
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 200) 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 |
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/will-tell-friend-podcast/
Why Waiting Lists Fail
📅 September 04, 2018 | View in Gmail
The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve wracking decision.
Psychotactics
Why Waiting Lists Fail
https://www.psychotactics.com/why-waiting-lists-fail/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/why-waiting-lists-fail/ | 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 | Look for episode 184). The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve wracking decision.
Is it going to drive clients away? Or will it work?
The odds are it will fail if you don’t consider “segregation” and “creating attraction”. What do those two terms mean when it comes to waiting lists.
Let’s find out, shall we?
Would you wait 14 years to join a Disney Club?
Apparently so, because Club 33, in Disneyland has a 14-year waiting list. Originally intended as a place for Walt Disney to entertain investors, the club now has a nose-bleed $25,000 joining fee plus a recurring $10,000 a year membership fee. Oh, and you still have to pay your tab for the food and drink.
But surely all this waiting is excessively nutty behaviour, isn’t it?
We wouldn’t ever get obsessive about a waiting list, would we? And yet we do get on a waiting list all the time, though on a modest scale. • You may not think of going to your hairdresser as being on a waiting list, but if you’ve made an appointment, that’s just what it is. • The reservation you made at the restaurant next week, that’s also a waiting list. • That flight in October, the hotel bookings—they’re all waiting lists.
Waiting lists are everywhere, but we don’t quite seem to notice because they’re part of our everyday lives.
And when you book or put down your name, the commitment increases
Or does it? If we look at the hotel you booked, there’s a reason for that specific choice. The flight, the tennis match, the restaurant booking—they’re all a form of commitment. Some of them you might need to pay for, in advance.
Some of them, you pay for later, but the reason for being on that list is because you and I seek a level of satisfaction. However, we are more likely to show up, pay for, or join something if we’re already on a list than if we’re not on that list.
Nonetheless, a waiting list by itself doesn’t work.
If all you do is slap on a form on your website, it’s unlikely to get any attention.
However, if you create the demand for it, the corresponding commitment goes up as well, because potential clients have both something to gain and to lose.
If they get into Club 33, for instance, they have additional status, plus other goodies such as immediate fast passes, upgrades on Disney cruises and behind-the-scenes tours of Disneyland attractions.
If your eyes glazed over the attraction—and the loss factor, in the case of Club 33—then clearly you’re not going to get on that list even if you owned half of L.A.
At this point we are probably clear, a factor of attraction is what we’re going to need to get a commitment of any kind • In the case of a famed club, restaurant or event, the attraction can be a foregone conclusion. • In the case of your course, workshop or book launch, you need to spell out the detail of why the client should even bother getting on that list.
However, you don’t have to list everything that the client is likely to get.
Clients are pretty smart and know a good deal when they see one, but can quickly get overwhelmed with dozens of reasons. Instead, picking one reason why someone should get on the list is extremely important.
For instance, even with the home study versions, we expressly communicate that there are only 35 copies. When a to-be buyer realises the scarcity factor, they understand they can’t get the product any other way and hence sign up.
But what if you’re a complete newbie?
If you are, pay close attention to the previous paragraph. Even a completely unknown business can focus on one big idea that will convince a client to commit.
Let’s say you’ve just decided to sell a physical product like a water bottle.
There’s nothing fancy about water bottles, but let’s say your bottle is designed to enable the person know for sure, how much water they’ve consumed in a day. That’s a single point. It solves a problem, and the potential client is likely to be more eager to want to know when the product is out so they can buy it.
Or let’s say you have a camera—a video camera—that is likely to help you edit video as if you were operating a two or three camera set up.
That one point is likely to get most people who shoot video to pay very close attention to your list. As you’d expect, it works just as well for a training session or a digital product.
You’ll need to pick ONE point from your product that’s super-compelling.
Let’s say, for instance, I’m laughing a book on “talent” for example, or a book on how to “make nutritious Indian food, 10 minutes after you get home”, I’d be harping on a single point.
And that point alone without a ton of details about the book is likely to be enough to get you on a list.
Once you’re on a list, it doesn’t mean you’ll go through with the commitment
Many reservations get cancelled and changed along the way. However, the greater the loss factor, the more likely the client will go through the entire process. Therefore, even if you’re only able to create attraction at this point, you’d want to think about the downside as well.
A person headed to a hard-to-reserve restaurant is more likely to clear all obstructions so that they can make it for dinner. A person that is keen to do a course will wake up at midnight just to make sure they sign up.
It might sound a bit like science fiction to you right now But remember that all businesses that have that kind of demand today, were once struggling just like everyone else. They systematically put the attraction/loss factor, increased the scarcity and then commitment followed soon after.
August 2018
Announcing Goodies: How To Stand Out From Your Competition
📅 August 31, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/
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?
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 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.
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?
Here is the link to get the goodies: Uniqueness Free Goodies
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/
Regards Sean D’Souza
3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work
📅 August 28, 2018 | View in Gmail
What is one of the biggest reasons that you need to have a waiting list?
Psychotactics
3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work
https://www.psychotactics.com/create-waiting-lists/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/create-waiting-lists/ | 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 | Look for episode 183).
Why do most of us prefer Friday to Sunday?
It’s odd when you think about it, right? Friday is a working day (in most countries), and Sunday is a day of rest. Yet we wait with baited anticipation for Fridays. The reason is probably apparent to you by now. Friday clearly and consistently holds the promise of the weekend that is to follow. We all know what follows Sunday, don’t we?
Anticipation—that’s one of the big reasons that you need to have a waiting list
Anticipation creates an enormous amount of drama in our minds. If you have to wait for something, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to value the product or service a lot more than if you hit some magic button and got an instant delivery.
We create waiting lists for three core reasons:
The first reason—anticipation The second is to create a barrier And finally to get a commitment.
Let’s take a deeper dive, into the first two reasons:
1: Anticipation
In 2010, some British ministers came up with an incredibly interesting, if slightly preposterous idea.
If you were going to apply for British citizenship, you had to learn to queue. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister at the time was dead serious when he suggested that to-be citizens would need to learn to queue.
He said: “The simple act of taking one’s turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea.
It is central to the British sense of fair play, and it is also better for everyone. Huge resentment is caused when people push in.”
There you go—anticipation in a nutshell
And you know something, the British are spot on when it comes to creating anticipation. We like stuff better when we have to wait. Tali Sharot, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London gives a simple example of how anticipation works.
Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy
The behavioural economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity, any celebrity.
Then he said, “How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a superstar if the kiss was delivered immediately, in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years?
He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days. They were willing to pay extra to wait. Now they weren’t willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an ageing celebrity. But three days seemed to be the optimum amount.
So why is that?
Well if you get the kiss now, it’s over and done with. But if you get the kiss in three days, well that’s three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait. The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen. Anticipation made them happy.
A waiting list is all about anticipation, isn’t it?
No matter whether you’re about to sell a product, service or training, it would do us all a bit of good to create a waiting list. And waiting lists work for a simple reason: it creates a feeling of scarcity—even if you’re not exactly well known in your field. Take the example of Joseph Pilates, for example.
When Pilates started out his studio, he wasn’t just an unknown; he was also an immigrant to the US with a German accent. That didn’t exactly stop Pilates from creating a waiting list.
He started his exercise regimen near a niche audience—dancers. Despite being brand new in the business, Pilates never agreed to see a client right away. The client was always put on a waiting list, a few days or a week or two after the initial contact.
Waiting in that “queue” as it were, created anticipation for the client. When the day rolled along, they were eager to get started.
In the case of a kiss, that anticipation needed to be relatively quick
However, that’s not always the case. A few years ago, I bought a cigar-shaped Nakaya pen from Japan. If you’re into fountain pens, you can bow now, because the Nakaya is easily one of the most revered pens.
Solar orange in colour, the nib is fashioned to your writing style, and yes, the nib is made from 22 karat gold. It comes with its own fancy box and a whole lot of razzmatazz justifying its price.
And as you’d expect, you can’t just walk in and buy a Nakaya. That would ruin everything, wouldn’t it? The joy of owning a Nakaya is in telling this story. The story of how I was told I’d have to wait for at least nine months.
Nine months turned to a year, and if I’m not mistaken, it took yet another six months to get the pen. By the time it showed up, I had almost given up on ever owning it.
Which brings us to an important point of anticipation
Some anticipation can be relatively quick; some months long. The main factor is to keep the flame alive while the client is waiting. Waiting for the Nakaya was partly interesting, partly a pain.
I didn’t get any updates on what was happening, and as a client, I had to follow up. That’s not good practice, especially since the delivery was an unspecified date. Even if the delivery time is well into the future, it’s a good idea to keep the client in at least a mild state of anticipation, or the whole experience can quickly turn to irritation.
Pilates’ system wasn’t complex
He created a list. Anyone of us can do that. Whether you use a notebook, appointment software or some form online, the first task is to create a list. That list alone creates the first level of anticipation. And believe me, it makes a big difference to how clients perceive your offering.
Take for example the home study courses we have at Psychotactics
One of the downsides of creating content is that there’s this eagerness, almost a lust for creating new products. It’s so much fun to create yet another course, yet another product, yet another service.
And it’s inevitable that as you produce new products, the older products—powerful as they are— seem to become very Cinderella-like. They don’t get much attention because all you’re doing is promoting the new and fancy program or workshop or app.
Well, in 2016 I overdid things a bit. I rewrote the entire Article Writing Course so that it was now in Version 2.0. However, I like to do things “live”, which meant that I rewrote all the notes, re-recorded all the audio, and moved around whole sections of the course.
Stuff that was in week 8 moved to week 2 and let’s just say it was like trying to refuel a plane while flying it.
Anyway, that fried me a bit and I couldn’t do any more courses that year
Which is when Renuka and I sat down and decided to bring out the stuff that we’d already done.
The uniqueness course, the copywriting course, and yes, since I wasn’t going to conduct the Article Writing Course in 2017, that too went on the list of courses to be sold.
We then created waiting lists.
And just because we’re weird, we kept the list down to a fixed number. Which meant we’d sell only 25-35 copies depending on the course. As you can tell, the scarcity works quite well, and the sales of the product replaced me.
Instead of me doing a course, just the combination of the waiting list, the anticipation and the scarcity created enough revenue so I could do something else instead of conducting a course.
If you’re just starting out, Pilates is an excellent beacon in the dark
Yes, go and do some Pilates at a class, but also pay attention to how he created anticipation by making people queue in an imaginary line.
And that’s the first point to consider when designing a waiting list; the first element to put in place. Create the anticipation.
However, a waiting list is an instant barrier. • Is that a problem? • Or a blessing? • And can it blow up in our faces?
Let’s find out.
2: Barrier
If you host a valuable seminar and charge a lot, will more people show up? Or is it better to have one free of cost?
Back in March 2007, we had the chance to test the free option. We’d decided we wanted to give back to New Zealand because we got so much from this strange and lovely country.
We decided we’d have free marketing events under the brand name “The Learning Rock”. You could come to the event; there would be no up-sell; no charge and not even the Psychotactics logo anywhere in sight.
In effect, we decided to spend over $1000 a year (and these were the costs of hiring the venue), without expecting anything in return.
We had a room capacity of 40 people. Would enough participants turn up or would the room be half empty?
The answer lay in the barrier that needed to be put in place. For one, the event was at 7:32 am. Not 7:33, not 7:34. The doors were fastened as though with superglue once we got to the start time. The attendees were put on a list, and if they showed up, they’d get a chance to be on the priority list.
If on the other hand, they didn’t show up they’d be taken off the priority list. All of these barriers should have put people from making the long drive into the city. Instead, the room was packed to the brim, every single time.
Barriers play a significant role in creating a filtered waiting list
It’s not like there aren’t waiting lists online, but having a barrier of sorts makes a big difference to the quality of the clients. It’s easy to believe that a barrier isn’t much use if you’re selling something like products or digital products, but it matters.
We sell information products. When there’s a barrier in place (and we insist on clients reading The Brain Audit), they tend to buy a home study product and finish it.
The size of the barrier doesn’t matter. What matters is that there’s some sort of barrier in place. You could get the client to read a few pages of a report. Or you could get them to fill in a detailed form.
Or there could be a small fee—say $10—that creates a barrier. The waiting list itself is a barrier, but to make it, even more, wanted, add one more level, and you get a far better quality of clientele.
However, easily the coolest reason to have a waiting list is, so you don’t have to bug clients who are not interested in your product or service. Having a waiting list creates a nice opt-in and commitment factor.
Announcing Goodies: How to find your business uniqueness
📅 August 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/uniqueness-form/
Have you ever wondered 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. Somewhere 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.
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/
How to Become An Overnight Success
📅 August 21, 2018 | View in Gmail
Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right?
Our world, your world is inundated with success stories
How to Become An Overnight Success
https://www.psychotactics.com/overnight-success/
(You can also read or listen to this article: Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/overnight-success/ | 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 | Look for episode 182). Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right?
Richard Lustig doesn’t agree. Despite odds of 175 million to one, Lustig has won the lottery seven times, and claims he’s won over a million dollars so far. When you hear the repeated success of Lustig, it’s easy to miss the sub-text in his wins.
The first point of the sub-text is that he’s been playing the lottery since 1992—that’s well over 25 years. Plus he has a strategy. He goes after the smaller prizes, like the $100,000 lotteries, completely avoiding the $40 million jackpots.
Are you going after the $40 million jackpots in your business?
You know what I mean, right? Let’s say you’ve managed to make the break from a job to your own business. That move, wonderful as it is, hasn’t brought a lot of relief because you still have to commute to and from meetings with clients.
And now you’re keen on hitting the jackpot. Well, what’s the jackpot? You want to reduce or eliminate that commute completely, don’t you? And while it would be ideal, that’s not what a “gambling man” would do.
A “gambling man” would reduce their odds of losing. Instead of five days of commuting, maybe you can whittle it down to four. Four may not sound like much until you get into the percentages—yup a 20% increase in home-time, isn’t it?
In the months to follow, reduce that by yet another day, and you have a 40% improvement over the start of the year.
A similar sort of phenomenon plays out when it comes to earning revenue online Let’s say you’re earning twenty three dollars online. What next? Oh, that’s easy. Most people would like to go from twenty three to two hundred thousand and twenty three.
It sounds bizarre right now, as you’re reading it. No one in their right mind is likely to achieve so much of a monetary gain, so quickly. Even so, it’s a lot like playing the lottery, isn’t it? You see others playing, they seem to be winning; surely you have the same odds too.
Our world, your world is inundated with success stories
Everyone is making more money than you, everyone is spending more time on vacation (yes, I’m guilty) and everyone seems to be winning the lottery, except for you. It’s not like there’s any shortage of avenues, either.
Some make their fortune via podcasting; others on YouTube; the third through some SAAS (software as a solution) offering. We all have this multi-pronged attack of the different types of media that will make us our fame and fortune, and the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine.
But a gambling man like Lustig may tell you a different story
He’s spent the past 25 years hacking away at the lottery. He’s picked the smaller wins, because the odds are so much better. It’s all about structural change, making sure that he gets ahead bit by bit. And to be fair, his gains are pretty average by a wage standard.
By his own admission, he’s won a little over a million dollars over twenty five years. That’s a pretty modest $40,000 per year. You can easily beat those odds in your own business, but your goal must always be structural.
I guess it’s time for an example, right?
When we bought our first house in New Zealand, it was priced at $230,000. I’d read a book about how to whittle down that mortgage in a few years (In New Zealand it pays to wipe out the mortgage quickly). Our expenses, barring educational courses, was about $3000 per month (and that included the mortgage).
We set about aiming to turn that mortgage into a big fat zero. In the first five years, we bought three houses in Auckland, totalling well over a million dollars.
In ten years, we paid off every last cent on those loans. Would anyone in their right sense try and pay those loans in three months? How about six months? Ten years seems pretty quick by any standards, but we learned what we had to do, and we went about it systematically.
We applied the same rigour to our business
In the year 2000, the business was just a website with a dozen articles. No one bought anything, hardly anyone read much of anything. We simply buckled down, went for dozens of meetings with clients. And out of those dozens, sometimes hundreds, we got ourselves our first client; a sofa store.
The second client was a law firm. The third was a division of Quickbooks. We paid the mortgage, we budgeted our expenses and the only big blow out was education. I bought a ton of stuff online and we both read through them. We listened endlessly to workshops and marketing material (even the stuff which was tedious).
It took a while for things to happen. The first international workshop was in 2004, but that was after we’d done a tonne of speaking sessions in little places all around New Zealand. By 2006, we had our first really big ticket item, the Protégé sessions where clients paid us a substantial sum. That’s when we knew we were finally getting somewhere.
Jim Collins is the author of “Good To Great”, a book that has sold over 2 million copies
In the book, Collins talks about the “Egg and Chicken”. He says: If you look at an egg before it hatches, it looks like nothing’s happened.
Then the chicken jumps out—now we’re the chickens—the chicken jumps out, and Fortune magazine comes running in or Fast Company comes running in and says, “Revolution at Egg! Transformation to chicken! Interview with CEO of Egg!”
But if you ask what it looks like from the chicken’s point of view—from the chicken’s point of view there was a lot going on inside the egg before this one step happened that you never know about that led up to that process.
We know what leads up to that chicken moment
It’s structural change, bit by bit. Whether you’re aiming to win the lottery, or start up a business, your job is to go about the steps systematically. Will you get twenty e-mails telling you that you could become a millionaire overnight?
Sure you will. Will there be a pull to do this, that and the other all at once? Sure there will.
But eventually, it’s the gentle progress that counts.
Progress like commuting just four days, instead of five; getting one strategic alliance per month; taking on one medium, e.g. podcasting, and working it day after day for the next few months, weeks, and yes, years.
All those stories about how you can double and treble your income, they’re probably true. And they probably aren’t at odds of 175 million to one. However, the structural way is better. With tiny changes you can move ahead.
You can slowly but surely get your commute down to zero; your bank balance to a healthy state and pay off the mortgages in style.
If you want to become an overnight success, you’ll need to slow down a bit and work the structure. The odds are a lot better, I can assure you.
How to Ramp Up Curiosity (Even When Using a Controversial Topic)
📅 August 18, 2018 | View in Gmail
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=RYRw1T9k14heLctrdCNEUA
Most of us avoid controversy because it brings up too much pushback.
But what if there were a way to present your controversial idea and delight your clients? And what if you could do it in various media. • Would it be possible to create an info-product that went against the grain? • What about a webinar or seminar that was a bit different from what clients expect?
In this series, we’ll look at books, articles, and even sales pages and see how you can take on the biggest and most controversial point and give it the spotlight. Let’s get going, shall we?
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 205 on iTunes) iTunes
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=oKPch42EEQeaRTbXjAoCpA | Android
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=vpkGdm0OEMh.rsRXOaFi7g | Read
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=RYRw1T9k14heLctrdCNEUA |
One episode you may have missed
Why Onboarding is Crucial (And Most Companies Ignore It)
Is it hard to get a client? Sure it is, but how many of us “lose” the client within minutes or days? We may not realise it, but without a very clear on-boarding system, clients simply get confused and leave.
The question is: how do you get an on-boarding system in place and what does it entail?
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 202 on iTunes) iTunes
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=oKPch42EEQeaRTbXjAoCpA | Android
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=vpkGdm0OEMh.rsRXOaFi7g | Read
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=QGgIOKRY4hXRowzsldABwQ |
Image
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=Xo0ixtLOvZ4bfbPZTYTgxg
Warm regards, Sean D’Souza
P.S. Can you tell one friend about the podcast? Here is a simple link: http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KQnf2&m=J9SCeKBvSNEtt1&b=HUD0ECRzaxmb5pvEL6aZxg
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Last Day for Special Offer—Dartboard Pricing + Special Bonus (worth $49)
📅 August 14, 2018 | View in Gmail
When you buy Dartboard Pricing-How To Increase Prices Without Losing Customers from 11 - 14 August 2018, 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:https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/(This special offer ends 18 August 2018—US Eastern at 12 midnight) 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
📅 August 11, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/
When you buy Dartboard Pricing-How To Increase Prices Without Losing Customers from 11 - 14 August 2018, 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.
https://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.
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/
(This special offer is only valid until 14th August 2018—midnight)
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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How Giveaways Increase Sales of Information Products
📅 August 07, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
How Giveaways Increase Sales of Information Products
https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/
(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
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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? Keep reading here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/#structure
Product Offers: Links you should visit
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/
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.”
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/
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/
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Why Onboarding is Crucial (And Most Companies Ignore It)
📅 August 04, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2
Is it hard to get a client? Sure it is, but how many of us “lose” the client within minutes or days? We may not realise it, but without a very clear on-boarding system, clients simply get confused and leave. Or they feel unsafe and don’t consume your product or service.
The question is: how do you get an on-boarding system in place and what does it entail? Let’s take a sneak peek into what’s possible.
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 202 on 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
Episodes you may have missed
#200: Why Giving is Rushed (And How to Make Gifting More Deliberate)
We might be generous, but are we rushing the act of giving? Often we give people what we want, instead of what they would like to receive. Can giving be less rushed?
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 200 on 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
#201: Four Recurring Testimonial Mysteries (And How To Solve Them) Testimonials are extremely powerful in solving problems that range from getting the clients you want, to finding your uniqueness. How do you use testimonials to increase conversion or just change behaviour?
Let’s find out in this episode and get these mysteries out of the way.
(Look for episode 201 on 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/general/podcast-friend/
Warm regards, Sean D’Souza
P.S. Will You Tell A Friend About The Podcast? It would be really cool if you could tell a friend 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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July 2018
Announcing: Why Some Books Stand Out (While Others Fail Miserably)
📅 July 31, 2018 | View in Gmail
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https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/
Why would anyone want to write a book?
Book writing is a pain from start to finish. You have to think about the outline, collate the information and then somehow make it all seem very informative and entertaining. The last thing anyone would want to do is to write a book.
And yet, we know the power of the book because we read books
We know what happens when we read a book that changes the way we think or do something. We seek out that author, we buy more books. If they have courses or training, we want to join in. And we too want to be like that author. We too want people to earn our living doing the stuff we enjoy.
It’s just this writing process that’s a real pain
I know this to be true because I was pretty much a nobody in a nowhere land. When I moved to New Zealand from India, I didn’t know anyone here. I was also not known for marketing, and if I had any references or testimonials, it was solely for cartooning. If it seemed like the odds were stacked against us, well, they were.
I didn’t realise it back then but The Brain Audit became a doorway
It started out as a tiny booklet (padded with a lot of cartoons). It was through this booklet that people came to our even tinier workshops. This book was key to us starting up 5000bc (our membership site). The book got us a few speaking engagements, then connections to the world outside.
But aren’t there already millions of books on the same topic?
Yes there are, and there were—even back when we started. There have always been more books than you could read. Even in the noisiest marketplace, there will always be books that will stand out because they’re easier to read and remember.
And how does a book become easy to read and remember? You do it with: • Structure • Stories • Summaries You might not realise, for instance, that summaries rock.
That summaries show up not just at the end of a book, but in a ton of different places. You may think of stories as just a story, but in fact stories, analogies, examples and case-studies are what makes one book great and the other just ho-hum.
And structure.
Without structure it’s easy to get hopelessly lost.
You can spend months going around in circles trying to figure out which part to keep, which part to drop.
And this is why amazing books are hard to find
Outstanding books are hard to write because we’ve never been taught that writing is less about the word, and more about the structure. It’s less about the decoration of the cake, and instead the way the cake needs to be structured so it doesn’t topple over.
• Learn how to structure. • Learn how to craft stories in a compelling way. • Learn the immense power of summaries.
Judge for yourself : Information Products Home Study Details
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/
Warm regards, Sean P.S. Did you collect your free goodies? Did you read the piece on the “One Concept”? That’s your starting point to creating a far more effective info-products. Goodie 1: How To Make The Information You Sell More Valuable Goodie 2: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight Goodie 3: Product Sequencing: How to guide a customer along a clear purchasing path Click here to get your goodies: (You will be asked to opt-in) Free Information Products Goodies
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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Announcement: How To Get $75 Worth of Info-Products Goodies (Absolutely Free!)
📅 July 28, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
I don’t know if you’ve read a watercolour instruction book before.
But no matter which book you read, the instructor will tell you one thing: You need to understand ‘values’. Without ‘values’ in your painting, you will never create a watercolour that is dramatic.
And then you open the book, and guess what? One page. One measly page. One measly page among about 150 pages of the book has been devoted to ‘values’.
What just happened? The instructor told you what was important, and then failed to drive home that importance in greater detail.
Why?
Because there’s so much to teach that they feel a need to rush from one thing to the next; one concept to the next.
And it’s approximately what we tend to do when creating an info-product. We are in such a hurry to create this massive info-product, that we fail to understand the importance of “One Concept”. Without a single concept, an info-product can ramble mindlessly. This causes you to struggle when putting the information together, but it also causes reader fatigue.
Read this piece on the “One Concept” as well as five other pieces.
That’s your starting point to creating a far more effective info-product.
You will also learn about: • Why A Crappy Name Will Bury Your Book or InfoProduct • How Your Product Can Create A Niche In Your Marketplace • How To Create Non-Confusing InfoProducts—The Stop-Go System • Why A Unifying Theme For A Product Helps Sell Your Product A Lot Quicker • Why Cannibalising Your InfoProducts Is A Sound Business Strategy
Click here to get this goodie. (You will be asked to opt-in)
Information Products Free Goodies
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
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Warm regards Sean P.S. Also look out for two more free goodies in the coming weeks Goodie 2: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight Goodie 3: Product Sequencing: How to guide a customer along a clear purchasing path.
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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How to double your sales with satellite products
📅 July 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
How to double your sales with satellite products
Double Your Sales With Versions and Satellite Products
https://www.psychotactics.com/double-sales-product/
(You can read or listen to the article on the website as well)
https://www.psychotactics.com/double-sales-product/ .
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.
Coming Soon! There’s a new website on the horizon, but what does this mean for you? It means that there will be a treasure hunt and you will be able to find a lot of really cool prizes as you go through the website. It’s going to be an adventure and lots of fun. Look out for the launch in early August.
Product Offers: Links you should visit
New Products
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/
"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/
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?
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/
http://www.psychotactics.com/products/websites-that-workinternet-marketing-psychological-secrets/
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/
DartBoard Pricing How to systematically increase prices without losing customers
http://www.psychotactics.com/products/trust-the-chef/
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Free Goodies Why Smaller Lists Work Just As Well As Big Ones (And Often, Even Better)(Look for episode 189) 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/smaller-lists-work/ |
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Announcing: How to get $75 worth of Info-Products Goodies (Absolutely Free!)
📅 July 21, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
I don’t know if you’ve read a watercolour instruction book before.
But no matter which book you read, the instructor will tell you one thing: You need to understand ‘values’. Without ‘values’ in your painting, you will never create a watercolour that is dramatic.
And then you open the book, and guess what? One page. One measly page. One measly page among about 150 pages of the book has been devoted to ‘values’.
What just happened? The instructor told you what was important, and then failed to drive home that importance in greater detail.
Why?
Because there’s so much to teach that they feel a need to rush from one thing to the next; one concept to the next.
And it’s approximately what we tend to do when creating an info-product. We are in such a hurry to create this massive info-product, that we fail to understand the importance of “One Concept”. Without a single concept, an info-product can ramble mindlessly. This causes you to struggle when putting the information together, but it also causes reader fatigue.
Read this piece on the “One Concept” as well as five other pieces.
That’s your starting point to creating a far more effective info-product.
You will also learn about: • Why A Crappy Name Will Bury Your Book or InfoProduct • How Your Product Can Create A Niche In Your Marketplace • How To Create Non-Confusing InfoProducts—The Stop-Go System • Why A Unifying Theme For A Product Helps Sell Your Product A Lot Quicker • Why Cannibalising Your InfoProducts Is A Sound Business Strategy
Click here to get this goodie. (You will be asked to opt-in)
Information Products Free Goodies
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/information-products-live-workshop-form/
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Warm regards Sean P.S. Also look out for two more free goodies in the coming weeks Goodie 2: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight Goodie 3: Product Sequencing: How to guide a customer along a clear purchasing path.
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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How to structure your information product giveaway
📅 July 17, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
How to structure your information product giveaway
https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/#structure
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/#structure | 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 | Look for episode 140).
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?
Coming Soon! Information Product Goodies More details on 21 July 2018.
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Product Offers: Have a look
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/under-50/
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/
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/
Chaos Planning Forget Business Planning and Goal Setting.
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Free Goodies Can You Successfully Defend Your Work Against Criticism? (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell)(Look for episode 198) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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Announcement: How To Speed Up Your Sales With Client Attractors
📅 July 14, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors/
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
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Why Giving is Rushed (And How to Make Gifting More Deliberate)
📅 July 10, 2018 | View in Gmail
Why Giving is Not Enough
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2
Hello from Psychotactics-land.
This week, I have something different for you—two very short podcasts. One about ‘the power of giving’ and the other about ‘chaos and how to manage it better’.
Here goes:
#200: Why Giving is Rushed (And How to Make Gifting More Deliberate) We might be generous, but are we rushing the act of giving?
Often we give people what we want, instead of what they would like to receive. Can giving be less rushed? How can we improve our generosity? In this episode we find out how we did things wrong, and how we’ve tweaked the way we give.
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 200 on 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 | Listen online
#199: How To Work With Chaos (and Succeed) Chaos comes visiting every day. Are we prepared to receive it? The reason for stress is a lack of planning on how to deal with chaos. Let’s find out how it’s done.
Listen to this episode here. (Look for episode 200 on 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 | Listen online
http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/199_-_How_to_work_with_chaos_and_succeed.mp3 |
http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/199_-_How_to_work_with_chaos_and_succeed.mp3
Warm regards, Sean D’Souza P.S. Next week look out for information product goodies.
PO Box 36461 Auckland Auckland 1330 NEW ZEALAND
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Announcing! How To Speed Up Your Sales With Client Attractors
📅 July 07, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors
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
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How to Win Your Negotiation Battle With Three Key Questions
📅 July 03, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
How to Win Your Negotiation Battle With Three Key Questions
How to Win Your Negotiation Battle
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ | 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 | Look for episode 181).
If you’re a cartoonist and want a job as a copywriter, how do you get that job? This was my dilemma around the age of 20. I’d finished university, and my dream was to become the top copywriter in the city I lived in—which was Mumbai, at the time. There was this peculiar problem, of course: I didn’t know much about copywriting.
To smoothen my entry into the world of advertising, I did a class, which loosely promised a job in an ad agency, but it was just a hot-air promise. No one got a job, or not at least one with the big agencies.
And I was impatient.
I can’t remember the details, but there I was sitting in front of the creative director who was leafing through my cartoons. She looked up and said: “You know there’s a difference between cartoons and copywriting, right?
I agreed, but it wasn’t a time to be coy.
As most negotiators will tell you, there’s a way out of any negotiation, if you know what to ask. When FBI and other international negotiators get on a scene, the situation is already way out of control.
Their job is to somehow, get a nutter to give up hostages; and to surrender. In short, their job is simply to win in a situation where winning seems implausible or even impossible.
Which is why Chris Voss talks about calibrated questions
Calibrated questions are easy to dismiss as everyday open-ended questions, but they’re pretty precise in how they get the discussion moving forward. They’re designed first to acknowledge the other side (that’s always super-important).
Once that acknowledgement is achieved, calibrated questions get you to introduce ideas and requests that would generally seem pushy. It edges you forward. Instead of getting all riled up, a question that’s calibrated swings the problem across to the other person.
In the book, “Never Split the Difference”, the author gives a range of questions you can choose from:
However, most of the questions he recommends you work with, are simply “HOW” and “WHAT” questions. Quite by chance, this is approximately what I did back at that early meeting with the creative director. I asked her:
• What can I do to be a part of this agency? • How about I work for free for a month and then you can decide if you want to pay me, or I can decide if this agency is a good fit?
The questions seem pretty mundane, and even silly when you think about them, but they get outstanding results.
Voss insists that calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart.
It brings the problem to the fore and completely defused the conflict. Calibrated questions aren’t random at all. Once you have a conversation going, or if you’ve decided how that conversation should move, you design what and how questions that make the other person think it’s their idea.
Of course, when I was sitting in front of my potential boss, I had no idea I was asking intelligent, let alone calibrated questions, but they were “how” and “what” questions and I was hired. Without pay for a month, as you’d expect, but I had a job in Leo Burnett, one of the largest agencies in the world.
The same kind of questions apply to most negotiations because they get the other side to explain their situation
You start with “what” and “how” and completely avoid the “why”. Why is very confrontational so barring rare situations (which Voss describes in the book) you stick closely to “what” and “how” questions.
Which is what I did when we were negotiating the fence issue earlier this week.
• What about this is important to you?
• How can I help to make this better for you?
• How would you like me to proceed?
• How can we solve this problem?
• What are we trying to achieve here?
• How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in a hedge instead of a fence?
Notice the tenor of those questions?
They’re all about the other person and their agenda. And you almost appear subservient. You’re not even asking “what can “WE” do to make this better. You’re asking what can “I” do? And only once you’ve moved along do we get to “we” solving the problem. Or “we” trying to achieve a goal.
The scene outside my dining area was complicated.
The builder didn’t want to leave out the space that was owed to his client. The client didn’t want the area to become a problem when she developed and sold the property. In short, there wasn’t even one person to deal with, but a range of people, some of whom weren’t even on the scene until they bought the property somewhere down the line.
Even so, being calm and working through the problem got the builder to progress from, “We are sorry, but there’s no way out,” to pitching in with a whole bunch of very workable solutions.
The trees at the far end weren’t going to be touched. The apple and the pear espaliers (which grow on the fence) will be removed in the dormant winter season in June. Even the big tree that’s in the way will have a skirting around so that it doesn’t have to be cut down.
In short, the builder got precisely what he wanted, including every inch that was on his client’s property, and we got our trees, our fence and yes, there will be some minor inconvenience, but what a good solution, wouldn’t you say?
The calibrated questions led the way at all times
As we went through the questions, he showed me his plans, explained his situation, worked with me. And though we went for the win, and not the win-win, both of us ended up getting whatever we wanted and without any fuss or aggression.
The key to your success is to make sure you stay calm at all times and ask the questions.
However, one question did make me a bit queasy. That question was “How am I supposed to do that? “How am I supposed to do that?” seems anything but an open-ended question.
It seems like someone who has the upper hand would simply snap back and say: I don’t know. You figure it out.
However, that’s not what happens.
Once I went through the above questions, I blurted out the last question too. And I was amazed at the response. Instead of telling me to go take a hike, the entire set up of questions before this one caused the builder to be even more helpful than before.
In the end, we shook hands on a decision that we both loved and went our merry ways!
The next time you’re in a negotiation, use just three of them and see them work like magic, though I’d add the fourth one about creativity too. It helps the other side come up with a slightly different point of view, especially if you give an example.
However, here are the three questions and the fourth that I added to the mix.
• What about this is important to you?
• How can I help to make this better for you?
• How would you like me to proceed?
• How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in an "x" instead of "y"?
What? How? And no WHY.
Footnote: Often, when you read or listen to a book, the information either seems old or new. Old, as in, “I already know this stuff, so it’s slightly boring, or at least not very groundbreaking”. Or “new” in the sense that you’re learning nuances, and you have to pay close attention to what’s being said.
For instance, there’s a tiny nuance in the calibrated questions: e.g. How can “I” make this better for you? which moves to “how can “we” solve the problem? The nuance is so tiny it’s easy to miss unless you pay close attention, or someone points it out.
Either way, whether you consider the information to be old or new, you’re always working out how to implement the information in your own life, your own chat with a client, or when you have to negotiate something like a lease or rent. Which is why, when I listened to this book for the first time, I missed a lot of the information.
Then, the whole fence-dispute started up and I was instantly focused on trying to speed up the learning and implementation. Even though the negotiations are over, I’m listening to it once more.
Coming Soon: Information Products Self Study Course 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. Here are the details: Information Products
https://www.psychotactics.com/home-study/how-to-create-knockout-information-products/
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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.
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.” 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/
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Free Goodies How To Choose Evocative Titles for your Book (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell(Look for episode 197) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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https://www.psychotactics.com/choose-titles-for-book/ |
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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June 2018
What I learned from Malcolm Gladwell
📅 June 30, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2
What happens when your book finally goes out into the world?
Gladwell has been attacked time and time again for his chapter on the 10,000 hour rule. • But was the attack justified? Or was it all wrong? • How do you defend yourself against something you’re innocent of, in the first place? • Plus, a bonus on how much time it takes for a book to get traction—and more—in this episode. Episode 198: Can You Successfully Defend Your Work Against Criticism? (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell) Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 198 on 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 online
https://www.psychotactics.com/malcolm-gladwell-lessons/ |
Two more binge worthy podcasts (Transcripts are available too)
Episode 196: How to Get Precise Feedback for your Articles (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell) Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 196 on 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 online
https://www.psychotactics.com/get-feedback-for-articles/ |
Episode 197: How To Choose Evocative Titles for your Book (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell) Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 197 on 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 online
https://www.psychotactics.com/choose-titles-for-book/ |
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
Warm regards, Sean D’Souza P.S. Will You Tell A Friend About The Podcast? It would be really cool if you could tell a friend about the podcast. Here is a simple link: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
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How To Use Procrastination To Deal With the Deluge Of Email
📅 June 26, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
How To Use Procrastination To Deal With the
Deluge Of Email
Load the images to see the cartoon. It works!
https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/#proadvantage
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/#proadvantage | 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 | Look for episode 165).
On Sunday nights, I sit down to go through my e-mail.
That way when I wake up on Monday, I expect my inbox to be empty or at least sparse. Hah, I should be so lucky.
No matter how much you and I deal with e-mail, there’s always more coming through.
And easily the biggest problem with e-mail is that it drains you. If you’re doubtful about this, start up a new e-mail account and look at the vast blankness of that account. Not a single e-mail sits in your inbox in that new account. And if you sneak back later, maybe 20 minutes later, there’s still nothing to be seen.
Now if only you could make your current inbox so neat and tidy, eh?
Well, you can. And it’s all a matter of managed procrastination. Email software has gotten very smart over the years and some of it is free, while some of it requires a subscription of some sort.
What most modern e-mail software allows you to do is to push e-mail away until it’s needed. Maybe someone is requesting an article that I won’t tackle until next week.
• Normally I’d just let it sit in my inbox, because it needs to be done. • Or I may put it in a folder that I won’t ever see again.
But at this point, and because of e-mail software, I can push it away.
In other words, procrastination comes to the rescue. On any given day, I’ll deal with the urgent e-mails right away.
Everything else gets pushed for later. Either later today, which is about 3 hours after reading it, or for the evening, weekend, next week, next month, or at a specific date and time. Like Friday, 29 Sep at 3:13 pm, for example. No matter how important you are as a person, most of your e-mail can be allocated to another time zone, when you’re more likely to be able to tackle what needs to be done.
For instance, some emails that require more effort, I’ll either deal with right now, or push until later. It’s hard to say which ones you should keep and which ones you should push away.
How you defer your e-mails depends on your work load and your mood.
But one thing is clear
If you’ve ever had an inbox with zero e-mails or just a couple of e-mails, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You feel like a burden has been lifted off your shoulders. You feel free. You feel excited—ok, ok, I’ll stop.
And yet, all this procrastination, managed as it is, may seem like you’re just fooling yourself. We all put reminders and alarms and when we’re supposed to do the task, we swipe away that reminder.
Won’t the e-mail that comes back be just an excuse to swipe it away for somewhere in the future?
I once had a few e-mails that kept coming back
At first I’d send them off for a week, as they were not urgent. But I soon found myself pushing them away for a month. They showed up in the inbox in January, February, then again in March. April, May—which is when I decided I was never going to act on them and simply archived them to pull up, should I ever need them again.
If you’re never going to read that e-mail now or later, you may as well get rid of it or archive it (because you never know).
E-mail is a fact of life
We don’t expect to get less. We’re always going to get more. And it sucks our energy to keep scanning e-mails in our box, often opening some we’ve already read. Much better to clear up that box so that the e-mails appear later, or as when needed in the future. To get this job done, I used Boomerang for Gmail (which is a paid service).
On the Mac, you also have Spark, which does an excellent job and strangely is free. I know nothing about the PC because I walked away from PCs back in 2008, though Boomerang works with Outlook and should be PC-friendly.
All e-mail isn’t the same
Some need to be dealt with right away. Some can do with managed procrastination. Use the procrastination and you’ll be more relaxed and you’ll have that new e-mail account feeling yet again.
Use procrastination to your advantage Use it in your e-mail to keep that inbox clean as a whistle.
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Product Offers: Links you should visit
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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?
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 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.” 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/
Chaos Planning Learn how the ‘Chaos Planning System’ is a radical, yet perfectly intuitive way to plan). And learn how to get things done, and take long vacations as well.
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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Announcing: The DaVinci Cartooning Course 2018: Bookings Open
📅 June 23, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/
“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 2018 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 26 June 2018)
Warm regards, Sean P.S. Since 2010, over 197 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 26 June 2018)
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/
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Mental Myth: You Need To Remember What You Learn
📅 June 19, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-mental-blocks/#myth2
Mental Myth: You Need To Remember
What You Learn
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-mental-blocks/#myth2
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
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https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Look for episode 158).
In 2006, a journalist called Joshua Foer won the U.S. Memory Championship.
He also set a new US record in the speed cards event by memorising a deck of 52 cards in barely 1 minute and 40 seconds.
However, Joshua Foer doesn’t consider himself to have a very good memory at all.
He forgot where he put his car keys, often where he’d parked his car in the first place. He’d routinely leave food in the oven, forget his girlfriend’s birthday, their anniversary. Despite the onslaught of advertising he’d miss Valentine’s Day, and not remember most of the things that you and I seem to routinely forget.
In 2005, he was a journalist who wanted to figure out what made memory champions so successful. In 2006, he was the U.S. Memory Champion.
If there’s one statement almost all of us have heard before it’s this: I have a really bad memory.
At first it’s some relative; maybe a grandparent or someone much older that seems to complain about memory, but increasingly, even in your teens and twenties, you’ll find yourself—and others making statements such as: I can’t seem to remember names at all. I have a really bad memory.
Which seems to make sense, because we find there are those who seemingly have memories like elephants and our memories seem to be like a sieve. Trying to remember what we’ve learned seems hard, and often impossible. Learning seems to go one way where we build up skills and knowledge.
• Forgetting seems to land all that hard earned information into the gutter. • Forgetting seems to be the arch enemy of learning. • Forgetting seems to be about failure, and it drives us crazy.
And yet, forgetting is exactly the opposite.
“The brain is nature’s most sophisticated spam filter” says Benedict Carey in his book, “How We Learn”.
To be able to remember one thing, we often have to forget the other. In his book, he talks about how we’re all amazingly impressed at the sight of a spelling bee, a competition where young kids seem to be able to spell incredulously complex words. As all contests go, there’s a winner and there are losers.
Yet how do we make every one of those seemingly smart kids lose?
Instead of getting them to spell words, let’s say we drag them back on stage and run a different type of memory test.
The questions would go like this: • Name the last book you read • What did you have for lunch two days ago? • Which was the last movie you saw? • What’s your sister’s middle name? • What’s the capital of Ouagadougou? (It’s Burkina Faso)
“In a hypothetical content, each of those highly concentrated minds would be drawing a lot of blanks”, says Carey. But why is this the case? And how does this related to what you’re learning?
Most of us automatically assume that we should remember what we learn.
In many cases, we assume that we’ve understood what we’ve just read, seen or heard. In almost every instance, it might take three or four tries for a person to get all the facts right, even if they go back over the information.
Take for instance, this article itself. You probably remember that there was a memory championship. But was it a world championship or based in a specific country? Who won it? Do you remember the year? You possibly remember that the winner was male and that he was a journalist, but there are constant gaps in your memory.
Which is why people tend to write notes
However, while notes might be a better-than-nothing option, they’re still extremely poor at pulling up details. All information is dependent on your initial knowledge of the subject matter in the first place.
Take for instance, the book called “Dartboard Pricing”.
The book goes into a lot of detail about why one product or service can be priced higher than a similar product in an identical market. As you’re reading through the book, or listening to the audio, there’s a feeling that you’re getting the idea.
However, the moment clients put up a pricing grid, they get elements of the grid wrong. Logically this shouldn’t be the case at all. You have the book in front of you. The information isn’t flipping past you at high speed. Even so, clients will get the pricing grid wrong.
To really get the information, you have to go back several times and no amount of arrows and boxes, or explanation will help. The brain is designed to pick up some information and drop all the rest.
The best way to retain information is to follow the way the brain works best
And that’s to get to the first powerful idea and then turn off the audio. Close the book. Stop watching the video. If you have to, rewind, or go back. But going forward does little good. Your brain isn’t necessarily picking up the details as you progress. Even when reading an article, I will get to a point where I run into something profound, different or difficult.
At which point I stop any sort of progress. If it’s on my phone, I freeze the idea by taking a screenshot. If it’s on audio, I stop listening to the podcast and yes, you need to do the same, if you really want to remember what you’ve just read.
The breakdown allows your brain to stop at that point. When you go back and review the point, it makes even more sense. Then, if you’re ready to go ahead, please do.
Does this method mean you’ll progress an inch at a time?
No it doesn’t mean that at all. It depends on the information you’re learning. I’ll listen to some podcasts and it’s pure storytelling or information that keeps my brain cells entertained. They may apply to my business or not, but at least at the time, I don’t find I need to imprint it in my memory. However, if there’s something that’s important, I will make sure I stop and come back later.
It’s a way of highlighting that information and forcing your brain to remember
I do this at workshops and seminars as well. I will continue to sit and participate in a seminar, but I wait for the first big point to hit me. When that’s done, I’m “technically” ready to go home. I notice others are scribbling tons of notes, but I know I will remember nothing when I get back. So I keep the idea down to one. If I’m feeling really generous, I may add a second or third, but that’s easily the upper limit.
You don’t need to remember everything you learn
It’s a myth that your memory, or even the memory of the memory champions are any good. The brain is one of the nature’s most powerful spam filters. It remembers what’s important. And hence it’s your job to help your brain.
When you find something that’s important, dig in your heels. Stop. Then go back and review it later.
That’s how you’ll improve your memory and your knowledge over time.
Announcing: DaVinci Cartooning Live Online Course 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? Read how you can do all that and get called a cartoonist too!
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/ (Bookings opening in a few days)
Product Offers: Links you should visit
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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.”
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/brain-audit-epub/
Sales Pages How To Write Benefits and Bullets That Speed Up Sales
http://psychotactics.com/products/client-attractors
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http://www.psychotactics.com/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines
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Trending 4 Super-Cool Travel Tips (That Save a Lot of Bother)(Look for episode 177) iTunes
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One Special Announcement: How to Liven Up Your Website, Blog or Presentation with Cartoons
📅 June 16, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/
Just one short announcements today.
The Da Vinci Cartooning Online Course: Opening 23 June 2018
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.
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 197+ 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 23 June at 4 pm (Eastern US). You can get on the waiting list to get first preference.
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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How to Negotiate (And Win) When the Odds Are Against You
📅 June 12, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiate-win/
How to Negotiate (And Win) When the Odds
Are Against You
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiate-win/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
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https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 |Android
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Look for episode 180).
A few weeks ago, I started listening to a book that I’d bought way back in late November. I heard an interview with the author, Chris Voss, and I was taken with the concepts he brought up on the call that I started listening to the book shortly after.
And that’s what this article is all about It’s a look into “Never split the difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it”, by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz.
It’s important to mention both Voss and Raz because they’re both outstanding. Voss has a wealth of experience, and this is real-life experience with murderers, bank robbers and terrorists.
However, Tahl Raz is the writer, and as a result, the book is spectacular. I rarely marvel at a book’s structure, because by and large books tend to be more about information, which can get tedious. However, this book is masterful in the way it has been constructed. It brings up a concept, explains the concept, tells a story, gives examples and then goes on to succinctly summarise the contents of the chapter.
In this book, you’re going to find out how to win without the other person feeling bad.
No, it’s not win-win in any way. You go in wanting a specific solution to the problem, and you win. And the other party doesn’t feel like it has lost.
How’s that possible?
This article will distil the core stuff that makes the difference
Instead of leafing through the entire book, you’ll get a few core concepts that you can use right away. And then you can go and read the book and the concepts will be more enduring.
Sound good? Well, keep reading.
Concept 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen.
About a year ago, our hedge was the bone of contention with the neighbours.
Sure, we’d got the house for a very decent price at the auction, and with it came a hedge that four of five metres high. Every now and then, we’d get the hedge guys to trim the hedge, but it was always a respectable height.
That gave us our privacy, but more importantly, we could look into a sea of green, instead of another house, with a grungy shed on the other side of the fence. And about a year ago, on two separate occasions, something happened that would permanently change our view.
At first, the neighbour cut down the trees near the far side of the fence
To come back and watch the trees hacked was an incredibly rough moment, but it chopped down while we were away on vacation and there was little benefit in getting into a war over trees that were gone forever.
However, the next time we were away, the entire hedge was reduced to the legal height of just two metres, and that’s the way it seems likely to stay. What’s interesting about this whole hedge and tree episode is that the neighbour wasn’t aggressive, to begin with.
If anything, she was overly helpful, calling us to let us know when our TV antenna had gotten ripped off in a storm. How did someone who was on our side, literally move to the other side of the fence and declare a “hedge-war” of sorts?
Author, Chris Voss would say: It’s a listening problem.
Back in 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard Negotiation Project was formed. The goal was to improve negotiation results so that people could be in a better position to take on stuff like peace treaties, business mergers and I suppose, the occasional hedge.
As a result of the discussions at Harvard, the co-founders of the project came out with a book—and idea—called “Getting to Yes”. They mostly seemed to discard the unreliable, primal animal instinct and espoused a more rational, “let’s be friends and fix this together” type of approach.
And yet the FBI, who Chris Voss was a part of, wasn’t getting consistent results in their negotiations.
Even if deals seemingly worked out in the boardroom, the idea of a rational approach was ending up in a bloody mess when it came to terrorists and hostage situations. Which is when two of the most decorated FBI negotiators, Fred Lanceley and Gary Noesner, started asking a simple question.
Their question was directed to 35 of the most experienced law enforcement officers, and the question went like this: How many had dealt with a classic bargaining situation where problem-solving (or logic) was the best technique?
Not a single hand went up.
Then came the follow up question… How many had negotiated an incident in a dynamic, tense, uncertain environment where the hostage taker was in emotional crisis and had no apparent demands?
Every hand went up.
What this informed the FBI negotiators was pretty clear.
Emotions are the key drivers of our behaviour, not logic. It’s the frustration of some factor that caused the trees and the hedge to be hacked in the way it was. Instead of silly logic and defining our position, we have to step over and listen.
Listening, says Voss, is the cheapest, most effective concession we can make to get the other person on our side.
When people feel listened to, they listen to themselves more carefully. Notice that line again? They listen to “themselves” more carefully. They almost do a double take evaluating the strangeness of their demands. The jagged defensiveness goes down, and they’re keen to help, instead of simply barging in with their demands.
The goal of negotiation is to stop acting like a goat
Instead, always move towards the other side. • What does the other side need? • What are their monetary, emotional or other needs? • Who do they need to report to? • What constraints are they working with?
Being angry and emotional will merely get them to mirror your behaviour, and you get to a situation of mistrust, which often leads to a standoff.
The way to get control is to give the client the illusion of control. It isn’t to suggest you’re conning them in any way. However, when the chips are not in your favour, you want to even the odds and get the client to start thinking of you. And the only way to get that going is to start listening.
When both parties want to row the boat in opposite directions, it looks like there’s absolutely no solution
However, experienced negotiators (like my 8-year old niece, Keira, for instance), knows that’s not true. Her mother will be all upset, refuse to give her what she wants and threaten to ground her for a week. Keira switches from “whiny mode” to “listening”.
She says: If I do this, that and the other, can I get it? And almost instantly you are taken back to negotiations you’ve had with your nieces, nephews or children. They know their position is pretty hopeless, and they turn from tiny little devils to skilled negotiation experts.
They listen and turn things around in their favour.
And that’s what we need to do as well if we want to get anywhere, let alone get the negotiation in our favour.
We need to listen. Slow down and listen. However, that’s just one piece of the negotiation puzzle. Listening alone will pay huge dividends, but we need to get the person to realise that we understand. So we do the most obvious thing of all: we use labelling.
What is labelling and how can we quickly use it in our negotiations?
Concept 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions.
Ever seen how some presenters start their speech when they get on stage.
They might say: “Good morning, everyone. It’s good to be here. It’s a wonderful morning, isn’t it?” And while all of this sounds like adorable banter, it’s missed out on a significant opportunity to get right into the audience’s emotional state.
Audience members aren’t sitting around to discuss the weather. And neither is the person across the table from you. While you don’t have to be all business-like, it’s best to get the person across the table to know that you’re on their side.
Most people always talk about themselves And here’s where you can run a little test. Tomorrow morning tell your partner how you didn’t sleep too well. Almost immediately, he or she is likely to ask you a question or two, but the conversation will swing rapidly to their sleep patterns.
People are so obsessed with their issues that they fail to realise how quickly they take over the discussion. Now imagine you talk about their sleep patterns instead. See what I mean? Immediately two people are talking about precisely the same thing. Suddenly you’re the best “conversationalist” ever.
Negotiation pushes that point a little further with “labelling.”
Labelling is a bit like putting a Post-It on a person’s forehead. For instance, in early January we got a nasty surprise. There was some development work going on in the plot next door. Three houses were being built, and yes, there was the usual earth-shaking noise.
However, nothing prepared us for what came next. The surveyor’s plan indicated that our fence—and the eleven trees on our property, was really within their boundary. As you’d expect, they wanted every inch of their land, and it really did come down to inches. In reality, it was about 12-13 inches at one end and a lot less at the other. Even so, because of the location of the trees, it was about to cause enormous disruption to the landscaping.
How do you get out of a mess like that?
For starters, you listen and keep your cool. Once you’ve moved into your meditative zone, you label the situation. It was clear from the very start that the builders were not happy with this sudden surprise.
On the very day they discovered the boundary problem, they were all raising their hands as if to say, “don’t hate us for this problem”. Which is exactly the label I gave the builders when I spoke to them. I called it “messy”. I said: This is a terribly messy situation for you, isn’t it?
Think about that label for a minute
Normally we’d be likely to say something like: This is a big issue for us. The trees are getting cut down; the fence is going to be destroyed. We’d go on and on about our own problems, which have absolutely nothing to do with them. No, no, no, no, no—that kind of nonsense won’t get you very far.
Instead, use the label. What is the situation? Is it messy? Is it noise you’re negotiating (and it’s noisy?) Does it seem like it’s overpriced? (and hence they are already edgy about the price?) Whatever the situation, you can use labels to identify how the other side is feeling.
And this is what author, Chris Voss, suggests
Spot the emotion. Then label it aloud by using either of the following terms: • It seems like… • It sounds like… • It looks like…
The exact terms are important
You can’t go around saying “I’m hearing that…”. The moment you put the “I” back in the discussion, you’re talking about yourself. It also makes you take personal responsibility for the discussion that follows. And things may go horribly wrong.
However, “it seems like…” is a very neutral statement that feels almost like you’re trying to get to grips on the situation. It also gives the other side a chance to speak. When I said, “It seems like a very messy situation that you want to avoid”, the builder immediately responded to my point explaining what was going on.
He told me about their plans, where they were stuck, and what had been discussed with the architects. The information wasn’t particularly important to this situation, but in many cases, the smallest bit of information is of extreme value.
But what if the other person disagrees?
What if you said:“It seems like you’re uncomfortable with this high pricing”, and they disagree. You can always step back and say, “I didn’t say it was that way. I just said it seems like that”. However, in many cases, if not most, the other person will not go on the attack. Instead, they will explain themselves in a fair amount of detail.
There’s just one big caveat
Once you’ve put forward the label, be quiet. Deathly quiet. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four, tick, tick, tick.
Wait for them to speak, because you won’t have to wait long
Once you add the label, you’ll get the reaction you need. It’s almost one of “thank goodness, you know how I’m feeling right now”. Now both parties are seemingly rowing in the same direction. You haven’t lost any control. No one is going to eat you for lunch.
However, a standoff has not only been averted, but you’ve got the other side to see you as a partner.
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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Product Offers: Links you should visit
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Top-Selling Products Under $50
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/
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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http://www.psychotactics.com/learn-how-to-speed-up-article-writing-with-simple-outlines
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Binge Worthy
The Incredible Power of Kindness (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Business) (Look for episode 167) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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https://www.psychotactics.com/power_kindness/ |
How you can tell your friends about Psychotactics
http://www.psychotactics.com/tell-a-friend
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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Announcements: How To Liven Up Your Website + Information Products + Meet Sean in Houston
📅 June 09, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/davinci/
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 197+ 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/
- How to create a perfect landing/sales page—and have it ready before you leave the workshop—in just 3 days? Houston, Texas: 28-30 October 2018 (Bookings Open)
https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/
Warm regards, Sean P.S. If you have any questions, do email me
sean@psychotactics.com . I answer all questions.
https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
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Last day: How to join 5000bc (without being on the waiting list)
📅 June 05, 2018 | 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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Announcing: How To Join 5000bc (Without Being On The Waiting List)
📅 June 02, 2018 | 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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May 2018
Mental Myth: You Need To Speed Up Your Learning
📅 May 29, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/mental-barriers/
Mental Myth: You Need To Speed Up Your Learning
https://www.psychotactics.com/mental-barriers/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/mental-barriers/ | iTunes
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https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sean-dsouza/seanpsychotacticscom?refid=stpr | Look for episode 159). -----------------------
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.
Mental Myth: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster)
If you looked at the About Us page on the Psychotactics site, it used to say that I read 100 books a year.
Well, that was true when I started out in business. I didn’t have many clients, hence loads of time. It was also the very early days of the Internet. There were still millions of pages online, but blogs barely existed. Youtube was non-existent. Facebook was years away.
If you wanted to get those 100 books, you had to physically make your way to the book store or the library. Nothing online was particularly instant or as distracting as it is today.
Even so, I bought a book on speed reading. In fact, it was an entire course. The course was instantly impressive. It showed me how my brain could recall just about anything it viewed even for a brief second.
It got me to open a random page of the dictionary, then flick through the page and later recall a fair bit of what was on the page. It was a long time ago, and I forget the details of the exercise, but I was hooked into believing I could store endless amounts of information in my head. As I found out, it wasn’t impossible to store information, but it was quite like a photocopy machine.
Think of a photocopy machine for a few seconds
What is the primary function? It takes photocopies of information. You can run tens of thousands of pages through a photocopy machine, and it just takes images. Your brain, from what I understand, can do something similar. However, it does not mean that your brain can make sense of the information.
It’s just information, loads of information piling up on top of more information. The speed reading course was instantly enjoyable and useless to me, even back in those early days. I abandoned it despite paying a small fortune for it and went back to reading two books a week at top speed.
For someone like me, who was just learning marketing and business reading a lot was a great idea
It was a bit like getting to know the streets in a city. It gave me the confidence and feel for the city. And I didn’t have a fear of getting lost. And this constant, pounding flow of information is great as long as you don’t have to do too much with the information.
You watch the news; you read magazines, you listen to podcast interviews. They constitute a mountain range of information, but not information you necessarily need to use, now or in the future.
I found that I was losing out on depth
In my need to keep up with 100 books a year, or even 25 books a year, I was playing a game of chicken. I was headed right towards my goal, refusing to swerve, and in doing so, missing out on the nuances.
To bounce back to the analogy of the city streets, I was getting a lot of information, but not enough depth. I didn’t need to speed up my learning. I could take things at a reasonable pace and even slow down.
When I slowed down, I noticed something quite interesting
I missed out at least 30-50% of the nuances in the first reading or listening. I remember listening to how trees absorb nutrition, for example, and I loved that podcast episode, so I heard it again. And again. And yet again.
The fourth time around I was still picking up nuances I’d missed on the earlier drive-throughs. It wasn’t enough to read and listen at normal speed but to go back and read again, listen again.
Which is why the book, The Brain Audit has a note right in the introduction to go back and read the book thrice. And most clients come back to say that they were surprised at how much they learned on the second and third pass.
This isn’t to say that speed itself is a problem
Right now I’m learning some nuances of InDesign and ePub. And much of it is “old knowledge”. I’ve been over the material and could do some other activity while “listening to the video”, let alone looking at it. In cases where I am very familiar with the material, I will wind up the video to at least 1.25x or even 1.5x.
Even in these conditions, it’s important not to get cocky. The material may be the same, or remarkably similar, but often the presenter talks about a new way to implement the information. And if I’m just speeding things up, I will almost certainly miss it. And the idea is to make the learning stick.
But doesn’t your brain adapt to faster speeds?
I believe it does. If you listen to everything at twice the speed, over time that double speed is more than likely to become the new standard for you. This isn’t to say you’re going to know twice as much, only that you can absorb twice the amount at once.
There’s also a definite downside when you enter the real world, and people don’t speak at 2x.
If you listen to everything at high speed, normal speech will cause you to get distracted because everyone seemingly speaks so slowly. The main point, however, is that speeding up your reading or listening doesn’t necessarily make you smarter.
Eventually, what’s the point of all the information you’ve just read?
When you go online, you’ll often run into a site like ours. And some person just like me will tell you that they read 100 books a year. That information may have been correct when they had less work. Or when they were needier for that information. It could be true in an age when everyone wasn’t being blasted with ten million pieces of information every single minute of the day.
We believe in speed. And for the most part, speed kills. Speed doesn’t make things better or more profound.
As singer/songwriter, John Mayer writes in one of his songs: Twice as much ain’t twice as good And can’t sustain, as one-half could. It’s wanting more, that’s gonna send me to my knees.
It’s a myth that you need to go faster
• You can slow down, make notes, make mind maps. Even doodle. • You can go over a book once, twice and thrice if you choose to do so. • Savour what you’re learning and learn it in a deeper, more profound way. It sure beats rushing through life at 2x.
Coming Soon! The DaVinci Cartooning Course: (Bookings Open 23 June 2018) If you thought: “I can’t draw a straight line,” this is the course for you. That’s because cartooning involves mostly wobbly lines. Plus you have a lot of fun on this course. Click here for more details here:
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Free Goodies How To Get And Keep The Attention Of Your Client(Look for episode 179) iTunes
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Announcing: Free from Psychotactics: The $2500 Brain Alchemy Marketing Strategy Workshop
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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.
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How To Get—And Keep The Attention Of Your Client
📅 May 22, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
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How To Get—And Keep The Attention
Of Your Client
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(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
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You’ve probably never heard of Ben Curtis
In an e-mail addressed to both Renuka and me, here’s what he wrote: “I am a massive fan! I listen to all your podcasts and reread sections and chapters of The Brain Audit over and over. It’s difficult to model after the examples when none of them are products.”
Well then, it’s time to correct this grievous mistake, because it gives us a chance to dive deeper into The Brain Audit. Well, here we go.
In this series, we’ll go through the stages of how to get—and keep the attention of the client. • Stage 1: We’ll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem. • Stage 2: This stage calls for us to drive home not just the problem, but also the consequences of ignoring that problem. • Stage 3: We’ll do an instant check after we’ve gone through the first two stages.
Let’s look around the room for some products and play a game of “I spy”.
What do I spy? It starts with the letter M. It’s a product, and it’s a microphone. Except that I already have six microphones, so why bother with another one? Let’s find out, shall we?
Stage 1: We’ll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem.
Example 1: M as in “microphone”. Let’s look at the microphone that I recently bought. What problem could it possibly solve? Why buy yet another microphone when there are plenty lying around? As you’re probably aware, every product solves many problems, and since we’re on that trend of reasoning, every product must have many features and benefits.
Let’s list the benefits and features of this microphone, shall we? • Let’s start with the weight: It’s just 10 g. That’s just 0.35 ounces. That’s light, don’t you agree? • The usage time on a single charge is 6 hours. That solves a problem too, of having to change batteries all the time. • The operating temperature is from -10°C to 50°C. Which means it would work well in a desert, which is freezing by night and boiling by day. • And finally, it has an operating distance of 65 feet or 20 metres. That’s a fair distance away.
But what problem does it solve? Let’s say you’re keen to shoot videos of yourself as a speaker. There are two reasons why you’d need to capture the event. The first reason would be to capture the information for a showreel for your clients. The second reason would be to see and hear yourself so you can improve your technique.
However, you’ve always needed a slightly sophisticated set up with a cordless mic. But imagine a microphone so small that it’s just a clip-on. And once you have it on, you can be a whopping 65 feet away and record perfect video—but more importantly, the audio. It’s a Bluetooth mic that frees you from cords and cables.
That’s it! No cords, no cables, but what about the other points? What about the weight, the extended battery time, the ability to work under crazy weather conditions? They’re all important, but you have to pick one problem if you want to get the attention of your client. It’s not like we’re chucking away the rest of the points.
We just can’t have it all up in lights together. Only one problem needs to be chosen. Think of it as a movie. There’s the hero, and there is the supporting cast. The rest of the points; those benefits and features are the supporting cast. The only thing that matters is the “no cords and no cables”. And if you’re a speaker, you know exactly what that means. To be able to simply walk across the room, over even across the bridge to the other side and be recorded perfectly, that seems like a dream come true. It’s a big problem and this microphone; this Bluetooth microphone solves the problem perfectly.
That’s example No.1 down. Let’s take another example.
Example 2: Daniel Smith watercolours Now this example is interesting because I’ve never used these watercolours. Back in 2010, I went for a watercolour class, and my teacher, Ted, told me to do one small watercolour every day. Being a model student, painting every day is approximately what I’ve done. In the past eight years, I’ve probably painted about 2500 images—yet not one of them was with Daniel Smith.
My goal today was to find out why I should bother with Daniel Smith watercolours when I already have several tubes with a rival company called Winsor and Newton. So many tubes of paint, in fact, that though I paint every day, I’d still be using those tubes for at least two-three years.
And yet, here we are, looking for a problem to solve with a whole new brand of paints This diversion brings up an essential fact of customer behaviour. In a majority of situations, clients or prospects may not have a problem. I am reasonably happy with my paints, but that doesn’t mean I’m not on the lookout for something different.
When we, as sellers of a product fail to get the point across clearly and succinctly, the customer is left in a bit of a limbo. Which is what Daniel Smith colours tends to do when you do your research.
But here’s a start from a post online: I love Daniel Smith. What I like about the paint is the pigment load, ease of re-wetting in my palette; ease of handling on the paper. Every tube I have bought is fresh, soft and well mixed with the binder, no separation into binder and pigment. And I love their range of colours. No other paint maker offers such a huge number of colours. It seems Daniel Smith is always looking for new colours to add.
In that short client description we have the bits and pieces needed for a problem, don’t we?
Let’s look at the features and benefits mentioned in that post. • Ease of pigment load: That’s a bit technical, but what I can figure out, is that the paint sits nicely on the brush. • Ease of re-wetting: This is a nuisance with watercolours. They tend to dry up into a hard rock-like mass. Re-wetting is a definite benefit. • Ease of handling on paper: It’s a vague description, but we’ll take all the description we can handle. • Well mixed with the binder—no separation of binder and pigment: That’s yet another winner. • And the final one: Astounding range of colours—especially for those always on the lookout for yet another shade.
Once again, we have to pick, and most of the time, the pick will be based on the target profile
It seems that artists are always on the lookout for new shades, new textures and so the range of colours is a big solution. And the opposite of the benefit is—tah, dah—the problem. Daniel Smith has a massive 252 colours, including the Primateks as well as 48 luminescent, pearlescent and interference colours.
The problem is evident isn’t it? With the paints I’ve been using, I’ve more or less restricted myself to a range of shades. Daniel and Smith seemed to have gotten me out of my stupor and caused me to investigate a whole range of colours that I may never have considered before. In effect, it’s created a problem where none existed.
Example 3: This takes us to a third product, like the t-shirt I’m wearing.
Stage 1: I’m a big fan of graphic design, and there’s probably no greater joy than to walk into a t-shirt store when on vacation. Portugal, for instance, has an astounding design sense, which frankly surprised me. Whether we were in Vancouver, Tokyo or Sardinia, I’d be on the lookout for new, well-designed t-shirts. Yet, for the past three years or so, I’ve more or less given up buying t-shirts while away from home.
It’s a strange phenomenon, don’t you think? The plot, as it were, thickens, because the t-shirt brand I now wear doesn’t quite suit my design appetite. Even so, I’ve made the change to the Icebreaker brand. And the reason why I’ve made this leap is that it solves a precise problem: it doesn’t stink.
It’s summer here in New Zealand, in January And summers here are hot, really hot, and with heat comes sweat and body odour. Which means you have to get yourself some sort of deodorant or wipe rubbing alcohol, vinegar or hydrogen peroxide onto your underarms. If you want to save yourself of the trouble of any of those weird and wonderful methods, all you do is wear an Icebreaker.
That’s it. No odour. Wear the t-shirt for a day, no odour. Ten days, still no odour. Forty days? You’re getting the point, aren’t you? As you can quickly see, Icebreaker solves a problem you didn’t know you had in the first place. I wouldn’t go so far as to say all my t-shirts are Icebreaker, but let’s just say they’ve taken the whole fun part out of my vacations.
I haven’t bought a new t-shirt on vacation in over three years. I ask people to send me vouchers for Icebreaker for my birthday, or if they want to give me a gift. I use Icebreaker in my presentation on Dartboard Pricing at events.
I can’t even begin to tell you what killjoys this company has been for me, consistently solving my problem.
And once we have our problem, you know what The Brain Audit recommends next, don’t you? Yes, it’s time for the consequences.
A problem is a problem, but it’s not quite as big a problem unless there are consequences. What are consequences and how do we use them with the marketing of our product? Let’s find out.
Stage 2: The consequences of the problem
Imagine you’re driving down the road, and in the corner of your eye, you see flashing red and blue lights. What do you do? You slow down, don’t you? You’re aware that somewhere in the vicinity there are cops and there’s no point in flooring the accelerator.
That’s how the brain works. It senses a problem and immediately most other thoughts are subdued. The focus is almost exclusively on that problem. However, to stay in that state for too long would be counterproductive, so once the cops are out of sight, you and I tend to go back to our normal behaviour.
When clients are buying products or services, the problem gets their attention, but it’s not enough
Once the problem isn’t front and centre, there’s the risk of the client going their own way. It’s akin to spotting a cop car on the highway and then encountering a sign that says: No cop car for the next 300 miles, guaranteed.
Without the consequences, the attention wavers quite a bit.
Back to our examples: • So what are the consequences of not having an easy-to-use Bluetooth microphone? If you’ve ever fiddled with a wired microphone, you’d know what a pain mics can be. The cords and cables run all over the place, someone trips over the cords and cables, or at the very least they need to be taped down. That’s great if you’re in the sound business because as disaster hits, you have Option B in place.
However, as a small business owner, you’re hoping for one take. You want to get your video on YouTube, or you want to record that seminar you’re giving. That’s one take, in most cases, and there’s no going back. With a Bluetooth mic, a simple phone can record the video from anywhere in the room, while capturing very high-quality audio.
Without audio, even the sharpest video is unwatchable. And that’s why a Bluetooth mic is so very crucial. One that you can quickly fasten to your clothing and in seconds the wired microphone is history.
That’s an example of consequences Just because you’ve brought up a problem in your headline or speech, doesn’t mean that clients get the point to the fullest extent. There’s no doubt they’re paying attention, but unless the consequences are driven deeper, there’s a good chance of bypassing, or at least not valuing the product to the fullest extent.
The consequences are akin to underlining what’s being said, and yet staying on point. We’re not trying to cover all the problems the product solves. If anything, you have to be careful to stay on target. When I was writing about the microphone above, I was tempted to talk about the lightness factor and how it lasted for six hours. It took all of my focus to stay on topic of “no cords or cables”.
We can bring up the issue of how it lasts for six hours later in the message. On a sales page, there’s a lot of space to bring up features and benefits much later. At first, however, we have to nail down the problem and the consequences to the exclusion of everything else. And the consequences matter.
The consequences put a spotlight on the problem, but because it creates agitation, it also sets up the client for the solution that must follow.
As you read in The Brain Audit, the problem shows up, and then we go to the solution. But sitting smack in the middle is that big consequence that needs its share of the spotlight. • Execute the consequences correctly, and it’s clear why Daniel Smith range of colours solves a pressing problem of not quite having the shade you need in your paint palette. • Or why choosing Icebreaker as a garment makes for the most pleasant t-shirt wearing experience, because who wants to stink? The consequence of being inadvertently socially unacceptable or even having to put chemicals (or for that matter vinegar) on your body is a bit of a pain.
And it’s only when those consequences are driven deep that we’re ready for the solution. In fact, we’re not just ready; we’re hankering for the solution at this stage.
Stage 3: An instant check
Which brings us to the third part of this series: An instant check after we’ve gone through the first two stages. We didn’t start off needing or even wanting.
Did you need a microphone? If you’re recording an event, do you feel like you need one now? And do you need that specific brand so that you don’t run into cords and cables?
What about the paints? Maybe you’re not a painter—yet—but should you wander into watercolours as I did back in 2010, you’d want the best possible colours, right? And personally, I’m feeling a bit like a dunderhead because I haven’t heard about this brand though I’ve been painting for eight years straight.
What about the t-shirt? Icebreaker has no stink, even if you wear it for a month. Not that you want to wear it for a month, but notice how the problem and the consequence have gotten your attention and kept that attention.
The proof of the pudding is almost always in the eating If you feel you need the products mentioned above, then The Brain Audit has started to weave its magic.
And more importantly, we’ve found out that products, physical products or digital, don’t differ that much from services. In fact, we just have to look at one thing to figure out the problem and the corresponding consequence.
We think the more we load onto our website or marketing material, the better. But in reality, it’s the core stuff: the problem, the consequences—that is what really matters. And we can test it because clients don’t just say, “wow that’s interesting”, but instead ask, “where can I see it or where can I buy it?”
That’s your test. That shows you that your message is working.
And that’s pretty much it. You can use The Brain Audit on products, services or training with equal effect. Try it out today and you’ll see how effectively it works.
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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.
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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 15 May 2018 (US Eastern). 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
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options, visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zJyMHIyMbGw=
Special Offer: How to Create Compelling Pages on Your Website + Special Bonus (Valued at $45)
📅 May 12, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/special-offer/
Hi Seree
When you buy Website Components-How To Create Compelling Pages On Your Website
How To Overcome Mental Blocks That Derail Your Progress
📅 May 08, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-mental-blocks/
How To Overcome Mental Blocks That Derail Your Progress
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-mental-blocks/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/overcome-mental-blocks/ | 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 | Look for episode 158). ------------------------
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 can we transform them from failure to success.
As late as the 1970s, women’s brains were considered to be inferior to that of men, and especially so in the game of chess.
Chess is a game that demands a high level of spatial awareness, among other skills, and it was erroneously believed that women could never equal men at the grandmaster level. In fact, not one woman had made it to grandmaster level until Susan Polgár came along.
Free from Psychotactics: The $2500 Brain Alchemy Marketing Strategy Workshop
📅 May 05, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/free/brain-alchemy-goodies/
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
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/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options, visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zJyMjIzMDCw=
Why You Need to Stop Looking For Your Passion (And How To Get It To Find You Instead)
📅 May 01, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/
Why You Need to Stop Looking For Your Passion
(And How To Get It To Find You Instead)
https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/find-passion/ | 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 | Look for episode 160).
Imagine a person who can sniff a perfume and instantly identify the brand.
That person is my wife, Renuka. She can quickly work her way through as many as 150 fine fragrances. Fine fragrances are perfumes made in the classical style, by companies such as Chanel, Givenchy, Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, etc.
If you asked her if she’s passionate about perfumes, her answer is clearly, yes. She worked in the perfumery industry for well over ten years, spending as much as half an hour to an hour each day, just tuning her nose to the subtleties of every perfume.
Would that count as passion? It should, shouldn’t it?
April 2018
Why Clients Leave
📅 April 28, 2018 | View in Gmail
Why Clients Leave: Episode 185
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2
Why do clients leave? It seems odd, doesn’t it?
When you ask a client why they join, they seem to suggest it is all about information and content, but then they inexplicably leave. They seem to suggest they need either better content, or they need time to implement the content.
But that’s rarely the case, as we’ve found out. The need is far greater and we’ve all experienced it.
Clients leave for a very obvious reason that you’re never going to find in analytics software or surveys.
Listen to find out more. (Look for episode 185 on 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 |
Here is one more podcast you may have missed
#186: How to Craft Interesting Stories and Analogies (For Articles and Sales Letters)
How do you make your articles or sales letters more interesting? Analogies and stories always increase the drama and attention span.
Yet, it’s hard to find and craft interesting stories on a regular basis. Or is it?
Find out how you can use three simple and effective ways to craft a ton of great stories and analogies.
Listen to find out more. (Look for episode 186 on 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 |
Warm regards
Sean D’Souza
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/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options, visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zJzMDCzMTKw=
The Science of Undervaluing Yourself (And How to Overcome it)
📅 April 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/science-of-undervaluing/
The Science of Undervaluing Yourself (And How To Overcome It)
https://www.psychotactics.com/science-of-undervaluing/
(You can read the article on the website as well)
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
Tiny Saturday Request
📅 April 21, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/about/psychological-marketing-business-tactics-tell-a-friend/
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.
One-Buttock Passion (How a Simple Redefinition Can Help You Move Forward)
📅 April 17, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/one-buttock-passion/
One-Buttock Passion (How a Simple Redefinition Can Help You Move Forward)
https://www.psychotactics.com/one-buttock-passion/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/one-buttock-passion/ | 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 | Look for episode 161). -----------
In a TED Talk that’s been watched over 9 million times, the conductor of the Boston Philamornic, talks about a seven year-old child.
How to Become An Overnight Success
📅 April 14, 2018 | View in Gmail
How to Become An Overnight Success :Episode 182
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2
How do you instantly grow your small business? How do you become rich overnight?
These are the frustrations we have to deal with, almost every single day as we wade through the temptations of the internet.
How to Transform a Miserable Day into a Happy One, in Under 30 Minutes
📅 April 10, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/miserable-day/
How to Transform a Miserable Day into a Happy One,
in Under 30 Minutes
https://www.psychotactics.com/miserable-day/
(You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/miserable-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 | Look for episode 164). -------------------------- Fed up. Fed up. Fed up.
I said it thrice on my walk this morning. And then Renuka pointed out that I was saying it yet again, as I reached the cafe. If you know me well, you probably know I’m always darting around at a squillion miles an hour. As a friend, Kimberley Carroll once said to me: “Sean you’re a mad person. You’re always busy doing things”.
Announcing: The Article Writing 2018 Course Page Is Live
📅 April 07, 2018 | View in Gmail
It’s finally here: The Article Writing Course 2018
If you want to be on the course, you’ll need to get to the page below.
As you know, we’ve sent you the prospectus and the sales page (without the ‘buy now’ buttons well in advance) so you could do your due diligence. Well, here’s the final step. To book your spot, you need to make your payment.
The page link: (If you can’t see the payment link, refresh the page) https://www.psychotactics.com/articlewriting-details
How John Forde (and Sean D’Souza) Got Me to Write Articles
📅 April 03, 2018 | View in Gmail
How John Forde (and Sean D’Souza) Got Me to Write Articles (You can also read or listen to this article on the website : Read online)----------------Before I start, let me make one thing clear. John Forde is a copywriter who lives in Paris. And a good friend with a great newsletter. And me, I’m Sean D’Souza. Which of course makes it really weird when I say I used myself for inspiration. It sounds a lot more than weird, actually. It sounds egocentric. Let me assure it’s got nothing to do with ego. And everything to do with desperationYou see when I started writing articles for my website back in about 2001, I was at best a cartoonist. If you asked me to draw something, you had a bouncy volunteer right besides you. But when you asked me to write, the bounciness would sure fade away pretty rapidly. You see not only did I consider myself an average writer, but I had enough reason to be afraid of writing.And the reason I was afraid was because of girl named Clare.I remember writing an article way back in the year 1990-91 I wanted to be a copywriter and in one of my diverse moods I decided to “make some money” writing for the newspapers as well. So I met up with this guy called CY Gopinath, who ran this writing agency. Well CY gave me an assignment, and I wrote about it.And Clare, who worked with him, edited my assignment. And when Clare was done I couldn’t recognise the darned thing at all. There was so much edited; so much added; so much removed that it seemed to me not my work at all. Today I can’t even remember the subject of the article.But I remember the memory of frustration I remember that I didn’t want to be a writer. Well who cares about writing articles anyway? I could be a cartoonist instead. I could write ad copy. Clare wouldn’t be around to edit my stuff. And who died and made Clare queen anyway? And there I was, ten years into the future, and Clare was still bothering me.In fact most months, article writing was a drudgeryI wrote articles because I was forced to do so. I knew I was supposed to update my website. I knew that one of our alliances, Allen Weiss (from MarketingProfs) would be asking me whether I’d completed my article. Somehow I had to banish Clare from my head and take away the fear of writing.Article writing was intense drudgery I hated every bit of article writing. I hated the start, the middle, and I couldn’t be sure of the end. If I completed an article in one working day, I’d be ecstatic. Most days it would take me two days.Two whole days and I couldn’t honestly tell you if the article wouldn’t end up in this article graveyard. Thankfully it was only two days in the whole month (Yup, I’d write once a month).And then I decided to get inspiration from my own articlesI started looking back at the ones I’d completed, and felt this immense sense of satisfaction. Even inspiration. And so before writing, I’d look at my previous headlines. I’d read my own articles. And feel a sense of accomplishment. That put in a little juice in my reserve tank. That propelled me off the starting point.And I coughed and sputtered, but at least I was writing a new article. It didn’t make things any better. I was still a foul person to be around on article writing days. So I had to search for inspiration. And inspiration came in the form of a guy named John Forde I loved the way John wrote. His writing was always so effortless. He seemed to be having so much fun. And he knew his topic (unlike me who mostly knew about cartooning). And so I’d read many of John’s article. At one point, after getting to know him, I even asked him for an archive of sorts. Just so I could read and be inspired.John’s writing and mine: They both nudged me on And while I got a lot better over the years, there was a moment in time when I got radically better. That moment was when I promised my members that I would write 5 articles a week. No one paid attention of course, but I had promised 5000bc members that they’d get this wealth of information week after week.And there I was trapped—in a way. I had to write those articles. If you thought writing one is hard, five must be pure agony.Actually I found quite the opposite The moment I started writing five-six articles a week, something changed rapidly. Not all at once, of course, but in a few months I found that I could literally sit down at my computer and turn out five articles in the course of the day.Fast forward to the year 2008, and I could write five articles in about 3 hours or fewer. In March 2010, I surprised myself.I wrote 350 pages of content in four weeks .Three whole books: One on “Chaos Planning”, one on “The Secret Life of Testimonials”, and one on “Blackbelt Presentations: Part 1”. And this is while tending to forum posts on 5000bc.com and answering email and creating new websites, blogs, and doing at least two dozen projects at the same time.And when you see all of this from the outside, it’s easy to think: This Sean is a genius. Or a mad man.I don’t see the same Sean as you do I see the Sean who struggled with Clare’s edit (she was only doing her job well). I see the plod, the drudgery of writing articles for MarketingProfs in the early days (I wrote almost 50 articles for them). I see the fear in my eyes when I promised to write five articles a week in a moment of madness. And I know that anyone can do it. Anyone can.I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your education.I don’t care if you can even read—or write.The best part is that you don’t need to slave for almost ten years like I did. Or if you go back in time to Clare, twenty years. You can do it in three-six months. It’s still going to be a slog, but you can do it.And then there are going to be times when you’re super frustrated And the only inspiration you have is yourself. Or someone like John Forde. And if you persist, something magical will happen. You’ll get enormously better at writing.And you’ll be an inspiration to others.Imagine that!Two Announcements: Start. Stop. Start. Stop. The biggest frustration with writing is it drives you crazy. Yet writing is a “language” like everything else. Learn the structure and you can learn to write without the frustration and faster than every before.Click here for Free Goodies: Article Writing mini-booklet that helps you quickly improve your article writingClick here to read about: The Article Writing Online Live Do share this article 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.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
March 2018
Announcing! How To Become An Expert In Your Industry
📅 March 31, 2018 | View in Gmail
Imagine you had a fairy godmother. And she gave you one wish: The wish of ‘perceived expertise’. This ‘perceived expertise’, means that your customers would look at you and say: “There goes the expert in the field. I only want to work with her/him.”
I had such a godmother. And I got a wish from that fairy godmother in the year 2002.
You see I’d just started up my consultancy in marketing I’d moved from India to New Zealand. No one knew me in these parts. No one knew if I was good at what I did. Or just plain useless. And what was worse, was I wasn’t quite sure either.
How To Know If Your Article Is Exciting Enough For The Reader
📅 March 27, 2018 | View in Gmail
How To Know If Your Article Is Exciting Enough For The Reader (You can also read this article on the website : Read online )-----------When you complete an article, you always have one of two reactions.You think it rocks. Or you think it sucks.And you may be wrong on both fronts. You may think your article rocks, when in fact it sucks. And vice versa.So how do you know if your article works?You would think you needed to read your article from start to finish, don’t you?Quite the contrary: You don’t read the article at all. You simply scan the article. And when you’re scanning, here’s what you’re looking for: 1) The headline. 2) The first fifty words. 3) The sub-headlines. 4) The ending.That’s it.If you can see a flow from headline through the sub-headlines down to the ending, you know your article is working.And the reason why it works is because it’s answering all the questions that a reader would possibly ask. Now the only question is: When do you do this audit? Before or after you write the article?That’s a toughie, because your situation determines how you write an article.On some days will write an article from start to finish based on a ‘response’. So if you’re in a forum or a blog, and someone posts something, you’ll find yourself all fired up and you’ll write a detailed answer.In many cases, your answer will have all the power and completeness of a finished article because you’re trying to make sure you cover all the points. In such a situation, all you need to do is make the sub-headlines bold (if you don’t have sub-headlines, invent them for the sake of the exercise). Then audit the article for flow. A touch here, a move there, and your article will be ready.What if you’re starting up from the ground up?If you are starting up from ground zero, you need structure. The structure comprises of the headline, the first fifty words, the sub-headlines that answer the questions ‘What? How? Why? When? Can you give me proof? Can you give me an example?’ And then the ending paragraph of the article. If you follow this systematic approach, your article will flow a lot better than most written material.But let’s take an example using an actual article -----------------Headline: Power of Connectors in Copywriting First fifty words: You’ve started reading a newsletter. And before you know it, you’re at 500 words. Then at 750 words. And hurtling past 1000 words. How on earth did you end up reading so much, when all you wanted to do was skim through the article? The answer is in the connectors in copywriting. The sub-headlines: – So what are the connectors in copywriting? – Do you see what’s happening?– A connection is like a bridge – Why is this slip-sliding so very important? – Example, Example: – Personal Experience:Ending: If you noticed, the content in this piece didn’t have enormous style. It lacked stories. It lacked metaphors. And yet it made a distinct point. It taught you something very powerful. Of course, the biggest reason you continued to read, was because of the connectors. Every movie, article or sales letter that’s brilliant always has a connection. Create the connection and your reader will read from start to finish!-----------------See the flow in that article?Once you have flow in the sub-headlines, what you have is solid structure. And that’s what makes an article exciting: the ability to answer all the questions of the reader in a systematic, easy flowing manner.That’s your internal audit system. That’s how you know if your article really rocks. Or sucks.Way better than just ‘wondering’ if it rocks. Or sucks. Do share this article: Announcing: The key to writing articles is clarity Download If you can write like you think—you’d be able to turn out not just articles, but reports and books as well. Clarity—or the lack of it, stops us in our tracks. And clarity depends on structure.Click here for Free Goodies: Article Writing mini-booklet that helps you quickly improve your article writingClick here to read about: The Article Writing Online Live Course 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.Interested in article writing? Have a look at:How To Write 4000 Word Articles Without Getting Exhausted(Look for episode 111a)iTunes | Android| Read and Listen |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
Announcing: The Secret to Becoming an Expert in your Customer’s Eyes?
📅 March 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
How do you become an expert in your customer’s eyes? How do you become the person the customer most wants to work with? How do you then increase prices 500% and still have customers wanting to work with you?
To understand how this unusual situation occurs, let me tell you a story I was a cartoonist by profession. Then one fine day, I decided to get into ‘marketing.’
Now tell me honestly Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to attract customers? Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to improve your website? Would you hire a cartoonist for anything—but—to draw cartoons?
Why would you? I wouldn’t.
And that was the uphill battle I faced: No one knew me as an expert. Now it didn’t matter how many times I looked in the mirror and called myself an expert.
I still wasn’t getting any respect, let alone pesos in the bank. And it drove me crazy.
But there’s always a way out of crazy-land So here’s what I did. I started writing articles. And it was painful writing those articles. I’d write one article after slaving over it for two days. And then sometimes after two days, I’d trash the article and start all over again.
Did I say there’s a way out of crazy-land? Well, it sure didn’t seem so, because this article-writing-jazz was driving me loco.
But here’s what I found too. That there were systems. And techniques. Techniques that enabled me to write faster. That enabled me to make an article almost like a movie. That enabled me to see a pattern as to which articles would go down the gurgler, and which articles would get lapped up by the readers.
That there were certain articles, when published, that got customers to my website in droves. I’d wake up, and suddenly there were fifty, or a hundred new subscribers.
Sometimes as many as two hundred or more.
And then as the weeks and months passed, I started getting calls Calls to help customers with their website (um, after I wrote a website-based article).
And then emails. To help customers to help them attract clients (um, again, it was an article that did the job).
You’re guessing what crossed my mind, eh? Not only were the articles pulling in customers to the Psychotactics website, but these customers were asking me to work with them.
Me, a cartoonist, work with them?
I have to say, I was scared out my wits. (For two whole years actually). But after two years of writing articles (and I just wrote about 20 articles in the first two years), even I began to see a trend.
I figured I could go nuts and cold-call Or I could sit at my computer and write an article. And have a customer call. (Ooh, I did like the sound of that phone ringing).
But you have to remember this was back in the year 2002-2004. Back then, the Internet was a bit of a novelty. People doled out their email addresses like peanuts. Today it’s not that easy to have two hundred people stream through your website. Which means that it’s not enough to just write an article.
There are squillions of articles on the Internet today And those articles are competing with audio. And video. And heck knows what else.
So the questions do cross your mind
- How do I write so that my clients actually read my articles above all that noise?
- How do I write, if I struggle to put a paragraph together?
- Is there a ticket out of crazy-land? Can I really become an expert in my client’s eyes?
There indeed is a ticket And if you’ve been putting off writing, because you think it’s hard, well, it’s time to get that ticket out of crazy-land.
Information (um, Article Writing) creates expertise Ask every author on Amazon.com Ask every top consultant. Ask every top trainer. And ask a cartoonist.
Free Goodies: Don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself. Get some solid methods to write better articles at this link. Don’t wait. This link won’t stay up forever. :)
Free Goodies: Article Writing
Sean P.S. The goodies are free.
P.P.S. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. The biggest frustration with writing is it drives you crazy. Yet writing is a “language” like everything else. Learn the structure and you can learn to write without the frustration and faster than every before.
We don’t accept more than 25 on the course. It’s intense. It’s tough. We open registration on Saturday 7th April, at 3 pm Eastern (US). The course fills up incredibly quickly (often in matter of hours). Make sure you put at least a couple of alarms so you don’t miss out.
Here is the sales page with all the details about the course. (The ‘Buy Now’ button will appear on the 7th April)
https://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-course-how-to-write-articles/
Psychotactics, PO Box 36461, Auckland, Auckland 1330, NEW ZEALAND
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options, visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zBwcnKycTAw=
Announcing! How to Become an Expert in Your Industry: Article-Writing Course
📅 March 17, 2018 | View in Gmail
Imagine you had a fairy godmother. And she gave you one wish: The wish of ‘perceived expertise’. This ‘perceived expertise’, means that your customers would look at you and say: “There goes the expert in the field. I only want to work with her/him.”
I had such a godmother. And I got a wish from that fairy godmother in the year 2002.
You see I’d just started up my consultancy in marketing I’d moved from India to New Zealand. No one knew me in these parts. No one knew if I was good at what I did. Or just plain useless. And what was worse, was I wasn’t quite sure either.
Then one day, that fairy godmother whizzed into the room “Write articles,” she said. “Write articles?” I echoed. “What good are articles going to do for me?” I thought condescendingly.
But as fairy godmothers go, they can read your thoughts And so there I was, um, writing articles. And remember, I didn’t even know my subject well enough. To me, marketing was a whole new world.
But then something magical happened. Something I just didn’t expect. When I sat down to write, I started to get ideas. Ideas that I didn’t know existed in my head. And as I read more books (both business and non-business books), I got even more ideas.
When I put those ideas on my website, and put up a little ‘Subscribe’ link right at the very bottom—I started getting subscribers.
I wasn’t even selling anything online (or offline for that matter) And there I was..ahem…building an audience. An audience that wanted to listen what I had to say. An audience that went from just friends and family, to a chunky hundred people. Then a thousand. And it kept growing.
I wasn’t doing any advertising No publicity. Heck, I barely knew how to do my own marketing. Yet these articles were like a magnet. They pulled people from every part of the world to my…um…pretty crappy website (you should have seen it in the year 2002). And offline, I was starting to get inquiries too.
“Can you give us some advice on these marketing matters?” they said “Can you train our staff?” they said. Can you do this, and can you do that. And on and on it went. But articles were hard work for me It would take me two days to write a single article. And I’d curse and struggle. And to write one article a month was a big achievement for me.
But hey, I did have a fairy godmother And fairy godmothers grant wishes, so I took her up on the wish. “Make me write great articles that captivate. And show me how to write them at high speed (so I don’t have to spend two days over a single article)” I said to her.
“Article writing is about structure”, she said “Structure and drama,” she continued. “Structure and drama and the ‘next step’,” she crescendoed. “Drama pulls you in. Structure keeps you there. And then the next action gets your client to move to the next step.” And just like that I learned how to write articles. And now it’s your turn.
Will you let me be your fairy um…godmother? Do you want to learn how to spot drama? Learn how to spot structure? And understand how to use the power of the next step?
Well, ask and you shall receive. But hey, there are no magic wands here. You’ve actually got to go to the link below. And there you’ll be taken to a page with instructions. Instructions on how to get some free goodies. Goodies to drama, structure, and the next step.
So, tah-dah, here’s the link: Free Goodies: Article Writing
See you on the other side! :)
Sean P.S. The goodies are free.
P.P.S. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. The biggest frustration with writing is it drives you crazy. Yet writing is a “language” like everything else. Learn the structure and you can learn to write without the frustration. Registrations open on 7 April at 3 pm Eastern (US). Set your alarms.
https://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-course-how-to-write-articles/
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How to Use Procrastination to Your Advantage
📅 March 13, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/
How to Use Procrastination to Your Advantage
https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/
(You can also read or listen to this short article on the website:
Read online
https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/ | 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 | Look for episode 165). -----------------------------------------
Imagine you’re sitting down late at night to get ready for your presentation the next day. And you find your slide deck is empty.
That’s precisely what happened to me when I was conducting a workshop in California many years ago.
Usually, I’m very thorough, making sure everything is in order at least four-five days before we board the flight. This time, however, I’d somehow put off what I needed to do, confident I’d have enough time when I got to the U.S.
When preparing for workshops, I go through my slides anywhere between 10-15 times, and complete full run-throughs at least thrice, on the day before. So how come the slide deck was empty? Our workshops usually span three days or more, and the slides for Day One were just as they needed to be. But who looks for Day Two slides on Day One? Not me, at least.
Which brings us right to the evening of the first day, when I sat down to prepare myself for Day Two. That’s when I realised many of the slides had incomplete information.
Procrastination doesn’t have a good rap.
And rightly so. Just because we’ve pushed something out into the future, doesn’t mean it’s gone away. In fact, there’s a good chance that unfinished task is a mega-energy drainer.
If I have to go for a medical checkup, and I can see that white slip in front of me, it bugs me. If you need to finish writing that chapter in your book, you spend enormous amounts of energy just pushing that task out on a future to-do list.
However, there are times when procrastination can be good for you.
Let’s find out more:
How Deadline-Based-Procrastination Helps Formulate Better Thoughts
In 1966, there was a study on the Ju/’hoansi bushmen that wander around the borderlands between Namibia and Botswana.
It found that the bushmen only worked seventeen hours a week, on average, to find their food. An additional nineteen hours were spent on domestic chores and activities. In all, their 36-hour week might seem pretty excessive when you consider that most working people aim for a 40 hour week.
However, our week is a lot longer
Even back in 1966, a comparable week in the United States was roughly double. 40 hours were spent at work, and about thirty-six, on average, on domestic labour. Today, adults employed full time in the U.S. report working an average of between 47-50 hours per week. That’s more than a whole working day as compared with 1966.
All of this extra work only means one thing
The working brain of the Ju/’hoansi and the busy business owner in Beijing, is similar. But the demands on energy, distractions and travel have made procrastination an imposing part of our lives.
Even if you were to go back just to my father’s time. He ran a business, a secretarial college and while he put in a long workday from 8 am to 8 pm, he didn’t have Facebook or a mobile phone.
Once he got on his train at night, he’d be eating roasted peanuts and nodding off as he made his way back home. In comparison, we have to battle all sorts of crazy stuff, just to get through the day. It’s inevitable that as our energy depletes, our procrastination levels skyrocket.
Even so, procrastination can be a great ally when it comes to formulating thoughts
Take this article for instance. I write most of my articles within 5000bc, right in the forum, on forum software. Which means every member of 5000bc can see the progress of the article. This article, for example, started as an announcement.
By day three, I’d only managed the three topics I was going to cover. As the fourth day makes its way to another sunset, four paragraphs are in place. And then there’s a “to be continued” added to the unfinished piece. If you look at this form of article writing, you can either consider it to be procrastination or progress.
I think it’s procrastination and it’s good when you’re trying to maximise your creativity
According to Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, creative work. He says that there are five steps to getting to a sort of finish point.
They are: • Preparation • Incubation • Insight • Evaluation • Elaboration. When you and I look at that list, there are five whole levels of procrastination
Tiny tasks would blur those five elements together in a matter of seconds. However, the moment you have to write an article, compose some music, or even put that plant you bought last week, it all requires five chunky steps. Trying to rush a project of some complexity through those stages, is likely to be counterproductive.
Even so, every stage of the procrastination process needs to be long enough, but not so long that you completely forget about it. The bigger the project, the more likely you’re to push it to the back burner and then it just lies in a corner, unfinished.
Properly managed procrastination seems paradoxical
Procrastination by its very nature is putting off something for the future because you don’t want to deal with it right now. Managed procrastination, however, is where you do a tiny bit, then put off the rest for just a little while. In some cases, you may start on the task in the morning, and continue your task a lot later in the day.
For other tasks, it might be a lot better to hit the pause button until the next day. While you’re seemingly stuck on the pause button, your brain will come up with different angles to solve the problem. If you’re writing an article, you’ll have different examples, possibly even a different way of expressing yourself.
The more significant the task, the more the complexity
Writing an article might be no big deal for one person, but for you, it might mean a lot of sweat, tears and a bit of beer too. Even so, professionals tend to have some system that will take them through preparation, incubation, and insight. The job gets done as a first draft, then you come back to evaluation and for some elaboration.
The more we find ourselves working through these steps, the greater the procrastination. However, it’s a managed form instead of simply putting things off, like we usually do.
Distraction has a bad name and rightly so
We’re off on a tangent when we should be working on our project. Unlike the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen, we have too much to cope with all at once. When you accept distraction as part of your day to day life, procrastination becomes even more vital.
You realise that once you’re done with a pre-designated chunk of work, you’re going to reward yourself with some distraction, so your brain doesn’t slip into a downward spiral.
Hours later, or even a few days later, you’re fresh, filled with a range of ideas and examples (that you no doubt jotted down) and the very same project has a raw new energy. The distraction, unfortunate as it may seem, is not quite so ugly if you plan for it in advance.
In previous versions of the Article Writing Course, I’d get clients to write an article every day
Then around 2016, someone mentioned that she was taking 3-4 hours to finish the article every night. I was appalled at the idea, because in my mind, clients should be taking between 60-90 minutes at best, to write an article.
If you spend 3-4 hours, you merely get exhausted, and the material isn’t 300%, and often a lot worse than if you’re not so exhausted. Hence I went about re-engineering the Article Writing Course. On Monday, the clients only write topics. On Tuesday they outline the topics. As the week winds its way to Wednesday, they chip away at the article using the system of procrastination. Instead of writing five articles a week, they may end up with just two. However, those articles are of a higher quality, and the student isn’t dreading the following week as much. Make no mistake; learning a new skill or working on a project with twists and turns, is never going to be easy.
However, slaving your way through it is a silly strategy
Going through several stages makes more much more productive, more valuable content and finished projects.
Procrastination is often seen as a form of laziness
And for some of us, that’s just what it can turn out to be. We are either so drained by the activity that lies in front of us that we choose to avoid it, causing a further drain on energy. We know it’s still on our to-do list and that drives us crazy, even though it’s hard to admit it to ourselves.
However, managed procrastination is a whole different kettle of fish. When used well, it can keep your energy high so that at 5 pm every evening you’re still raring to go, instead of feeling washed out and unable to do much.
Use procrastination to your advantage.
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Product Offers: Links you should visit
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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.”
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.
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How to Win Your Negotiation Battle Using Calibrated Questions
📅 March 10, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/
Is negotiation a skill? • How do you win when your back is against the wall? • When negotiating will aggression help or should you use something else, like questions? Questions play a role, but nothing does the job quite like calibrated questions. In this podcast on negotiation strategy we find out exactly the questions you need to ask to get the information you need to get your negotiation to work out stunningly well.
#181: How to Win Your Negotiation Battle Using Calibrated Questions Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 181 on iTunes) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ |
P.S. One more thing before you go. Have you listened to or read this one podcast? The Incredible Power of Kindness (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Business)
https://www.psychotactics.com/power_kindness/
So many people wrote back with stories about how this podcast helped them, that I wanted to share it again.
Here are just a few of the emails I received
• “This article was eye opening, I’ve never consciously thought of kindness in this way. Thank you!”
• “Great post, Sean. I’m glad I took the time to read the entire article before starting my workday. I’ll be re-reading it to help it sink in, and sharing it with those I know.”
• “I just wanted to let you know, specifically that this article is beautiful and deserves a much wider audience.You’ve done a great job of showing three ways that anyone can use to become a kinder person.
• I especially liked your first point because I often feel at a loss about how to help when someone I know is suffering, and your advice was practical and actionable.”
• “I listened to the Power of Kindness, it reminds me how to really care for someone in times of need.Thank you again for taking time to send over the links, I really appreciate it :).”
• “This piece was such a pleasure to read. It was kind of you to write it and send it along. I will read it many more times. Food for action, indeed!”
Here is the link to listen or read the podcast: #167: The Incredible Power of Kindness (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Business) Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 167 on iTunes) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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https://www.psychotactics.com/power_kindness/ |
Warm regards Sean D’Souza
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
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How to Sell a Product When There’s No Scarcity Factor
📅 March 06, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics https://www.psychotactics.com/product-sales/
How to sell a product when there’s no scarcity factor
Do you like cold pizza?
Apparently, some people do. They eat pizza, leftover pizza, the next day and they thoroughly enjoy it over breakfast. Some people eat it as a snack, while others may eat it for lunch or dinner. What’s the point of this pizza discussion, you may ask? The pizza analogy is to demonstrate that barring some exceptions; pizza is almost always treated as some kind of food.
A similar sort of concept applies to selling a product.
Often, people believe that selling a product is entirely different from a service. Or that selling training, a workshop or course, for example, must somehow be different from selling info-products online. The reality is sales is sales—pretty much like pizza.
There are various situations in play, but by and large, whether you’re selling a dump truck, a $20,000 course or a pizza, the principles are remarkably similar. You launch a product or service when it’s ready. You get a few, possibly a fair number of sales. And then what?
This article is about the “then what” that occurs right after you’ve done your launch
And the reason for all that “pizza preamble” is because the example you’re about to read about involves a digital information product, namely, The Brain Audit. When we launched The Brain Audit back in 2002, we had no clue what we were doing.
To put things in perspective, Google was just four years old, YouTube didn’t exist, and hardly anyone bought anything online, let alone an e-book that was twice the cost of a hardback that you could get in a bookstore.
We launched The Brain Audit, then we waited. And nothing much happened.
A similar concept might apply to whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a product or service. You’ll launch the product and wait, but find that nothing seems to happen. • How are you supposed to keep selling the product/service for years on end? • Do you create scarcity all the time, or will it get old and tired? • Will clients get fed up with your tactics?
This series outlines the things we’ve done with The Brain Audit, just because it’s our most enduring product
However, just to give you a framework so that we’re all on the same page, we’ve sold services too. We’ve sold consulting, both one on one, as well as group consulting. We’ve sold seminars and workshops, courses like the info-product course or the Article Writing Course.
And as you’d expect, e-books, videos and audio—both digital and physical, as well as to sell a membership site like 5000bc. In short, while this story is mainly about The Brain Audit, it’s really a “pizza story”.
You can quickly and efficiently apply these steps to both product and services.
This article continues at the full page with 3 major stages…
How to Negotiate (And Win) When the Odds Are Against You
📅 March 03, 2018 | View in Gmail
http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/180-Negotiation_Part_1.mp3
Imagine you’re dealing with a terrorist or hijacker who has captives and threatens to blow up everything if you don’t agree with his demands.
• How would that knowledge help when negotiating with a boss, a client or perhaps your own kids? • And how are you supposed to remember the negotiation steps?
That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this episode—you’ll get to hear how we applied the negotiation skills we learned (and got to a perfectly great settlement). Listen away!
#180: How to Negotiate (And Win) When the Odds Are Against You Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 180 on iTunes) iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2 | Android
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https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiate-win/ |
Two more binge worthy podcasts (Transcripts are available too)
#181: How to Win Your Negotiation Battle Using Calibrated Questions Is negotiation a skill? How do you win when your back is against the wall? When negotiating will aggression help or should you use something else, like questions?
In this second part of negotiation strategy we find out exactly the questions you need to ask to get the information you need to get your negotiation to work out stunningly well. Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 181 on 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 online
https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ |
#178: How To Sell A Product When There’s No Scarcity Factor So much effort goes into the launch of a product, but what happens next? How do you keep selling products on an ongoing basis?
These are the questions we tackle in this episode. Listen or read this episode here. (Look for episode 178 on 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 online
https://www.psychotactics.com/product-sales/ |
Warm regards Sean D’Souza
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
P.S. Will You Tell A Friend About The Podcast? It would be really cool if you could tell a friend about the podcast. Here is a simple link: https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
https://www.psychotactics.com/general/podcast-friend/
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February 2018
The Incredible Power of Kindness (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Business)
📅 February 27, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/power_kindness/
The Incredible Power of Kindness
A few months ago, my brother in law’s house was burgled.
What do you say to someone when their house has been burgled? What do you say when you run into a friend, and you find she’s lost her father? We live in a world that’s filled with kindness, or else we wouldn’t function on a day to day basis.
However, as one writer wrote: We’re only one generation away from anarchy. We’re all born selfish. Kids hang on to their toys and bawl at the need to control the entire ice-cream stand.
We have to be taught to be kind.
And kindness comes in different forms
It’s not just about charity or letting the other driver cut into your lane on the motorway. In today’s article, we go all philosophical, simply because of a book I’d been reading by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.
Sandberg and her husband, David were on vacation to Mexico. David was on the treadmill exercising when he collapsed and died alone. In her book, Option B, she recounts the horror that inhabited her brain at the time of the accident, and for months later.
This article isn’t about business. It’s about kindness and its many forms.
Let’s find out how we can be adults in a world of “kiddy tantrums”. And how we can be kind as children, in a world of jaded adulthood.
Here are three things we’ll cover. I promise it will change the way you look at kindness from now on.
- Not asking what we should do, but doing something instead
- Telling someone how they changed your life and being very specific
- Slowing down, because kindness can be heavily dependent on how much you slow down.
1: Not asking what we should do, but doing something instead.
In 2010, my father in law; Renuka’s father, passed away.
I don’t remember much about the day. What I do remember was the act of our friend, Cher Reynolds. Somewhere after the funeral, Cher showed up to the house with muffins. “I baked these muffins”, she said. Cher then stayed a while and left. So why did the incident of the muffins stay in my head?
I only realised it when I read Sheryl Sandberg’s story.
The difference between Cher and so many people is that Cher left out a question that so many people tend to ask in times of crisis. When there’s a disaster, death or sudden misfortune, we feel helpless. And our helplessness shows because we all make a similar sort of statement.
We say: If there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know.
On the face of it, such a statement is exceptionally kind. In effect, we’re writing a sort of blank cheque. We’re saying we’d go completely out of our way to help, no matter what the request. And yet in its kindness, the statement becomes a bit unkind. It’s asking the person who’s under enormous stress, to let you know what they need.
The stress is so high that the person is often cut off from reality and can barely function. It’s at this point that we misguidedly ask them to “think up a list of what they need”. Author Bruce Feiler writes, “that the offer while well-meaning, shifts the obligation to the aggrieved”.
Cher didn’t ask if she could bring muffins
Instead, she took a decision, made the muffins, drove halfway across town and gave the muffins. In the book Option B, Sandberg talks about her colleague Dan Levy. Levy’s son was sick and in hospital. That’s when a friend texted Levy with a message that went like this: What do you NOT want on a burger?
Levy could see how the friend has not dumped the obligation. “Instead of asking if I wanted food, he made the choice for me but gave me the dignity of feeling in control”. Another friend texted Levy saying she was available for a hug if he needed one. She added that she would be in the hospital lobby for a whole hour, whether he came downstairs or not.
Kindness comes from specific acts, writes Sandberg
“Some things in life can’t be fixed. They can only be carried.” My brother-in-law and sister-in-law weren’t the same people I’d met just a few days before the incident. They were shocked beyond belief that someone had violated their space. It’s at times like these that we sip from our cup of helplessness and ask that question, “how can we help?” It’s at this time that we have to step up and act.
That’s just the first act of kindness, however. There’s more. Like letting someone know how they changed your life. And be specific about it.
Announcement: How To Put That Zing-Kapow In Your Articles (With StoryTelling)
📅 February 24, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling/
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.
Have a look right away.
https://www.psychotactics.com/products/story-telling
How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power Of Infotainment
📅 February 20, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power Of Infotainment
When my mother-in-law, Preta, was in her twenties, she was teaching at Sunday school.
Like most Sunday schools, the kids were there to learn about the Bible. However, my mother-in-law decided to teach the girls how to sew tiny dresses for their dolls.
Within weeks of her starting up, all the girls wanted to be part of her class. Ironically, this made the other Sunday school teachers jealous. They complained to the “higher authorities”, and Preta was called in to explain herself.
“We’ve heard you’re not teaching them about the Bible, and instead only involving them in play”, said the person in charge. “You can come in and test the knowledge of the kids,” retorted my mother-in-law, “and you’ll find they know they’re well-versed in their Bible studies”.
You can clearly see the wisdom of play in this story, can’t you?
You can also see how people in charge resist it a lot, even though it’s apparent that we all have a maddening streak of playfulness we can’t seem to shake. That when learning something, we want the trainer to bring a sense of joy into our learning.
Instead, most education is soulless, incredibly dull and it’s not surprising that clients drop out. The problem is that we’re pretty sure we’re guilty of this callous training and teaching as well.
But what if we were to make fun the core of our system?
• What if we postponed designing the information-based section and thought about the fun elements, instead? • What if fun wasn’t an afterthought but part of the entire structure of learning? • How would we do things differently, if this were the case?
Announcing: How To Put That Zing Back In Your Articles
📅 February 17, 2018 | 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.Book 1: The Power of Stories—How to Turn Average Stories into Cliff-HangersBook 2: Signature Stories—How to Create Clear and Memorable Business StoriesBook 3: The Power of Drama—How To Create Counterflow (Without Making Your Reader Sick)So have a look right away. http://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
Why Lack of Depth In Article Writing Drives Us All Crazy
📅 February 13, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-depth/
Why Lack of Depth In Article Writing Drives Us All Crazy
In the year 2003, I did something incredibly silly.
I started a membership site called 5000bc. And one of the first announcements I made on 5000bc was to tell the clients I’d write five articles a week.
There was just one problem I had been struggling to write even a single article a week. At the time, we were sending out the Psychotactics Newsletter just twice a month, and it would take a bit of head-banging to get two articles out of the door.
Nonetheless, I made the promise of five articles a week based on my experience as a cartoonist. You see, before I became a marketer, I was a cartoonist and one of my specialties was drawing comic strips—kinda like Calvin and Hobbes.
For months, I’d been badgering the editors of two newspapers to run my comic strips They mostly ignored me—and one day they didn’t. Almost like a conspiracy, both of them agreed to run the comic strips. Now I had to do two separate comic strips, five days a week—that’s a whopping ten comic strips a week.
I thought I was going to be in a lot of trouble
But I wasn’t. I found the experience to be quite the opposite. When I needed to draw a cartoon now and then, I’d struggle like crazy. The moment I had this punishing routine, I found ideas popping out of almost everywhere.
Which is about the same experience I had in 5000bc (yes, the membership site). I found writing an article a day sped up my writing like crazy. Since I had no option and made this crazy promise, I had to work out a system to write—and write well.
To write well, you can’t stay at the top level of articles—you have to go deep
Think about it for a while. Let’s say you’re writing on the topic of “triggers in marketing”. That’s a pretty top-level topic. If you jump onto any search engine and look up triggers, you’ll get some mundane “3-steps to create triggers” or something just as pathetic. That’s because top-level writing is well, pretty vague.
4 Super-Cool Travel Tips (That Save a Lot of Bother)
📅 February 10, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/travel-tips/
My friend loves egg curry And though I’ve learned over the years to make complex Indian dishes like biryani, peeling a humble hard-boiled egg seemed to be beyond my control.
So here’s what I did. I tapped the egg dozens of times so that it looked pretty much like a parched field. Six eggs probably had six hundred fragments with that insane tapping of mine, and it took me about half an hour to peel six eggs.
Then I went on YouTube and found that all you had to do was tap the egg once on the kitchen bench and roll it forward and the entire peel would unfold in a matter of seconds. That is a nifty tip.
That’s tip. A nifty tip.
And since we travel so much every year, we’ve picked up some of these goodies along the way. Let’s take on four of them. Some of them we’ve been using for years, and some we picked up just on this vacation to Sri Lanka and India.
Here are four tips: • How to entirely sidestep jet lag • How to sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without earplugs) • A travel app that sorts out your entire sequence (especially if you have a complex set of journeys) • Why travel agents are invaluable (even though you can book everything on the Internet).
Last day for special offer: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t)
📅 February 07, 2018 | 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 16 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 6 February 2018—12 midnight 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 6 February 2018 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
-How You Can Get Target Audience Wrong
-How Target Profile Works
-Persona Vs Person and more
Announcing: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t)
📅 February 03, 2018 | View in Gmail
Hi Seree You’ve seen it before You’re about to get a customer to buy your product or service. 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 6 February 2018) Marketing provides thousands of ways to get and keep your customer’s attention But you don’t want thousands of ways: You 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 18 years and got results. A system that has over 967 testimonials. A system that has got results across all media from websites 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 3-6 February 2018, 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 of: - 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 6 February 2018. 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
January 2018
How do you Decide on the Length of an Article?
📅 January 30, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/article-length/
How do you Decide on the Length of an Article?
I don’t. I create an outline. And with the help of that outline I can usually write about 500-800 words. Then I stop.
If the outline has a lot more elements then the article goes on forever
You can indeed write an article that goes deeper and deeper, but for the most part, you definitely want to stop around 1000 words-and without needing to count. Because the outline will do it for you.
So an outline like this will get me about 600 words
“First 50 Words”. Why I get stuck. How I use outlines to get stuck. Why outlines help me in article writing. How professionals use outlining in every field. How much time do I put into my outlining? But can outlining go awry? Summary. Next Step.
An outline like this gets me about 500
“First 50 Words”: Making a moussaka. The stages involved-and how tiredness sets in. How the same applies to article writing-causing a block. How to side-step that block with separate stages. Why the separate stages is just what the brain wants-and needs. But I don’t have time to go through these stages. Summary. Next step.
Good to Great: How to Take Your Small Business to Greatness
📅 January 27, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/good-to-great/
Can A Small Business Achieve Greatness? There’s are two options in life: greatness or mediocrity. But greatness seems so elusive, even so pompous. How do you call your work “great”?
How do you even know or benchmark “greatness?” And can a small business achieve greatness or do you have to be a dominant player like Apple, Disney and Walmart.
In this episode we gets right to the root of greatness and how the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins changed my life. But instead of the massive journey to greatness, this episode shows you a tiny path. A path most of us can manage with just a little bit of effort. A life of mediocrity is hardly worth living.
Here’s the pathway to greatness Part 1: The Hedgehog Principle Part 2: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 3: Big, Hairy Audacious Goal—The BHAG
How to Increase Energy (Even in the Midst of Chaos)
📅 January 23, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/
How To Increase Energy (Even In The Midst Of Chaos)
Load the images to see the cartoon. It works!
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.
The Secret To Get Clients To Keep Coming Back Repeatedly
📅 January 20, 2018 | View in Gmail
https://www.psychotactics.com/secret-feedback/
(From the Three Month Vacation Podcast Archives)
https://www.psychotactics.com/secret-feedback/
Most of us are like crazy chickens, focused solely on attraction and conversion We fail to see the biggest resource in our business—returning clients. If you’re able to keep your existing clients and they buy everything in sight, you may never need new clients again.
But what magic spell would cause them to buy everything in sight? Incredibly, the answer is “feedback”.
Join us as we explore Part 1: How do you get feedback? And when do you get feedback? Part 2: Why safety plays a big role in feedback Part 3: How to cope with feedback
The 6 Most Important Lessons In Marketing
📅 January 16, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
The 6 Most Important Lessons In Marketing
- Follow up.
- Follow up.
- Follow up.
- Follow up.
- Follow up.
- Follow up.
How do I know this to be true?
Because recently we launched a book on Membership Sites. As is the norm, we give the best price to our members at 5000bc. We also let them know about the product a lot in advance. They read it in announcements, on the forum etc.
So what price would your members choose to buy the product at? The lowest possible price or a higher price?
You’d be surprised at what you’d find
Our logical minds would tell us that the lowest possible price is when you’d pick up a product. But that’s not the case. Yes, many members do pick it up at the member’s price. But at least 15% or more pick up the product/service/workshop at a higher price.
Now why would they do that?
We can’t say. And neither can you. Maybe they weren’t convinced. Maybe they didn’t read the earlier emails. Maybe they were on vacation.
Maybe-and the maybes don’t matter.
What does matter is that a reasonable number of buyers (and we’re still talking members here) do buy at a higher price, and on a later date. Which means that if we didn’t follow up, those sales may not have happened.
And this little insight shows you that if your closest, tightest band of followers aren’t paying that much attention after being reminded over and over again, how will the rest of your audience react?
Announcement: Why most planning fails (the critical importance of chaos in planning)
📅 January 13, 2018 | View in Gmail
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.
Biggest landing page mistake and how to fix it
📅 January 09, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
Biggest landing page mistake and how to fix it
Biggest landing page mistake and how to fix it
https://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-mistakes/
http://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-mistakes/ (From the archives: One of the most read articles. You can read the article on the website as well).
https://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-mistakes/
http://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-mistakes/
There’s a reason why I moved from PC to the Mac.
In 2008 I had to do a series of presentations for a radio station. Since the clients of radio stations are always looking for ways to get the attention of their clients, the presentation of The Brain Audit seemed like the perfect match. If there’s one thing I’m very possessive about, it’s the slides for my presentation.
I tend to make changes, simplifying the content and moving the slides around until the very last minute. Even if I have done the presentation dozens of times before, you can be sure I will be making changes at the very last minute.
In this case, the terms of my contract prohibited me from making those changes at the last minute.
The radio station was putting all their slides together in advance, so all slide decks had to be submitted the week before the presentation. This rattled me enough to show up three hours before I had to make my presentation. The technical crew was more than happy to let me go through a run through of my presentation on the big screen.
As I clicked through the slides, I realised that something was wrong. The presentation I was seeing on the screen looked a bit like my presentation, but somehow it was different.
The weird part was that it looked better than what I had done.
After I had got over the shock of someone tampering with my presentation, I asked the crew how they had gone about changing the presentation. “We didn’t do anything with the presentation itself,” they said. “We just ran it through keynote — which is a presentation software for the Mac.”
That one idea was enough to get me hooked onto the Mac, even though I had used the PC for close to 15 years. The Mac had solved a problem that I didn’t know existed. It had taken the best possible presentation I could muster, and made it far more beautiful than I could imagine.
Since then, I have dumped all my PCs and stuck to the Mac. So does this make me the ideal client?
It does not, because I wasn’t aware of the problem in advance.
To find the ideal client, you have to find someone is already deeply aware of the frustration they are facing. If you find someone like me—someone who’s surprised and delighted, you’re going to get a very shallow rendition of the set of problems the client faces—and most certainly never get to the depth of the biggest problem.
You have to find someone who already has a problem
And the best place to start could be a random place like Facebook. Since everyone already has an opinion on Facebook, you may shortlist your ideal client based on a friend that responds to your question.
You may have a tiny list of subscribers on your e-mail list, and if you send out a request, there’s a good chance that at least a couple of responses will show up in your inbox. If you already have clients like we do, you’re often still like a newbie, especially when you want to launch a new product or service.
Let’s say we want to launch a product on how to take outstanding photos with your iPhone
In many cases it’s easy enough to locate a great client, and it’s more than likely that they would like to take great photos, but don’t know how. Once you interview them over the phone, or in person, you’ll quickly find a series of issues.
– Taking great food pictures with an iPhone – How to improve your vacation photos – How to use manual controls with your software – How to shoot close up or macro photography – Great portrait photography with Your iPhone – How to dump the SLR at home and take outstanding photos with your iPhone.
The problem is obvious, isn’t it? How do you choose? All of these problems seem headed in divergent directions.
The answer is: You don’t choose. You get the client to choose.You focus on the problem at hand and dig deeper.
The questions would hinge on the single problem: – Why do you want to take your iPhone instead of a Nikon? – What frustrates you when you take the Nikon? – Can you describe a day on your vacation? – What are the consequences of taking a heavy camera along?
If you own a Nikon 7000 like I do, you’ll find yourself leaving the camera back in the hotel room a lot.
The Nikon 7000 is a great camera, but it feels like you’re lugging a brick along—and when you take three months off every year, that’s like lugging a brick for 90 whole days.
So unless I’m going on a trip—like the time we went to see orcas in Vancouver, or camels on the road in Australia, I keep the DSLR—that’s the Nikon—in the hotel room.
And once you get me started, I can keep going on and on about the problems of a heavy camera. However, as the interviewer digs deeper, she may find that I like the iPhone for other reasons as well.
I can use a slew of software, improve my photos, use filters, create depth of field (that’s a feeling of fuzziness for objects in the distance)—and do that all before I get back to the hotel. With the Nikon, I have to get back, download the photos into a program like Lightroom, and then I’m chained to my computer, instead of enjoying my vacation.
When you dig deep into a single problem, you get the client to give you a ton of details.
You get them to describe their frustration on that one problem. You also get a sense of what they experience with that one problem when you ask them to describe their day.
And finally, you get the consequences—a truckload of consequences.
You then take the biggest problem and put it in your headline and sub-head on your page
The frustration and the sense of what the client experiences: that needs to go in the first couple of paragraphs, followed closely by the consequences. Which leaves us with a sort of dilemma, doesn’t it? What do we do with all the rest of the problems the client brought up? Do we just get rid of them?
This takes us to the next element—what to do with the rest of the problems.
Next Element : What do you do with the rest of the problems?
The answer is simpler that you think. Remember the Portabooth—that portable recording booth that you could take on the road with you? Well, it didn’t have one benefit or feature, did it? It has a series of them.
And yet, the client is most interested in the biggest problem. Once you’ve solved the biggest problem, the rest of the features are really a bonus for the client. They are a nice-to-have, but not a deal breaker.
The way to use the rest of the problems brought up by the client is to see whether you want to tackle them in the first place
With the Portabooth, we could bring up the rest of the features and benefits and explain why there was a problem and how the Portabooth solves that problem. Unlike the biggest problem, where you have to go into a lot of detail, you can just use a paragraph or so to explain the rest of the main features.
You bring up the problem—for example: Assembles in seconds Just close two zippers—and describe the problem briefly, before bringing up the solution. Now you’ve taken every one of the remaining features, turned it into a problem, and brought up the solution.
But what if the problems were incredibly divergent, like in the case of the iPhone photo book?
Think about it for a second: Is the book going to show you how to shoot portraits, use manual controls, take pictures of butterflies—as well as show you how to take great food photos? If so, then hey, the product already solves the problem, so simply use the remaining features on the sales page itself.
If the problems the client brought up, don’t fit in with your product or service, then you have to ask yourself: Am I going to include them in this product or service or do I simply focus on one thing?
In Psychotactics land, we’ve focused on one thing
Instead of writing a book of 200 pages, we may restrict ourselves to 59 pages. We’ve come to the conclusion that clients want to get a skill, not more information. But if you’re selling a product like a mixer, for instance, you have a ton of features and benefits.
Even so, it’s better to restrict yourself to just four-five problems being solved. In today’s world it’s easy to get overwhelmed very quickly, and keeping the features and benefits to just a few is the best way to go.
If, however, you still have a ton of features and benefits and would like to talk about them, then restrict them to bullet points. Bullet points are amazingly effective, because they form a quick summary of the product or service.
And there you have it—the series of steps you need to give your product or service the limelight it needs. You focus on one. One plane landing on the tarmac at a time. It makes for a tidy airport and a very successful landing page!
So what did we cover? 1 How to choose one problem. (If you missed this article click here
http://www.psychotactics.com/sequential-landing-page/ ) 2 Defining why the problem is important. 3 What to do with the rest of the problems.
We looked at the racehorses—and how they bolt out all at once. It seems like a good idea to introduce all our benefits and features, but instead of benefits and features, we need to use a problem.
We get to the problems, by inverting the features and benefits. And then once we have the list of problems, we get the client to choose one. Which is the client’s most pressing problem?
– Trying to write this landing page all by yourself is usually a big waste of time. You struggle to write it and then the problems are not that which the client experiences. Plus, it’s hard to figure out the emotions the client feels. I’ll ignore my own advice only to come back later and realise what a fool I’ve been.
It’s so much easier to call a client and record their experience. Or better still, take them out to lunch—because you’ll get to drink some wine too. And that’s always more fun. Take your recorder with you and make notes as well. Both are very important.
– Finding a client is always daunting. The best kind of client is a client that’s already deeply frustrated. Someone who’s been going through a heck of a lot and can describe in great detail what they’re experiencing.
I’ve lugged my camera around a lot to tell you what that feels like and why I leave the camera behind. You may think Facebook isn’t the best place, but you’ll be amazed at how much feedback you can get on Facebook. Are they the best clients ever? Of course not, but once you launch your product or service, you can always tweak your landing page.
– Go deep into the problem. Ask the questions.
- What frustrates you the most? Why does it frustrate you?
- Can you describe a day on your life? *What are the consequences of postponing this decision? How does it make you feel? Announcing: 2018 Workshop When writing sales pages or landing pages, do you get overwhelmed even before you start? Find out how you can create a perfect landing/sales page in just 3 days. Here are the details: Landing Pages
https://www.psychotactics.com/workshops/landingpages/
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http://www.psychotactics.com/itunes How To Prevent Your Landing Pages From Crashing and Burning(Look for episode 85a) iTunes
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Announcing: Why most planning fails (and why chaos is your buddy)
📅 January 06, 2018 | 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
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TExsbIwstKxszJzMzKxMtEa0zOycHGwcbCw=
Why Some People Achieve Creativity Highs-And Others Don’t
📅 January 02, 2018 | View in Gmail
Psychotactics
Why Some People Achieve Creativity Highs-And Others Don't
Why Some People Achieve Creativity Highs-And Others Don't
https://www.psychotactics.com/creativity-triggers/
(From the archives: One of the most read articles. You can read the article on the website as well).
https://www.psychotactics.com/creativity-triggers/
We all know this to be true when it comes to bad habits. We open the fridge knowing that a Coke is doused in sugar.
But once the fridge is open, the trap is sprung.
We can’t help but reach for the can, pour that liquid sugar down our throats and then feel good-and miserable shortly after.
The good news is that your so-called creativity needs a trigger too
And the mistake that most of us make is that we fail to set the trigger. In her book “The Creative Habit”, choreographer and author, Twyla Tharp talks about how she has to exercise every day for two hours.
And no matter how dedicated you are, there’s going to be a fallout of some kind. A late night, a virus, some well-meaning friend-they can all keep you up too late. And then it’s a drag all the way to the gym.
But Twyla depends on the taxi
Every day her trigger is the taxi. She just has to get to the taxi, and then she’s on her way. It’s like getting on the top of a huge water slide and finding there’s no way back up. That’s how she gets stuff done. She nudges herself towards the trigger.
Think about it: how scary is the handle on the fridge? How scary can the taxi be? And yet it is very scary because you suddenly have enormous momentum on your side and you have to get things done.
I wake up every day to a similar sort of trigger
I wake up and I avoid email. They often sends me hurtling into some black hole. Facebook will do approximately the same. Instead I wake up and there in front of me is my InDesign file. Or my Photoshop file.
The night before, I’ll make sure the file is open on my computer and then I’ll wrap up. When I boot up the computer again, nothing opens, but the file itself. And then I’m propelled to making that first step. I’ll either write a book, an article or draw a cartoon (depending on which file is open).
Some days of course, I forget
And Facebook or email is the last thing I have open. Those days I’m down the hell-slide. It might seem like just 10 minutes, but I will often find that 20 or even 30 minutes pass before I can pull back.
But what works for the hell-slide also works to get me productive. Shortly after I write or draw for two hours, I have to take a walk. At this point, I’ll pull out my iPhone and look at my score on Fitbit.
And there is Steve S.
Steve S. is the nemesis. A nice nemesis, but a nemesis all the same. No matter how many steps I take, he seems to take more steps than me. But I can see how many steps I need to catch up and overtake Steve. And so that sets me off on my daily walk.
That in turn sets off a trigger to listen to an audio book, and then learn a language on my way back.
Of course, no one is motivated all the time
There are days, even weeks when things don’t get done. Life just gets too bothersome, you promise too much-it’s the same old story. Or you just want to sleep in some days.
Even Facebook and email can wait.
And yes, we all get into that zone which it’s kinda pointless to avoid. Sometimes you just go with the flow.
But most days the flow gets you nowhere
Twyla Tharp drives home this core fact with the concept of the trigger. The trigger is what’s important. Most of us don’t have triggers. What we have is to-do lists. But to-do lists are hard to get into without the trigger. Once the trigger is activated, we’re on our way.
Good habits start with a trigger. Bad habits too. P.S. Steve S. is ahead of me today. But not for long. P.P.S. Interested in how I do my goal setting? Have a look here.
https://www.psychotactics.com/goal-setting-successfully/
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