The Three Month Vacation Podcast
Sean D'Souza
Sean D'Souza made two vows when he started up Psychotactics back in 2002. The first was that he'd always get paid in advance and the second was that work wouldn't control his life. He decided to take three months off every year. But how do you take three months off, without affecting your business and profits? Do you buy into the myth of "outsourcing everything and working just a few hours a week?" Not really. Instead, you structure your business in a way that enables you to work hard and then take three months off every single year. And Sean walks his talk. Since 2004, he's taken three months off every year (except in 2005, when there was a medical emergency). This podcast isn't about the easy life. It's not some magic trick about working less. Instead with this podcast you learn how to really enjoy your work, enjoy your vacation time and yes, get paid in advance.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 17, 2021 • 21min
Free vs Paid Content: Will clients buy if you give away a lot of free stuff?
Does generosity have its limits? Let's say you decide to give away a lot of information to clients. How do you get them to come back to buy the rest of your information? Won't it overlap? Won't they get mad and demand a refund? Not necessarily. It all depends on how you go about about the free vs fee strategy. At Psychotactics, we give away hundreds of articles and an equal number of podcasts. We give away whole courses, reports and other goodies. And yet there are no shortage of buyers. How do you manage fee vs free? Let's find out in this episode.
Apr 10, 2021 • 27min
Why unnecessary obstacles make writing so exhausting
When we think of writing, we automatically assume it's the act of sitting down at the computer and creating a new article, report or book. What we seem to miss is that there are other factors that come well before the writing process that drain us more than the writing itself. What's even more important, is that you're able to easily avoid those other factors—those minefields. While writing may still be difficult, there's no reason to make it even harder than it is. Let's find out how to remove the unnecessary obstacles in our way.
Apr 2, 2021 • 14min
How to audit your information product in four systematic steps
It's one thing to create information and quite another to know whether you've ticked all the boxes. When creating information, the client doesn't just seek information. Instead, she looks for other elements as well. Elements such as examples, entertainment etc, all of which need to be part of the product itself. In this podcast, we go back to front. Let's say you've already finished creating your information product. Can you go back and make tweaks to make it more complete, even more interesting? Sure you can and let's find out how.
Mar 26, 2021 • 27min
Why list-building fails (and how to avoid the almost obvious failure): Part 2
When we start to build a list, we think of followers or fans, but all of these potential clients are elsewhere on YouTube, or Instagram or Facebook. We can't wait for the fans to swell up in number. Instead, you need to move quickly. Even if you have just four-five fans, you need to get them over to YOUR list, your website. How can you go about that task effectively? And how do you then get them to the very next stage, which is to buy something? List building isn't complex, but without these fundamentals in place, it's can be a massively wasted exercise. Find out how to avoid the pitfalls that a lot of people drop into and never seem to recover.
Mar 19, 2021 • 21min
Why list-building fails (and how to avoid the almost obvious failure): Part 1
It's a line we've all heard, but as it does in life, the very same line plays an extremely important role in list building. When we think of building lists, we hope that some course will give us a silver bullet. That some coach will tell you which buttons to press, and you'll magically have a list. Or worse, we believe people who tell us that we can build our lists pretty much like a Jack and the Beanstalk story. Unfortunately for us, all of these promises are castles in the sand. The reason why we fail time and time again to build lists, is because we believe the dream-merchants and fail to pay attention to how a list—any list is built.
Mar 12, 2021 • 14min
The Middle of the Project method: Where to restart a stalled activity
Imagine you've missed the sunrise for the past 300 days. Would that mean you'd give up on sunrise forever?We know the answer to the question, don't we? Even if we snoozed right a few hundred sunrises, it's possible for us to wake up on the 301st day and bask in the glow of a morning sun. And yet when it comes to projects, we often treat a stalled project as a form of failure. Why do we follow this crazy method of giving up? And how to we restart a stalled project?
Mar 5, 2021 • 20min
Part 2. What Makes Articles Dull? The Curse of Writing Like an Author
In this second part, we go deeper into how it's not just the writing alone, but how a fixed formula can derail us. We often believe that if we've written 800 words in the past, the next article needs to be just as long. Which slows down your writing and often throws you completely off track. Find out why staying flexible is good for you as well as the reader.
Feb 26, 2021 • 16min
What Makes Articles Dull? The Curse of Writing Like an Author
Why does writing seem like a chore? It's easy to believe that we need more practice. But practice alone doesn't bring an article to life. A dull article, even when filled with lots of words, is still very boring. The problem lies in the misunderstanding that we need to write like authors. Authors and writers may be similar but most often are not. Being an author is often a gruelling task, and as a writer of articles, it's best to avoid that path. Here's how you go about it.
Feb 19, 2021 • 11min
The Dual Boomerang system of learning (that helps me get to the finish line).
Did you finish the last book you bought? How about that last course? And if you're like me, you probably have at least two dozen things that you've bought—and still not finished. Well, there's a reason why. Somehow, our note taking gets in the way. We never seem to reach the finish line and we have a ton of books and courses to complete. Yet, what if there were a way to solve this problem? It's a method I use, and it's based (strangely) on boomerang behaviour. Here's how it works.
Feb 12, 2021 • 17min
Why clients leave—and why lack of community is one of the big problems.
When clients leave, we automatically assume they say they aren't using the service or membership site. They give reasons why they're leaving, and it sounds logical to our ears. However, there are situations where clients almost never leave. And as you'd expect, it has all to do with community. Which is also why you don't leave your family, your friends and your dance group. How can we understand this concept of community better? And how can we make clients not only stay but benefit from community. Let's find out.
