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
Jun 5, 2021 • 30min
Re-Run: The Contrarian Mindset (How To Think Differently Under Normal Business Circumstances)
When is it beneficial to adopt a contrarian mindset? What does it mean to be a contrarian? What is the concept of contrarianism? Do you know why Tesla is such a big car? Think about it for a second. Tesla Motors only make electric cars. The bigger the car, the heavier it's going to be and the greater the drain on the battery. So why make a big car? Let's find out.
May 29, 2021 • 27min
Re-Run: How To Systematically Manage The Pre-Sell Of Your Product or Service
Which product should you pre-sell?Should it be the $20 product or the $2000 one? Let's find out what's involved and how you can systematically manage your pre-sell. Stage 1: Which products are the most important? Which are not? Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the vital products/services?Stage 3: How can we create urgency and scarcity?
May 22, 2021 • 16min
Re-Run: The Mastermind Mindset (How To Harness It Across Your Business)
What is a mastermind mindset? How does a mastermind group work for courses, workshop and membership sites? When we think of a mastermind mindset, we tend to isolate the ideas to a group of people. But what if you could use the very same concepts in online courses, workshops and even in membership sites? Here are three steps to powerfully use mastermind concepts across the board in your business.
May 15, 2021 • 33min
Re-Run: Three Bizarre Learning Principles (And Why We Struggle With Learning)
Learning is odd. It should be logical, even progressive. This is why we feel that we're bad at learning. But if we recognise what's really happening, we can move forward steadily. In this series, we look at three sets of phenomena that I've personally encountered while learning.
May 8, 2021 • 8min
Re-run: How To Be A Source Of Inspiration To Others
You'd think you'd need to be someone great or at least do something wonderful to inspire others. Yet, you're a source of inspiration. How do you inspire? It's remarkably simple —and here's a short piece on how you need to go about it.
Apr 30, 2021 • 21min
Three Ordinary Aspects of Writing (That We Forget To Implement Consistently).
We often go looking for a magical solution to help us write. And yet the magic is often found in the ordinary. How can seemingly repetitive advice help you become a consistently good writer? Let’s find out
Apr 24, 2021 • 14min
How Subsets Help You Gain Momentum In Business (And Gain New Clients Too!)
When someone asks you what you do, what do you say? People tend to give a top-level answer. They say, "I'm a lawyer, a real estate agent, a fitness trainer". And while that information is descriptive, it's also extremely vague. It doesn't necessarily get clients to want to work with you right away and often they're not curious enough to ask for more information. How do you avoid being vague? You do so with the power of subsets. Subsets allow you to be extremely precise and in turn make the client want to know more, thus increasing the chances of working with you. Best of all, creating a subset is easy. Time to figure out how to create a subset and use it to your advantage, eh?
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.
